The Life Experience ~ Winter '13

What I Learned Since The Winter Solstice

• Dyslexia can cause difficulty in word retrieval in speech as well as in writing.


• The original edition of The Hobbit mentioned policemen. For some reason, I find this far weirder than the business I already knew about the Riddles in the Dark scene being so much less awesome at first.


• Lisa Frank is still around, but she's gotten rather weird.


• Retired AG items are on eBay for reasonable prices, and apparently inside I am still ten years old and WANTING them.


• Yuri Gagarin's flight into space was even more awesome than I thought, because it turns out his reentry strategy was basically to jump back to Earth.


• Fi, from Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, apparently does have real arms under her wings/cape.


• Netting requires its own special knots.


• The history of matches is long and crazy, and features poison, disintegrating jaws, and explosions. Which is kind of awesome.


• I don't have astigmatism; I just have myopia. This means I do not have football-shaped eyeballs; they are simply oblate spheroids.


• It is possible to get completely absorbed just classifying the hell out of images of distant galaxies. For SCIENCE!


• Snow can smash up your roof pretty impressively.


• You can totally make yourself a fluffernutter on the International Space Station.


• Prescription sunglasses are the bomb.


• MRI chambers act as Faraday cages to keep out external radio forces.


• Speaking of MRIs, apparently dybbuks show up on them.


• Oswald the Lucky Rabbit is the most adorable plushie ever made.


• The term for delicious potato chips and cream puffs and other such things is "supernormal releaser," which is a fancy way of saying "too much of a good thing," since back in Ye Olden Times it was really difficult to come across fat and salt and sugar, so your body is still convinced it should stuff them into your face whenever you come across them. That I knew, but I didn't know the term for them.


• Writing on a deadline, even a self-imposed one, is rough.


• Horror movies in theaters are a very different experience from horror movies alone in your room in the dark.


• Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D major is an impressive bit of music to watch being performed.*


• Cats and toy trains are natural enemies.


• My confusion regarding a certain specific idiom in Irish accents is a direct result of David Eddings' confusion regarding the same.  When I learned that the phrase "I'm after [verb]ing" meant "I've just been [verb]ing," I thought for some reason it was counter-intuitive--it seemed like it should mean "I'm gonna [verb]"--but I didn't know why.  It's only after rereading The Belgariad and Malloreon that I realized that it's because Eddings uses the expression in his "Wacite brogue" accent, where it does mean "I'm gonna [verb]."  I picked up that meaning in junior high and it stuck with me after I'd forgotten the source.**


• In Tolkien's mythos, Fëanor was the one who came up with the Tengwar. Yet another addition to the list of atrocities he perpetrated on the Firstborn of Ilúvatar.


• Popes can retire.


• Mister Rogers answered every single letter he got. Which is a gargantuan task, because by god he was MISTER ROGERS.

*I've always rather wanted to see that one. It gets mentioned on an episode of M*A*S*H and I was always intrigued by the idea of writing a concerto for someone who had lost their right hand. So when my friend invited me to the symphony, I was not disappointed when they changed the program due to the pianist's having an injury on his right hand because hey, that meant I finally got to hear the left-handed piece.

**Even back then I knew that Eddings had some fanciful ideas about linguistics, but I did not notice that one specifically.

WHO GAVE EMMETT A LINE?!

Okay, y'all, the Rifftrax for Breaking Dawn Part 2 is a goddamn MASTERPIECE. I may have to turn around and watch it again, because it had me doubled over laughing so hard.

Also, Dear Michael Sheen: I WILL BE YOUR FRIEND. Come find me and we will have sparkly shenanigans together. Wear your silly old-timey battle gear. Maybe we can go find nobleplatypus and go to Disneyland! IT WILL BE REMAAAARKABLE