De är lustiga att se...

Due to the awesomeness of my first Midsummer last year, I have decided that this is a holiday worth celebrating no matter where you are. I did have to alter the act of celebrating this day, though, mainly because no one else would give a damn enough to have a proper party on a Thursday but also because the day that the sun is up the longest is traditionally condemned in Tucson rather than celebrated. As a result, the fun times that were had were coincidentally at and around the same time and I retroactively declare them to be Midsummer celebrations.
Things of note from a Arizonan Midsummer:
-Judging from the number of kids from Sabino, I'm going to have to hang out at O'Malley's more often.
-There are at least two completely different ways to make a Polar Bear.
-One can still have a good time camping even without hot dogs or a fire.
-It's a sad thing when most people's idea of camping involves an RV.
-The forest rangers' device for putting out campfires would be a big hit at pool parties.
-People are more uncomfortable talking about the night sky than they are about sharing racy stories.
-Truth or Dare becomes Truth or Truth when too dark to see meets too drunk to walk.
-My brother and I are apparently the only two people on Earth who eat eggs over hard. (and a thank you to Keith for introducing me to the arguably best way to cook eggs)

And in honor of Swedish Midsommar, a series of photos from my year abroad that for various reasons didn't make it into the collection the first time around.

Fjortisar

One of the things I've noticed in my interactions with my coworkers is how I have not changed so terribly much from high school. In high school, for the most part, quality social interactions with was difficult with many people. I figured it was because I was socially inept (which I still may very well be) and not that it was any fault of theirs. This was slightly less so my freshman year of college and my sophomore year it seemed to vanish entirely. Of course that might have just been because I was in another country and half expected things to go back to the way it was once I got back to the U of A. And as it turned out my first semester was nearly all GedEd classes full of freshmen and my social skills were just like they were in high school. The next semester then brought classes all but devoid of freshmen and my ability to talk to people magically improved again. The people at work are no exception to this trend, the majority of them are either still in high school or just graduated and getting to know them and talk with them has been slow work. And even then I get the unshakable feeling that it is only my age that keeps them from ignoring me entirely.
I won't make some sweeping dismissive claim that every awkward or failed social interaction in my past is a result of the other person being a high schooler but it does seem there is a pattern here. While I still have a long way to go before I'm the confident socialite I'd like to be, I think it's fair to say that high schoolers/college freshmen and I tend not to mesh well even when I was younger.

Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End with Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley. I went in to the theater expecting very little since I didn't enjoy the first one very much and was unfortunately not surprised by the outcome. As I understand it, whatever your feelings on the second movie were, it will be exactly the same for the third. So while it was agreed that rescuing Jack Sparrow was way too easy, it was ultimately necessary because focusing on one plot line for too long would have crowded out all the other ones they insisted on including. One positive thing I will say is that I was wary of them bringing back Barbossa but not making him a central character, but was glad to see that he was given lots of due screen time. All of the characters were given their fair share of screen time, actually. I guess the best thing you can say about the movie is that it allows for a lot of character development but at the utter expense of plot structure.

Girl with a Pearl Earring with Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth. The plot itself is interesting but nothing spectacular; the fact that the created a movie as a backstory for a painting was pretty cool. The truly amazing thing about this movie is the visual composition where nearly every scene can be paused and might serve as a photograph or painting in itself. The film is incredibly beautiful and the depiction of Holland is very archetypical, especially the clothing. Honestly, the film would be worth seeing even if there were no audio, the visuals are that good. I should also mention that Scarlett Johansson is much prettier than the girl in the original painting.

Ass up!

We went tubing down the Salt River on Sunday in a rather poorly planned fashion. All would have been well if not for the forgotten fact that you can't buy alcohol on a Sunday before 10AM. This led to us being separated as half of us continued on to the park to get the tubes while the other half stayed behind to get the beer once it was 10. This of course led to the other group being unable to park at the entrance and due to the po-lice they weren't even able to drop people off by us while they found a parking spot. Flash forward to 3 hours later, all is resolved by patience and a little faith in everyone's respective abilities to meet up at the top of the river. Not exactly the best way to start out my first time on the Salt River, but the next 5 hours were quite worth it.
It's really kind of strange, I had this image of us all floating down the river all relaxed and peaceful, leisurely drinking our beers as we coast along. That lasted about 10 minutes. Then our raft of tubes caught up with everyone else, the river picked up and hijinx ensued. Due to lack of space (I'll leave it at that) we couldn't fit any water bottles into our cooler so the only liquid available was beer, which made everything more interesting. The whole experience was really fun, more than I had suspected; I was never bored for even a moment. I'm also rather surprised how little everyone was sunburned afterward. Save for right above my knees and my feet, I was just fine. And one poor girl who had a little too much to drink was looking pretty lobsterrific by the end of the day but evidently was just tanned afterward.

STFU

One of my pet peeves that's been coming up lately is people who don't know when to keep quiet, or at least not shout as loud as possible. My first clear memory of this problem was in high school when I made some quiet joke to someone about someone walking by. The ditz replied very loudly "I don't get it!" and despite my attempt to quiet her down, when she got the joke she happily cried, "Oh I get it! You're saying he's...!" I don't think there was anyway for the target of the joke to have not heard it. And I'm positive the two weren't friends, so there was no reason for her to do it deliberately, she was just a moron.
I find myself encountering this again at work; when I notice an attractive female customer, I honor my manly duty and make sure the nearest male coworker has the opportunity to check her out as well. But some people don't get the rules here. One coworker, a thuggish Mexican, has a complete inability to control his volume, so that when I discreetly direct his attention to a hot girl he'll loudly (perhaps vulgarly) agree with me so that the girl, indeed most of the restaurant, knows what we were talking about. Needless to say, I've stopped pointing them out to him.
So if you're going to be a loudmouth, you'd better be prepared to miss out on what everyone else notices around them.

No Hope

Hope's End by Stephen Chambers. A borrowed book which naturally came recommended. Unfortunately I didn't like it all that much. It's a fairly good effort considering the source (a then college sophomore) but objectively it's kinda dull. The setting seems interesting but it doesn't really make the story by itself. A dystopian future society on another planet that has regressed to Medieval technology where reading is forbidden by the Church. The author I think was trying to be too clever in his exposition, very deliberately coy about things to the point of being obnoxious. Constant reflections by the main character regarding strange artifacts with cryptic writing like "Campbell's So" Oooo what could it be!? The characters are not the most compelling either. There are a couple of badass female characters who are mysteriously attracted to the main character who has a knack for delivering lines that would make Anakin Skywalker blush. He also is frequently hit on the head hard enough by rocks and sword hilts to be rendered unconscious for a rather long period of time (generally when it's convenient for him to get from one setting to another without having to write how he got there) yet suffers not ill effects. I'm no doctor but I think repeated blows to the skull like that would at least make sword fighting difficult. I guess they just build 'em tougher on that planet. Though his quality dialog might be explained by being a little punch drunk. None of the characters are very well developed or likable, so when they die you don't really care, though you're very blatantly prompted to by the author. And while the author constantly drops hints about what the colony's founders were like and what they believed in it wouldn't kill him to give a little back story of how or why they left Earth. Given how unpopular their ideologies are it seems unlikely they would just be allowed to leave or that they would have enough voluntary followers to create a colony.

Art

Couple of stream of consciousness ideas that just came up. The phenomenon of surfing the web, copying and pasting links and emailing them to people is wholly contingent on the modern era. The only thing close to a historical analogy would be sitting in a library going through books, documents, encyclopedias and albums, writing down the articles or tracing the illustrations then putting them in an envelope and mailing it to a friend. And that's not including multiple recipients or forwarding YouTube videos.
Also, flowering plants only started appearing around the time of the dinosaurs. Imagine if that little evolutionary experiment hadn't worked out. How many foods, concepts or metaphors would no longer exist? Just on the poetic/aesthetic aspect, how would civilization have coped? What would Van Gogh have painted? Roses wouldn't be red, violets wouldn't be blue, there would be no sugar to be sweet and you know the rest.
And how would aliens with no sight organs create art? Would it all have to be tactile? That limits them to portraits and still lifes since they wouldn't be able to create a recognizable representation of a landscape. Would they regard paintings as some kind of abstract form of koan? Like maybe the way the paint is situated on the canvas is symbolic of the place where it was painted or a general pattern of paint represents a cloud. They'd sense the paint but couldn't understand how it represents a landscape. That said, they may very well have some other form of long range sense we do not comprehend and have developed art based around that sense. What, then, would we make of that?

Spindelmannen! Spindelmannen! Does whatever a spindel....kannen?

Spider-Man 3 with Tobey Maguire and James Franco. Yeah, the reviews are sadly accurate this time. I wanted to like this movie, I really did. And there are certain parts I really empathized with, especially since Spider-Man has always been my patron superhero. The movie is too long, suffering from the common affliction these days of directors getting so full of themselves they forget that it is possible, nay, preferable, to tell a story in under three hours. Eliminating the Sandman entirely would have made the movie shorter, the story better and everything generally less cluttered. I liked Harry Osborn quite a bit in this movie, though the big fight at the end was just dumb. Fantastic Four dumb. I didn't like MJ very well this time, I understand her difficulties and how Parker was being a little too self-absorbed but she was being such a girl about it all. Plus she's dating Spider-Man, she knew what she was getting into. Cut the guy a little slack, he can't always be there for you. That said, Parker was being kind of a jackass, even before the black suit. People in the reviews bitch about how Tobey Maguire was the wrong choice because he can't pull off evil, just creepy. I counter that Parker is inherently so good that even when his dark side is brought out it's still not actually evil. And it's only because it's skinny little Peter Parker that makes his behavior creepy, if it was Flash Thomson it would have looked better. And while his whole emo style was just plain silly, my favorite part of the movie is his slick moves with the ladies (and their varying reactions).

In other news, I went to the doctor to have my sore throat checked out. They use a tongue depressor, a stethoscope, write me a prescription and *poof!* I'm all better. THAT'S how going to the doctor should be!

4D

I'm done with the semester! I'm amazed as everyone generally is how quickly the year has gone by. Yes, it is trite to mention it but I'm genuinely surprised by it. Especially considering how long my stay in Sweden felt. It was only a little longer than a normal academic year but it felt like forever, which is why I suppose I was not really upset to leave Sweden as I felt I had gotten adequate time to experience it.
Why is that, I wonder? Time is supposed to fly when you're having fun and I've never had as much fun over a year as in Uppsala. If anything, it should have gone by even faster than in the US. Maybe it's analogous to the missing time when one works too hard only to look up from their books and find it's 3AM. Uppsala was definitely low stress so that phenomenon never occurred. The class schedule might have had something to do with it as well. In high school you had all your classes every day and so my base unit of time was the day since no matter what, something was due the next day. Freshman year of college, my class schedule was different every day with some classes meeting only once a week. This resulted in me changing my base mental unit of time to the week since I could afford to not do homework for a class the night it was assigned. Experiencing only weeks instead of days would definitely make the year fly by a lot quicker. In Uppsala I had classes every day (or evening, in this case, which might add another factor to my sense of time) but the academic week was shorter so while there was always something due the next day, my week ended on a Wednesday. So not only did I experience time in days again, I had more weekend days to enjoy my experiences. Also worth considering is the possibility that experiences themselves might contribute to my perception of time. High school seemed like an entire lifetime but then again the multitude of experiences, even if they weren't scintillating, made it seem longer than it actually was. Freshman year of college kinda sucked so maybe its uneventfulness made it just run together. Uppsala, of course, was nearly constant waves of new experiences and ideas so it felt like more was accomplished. Then again, it might just be as simple as I experienced my stay in Sweden as a contiguous year and not split into two different semesters.
Whatever the cause, I'd like to know how to duplicate it. As much as I enjoy zipping through boring classes weeks at a time, I wish I could slow down sometimes and experience a day, a week, a year like it is meant to be experienced.

It burns!

At this moment I'm suffering from the pollen saturated air in Tucson but nevertheless had every intention of writing about how much I had missed the desert in the springtime. Even though the sun is blinding, oppressively hot (and it's not even July) and everything is covered in thorns, it's just so beautiful. It's something I had really missed in Sweden, not to say that I didn't absolutely love Sweden in the spring, but the nature of the, well, nature is completely different. There's no way to compare the two nor a way to combine them. Plus, the scent of the desert in the spring is so compelling but I don't quite know how to describe it. It's spicy, but I don't know if that's just the collective scents of the cacti in bloom or maybe the pollen in the air burning my sinuses. Oddly enough, while some people were near literally incapacitated by their allergies in Sweden, I was perfectly fine. I wonder if you get an immunity to pollen you're not used to and the pollen you are normally exposed to eventually finds your weakness and destroys you.

Ook Ook!

Friday I skipped work to go see a lecture at the U of A by Jane Goodall! I kinda felt bad for leaving them high and dry, but it's for the greater good. I wonder if they think I called in sick cuz of 4/20... Anyway, the lecture was very eloquent and inspirational and most definitely worth seeing. She was talking about her research and claims being an uphill battle since all of the "erudites" at Cambridge insisted that only humans had personality or emotions. As a result Goodall's findings were utterly groundbreaking. She, of course knew well before observing chimps that animals had emotions and personalities and her dog was her living example. And since anyone who has a pet (be it a salamander, rabbit or dog) knows full well they at least have personality and the mammals have emotion, the conclusion must be drawn that the erudites of Cambridge were the stuffy British lords with spectacles, twirly moustaches, tobacco pipes and never owned a pet in their lives. Incidentally, she is likely the only person in the world capable of greeting a university lecture hall in customary chimpanzee fashion without looking silly.
Also, from the footage of her doing fieldwork in the 60's, she was a cutie in her day.

And congratulations to Mr. Kissel on winning Teacher of the Year!

Darmok

Wisdom Sits in Places by Keith Basso. A required reading but very well written and entertaining. It concerns the value of places and place names in Western Apache culture and why they have a strong connection to the land. While the Apache reasons might not necessarily be the same for other tribes it might explain the stereotypical American Indian obsession with land. First off, place names are considered to be direct quotes of the ancestors and to mispronounce them or abbreviate them is considered disrespectful. Second, the names are things like "Water Flows Down On A Succession Of Flat Rocks" and are meant to paint a descriptive picture of the place so that even if you hadn't been there you can imagine it just the same. Also, some places are so named from the view at a particular spot which they were originally viewed. The best example I can think of is the two light colored vertical strips on the Catalina Mountains in a depression that looks like a giant shoe print look like a 19 to me. But if you're further west, it looks like an 11. Most importantly, parables are told in context of those places and a moral lesson is then forever associated with that place and whenever you see, walk by or even hear the name of the place you are reminded of the moral lesson. This is why Apaches don't like to move from their land, because they will no longer have these very real reminders and they may forget to be a good person.
This also explains their cryptic dialogs with one another. As all Apaches know these stories and where they happened, they can reference the stories and talk about some moral issue without directly stating it. Think of it like constantly quoting movies to get your meaning across, you really need to understand the origins of the metaphors to effectively communicate in Apache.
I also learned from the book and subsequent class lectures on Apache culture that they are the most frustratingly passive-aggressive people ever and by Western standards (no, scratch that. By European, Asian, African and Middle Eastern standards) they're downright unfriendly. In the book, there's some young woman who is acting too much like a Whitewoman at a ceremony and is thus being disrespectful. Rather than mentioning that she's going against tradition in a subtle way, this old lady tells a story about how some stupid Apache tried to act White and in doing so almost betrayed another Apache, to all the people at the ceremony while the girl is right next to her. Gah!
The most bizarre thing is that Apaches make Whiteman jokes where they imitate how they think we speak and act. And naturally EVERYTHING we do offends them. Whites call people "friend" too easily, Apaches only use it for people they've known pretty much all their lives. Asking how someone is or how they're feeling is an invasion of privacy. Saying something like, "Look who's here!" is considered offensive because it's obtrusive. Calling someone by their name is rude. Physical contact such as handshakes, hugs, slaps on the shoulder are not welcome. Telling a guest to "Come on in. Make yourself at home." is considered bossy. A rapid-fire series of questions like "Can I get you something? Beer? A sandwich?" are also rude because you haven't given them time to stop and think about the answer. Calling attention to one's appearance (i.e. nice boots or something) make Apaches feel uncomfortable. Plus eye contact is considered aggressive. Just stop to think about all that. Those are some of the nicest things you can do as a host, but would all be rude and offensive to them.
They make jokes where they do all of the above and then end with "Whitemen are stupid."(incidentally Whiteman evidently means anyone that isn't Indian) All I have to say is they should thank their lucky stars it was Whites who colonized the New World. If Frank's and Feifei's moms are any indication they would have gone nuts with how polite and effusive the Arabs and Chinese are.

Zzz...

Sleeping Dogs Lie with Melinda Paige Hamilton and Bryce Johnson. A dark comedy with a moral is really the best way to describe it. It raises good questions that are generally glossed over in most movies: is complete honesty the best policy? And do your loved ones really have a right to know everything about your past? The movie was pretty good all around especially considering how small scale it was. My only gripe is how utterly screwed over the main character gets, but that's just cinema and the brutal dark aspect of the film. As I thought about it, there are really several messages one can take away from the film: the first is obviously don't assume honesty is always a good thing and don't assume you can handle the total truth. The second is the idea of forgiveness, one really shouldn't hold people's mistakes against them, especially if it's from a time before you knew them. That said, are there things that cannot be forgiven? Both in the sense of being unable to put down the mental weight of a grudge and also the inability to shake an idea from your mind no matter how much you want to forget. And third, perhaps the one no one wants to hear: should one police one's own behavior if they think they will regret it or have it come to bite them in the ass later? I have a feeling most people who read this blog are of the "No regrets. Your past is what makes you who you are. Time heals all wounds." mindset so bear with me. Are there things you shouldn't do (I'm talking about things you could go either way on, not stuff you know you want to do because it makes you happy) because having that in your past is a liability to your future relationships? It doesn't even have to be something horrendous, but just enough to scare away someone in the early stages of a relationship. And for those that would reply with, "If they can't handle who I am, then they weren't right for me anyway" I'd say you've missed the first two lessons.

Word of the Day: Bricolage- a construction made of whatever materials are at hand; something created from a variety of available things. A piece of makeshift handiwork.
I wonder if it's related to brickabrac.

Hen Mei Rong Xing!

About a month ago, some Asian guy stopped by Beyond Bread and after ordering his food somehow got into the conversation of jobs. He said he worked at a sushi restaurant and was about to suggest the cashier (a Mexican gangsta) do the same, when he realized he would probably not go well in a sushi restaurant and should set his sights on another kind of establishment.
What struck me about the conversation was the acknowledgment that certain races are given preferential treatment in the restaurant industry. I don't mean the usual discrimination of all non Whites, but how ethnic restaurants will hire people of that ethnicity to gain a measure of authenticity and avoid other ethnicities to maintain credibility. One of my favorite examples is a sushi restaurant in Stockholm owned by a Chinese family. As long as the average White person can't tell the difference they keep their authenticity. Which brings me to my main rant. Yesterday Frank and I went to get Chinese takeout from a place we had never been to before. We ordered boba tea and I ordered kung pao beef. The boba tea was absolutely horrid; the tea was bitter with nearly no fruit flavoring and the tapioca had a texture bordering on crunchy. After disposing of our drinks, we went home and tried the dinner. Normally when one has peanuts in Asian food they're raw and then fried, which gives them a nice flavor and texture which is still clearly peanut but not something you're really used to. Not this time. This kung pao had roasted peanuts sprinkled very generously on top. The most peculiar thing was the subtle yet distinctive taste of the peanuts, which is only found on Planter's products.
WTF mate? Who the hell do they think they're fooling? Was the old Asian man behind the counter even Chinese, I wonder? At the very least they weren't following any "ancient Chinese recipe" that's for damn sure.

One of these things is not like the others...

First thing's first: Muddy Bug rocked last night! I was genuinely impressed, though not surprisingly, they sound much better live than with the speakers on my laptop.

And Happy 19th Birthday to Stephanie!

Yesterday, per the suggestion of my adviser, I paid a visit to the Career Fair at the U of A. Honestly, I have no idea why she sent me there. Naturally, I figured the employers for anthropologists would be pretty hard to find and that it would mainly be business and hard science majors. Turns out the only thing even resembling a job opportunity for anthro majors involves working with the mentally unstable or meth addicts (note not recovering meth addicts) . I was most definitely out of place there; not only was I not the right major, I wasn't actually looking for a job, I didn't have a résumé and I wasn't dressed in a suit and tie. Oh no, while everyone is dressed to impress, focusing on a singular goal, rattling off 1 minute interviews at the people running the booths, I'm meandering through "exciting opportunities" and "leadership builders" with a McLenin's shirt. Ironically, I had the feeling people were paying more attention to me than the "goal getters" and "team players" that were trying to catch their eye.
Awash in corporate clichés, I departed after what was at most fifteen minutes. I left with that feeling you get when you walk out of a movie theater wondering why everyone else around you loved the movie you just tolerated. Sure, it was keyed to a certain type of major, but why would my adviser tell me to go? Had she never been to one before? Maybe she was deceived by the ALL MAJORS signs which were as abundant as the corporate catchphrases being recited. At the end of the day, one question remained nagging me: do corporations really ONLY want leaders? That word seems to be the key to a successful interview or accepted application. Do they really want 20 million people in the workforce all thinking they should be telling everyone else what to do? Is there no room in the job market for a highly trained and devoted employee with aspirations of leadership?

Bajs

No better way to start a Monday morning than with an email that begins: "There's no easy way to do this." Evidently the paper I submitted to Arizona Anthropologist was rejected. Helldamncrap.
In happier news I may have decided on a topic for my Honors thesis that has the best of both physical and cultural anthro.

Interesting tidbits from the Wildcat regarding the land I love (or rather it's neighbors): "The US is first in the world in gun ownership per capita, Finland is second." I've hear stories about the Finns carrying all manner of weapons with them, but never guns. There's a stereotype among Swedes that Finns all have knives in their boots and the Finnish exchange students were asked if they had a knife about as often as I was asked if I had a gun. Also, supposedly there's a large instance of murders in Finland related to medieval weapons such as swords and battle axes. I'm gonna have to call BS on that one, can't trust them Swedes.
And: "Norway consumes more Mexican food than any other European nation." This one I believe, as the Swedes were very fond of Mexican food as well. Even though the Scandinavians couldn't get Mexican food right to save their souls. Or drinks for that matter (sugar on a margarita glass, helvete) I'm guessing the definition of "Mexican food" is lax for that survey.

And new Flickr photos. The ones from NC are now correctly geotagged and I'll probably rearrange the sets sometime in the future.

¡No Me Gusta!

At the start of this semester I had been out of touch with Spanish for about 3 years. I had debated whether I should go finish my secondary language requirement with one semester of Spanish or tough out two semesters of Swedish. Ultimately I chose Spanish partly out of convenience, but also because I wanted to brush up on the language. The thing is, I considered this the best move career-wise and not something out of personal fulfillment. I never really had a good time learning Spanish in high school, mainly because of my classmates but also a lack of engaging teachers. My mom, who just so happened to be my middle school Spanish teacher, assured me that as I progressed to higher levels of Spanish the idiots would thin out and I would only be left with intelligent, well motivated classmates. Alas, this was not true. The morons just kept coming, utterly useless study partners and atrocious accents and always pronouncing the silent H.
My GATE and AP classmates all took French and they were clearly academic and motivated, plus they at least tried to get the accent right. I think the majority of my crushes in high school happened to study French, and there I was in crummy ol' Spanish. I sort of resented the kids that took French; did they think they were too good for Spanish? Of course I recognized this wasn't the case all the time, French is a very important, globally useful language and if people like the sound of French better, that's their choice. The people I could never abide, and still can't, are the ones who took French because they didn't want to speak "Mexican" as though merely learning their language might infect them. People who think it's a coarse and dirty language of peasants. I'm not exaggerating here, these are all things people have told me. Now granted, folks around Nogales really do sully the language's reputation and if you go to Spain or talk to someone from central Mexico the language suddenly becomes a lot more pleasant.
It also doesn't help my feeling toward Spanish that they have all manner of crazy verb tenses. Even when it's clearly written down and explained in English I still don't know what the hell the unconditional subtransitive perfect participle is. Or why they decided to make all of the most commonly used verbs the ones that completely defy all of the rules of the language. Seems like they should be setting an example for the rest of the verbs.
And then there's swearing in Spanish. Now swearing is a tricky thing in most every language and I haven't been immersed in a Spanish speaking culture so my observations are more limited, but it seems cursing in Spanish is fundamentally different than in other languages. From my understanding of the language you really can't have fun swearing, there's no real joy in it. You can call someone a "lucky son of a bitch" in English but "hijo de puta" is something quite different. In Sweden during the gasques (a formal dinner) the entire table toasts the V-Dala librarian, calling him a "skitstoval" which basically means bastard. The only contexts I have ever heard Spanish swearing is if someone is being mean or cruel, never in a joking or light tone. Of course, I get irritated when people swear too casually, where they say "fuck" with the frequency which Valley Girls say "like". But that's because it's still vulgar and inappropriate and it shouldn't be used all the time. But just because of that it shouldn't mean you can't have fun with it. I also have to consider I might be spoiled by English, as people from all over the world have told me that swearing in English is just better. Whether they are aiming for humor, vulgarity, anger or just aural appeal, people find English to be a good cursing language.
When it comes down to it, I know comparing different languages is like comparing apples to oranges and you can't ever expect that a culture should follow your rules. But that doesn't mean I have to like them equally. I've plowed through years of Spanish with the nagging thought that maybe it just isn't my thing. I always figured it was just because I was learning a new language and such feelings were unavoidable. But after learning another language (admittedly one that is closer to English) I realize this doesn't have to be the case.
So Spanish, I guess what I'm trying to say is I still think you're a good language to know and you're really interesting, but I just don't love you. I'm sorry.

Turtles

TMNT with James Arnold Taylor and Nolan North. As a lifelong ninja turtles fan, I would have been happy with most any movie they made (unless it had resembled the 3rd movie), but I was especially pleased with the way this one turned out. It's a pleasant shade darker than the other movies or series (but not necessarily the comic books) and the animation was very well done. I was glad Raphael, my favorite turtle, was given such a major role and was very pleasantly surprised that Leonardo's character was expanded upon and finally made interesting. It was a welcome change from him simply being the bland, level-headed voice of reason and now we see him shouldering the burdens of leadership. The fight scenes alternated between large scale, video game-esque battles and one-on-one intense combat, something the live action movies never really could do. It also reminded me I have a big stack of DVDs of the '87 series on my desk that I haven't even touched. I need to get on that.

Spartans

Ah spring at last. Finally I can wear shorts again, as opposed to Sweden where I had to wait until May and even then only on hotter days.I have to say, my favorite thing about spring in Tucson, aside from the girls on campus wearing more revealing clothing, is the orange blossoms. It may not have been the most eventful spring break I've ever had, but at least I got orange blossoms.

300 with Gerard Butler and Lena Headley. I think I'm one of the few people that can snootily claim they read the book before seeing the movie. I liked both quite a bit though it might be one of the few times where the movie is better. Aside from the simple fact that fight scenes are better in motion than in panels, the characters were made better, I thought. Leonidas was made more likable than he was in the book and some depth was given to the characters. Inevitably there will be some who claim it's not historically accurate, and it may not be completely faithful, but so what? It's definitely how the Spartans would have retold the story. Though I do think it's funny that the Spartans looked down on all those that didn't stay and fight as cowards when in reality it was more of a strategic retreat rather than just running away. The 300 were trying to stall the Persians while the rest of the Greek armies regrouped and assembled. I think people tend to forget that stylization and just plain good storytelling are just as important as, if not more than, historical accuracy.

God

A conversation I had the other day dealt with what proof an atheist would need to believe in a god. Now naturally, most atheists I've met reject the Judeo-Christian God since that's the one most prevalent in our culture and we're taught that the gods in all other cultures are, of course, false. I suggested that outside of monotheism, the requirements for godliness are relatively low. After all, the Aztecs thought Cortez was a god cuz he had shiny armor and facial hair. Even actual gods like Hermes or, say, Freyr are pretty achievable deities, relatively speaking. If one takes the conservative route, then Storm from the X-Men would be a full fledged goddess. But no one now would call a bearded man in armor a god, and Storm is just a mutant. I think the atheists don't believe in gods outside their culture not because it's the 1st Commandment but because they are raised with the idea that nothing short of the Judeo-Christian God qualifies as a god at all. The atheists reject Christianity but still define a deity by their rules.

The qualification for godliness in modern society I think is the cause of atheism. God, according to Wikipedia, is supposed to have "omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, perfect goodness, divine simplicity, and eternal and necessary existence" and since people have difficulty conceiving all those omni's and consider "good" to be subjective they then deduce that no deity or deities exist. Personally, don't see how these are necessary qualifications for a god. I think transfinite knowledge and power are good enough to be a god, especially since people try to argue God doesn't exist along the lines that He can't make a rock heavy enough that He can't lift it and is therefore not all powerful. One of the necessary abilities that was mentioned in my conversation was that a deity should be able to make something out of nothing. This isn't inconceivable since matter can be converted to energy and vice versa. That ability falls within the laws of physics, unless one considers energy to be "something" and therefore not creating something out of nothing. I find that idea flawed since that suggests a deity would be infinitely (or at least very) powerful without using any energy. Another criterion was that they have to have at least the ability to create, even if they did not themselves create, the Universe or the Earth. Except fro creating the Universe, this is not so hard. All one needs to do is bump a nebula and it will eventually it will create a solar system. Then you just guide organic molecules to a planet in a habitable zone around a star. If one thinks like the scientific atheist in this regard, the Universe does this naturally so none of this should require omnipotence.

To refer to the world of sci-fi, would we consider a being which meets all the criteria for a god as a god, or just a very powerful alien? The Q from Star Trek are effectively gods but they do not claim themselves as such. The ascended Ancients and the Ori in Stargate SG1 have seemingly limitless power, but only the Ori claim themselves as gods and demand worship. If humans were to one day encounter such beings, why not call them gods? As they say, "if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck..." Is it the obligation of worship that is then the defining characteristic of a god? Might that be the root of it all? Again, the standards for worship are low; from worshipping the bones of really good people to praying to the sun. My personal opinion is that worship isn't mandatory for deities any more than it is for the seasons. So basically, if you ignore our culture's requirements for being a god and remove the worship aspect, why is it difficult to imagine such beings exist?