The Life Experience ~ Summer '09

What I've Learned Since The Summer Solstice:

• Jesus makes good tea.
• “Good job” doesn’t always mean what it sounds like it means.
• Some of my favorite Paul Simon songs are about Carrie Fisher.
• The Liberry’s database of awesome references is available at home to anyone who has a library card number. And there was much rejoicing.
• There is such a thing as not finishing video games. I’ve had a number of friends recently express a certain guilt that they are “behind” on video games, and I keep in turn expressing amazement. I don’t think it’s ever occurred to me to not finish a game.
• It’s best for me to write a very first draft longhand. This gives me a chance to have better ideas when I’m typing it up.
• Ordinary people, like for example folks in Iran, can be inspiringly heroic.
• My aunt is officially off her rocker.
• In a strong enough wind, it’s totally possible to get one of those bouncy castles airborne.
• My sister is afraid of space. I’m not actually sure what that means, but she reacts to space porn the way some people react to ugly bug pictures.
• Speaking of horrible bugs, there is a horrible isopod whose life cycle includes eating and then REPLACING the tongue of a fish. Which is gross and AWESOME.
• The four elemental “bending” types in Avatar are all associated with a different fighting styles: Waterbending is Tai Chi, Earthbending is Hung Gar, Firebending is Northern Shaolin Kung Fu, and Airbending is Ba Gua.
• All of these styles, as well as Tae Kwon Do, are hampered by giant boobs.
• A good front stance is one where you can just see your toes on your front foot.
• I do, in fact, have an upper limit for how much ridiculousness I can stand in a splodey movie.
• When you don’t agree with someone, there is a delicate balance to strike between pointing and laughing at someone and taking them far too seriously. Sometimes it’s difficult to respect people’s personhood without necessarily having to respect their batshit ideas.
• As I suspected, I’m very bad at language tone. This hasn’t stopped me from trying to learn it, but.
• There are some disadvantages to having a room next to the air conditioning unit.
• I’m not the only person on Earth who was traumatized at a young age by The Brave Little Toaster.
• One new Theory Of Big Space Things suggests that we live in a multiverse—and that universes sometimes collide. Like, literally smash into each other, and get conflicting laws of physics all over everything. While I haven’t followed up on the validity of the theory, it would make for some interesting science fiction. (“You think YOUR natural disaster was bad?”)
• There is a complicated jargon associated with African-American hair. While I knew it was somewhat different to work with than whitepeople hair, I hadn’t learned the lingo until I had to look it up to make a scene in a story believable.
• Not everyone knows how libraries work, and locating books is not an instinctive activity.
• Something I didn’t know about libraries: some make a distinction between trade paperbacks and mass market paperbacks. It’s basically choosing whether a book will live or die.