The Life Experience ~ Winter '10

What I Learned Since The Winter Solstice:

• A “superegg” is a fake egg that is more appealing to birds than their own eggs.
• Cool Youtube comments, usually as rare as dragon eggs, seem to cluster around MST3k episodes. Or, if not cool per se, they are at least non-fuckwad comments.
• The Stepford Wives works better as a cultural idea than as an actual novel.
• Apparently there’s a “locker room etiquette” where you’re not supposed to be naked in a gym locker room where others can see you. I do not understand.
• The reason I’m so damn good at Super Mario World is because I played it nonstop from, roughly, 1991-1997. It’s not so easy to start a new Mario game.
• There is an interesting arc of goals for constructed language through history, starting with abstract languages attempting to find the True Universal Language, to an attempt to make languages meant to be easy to learn, to languages made because why the hell not.
• It is indeed possible to highlight all the italic-formatted text at once in a Word document. This is very good news for someone who wants to switch her document to manuscript format only after she’s written it.
• Also, turning the page to white-on-black text makes things a lot easier on the eyes.
• Gamma ray bursts are strong enough that we can detect them from NINE BILLION light years away.
• John Scalzi is fuckin METAL.
• So is Nancy Springer, in a completely different way.
• Latah may not be culturally-specific after all—Western medicine recognizes hyperexplexia, an exaggerated startle response, which sounds very similar to the description of the South Asian disorder latah.
• Dimetrodon was not a dinosaur. It was a large, prehistoric, finned lizardy thing. Fortunately for our sanity, this does not make Bert I. Gordon right, as Dimetrodon was more mammalish than lizardish and did not hang out in public parks masquerading as an alien Tyrannosaurus Rex.
• After a while, you really do get into a nice rhythm when you swim. This does take some practice, though.
• It takes practice to line up hems.
• Gauge and inner diameter ratio is an important thing to understand if you want to make chainmail.
• Printing out a novel-length manuscript, even single-spaced, takes forever.
• Jumpsuits will be in season this fall. It’s 2010, people!
• Always check the ingredients of the tea can you’re about to buy, lest you suddenly get surprised by the murderous stab of stevia and realize you just flushed ten bucks down the drain for a nasty artificial sweetener.
• A sort of epiphany: much of my actions throughout life have been dictated partly by ambient noise avoidance. It’s why I hate parties and refuse to go to gyms. Background noise makes me jumpy and nervous.