If you read nothing else, of this entry, just read this article. It's really good.



A friend of mine I was chatting with yesterday online said that it
seemed like I was distracted. She was telling me about things that were
happening in her life but she said she didn't really want to talk about
it because it seemed like I wasn't paying any attention. That I wasn't
focusing. She said I was being a bad friend. That I was slacking.



Hearing that made me feel bad. After, she said she was just joking and
didn't mean it. And I know she was. But she wasn't exactly wrong either. I wasn't focused.
I wasn't really paying that much attention to her or anyone.  I was
just... tired.

She's not the first person to accuse me of being a bad friend. I've been a bad friend... lots of times.  And believe me I know it better than anyone else. Sometimes I don't return phone calls. Sometimes I don't return letters or respond to emails or respond to IMs. Sometimes I just don't interact with you and even when your standing right there sometimes I lose focus and have one of my Osaka moments where I'm thinking about something else. And sometimes, yes, I avoid people. Even close friends who mean a lot to me. Sometimes I just need to get away from them. Sometimes I can be awfully rude.



You may have noticed I haven't been commenting as much. Or chatting as
much online. Or posting as much. Or replying to all of your comments.
There's a reason for it you know. It's not so much life is getting in
my way. And no I'm not too busy watching the Olympics (my TV is broken
actually so I don't watch anything).  The reason is rather simple. 
I've been tired. Tired of dealing with people online.  I needed a break.


Back when I was rambling on about Kryptonite, someone
posted a link to an article that I found enlightening. I'd tell you who
that person is, but there was no link to her blog, so I presume she's
some sort of Spirit who came down from the heavens to bless me with
this piece of brilliance. Either that or she's a Ninja. Either way,
same difference. I'm glad she posted this article. I've already shared
it with some of my close friends. I wanted to write about it here too
but I never got around to it until now.

The
article was called Caring For Your Introvert.   It's a discussion of
the nature of introversion and how it is perceived by and misunderstood
by society. It offers suggestions as to how you can be more considerate
and understanding of introverts in your life.   Here's an excerpt from
the article:

Continue reading →

One of the worst feelings in the world is observing someone in pain and not being able to do anything. Our instinct is to try and fix it. To undo the problem. To go in there and beat the crap out of whoever caused them this terrible pain. To change the world in such a way as to make the pain go away.

But of course we can't. So we end up sitting helplessly by not knowing what to do, afraid to overstep our bounds, wishing the pain away.

Sometimes we even get angry at the person. Irrationally angry of course. We think: Damn it why doesn't that person just fix their problems! They won't let me help them fix it and they won't do it on their own. It can be soo frustrating for us observers. Sometimes we even start to blame the person for their own suffering.

Of course it's a lie and we know it. The person we are really angry at is ourselves. Because we hate feeling so very helpless. Especially when it comes to the people we care about.

Of course, pain and suffering aren't really something that always needs to be *fixed*.  Sometimes sadness doesn't need to be cured. Just because someone is hurting doesn't mean they are affected by a disease. We don't want to be analyzed and diagnosed like we are some lab specimen waiting for the right drug cocktail to take away our "imperfections".  Rather, we just want someone to understand what we are going through. To at least have a glimmer of what it must be like. To commiserate. And then to shut up and let us go through it. It's our cross to bear. We'll find our way through it. Somehow.

And that's just it isn't it?  Breaking down. Hurting. They aren't flaws. They aren't something to apologize for or to feel guilty about. We certainly don't want to be blamed or made to feel ashamed for feeling the way we do. As if being sad or having elements in our lives that drive us to hurt were some kind of cardinal sin to be ashamed of. They are a part of life too.

So we the watcher, what do we do? Usually sit around looking really stupid. And we say the empty words that everyone says and make the empty gestures that everyone does none of which ever changes anything. And we hope that it helps. At least a little.

One thing that is rarely spoken of that is a sort of taboo is those situations where cultural sensitivity clashes directly with principals of ethics and justice.  There are lots of examples of this. Religious indoctrination is a good one to analyze. As is enforced marriage traditions. Or any kind of cultural tradition that restricts personal choice and freedom.

But when things start to get really serious is when we start to deal with culturally institutionalized abuse.  The simplest example is "beatings" as a part of child rearing. This is as a tricky situation because it is a manner in which behavior trends are passed on to children as part of their culture.  However, modern cultures limit that behavior strongly for one very important reason. The tradition of beatings empowers and validates the sadistic use of that educational act.  That is a cruel and malevolent sadist who lives in the society or even just a person with a grudge or a sick mind, can in effect hide behind the traditions and use it to do harm upon someone who is innocent and defenseless.  That's why "beatings" are taken seriously by modern society. It has nothing to do with political correctness or being wishy washy.

And yet the physical abuse is really easy to catch and deal with compared to other systems of Institutionalized Abuse.  In some cultures the traditions are set up in such a way that they allow the heads of family to have total control over members of the society with less standings. As a consequence, certain malicious entities can, when born into that system, use the power afforded them by the society itself to be Emotionally and Psychologically abusive to whomever is afforded the least respect. Their twisted egos are boosted on the backs of of the members of the society who lack face or are dishonored. They can, in effect, redirect all blame and shame onto the heads of others and feel perfectly satisfied in doing so.  It ends up being a sort of Cinderella story in many cases. Where the faceless members of the society are effective slaves of the higher classed family members.

The worst part about these situations is the abusers often don't know they are in the wrong. The cultural traditions in which they are born constantly validated their behavior. They believe they are superior and they have a right to do those things. They honestly come to believe deep down that they are not in the wrong and that the others the ones with less standings that they criticize actually are to blame for all that goes wrong in their lives. The older the persons are the more strongly ingrained this belief will be and the harder it will be to instill different values in them. 

Of course any individual who can knowingly cause emotional and psychological duress upon another is fully responsible for the harm he or she has caused and should be held accountable,  but the real problem here is the social traiditon. It's the culture that validates and empowers these individuals. It's the acceptability of it that increases the probability of harm being caused and increases the intensity of the harm caused.

To correct systems like this we actually would have to interfere with the cultural traditions of many groups and peoples right? And that would cause harm to the good that is carried along with those traditions. So what do we do?

Unfortunately as with many matters of justice, the way it will turn out, whether we want it to be that way or not, is that the future will have to work itself out. As economies improve and increasing generations develop a greater understanding of the principles of morality and the desire  for freedom and then the traditions evolve to become more rational... from the ground up. It will take the rebellions of the underclasses again and again and it is important for the society as a whole to support these people in their doing our jobs of creating the future for us.

You know what? I almost *never* get writers block. When I do it is really a horrible feeling and I just want to jump off a bridge. But it's really really rare for me.  I always have something to write about.

No, what I often get is not writer's block but something that outwardly appears like writer's block but is totally different. I call it writer's flood.

Basically it's when a whole bunch of really awesome ideas are bouncing around in my head demanding that they be written and I just don't know where to begin. My attention can't really be split in so many directions and I start to get overwhelmed by the sheer size of it all. 

If you've noticed, none of my entries are short. But what you don't know is most of what I write is way smaller than what I wanted to write or imagined writing. And you also don't know that of all the entries I post that's only a tiny fraction of all the entries I WANT to post.  The problem is writing each of these posts is hard. They take up a lot of time and lot of energy and a lot of thought. And sometimes a lot of emotional commitment too. And I have to focus on just that one piece of writing to get it right. Only when I'm in a Writer's Flood I can't do that. There's too much bouncing around up there. I get distracted too easily. 

Yeah so it's like that. I feel sometimes like I'm drowning in the ideas. Overwhelmed by the thoughts. And I can't write. And I wait until I can find a moment of peace, sort of a piece of drift wood to cling onto in the endless sea of thought. And that's when I write.

But lately the storm has been raging too wildly and I haven't been able to cling to much. So I haven't written much of anything worthwhile. So when I feel like this I tend to just do something else entirely. I drop writing and I dunno read manga or something. I meditate and focus on holding my breathe until another piece of driftwood floats my way.

Not to worry though. I can hold my breathe for a long time. And hopefully when all is said and done my writing will be even better for the wait.

I remember back during my freshman year in college I discovered something that quite surprised me.

I figured out that I didn't know anything.

Oh sure, I was somewhat academically knowledgeable. I could do calculus in my sleep. I could quote many a scene from Shakespeare in regular conversations and Plato's dialogues were my bedtime stories.

But outside of that basic academic competence I was ignorant beyond imagination. I would get into conversations with people and they'd randomly bring up stuff, like matters of popular culture, references to actors, movies, music, songs, books, politics, history, television shows, celebrities, clothing, art, sports, manga, anime, etc., etc. etc.  And you know what? I had nothing to say. I had no idea what they were talking about. Reference after reference I had never learned anything about.

My ignorance went further than popular culture too I found. In numerous situations I found I lacked knowledge of the proper etiquette or expected behavior. I would invariably find myself having no clue what to say, when to say it, how to appear, where to go, who to talk to, etc. etc.  And there were even various facts of life that I was similarly unaware of. The kinds of things people did with their time. The things that mattered to people.

My ignorance of the world at large was perhaps the worst. I was what one might call the quintessential American idiot. In that, anything about any country outside of the US was more or less outside of my purview. If they didn't teach it in the one year of World History I took in High School I didn't know it.  Of  course that made it rather interesting since my first roommate was from China and a next door neighbor was Korean and yeah it was a *very* multicultural school. In my defense, I was more sensitive of cultural issues than some of the people I met, but only because experiences I have had due to my race had caused me to be taught to be particularly cautious about such matters.

Even my abstract academic knowledge, which I thought was my expertise, was, at that school, really only ordinary.  That is, your average Math major could run circles around me in Mathematics and your average English Lit major knew a thousand times the references to cultural literature. 

Or so it sometimes felt. 

Sometimes I think a lot of them were just faking it, but eh who knows. To be sure there were many many people I met who were fountains of knowledge from the most obscure to the most obvious. And to be even more sure even the most ignorant of entities were significantly more aware that I was.

The whole experience made me feel very small. I felt many years younger than I was.

Of course people were very nice about it. This was not a place where you are likely to get ridiculed for your ignorance. People were too "mature". But their tolerance and accepting words while their face was filled with shock and surprise only made it worse. It made me more quiet and less likely to volunteeer anything for fear anything I might say might reveal some deeper ignorance.

So I tried to catch up of course. I spent hours and hours surfing the web trying to learn about cultural references I had somehow "missed".  And I would download movies, television shows, music.  But in the end it was a losing battle. I could not keep up with my academics and my own personal quest to fill the gaps of my ignorance.

At some point I just started lying. I hated the awkward pauses in the conversation when I revealed that I didn't know something or hadn't heard of something, so I just pretended that I knew what they were talking about. I'd just nod and smile and use the speakers and audience reaction to gauge how I should react. At first I did a very pathetic job of it and I'm sure everyone I talked to knew I was lying and that just probably confused them even more. I mean why lie about somethign so trivial as whether or not you've seen some popular TV show right? Sounds almost psychotic.

But after a while I got pretty good at it. I could seem more knowledgible than I was. Mostly the trick was being quiet and letting people assume whatever they wanted to assume. I'd then later go back to my room and try to research again and sometimes later in conversations I'd know just enough to make the chance comment here or there that made it seem like I knew what I was talking about. Haha I even got good enough to use this in class to be able to "fake" having read the material.  Well that was ok cuz most of the students hadn't read the material for a lot of those classes.

Anyway, lying just doesn't feel good. Especially trivial lying. And keeping track of the lies became annoying. And it didn't really solve anything.  So I was sick of it all after my freshman year and stopped altogether. By then though I guess I had "caught" up in a lot of matters so there was less need.

But even to this day I find myself significantly more oblivious to the world than most people I interact with.

For example, I know nothing of sports. And I mean nothing. I couldn't tell you which players belong to what teams or what teams belong to what cities or even what teams belong to what sports. I don't really know how most sports are scored. Golf and Bowling are particularly incomprehensible to me. Baseball and Basketball I can handle the scoring of. Just the post touchdown stuff of football is a little weird. I've never watched a game of Soccer or Hockey so beats me there. Tennis my older brother painstakingly explained to me or I still wouldn't get it.  As for other rules, I don't really know any of them. I've heard of the truly legendairy players like Pete Sampras, Wayne Gretsky, and Michael Jordon. But other than that I don't know anybody. I only learned who Manning was when I moved to a city where he happened to be a particularly big deal.

I never really understood sports fandom. Or most any kind of fandom really.

Music I am similarly ignorant about. Name a band or a musician or a popular song and chances are good I haven't heard it or heard of it. Most classical artists I don't recognize by any of their works. I don't know the musical scale, can't read music, have never played an instrument (not really).

I could go on and on and on I think. But whatever.  I won't bore you.

But even so, these days I just am much more inclined now to readily admit my ignorance and not give a damn.  Most of the things most people care about just don't interest me as much as they do other people. It's just something I've come to understand about myself. And that doesn't bother me at all anymore.

Well it doesn't bother me *much* at least. I still am always striving to increase my knowledge about everything even all the stuff I don't really care about. I have a basic level of curiosity avout everything. But I'm never particularly enthusiastic about it. I mostly want to know because ignorance is not bliss. It's rather annoying really.

Got this from edgebreak's blog and blatantly stole it.  Yeah for almost all of these questions two answers seemed to apply to me so I took the quiz twice and... ended up exactly the same! So I guess it's pretty accurate for me. Though a little odd.

***********

I really think I'm totally the opposite of indifferent. I just think the things represented here as being significant aren't particularly worth caring about.

On Fridays I try to share some of my favorite scenes in books, movies, television, anime, video games or whatever.  This is another installment of that series. Here are the rest.

It totally surprised me when Stargate SG-1 became one of my favorite television shows of all time. First of all I thought the Stargate movie was mediocre at best. For the first few years of SG-1 I didn't watch it at all.

Then I started watching it occasionally still really skeptical and sort of mocking it as I watched. I mean... it sometimes comes off as a really cheesy TV show. Sort of cheesy like those old Hercules and Xena shows only with a very different style. Or maybe like Andromeda. Did anybody else watch that? I tended to go more with the deep serious drama series or else just watch cartoons.

Anyway... so I was mocking it and watching occasionally when all of a sudden after just a month or so the oddest thing happened.

I fell in love with the series.

Suddenly I couldn't get enough of it. I wanted to see every episode. And I did. And I loved every minute of it.

What makes SG-1 so special? So weirdly addictive?  It's hard to pinpoint.

But if I'd have to wager a guess, I'd say a majority of its charm comes in its place in the middle ground of television scifi comedies and dramas. It's not absurdly silly. It's not super deep. It has drama but doesn't beat you over the head with it. It doesn't try to make you feel as if you're in a life or death situation by watching it. It had weird science puzzles, a large military component, and crazy religious themes but it wasn't deeply locked into any of these ideological paradigms. It doesn't make you feel as if you are being hit upside the head with the writers' political or social philosophy.

In short, Stargate SG-1 was great because it didn't take itself too seriously.  And I loved that. You could enjoy it and get to know the characters without feeling pressured to do so. Miss an episode? So what. Big deal. It'd still be there tomorrow and just as enjoyable.  It's so different from modern dramas like 24 and Lost and Battlestar Galactica which all seem to revolve around the *shock* factor. In each episode of those shows it's like the writers think "ok what can we make happen that people will least expect". And so they do that. It doesn't have to make any sense. It doesn't have to fit into an overall story. If it's shocking it'll sell. So that's how they write. 

SG-1 was very very different.

It just made you feel good to watch it. It was just a show about friendship really. About four friends saving the world together. No deep romance, drama, philosophy, religion, humour, satire, sarcasm, or anything you usually find shows revolve around. This was just friendship. The friendship between four amazingly well developed characters. And it was sooo much fun to watch!

It was really hard to pick scenes from this show to list as my favorite. I like so many episodes. In particular I like the first episode with the replicators. I like most episodes featuring the Asgard Thor. The Black Hole episode was very cool. I love the episode where Daniel Jackson dreams of himself becoming super knowledgible and totally evil. That episode has the line I always remembered that goes something like this: "The evil within me is too strong to resist. The only way to win is to deny it battle." 

But my favorite episode is Season 4 Episode 6. Titled: "Window of Opportunity".  It's a classical Groundhog Day scenario episode. The plot is Colonel O'Neill and Teal'c get trapped in a time loop and keep repeating the same day over and over again for an indeterminate amount of time.

The episode is just totally crazy hilarious. It reveals the best of the ironic semi-self mocking humour that permeates the entire series. Here's a clip from it:

Wasn't that an incredible sequence?

But believe it or not that's not my favorite scene in this episode. Rather the scene I love, the scene that brought the entire episode together with the perfect conclusion was the very ending. The encounter in which Teal'c and O'Neill finall free themselves from the loop by confronting the mastermind behing it.

I can't find the clip of this scene and I don't have time to rip it myself.     But I found a pdf with the script. Here's the part I liked:

36.54.04 DANIEL- Malikai. We have to reset those controls or the loop’s gonna start all over
again.
36.59.14 MALIKAI - I’m counting on it...
MALIKAI (CONT) - I need more time. Once I’ve correctly deciphered the symbols on
the altar I will be able to master the time device.

37.07.29 O’NEILL- Why so you can be king of GroundhogDay?
37.10.18 MALIKAI-  Do you think I would do this for personal power?. She--You wouldn’t
understand.
37.21.00 O’NEILL - What happened?
37.27.22 MALIKAI-  She died. Twelve years ago. When I found this place and discovered its
true purpose I dedicated myself to unlocking its mysteries.

37.37.16 CARTER (OS) - So you could go back to save her.
37.40.09 MALIKAI (OS)- No, that would...
MALIKAI (CONT) - be quite impossible. She died from...
MALIKAI (CONT) - a congenital heart weakness...
MALIKAI (CONT) - Not even the ability to travel time could change that.
37.48.21 O’NEILL- Then why are you doing this?
37.51.22 MALIKAI - To be with her once more.
37.56.01 DANIEL - Malikai, the device doesn’t work. It never did.
38.01.08 MALIKAI - It never did? You’re living proof.

38.06.02 DANIEL (OS) - We finished translating the text of the ruins...
DANIEL(CONT) - The ancients who built this place never got it to work...
DANIEL(CONT) - They tried over and over again, just like you, but in the end
they gave up. Why do you think this place has been...
DANIEL (CONT) - deserted so long? They couldn’t save themselves.
38.22.04 MALIKAI - You’re wrong. There must be some other explanation. I know I can make
this work.
38.26.15 DANIEL (OS) - You can’t...
DANIEL (CONT) - They proved it can’t be done. You, you’re just gonna go on like
this forever. You’ll be trapped.
38.32.24 TEAL’C - Along with billions of innocent others.
38.35.17 CARTER (OS) - This device...
CARTER (CONT) - activates fourteen stargates simultaneously. That’s fourteen
worlds re-living the same day over and over.
38.45.25 MALIKAI - I-, uh, I didn’t realize...
MALIKAI(CONT) - But it doesn’t...
MALIKAI (CONT) - matter...
MALIKAI (CONT) - Once I ’m able to input the correct...
MALIKAI(CONT) - time coordinates the loop will be broken.

38.59.02 O’NEILL - The people who made that machine are the same people who made the
stargates, and they couldn’t get the damn thing to work...
O’NEILL(CONT) - And even if you could...
O’NEILL(CONT) - just for the sake of argument, you can’t change what happened to
her.
39.13.11 MALIKAI - I I can touch her face again. Talk with her...
MALIKAI (CONT) - Hear her laugh.
39.20.26 O’NEILL - Like you remember.
39.22.05 MALIKAI - Yes.
39.23.04 O’NEILL - Then what’ll happen?
39.26.11 MALIKAI - She’ll die.
~ 39.27.22 O’NEILL - And then what? You start over. Listen to me. I know what it’s like.
39.41.27 MALIKAI - You can’t!
39.43.01 O’NEILL- I lost my son! I know! And as much as I... I could never live that over
again. Could you?

40.15.26 MALIKAI - No.
40.20.21 O’NEILL - Let her go.

************

The thing I love about this scene is how it brings a serious and well done dramatic conclusion with a substantive message to an episode that had previously been mostly sillyness. And it ties back in with the history of the series with the reference to O'Neil''s son. It's brilliant really. A master stroke of writing. In the end it completes the episode turns it from mindless fun to a complete work of art that is perfectly illustrative of all that is good about SG-1.

And hence it takes it place amongst the chosen few as one of my favorite scenes.