cleaned out my flist. I feel like I can breeeeath again, without all those lj idol 'friends' clogging my list with baby stuff and like christian inspiration stuff or just horribly boring dry shit that doesn't do anything for me except maybe help remove accidental arousal.

I opened my eyes and looked up from the tepid bathwater. The shower head was so far away from this angle, so tall and alien against the caked white tiles and the heavy sway of the neon green shower curtain. I shifted my knees so the exposed parts of my body submerged, and listened to the lazy, sterile ripples of water echo around the tiny chamber.

It suddenly occured to me how utterly bizarre this room and ritual would be to someone a few hundred years ago, or from remote and rural areas of the world today. Perhaps they would recognize the purpose without too much trouble, since the shape of the tub and maybe bars of soap would be familiar, but I wondered how intensely alien most of it would be: the smooth plastic tubes of bright liquid that seethes into bubbles, the pressured release of water in thin strands from a metal contraption controlled by two or three more metal knobs seemingly unconnected to it, various small sticks of plastic with metal edges for shaving unceremoniously, the smell of fresh flowers with a sinister artificial air, the toilet, which with a casual tap of a button opens the floodgates and removes waste to somewhere miles and miles away. Everything perfectly square or perfectly round and exquisitely clean except for a few hairs or building murk, neither of which would signal disaster to anyone but today's perfectionists.

How could you even comprehend such things existing if you didn't grow up with them?

The next day, coming home from work on the bus, the same feeling hit me, but with a different focus. While thoughts of how strange and terrifying a metal rectangle filled with tubes and bright fuzzy chairs and its own lights would be to a removed entity, what struck me as particularly interesting was this: there were three people on the bus at that time besides myself, and they were all speaking, not to each other, but on their cell phones. We were all on the front half of the bus and close enough that we could have had a conversation without raising our voices.

I thought that if I was experiencing "automobile" for the first time, or even just "bus," after the initial overwhelming science fiction attack from the mechanical aspects, the people who sat in proximity and spoke - but not to each other - would be the most unsettling aspect of the journey.

Perhaps one day we will have hi-tech bubbles or cocoons to wrap around ourselves during our commutes to make our singularity more understandable.

I came home and immediately began working on a draft of a short fiction piece of an unrelated nature, but quickly stopped and found myself reconsidering the same unfamiliarity problem as before: I was writing on a computer, not in a book. Putting an invisible and curious ancestor next to me, I answered his questions as they came. They keyboard has letters on it, and you hit them in the order you would write them normally. You become accustomed to their order and spacing over time, as well as understanding the more special characters. The screen is like paper that can move and erase itself and is connected to a sort of mechanical brain that helps you with whatever task you're doing. The mouse moves this thing on the screen in tandum with your movements, and hitting these buttons makes it interact with the brain and change what's happening on the screen.

As I came closer to describing the interior of the "brain," I realized my explanations would be empty gestures. How do you relate the all-encompassing connectivity of the internet to someone who would not easily understand a phone? How do you show them 3D games and tell them it's an illusion, a creation of man? How would you convince someone that all this technology is real and founded on science and not witchcraft or voodoo or the will of the gods?

I looked around my room frantically and tried to find something I could use to anchor my incorporeal visitor to this new reality. A hairbrush. A mirror. A mug. A blanket.

But they were all still unreal: The hairbrush, made of plastic with sharp and evil looking bristles; the mirror, edged with plastic and with stickers in the corner; the mug, perfectly round and printed with images of clownfish; the blanket, synthetic fibers and so fine it would be impossible to imagine being handstitched.

A fear crept over me as I tried to find anything that would be the same as it had been in centuries past, a nauseating fear that collapsed my tech-savvy image and exposed a little lost farm girl with a chick in her hands and scrapes on her knees: I don't know anything about these objects either. I just know how to use them.

I don't know how they make the mug so round or how the screen talks to the brain or how water gets from the boiler to the bathroom or how the blanket was woven or how a camera works or a lightbulb or a Tylenol or an electrical circuit or a phone or an internal combustion engine or ANYTHING NOTHING I DON'T UNDERSTAND ANY OF IT.

Confounded, I grabbed the nearest object on the way out of my room, walked numbly out the back door, down the steps, and sat in the wet, uncut grass.

I stared into the hollow beyond our overgrown fence and into the dense woods of Frick park and breathed. I heard birds and rain.

Looking down into my hands, I found what I had taken from my room: a simple, wooden statue of Buddha.

Oh, hi! I'm Suzi, nice to meet you. You're with the Idol group, right? Good, good...there have been a few of you through here lately so I've had some practice giving the tour.

( Let's just go up the stairs here...Ah, be careful...Collapse )

PSY 0035: Research Methods.

It's required for Psychology majors, and certainly not suggested to people outside the major. You have to have a few prerequisite psychology courses. I will assume, then, that if you're in this class you're relatively decided on your major.

Now, if you have ANY idea what a career in psychology entails, you know you have to do at least some research to get yourself out there. Whether it's your dissertation, a job as a research assistant, or just research for other undergraduate classes, you will encounter research, and you better know how to do it. That's not even mentioning the research you'll do in your post-graduate career.

I can only think that these fuck-faced bimbos in my Wednesday night 3 hour lab section imagine that psychology is about handing out bottles of Prozac to kids on street corners and doing outreach programs for the homeless and then writing in your blog about it.

I, personally, LOVE Research Methods. I'm currently a research assistant, and learning hands-on how incredibly relevant the skills I'm learning in class are is extremely empowering. But even without that experience, I would recognize the importance of a 4-credit writing course required for my major, and at least take it seriously! These people in my class whine incessantly about how boring this assignment is, or how much bullshit that one is, or how much they hate everything you could possibly say about the class. Really, now - why are they psych majors?

Why would you major in something that has a core, practical component that you can't stand so vehemently? Why would you waste your time struggling through a "bullshit" course that you're paying for, acting like a bored high school student in math class? How could you be so out of touch with the reality of your major that you don't feel embarrassed to look like a spoiled, ignorant piece of shit sitting there writing "research methods fucking sucks" on your desk?*

Not only do they whine and complain, they half-ass everything, too. And we do group experiments where we combine our data at the end -- REALLY great feeling to have our instructor tell us one-third of the class "probably faked their data." REALLY MATURE.

In a way, I feel bad. Here are kids who are so lost and clueless that they commit to one major long enough to get to Research Methods, and find out their passion isn't here. I guess, in a way, it's a logical place for this to happen - up until this class, you're only learning about theories and established literature that actually paints a very rosy picture of the profession, because we only see the completed end of things. Once you begin to dig into the meat of the profession -- research -- maybe, to those not paying so much attention to the "science" in "social science," maybe it becomes overwhelming and tedious.

At least one of them had the guts to say, before our professor got to class this week, "I'm reconsidering the whole psychology major thing, I didn't sign up to write papers on stupid shit like this."

I feel damn good that these people are my competition.

---
*Seriously, this is written in pencil on my desk, followed by "i SOOO agree" and "yeah lol fuck this."

"Then we'll go to Paris," he said. She kept eating; the hot sauce was perfect.

"Teach me enough French that we can go to Paris," he said. She tells him you don't really need to know French to go to Paris.

"You do if you move there," he said. She kept eating; the hot sauce was more than perfect.

"We'll move to Paris. No, I'm serious. Fuck your education." She asked him what they would do.

"My dad has connections. I'll work in a diplomat's office." She asked him what she would do.

"You'll wait tables. We'll pinch pennies. Get an apartment." He got this look in his eyes and she decided to let him keep going. She ate. The restaurant was loud.

"We won't be able to afford birth control, so you'll get knocked up."

Eat.

"We keep the baby. It's absolutely beautiful. She has your eyes."

Eat.

"I lose my job."

Eat.

"You have to fuck your boss to get enough money to raise the baby."

Eat.

"You're a wreck. But we're in love, crazy in love, and the baby is so beautiful," he looked into her eyes and she smiled briefly. "I love you too much to see this happen to you every day: I start gambling."

She took a long, slow sip of her red bean bubble tea.

"You've never seen this side of me. I'm a terrible drunk. Violent, cruel. I have a lucky streak and I make good money, so we get our beautiful daughter some nice clothes and you have enough to take care of yourself a little better. Your boss doesn't want you any more."

The bowl was half empty, the cup was half full. She kept eating.

"You're unemployed and our daughter's starting school. I'm gambling, still making a profit, though you're beginning to wonder how. I beat you a lot, but you know I still love you. And it's never in front of her."

She nodded.

"I keep it secret for a while, but eventually the loan sharks start threatening you two. Despite my recent problems with responsibility, I'm fiercely protective of you. We move to Cairo."

She asked why Cairo.

"I have a friend there. We've always wanted to visit."

She nodded, and finished her red bean bubble tea.

"I get a good job there. Things are going pretty -- until you find out I'm having an affair. I don't know why I did it; I still love you more. You know this, but you can't handle it. You tell me I'm a different person than I was when we moved to Paris. You tell me you're sick of me being drunk and hitting you and then disappearing for weeks. You're afraid I'll hit our daughter. She's eight now. You tell me to go to hell with that Egyptian hussy."

She stirred the bottom of the bowl. The noodles were soupy and getting cold. She stared at him intently and asked what she does next.

"You were going to move back to Paris and live with a friend of yours, but our daughter gets sick. Terrible asthma. You blame me for bringing her to Cairo."

She said she would. She asked what she would do then.

"You move back to the States to live with your mother. She has a friend who's a doctor and can get our daughter treatment for cheap or under the table."

She shuddered, but her mood lightened when she remembered her mother would be in Hawaii by then.

"You tell me you're damn glad you'll be half the world away. You take our daughter and go, crying. I kiss your forehead good bye. I'm not angry. I never drink again."

She asked what happens next. He shrugged.

They pay and leave, holding hands. She keeps teaching him French.

"Jusqu'à ce que ces moments de bonheur fin..."

-----

Written for LJ Idol Week 3: A Moment of Bliss. Sorry if the French is bad, I haven't taken classes for two years.

To those who are left,

The wind chills me as it never has before this morning. The tundra aches; the whole earth groans an icy, grating groan for us. I hear nothing but wind, wind, wind. Blasts of snow. This feels new and foreboding, despite the lifetime I have spent in this frigid place.

Is it from the cold, or is it from the knowledge of what lies before me?

Over the frozen ridge, my people are jittering with excitement, bathing in the warmth of their ignorance. Their lives are so small and meaningless. Their swollen bellies, their glassy eyes, their dull teeth and duller minds, all bent on what they see as a Mighty Exodus. They see our journey as an adventure into sprawling landscapes. They see retribution and hope over the edge of what is, in reality, an endless chasm.

I must lead them over that chasm. I must lead without looking back.

I will raise my head with dignity as we charge the cliff's edge. I will wave our banner and announce to the roaring waves that we are come. I must not falter or flail as I plunge.

Until now, I never could imagine the weight on my father's shoulders as he led the last generation to their doom. Besides the fear of his own inevitable death, he must have been so burdened with the task of condemning with him the lives of hundreds of innocent, loyal followers. Their eyes absorbing him greedily, lusting for the new beginning. Their small feet scurrying behind him, blissfully unaware of death so close at hand.

I am now not so happy that I was not among them that day. To relive his duty, to careen off those noblest of peaks, not in hope but in futility.

To you who are left, I pray, remove yourselves from this place. Refuse this ritual. Spread the knowledge that this exodus is wasteful tribute to the Sea and its teams of predators, not release into enlightenment and bliss in a new, beautiful country. We are not missionaries, but feed.

Above all, my dear lemmings, choose a ruler you will not follow.

------

Written for LJ Idol, Week 1, topic "Saying Goodbye." ...I wanted to do something fun.