Memory Hole the Size of a House
Thanks to mistakes, confusion, and incompetence, my mother’s house was sold out from under her on Friday, October 24th. While the new owner was willing to give us two weeks to clear the house, I didn’t have two weeks to spend on the task; I had a job to return to and had to focus on finding my mother a new place to live very very quickly. So Maya and I drove up Saturday, ran vital errands for Mom on Sunday, and spent three 12-hour days recovering what we could from the house.
Those three days are the days that wounded me.
I lived in that house for about 28 years. I originally left after 18, but the car accident that destroyed my hip took me back. Depression, anxiety, and concern that my mother couldn’t care for herself kept me there for another ten years afterwards. When I left, I left quickly, and took only essentials. On occasion when I returned to visit I would grab a remembered item or two, but I never made a priority of it; I didn’t have the time or resources, so little of it was necessary to my life at the time, and it would all still be there next visit.
All of those things were indeed still there that Monday, and time had run out. Indeed, most of the three days were devoted to recovering valuables of my mother’s. But I ventured briefly into the two rooms which held most of what I’d left behind, and barely knew where to begin. Maya was an amazing help, repeatedly unearthing treasures I’d long ago written off or even forgotten about; but so much simply had to be abandoned. Once again, there wasn’t the time or resources, and so little of it was necessary to my life now.
Still… even though it’s all just things, and my life would have continued on nicely if I hadn’t recovered a single brick of Lego or old amateur film prop… knowing that all the things I had to leave behind are even now being consigned to a landfill is hurting. My memory isn’t always the best when it comes to anything useful or important, and so many of those items were memory bookmarks. I’ve just dragged those bookmarks to the trash and hit “Delete”. I’m still suffering from that.
Also, I pushed my body to its limits those days, which it’s still unhappy about. The saga of getting Mom re-settled isn’t over, and there are other unavoidable weighty matters on the horizon. So this hasn’t been the best of weeks. I’m writing this in hopes it pushes forward my own personal healing process, gets me closer to letting it all go. Also, so that ten years from now when I’m trying to remember exactly when all this happened, I have a journal entry.
I have Maya, Mom is safe and warm, and there are good things coming in my life. All I have to do is hang in there.
The Science of Doctor Who: s01e09-10, “The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances”
Nanobots, nanites, nanogenes: these are all science-fiction terms for microscopic robots that can repair or create materials one molecule (or atom) at a time. We dream of building super-strong metals from base elements, or sending them into our bodies to remover cancers or repair damage. We’ve already made a few very crude examples, ver basic mechanisms only a few molecules in size!
But some science-fiction writers use this as a synonym for “magic” when they’re in a hurry; though this is an excellent Who story – one of my favorite tales of the Ninth Doctor – Moffat succumbed to the temptation. In seconds, these tiny little robots scan an unknown life form, determine how it is put together, determine damage, and repair it. It’s hard to imagine how they’re doing this. We can see no visible power source or external computer support, and a nanobot has to be a *very* simple device, by basic laws of physics. For example, a real cancer-killer nanite wouldn’t be complicated enough to do much more than blindly swim through the body until it bumped into something it could recognize as cancer.
If we grant that the nanogenes are smart enough to scan a body and do major conversion work with no power or raw materials other than the body at hand, we get other problems. How were they dumb enough to think the little boy’s gas mask was his body, but not his clothing? (Would have been great to see everyone with the nanogene infection forced into short trousers.) Also, the little bots are dumb about the gas mask but smart enough to recognize different genders, heights, weights, hair colors; that’s some odd programming. Must still be in beta.
Somehow they work, though. And the Doctor literally hand waves the job of reprogramming them to repair everyone properly. Now we bump into a common sci-fi peeve of mine: where did the reprogrammed nanogenes get the information to put everyone back together again properly (again with all the different genders, heights, weights, and hair colors)? If the answer is, “they extrapolated everyone’s DNA”, well that’s great. If they could do that, the nanogenes probably should have been doing that when they scanned the little boy in the first place? I’d also love to know how the critters were able to destroy everyone’s minds, but completely restore them afterward. It would be like smashing your hard drive, buying a new one, and expecting all your data to be on it. Doctor Crusher liked to ignore this problem on the Enterprise-D, too.
One last nit to pick: I’ve lived through my body trying to rebuild just a couple of smashed bones. The physiological stress of the conversion to gas-mask zombie in the first place would kill you. Between the excrutiating pain, and the sudden changes to your biology, your body wouldn’t handle the shock. The conversion process would make more sense if everyone’s body went into a coma for weeks before emerging as a gas-masked little boy, but I’ll concede that would be lousy TV.
Next time: I’m afraid I’ll have to blow up the Earth. It obstructs my view of Raxacoricofallapatorious.
Installing Skyrim Using Wine on Mac OS X
Computer used: 2009 Mac Pro with 8 GB memory, a 1 GB Apple graphics card, and OS X 10.9 Mavericks
- Purchase Skyrim on Steam. (By waiting for the right sale, I got it for $5.)
- Download ThePortingTeam’s Wine wrapper for Skyrim.
- Follow the installation instructions under “Installation”. Run Skyrim at least once. At this point Skyrim worked excellently except for a horrible display bug. So, after a lot of websites and some guessing…
- Right-click on the wrapper (the Skyrim icon), choose “Open Package Contents”, and open wineskin.app just as you did during Step 3.
- Click “Set Screen Options”. Uncheck “Use Mac Driver instead of X11”.
- Under “Override Wine control of Screen Settings?” click “Override”.
- Under “Override Settings” make sure that “Fullscreen” is checked. Under “Installer Options” make sure that “Force Normal Windows” is checked.
- Click “Done”. Click “Quit”. Double-click the wrapper icon, and enjoy your game!
I also installed the Unofficial Skyrim Patches, SKSE, and SkyUI, but that’s for another time. Further, I updated the wrapper engine to WS9Wine1.7.21, but I’m not sure I needed to do that. If you do, the instructions are on the Wineskin Winery website.
Have fun hunting dragons!
A Modern TARDIS Traveller
The phrase “modern TARDIS traveller” popped into my head, and about 90 minutes later this followed. I’m not going to apologize to Gilbert and Sullivan: they’re cool.
—
I am the very model of a modern TARDIS traveller,
I am a timey-wimey-wibbly-wobbly plot unraveller,
I know the queens of Venus, and I fight the villains terrible
The Daleks and the Cybermen in battle armor wearable;
I’m very well acquainted, too, with genius spatio-temporal,
With Omega and Rassilon and others far less sensible,
I understand the tricks of navigating ’round the Time Vortex… (erm… erm…)
But still have some confusion ’bout the motives of the fairer sex!
(But still have some confusion ’bout the motives of the fairer sex – but still have some confusion ’bout the motives of the fairer sex – but still have some confusion ’bout the motives of the fairer-fairer sex!)
From Earth I’m pledged to keep marauding nightmares safely far away,
Including massed invasion by the Time Lord planet Gallifrey
And as a timey-wimey-wibbly-wobbly plot unraveller,
I am the very model of a modern TARDIS traveller!
Harassment
Whether it be a fan con or a lifestyle event, from this day forward I will do everything in my power to make sure that every convention with which I am involved has an anti-harassment policy in place, well-publicized, and enforced. For decades, I have been under the impression that my subcultures were better than the everyday rank-and-file, and we didn’t do that crap. Over the last few years, I’ve had this mistaken impression corrected.
Today, someone actually said directly to me, “Cons don’t need anti-harassment policies because the women are always lying anyway.” And that does it. I don’t want my life polluted by these kinds of people, much less the lives of my friends. I can’t fix it myself, but I can be one more drop of water in the inevitable erosion of this mountain of idiocy. So yeah, I’ll be checking.
And I can name two events off the top of my head that have beat me to the punch: Intervention in fandom, and Debauchery in lifestyle. Since day one, neither event has been willing to put up with harassment against gender identity, skin color, or any similar method the greyfaces use to try to split us up. These conventions aren’t the only ones willing to stand up for their attendees, and more are joining the tide. Rising Star, Black Rose, and Virginia’s MarsCon either have or will soon have such policies with the eager support of their staffs.
I hope anyone who reads this is with me. Eventually, we’ll reduce these fucktards to the impotent, whining fraction they should be.
BorgSpace Interplanetary
Since the days of my first Lego set, I have never lost the joy of building something – having a goal for how something should look and feel and function, then correcting and tweaking until what I was making came as close to that goal as possible.
Kerbal Space Program takes that thought and expands upon it, by offering one all the parts to build a neat-looking airplane or space rocket, then challenging you to make it fly. And once you make it fly, to do something with it: can you reach the Pole? Can you reach orbit? Can you reach a moon or another planet? Can you land a rover or build a base on another world?
I’m thoroughly addicted. And I knew I was cursed to a few late nights when the idea popped into my head of building an imitation of a Valkyrie space fighter from the Macross anime… and then making it fly. Did I succeed? Well…
Threads of a Dilemma
Yesterday, I saw a trailer for a Fox Network “comedy” in which a lady wore the Japanese schoolgirl outfit known as a fuku, or seifuku, and I was repulsed by the sight. I have friends who own seifuku costumes. Heck, I own one. Why was I so horrified?
I knew I liked looking at ladies in various unlikely outfits at least as early as my introduction to Dungeons and Dragons. If you look at how they dressed female characters back then, “practical for fighting monsters” is the last concept that would cross your mind. I could only assume that the chainmail bikinis had to include some kind of magical deflector shield to be usable armor. Back then, I found the idea silly, but this was just a game, and it didn’t bother me.
Once I discovered anime, the seeds of doubt took root. I still loved some of the even more-implausible outfits, but seeing the characters move and be voiced by humans changed my perspective. I felt somehow more obliged to believe that someone would really wear this, and that was a bit of a stretch. Japan isn’t the most sexism-progressive country, and I wondered how women felt about being depicted in these costumes designed only to draw in the male gaze.
At fan conventions, I began to find out – or at least to become further confused. There were ladies all over the place wearing these costumes – at least the ones which could physically be hung on a human being’s body. I wanted to look, but was it okay to look? Which emotions were acceptable while I looked? What expression should I maintain to not seem creepy? The whole thing confused the hell out of me. If the costumes were not sexist, then why were there no obvious male equivalents? Why did they seem designed solely to encourage sexual thoughts in the viewer? And if they were sexist, how could these women – many of whom I knew to be intelligent, capable, and unwilling to take crap from anyone – be wearing them, and having such fun doing so?
Now I have an answer. There may be other answers but this idea has cleared up a few things. I’ve been into costuming since I was little, but in recent years I’ve chosen to wear rather more flamboyant outfits, for reasons which could be several blog posts on their own. Now some would call these outfits degrading when worn by any gender, but I stumbled upon a secret: if I’m wearing a costume *because I want to*, it’s not degrading at all. Someone else can try to convince me it is, but that’s my decision to make; and if my costume choice makes me feel appealing, confident, and happy, then people’s negative opinions don’t matter much.
And that’s the answer to my dilemma. If anyone wears something that makes them happy to wear, then I’m free to enjoy it. The inverse also holds true: no matter what the garment, if someone’s wearing something they don’t feel good in, something they are forced to wear to cater to another person’s whims, it’s bad. And these can be the exact same outfit, because at the end of the day, it’s just clothing. It has no power besides what we allow.
That’s how a seifuku on Fox turned my stomach. The lady didn’t want to wear the outfit, it was forced on her by someone to make it clear they had no respect at all for her. Hell, the costume was more over-the-top sexualized than you’d ever see at a con – which on its own doesn’t have to be a problem, but here was meant to say, “You are not a person, you are an advertising prop.” Nauseating.
So I’ll go back to looking with a clear conscience; I only hope that the wearer is having ten times as much fun wearing it as I am looking, because that’s how it works for me when I’m dressed up. I still can’t recommend the chainmail bikini for actual monster fighting, though. Dramatic poses only!
The Science of Doctor Who: s01e08, “Father’s Day”
The Doctor takes Rose Tyler back to the day when her father died, an event she was too young to witness and understand. In an impulse, Rose interferes with the death, and Time starts to unravel with fatal consequences to everyone nearby.
There aren’t many scientific concepts explored or mentioned in this episode, though Alexander Graham Bell is misquoted when cell phones start repeating “Watson, come here, I need you.” The proper quote is supposedly, “Watson, come here, I want you.” But on the other hand, Time’s damaged, so maybe it’s an alternate Bell speaking? As nitpicks go, that’s easily addressed.
I’m more interested in the way this episode treads in dangerous waters by discussing the way time travelers may interact with the world in their past and future. It’s a question that rarely bears serious examination, because things quickly don’t make sense. The show has contradicted itself many times over the decades, and will continue to do so as the seasons progress.
The Doctor tells Rose they can’t change something they’ve witnessed themselves, which fits the general tone of the show and prevents tension-killing easy answers to the many plot problems the characters have faced. But just what can we say is “witnessing”? Is a transmission over closed-circuit TV something one may change, but physical line-of-sight is not? What’s the range? If Rose looks at a star 1,000 light years away in the night sky, then visits a planet around that star 1,001 years ago, can she be certain that the supervillain won’t be able to blow the star up because she saw it perfectly healthy a “year” later?
Once again, you can figure out that there’s no way to answer these questions fairly and rationally because it makes the TV show impossible. And we don’t want that, so in the immortal words of the MST3K theme, “Just repeat to yourself, ‘It’s just a show, I should really just relax.'” But that doesn’t mean we aren’t allowed to think about the problem. We can set it aside for the duration of an episode, but entertainment doesn’t have to reflect reality perfectly. And I feel perfectly comfortable gently poking my favorite universes this way – it’s done with love, and I’m hardly going to stop watching.
The Science of Doctor Who: s01e07, “The Long Game”
It’s the year 200,000, and the Doctor, Rose, and Adam arrive on an Earth-orbiting space platform that has somehow become inhabited completely by the mid-21st century. Well, that’s not quite the plot, but it’s a sin that current sci-fi TV keeps committing over and over. Fashion, food, and entertainment are all exactly as we might expect them to be a decade or two from now, and while the plotline suggests that Earth’s cultural development’s been held back, this is a bit much.
Can’t I have just a little space fashion, space food, and holographic display tablets? I know it may come off as a bit silly, but silly beats lazy any day on Doctor Who. (Okay, “kronkburgers” are mentioned, and are an in-joke from old Doctor Who comic strips. So maybe the food is a *bit* futuristic, but the burger stand hasn’t changed in 198,000 years.)
Moving on past that, some people on Satellite 5 have dataports for high-speed super-broadband wireless data streaming directly into their brains. Sure, that’s very cyberpunk and an integral plot point; I don’t have any problem with that. However, to add “ew, ick!” factor for the eight-year-olds, they made the dataports into little doors that open up directly to the surface of the brain. Immediately, I started thinking “Well, there’s a fatal infection just aching to happen.” And why bother, given that there appears to be no hardware installed in the brain itself? You should be able to find an electromagnetic frequency that would pass through skin and bone well enough. While the transmission shows a visible beam, that would have to be a side effect: if the information is carried on visible light pulses, the brain tissue itself would block them. Brains aren’t transparent.
Now we head up to Floor 500, where we discover that the satellite is owned by a giant slug shark, managed by New Scotty, and operated by frozen zombies. Oh, dear, zombies again. Let me quote myself from “The Unquiet Dead”: “centuries of embalming technology has blinded modern humans to one fact: dead bodies decay. Shortly after death, various chemical processes in a body are no longer inhibited or controlled; it doesn’t take long at all before eyes are useless for seeing, internal organs are useless for digesting food, brain tissue cannot carry electrical charges, and muscles will no longer flex and pull.” And let me tell you that freezing the dead tissue doesn’t make it any better at doing any of these things.
Frost-encrusted dead people should have been about as useful to the operations of Satellite 5 as a frozen pack of convenience-store beef jerky, and about the same consistency, but as a culture we just can’t seem to get rid of our zombies, can we? Wouldn’t it have made just as much sense, and in fact be a delicious irony, for the Satellite operators to be alive and mind-controlled though the very dataports they were so eager to have installed?
Oh, and Adam is kind of a weasel, isn’t he? Of course, he was written that way in “Dalek”, so fair enough.
Next: an episode that will have repeated repercussions for Rose Tyler.
30-Day Cosplay Challenge – Day 1: Your First Cosplay
I don’t have any trouble at all remembering my first costume. I can’t tell you exactly how old I was, though I know I’d have been at least five years old. I suspect I was closer to seven or eight at the time; there was a friend of mine who lived probably three or four blocks away – a long walk when I was that age – and he was just as crazy about Star Trek as I was. He insisted that I always be Mr. Spock in our little innocent role-playing, and eventually my mom agreed to make the costume for me.
I don’t think she made the blue shirt, though I might be wrong about that – she was certainly good enough to do it. I can’t remember clearly if she put the black collar on it – I originally thought not, but upon further reflection she might have done so after all. I do remember she found exactly the right gold braid for the sleeve rank, and made sure it matched the Commander’s pattern in my treasured Starfleet Technical Manual. (I still have that, by the way, almost four decades later.) I think she hand-embroidered the department arrowhead symbol on the front – she did so again later for a Scotty shirt. I appreciate that so much now looking back!
Of course, I outgrew it soon enough. I was active enough as a child that I’d have worn it out if I hadn’t outgrown it. There aren’t any pictures that I know of, which is a darn shame. But that shirt meant so much to me, and my lifelong love for costumes and cosplay began back then. Thanks again, Mom.
