digital_snowflake

On a whim, I went looking at naginata online last night, and discovered that there is actually training for it (naginatajutsu) going on in the United States.

One of these places doing the training is out in Bellevue.

See?

Well, to be more specific, there's Tues/Thurs classes in Bellevue and Saturday classes in Mercer Island. But for all it's worth they might as well be on the moon for me; I can't do the Saturday classes due to prior commitment and the weekday classes are full to the best of my knowledge. And even were they not, it'd still be a two hour transit each way.

Though I will find it something to keep in mind for the future.

A thought came to me earlier when explaining why social change seems to take forever to accomplish, why it seems to be utterly glacier in comparison to other forms of change, and why we're rather resistant to it on the whole. Mind you, that's a statement I'm sure I've made before, but it brought to mind some other interesting idea that has been gone over, though I'm not sure it's been quite approached from the perspective I've seen it, myself.


It can be posited that authority systems have their rule-sets based in the social norms of the groups wherein it is created. I don't know how tautological this is, but basically: our legal rules are such because we believe, on the whole, that such things are wrong.

Admittedly, this is only in theory, and it breaks down once we apply the influence of resources and the distribution of power based on those resources as an influence on it. Yet the majority of people still have a stake in many issues, and these issues are the ones that reflect the held norms of the people involved.

Looking back through history, there's always been an organization of some kind which serves as the institution for norms. I'm curious now how institutions develop, potentially as an outgrowth of societal norms. Just something for me to think about.

Not that this will be particularly entertaining to many of you, but I find it hilarious. I've been watching a group of people online, and the discussion was about how to behave in public. I'm contributing in my usual way, talking with someone who actually is trained in the fields of sociology and psychology and making him happy that I know this too, but that's beside the point.

What the amusing part was that someone is working on building a primer of some kind for undersocialized furries so that they know how to behave in public without being triggering a normative response from the people around them. (Not that he put it in those terms, but he wasn't thinking of it like that; it just so happened that's what he was doing.) However, someone else started immediately attacking him for 'telling people how they should behave and what to believe' and practically running down the list of genuine normative behaviors in order to get him to capitulate.

Hence, irony.

I bloody loathe furries today. Not any single person in particular, merely a loathing for the entire bag of neurotic behaviors and impropriety that likes to address itself as the archetype of the furry fandom.

So, I admit, I'm a little bored. I've been writing and getting work done solely because I hate everyone recently, and the normal levels of stupidity that would just blow over me harmlessly are pushing the buttons in my head that make me want to engage in wholesale wanton slaughter. This is, of course, hyperbole, but regardless, it's still seriously annoying me.

Honestly, in part it's because I'm thoroughly disconnected from furries at this point in my life. I don't attend furry events, and my only regular contact with anything 'furry' in person is Chris whose connection to it is entirely image-based, these days. Our friends are all fairly successful geeks (married, with jobs, the whole in-their-thirties thing). I'm more busy with working on writing these days to actually spend much significant time on furry networks, and when I do, I'm left with this sincere feeling of disappointment that they're all so very shallow.

Granted, this could be simply because that's all they're showing, because, lo and behold, social networks, and one in particular that rewards straightforwardness and a lack of ambiguity. It's only causal that this would result in a populace which is permanently straightforward and seemingly shallow when dealing with other people. Even so, I'm so very bored with shallow.

Of course, there's a bunch of people-things that I'm bored with of late. The reflexive no, the inability to think through situations, the various concept-links that populate the popular ideological matrix--I don't really have a good term for this offhand; it's whatever you'd call the shared set of ideas that enable and allow people to communicate and have things mean the same things. I don't doubt that it's useful, and my point taken to extremes would be so much "Chicken", but sometimes the concept-links that associate certain ideas are just so faulty as to make me want to cry. Especially in politics.

I've been reading Transmetropolitan again. Bear with this diversion; it's somewhat related. I found myself marveling today at a panel in the first book, in which Jerusalem makes a single-panel reference to the bicameral mind, something I'd missed in previous readings. It made me warm and fuzzy inside.

Went back to something I hadn't realized I'd missed. Spent most of last night--hours of it--just working out stories in my head. Scenes, just playing with my imagination and seeing how things would work out. It's an important part of trying to get things written for me, of seeing how they play out instead of simply writing the outline. It tells me how the world works for them, how they respond, what they feel and what happens next.

I should get out more. There are things to remember; of watching cherry blossoms fall like ash, caught in the wind and pressed against the dank grey sky of autumn in Seattle. Memories of gangers sitting and waiting, of hookers flashing potential johns, of petty criminals and more upstanding ones. Of cigarettes abandoned before their time, of people standing on the street with signs asking for money, providing reasons why they should get it in preference to the next one over. Of the madness of people wandering the streets, sleeping in doorways and bringing their devout message to anyone who'll listen. Of people trying so very hard to make a buck without begging, busking on the street using the most absurd of skills.

These are the important things; these are the things which piss me off to no small end. These are the things that need to be remembered because they are the things that remind us that not everything is sweetness and light. Sure, they're sitting on the very bottom of the population probability curve. So what?

Trying to find a way to make all of this sit together cohesively. Everything's all fucked up, so fucked up, and it's all because of how we're wired, how we think, how we're built on such a fundamental nature that change isn't possible given the current situation. The flaws of society aren't simple; they're restrictions built into our brains that we can spend all of our lives trying to overcome, because we can't look outside and see it all. Because we're not designed to.

Posthuman? The word is accurate, but the idea is corrupt, debased, linked to so many different things now that it might as well mean the same thing as dogshit. I get it, now. It means getting over the little flaws in our neurology that make it so that we think that our success is ours, our failures belong to others, and that the guy on the street deserves his punishment as much as the man down the street deserves his millions.

This isn't a declaration against the rich. Far from it; ideas such as 'deserve' aren't integrated into this yet by me. You get what you get. Deserve implies an order, a system, a way things ought to be, implicit and levied by whatever measure of fate you ascribe to.

I haven't any more to say tonight. These are my thoughts; whatever they may be.

“Do you believe in destiny?”
This is not the question most people expect to be asked when sitting down for a drink.
“What?”
The owner of the voice dropped onto the stool beside me, back kept to the bar, arms folded across his chest. “Do you believe in destiny?” he repeated, in the same careful, questioning voice.
Normally I'd write this kind of thing off—I mean, come on, what kind of lame pick-up line is that?--but this time, there was something serious about the guy, even if he was a total freak.
“What kind of a man wears sunglasses indoors, at night?” I asked, pointing at the wraparound glasses, tinted practically to black, on the guy's face.
He finally turned to face me, though contrary to what I'd imagined he'd do, the glasses stayed on. He didn't look like a crazy person. At a more serious glance, he looked like someone who'd stepped straight out of some kind of pulp novel of detectives, complete with beige trench-coat and fedora. “The kind that doesn't want to show his eyes,” was his sincere response, one eyebrow raised beneath the brim of that hat. “I have a job for you.”
“What is this, Mastercheese theater?” I asked, taking to my feet to walk away. “Honestly, you've got to have better things to do than offer cheesy pick-up lines.”
I'd like to say that there was something in his manner that stopped me, but in truth, it was his grip. Like a snake, he'd uncoiled and grabbed my arm, his grip like a vice. I'm not a small person, by and large, and despite my disdain leveled at him I really was looking for a job, which ratcheted up my own paranoia quite a bit more. Where he looked to be playing the role, I was a private investigator; licensed with my own business. “Do you have any idea who I am?” I icily told him, looking to lock eyes with those hidden behind those damned shades.
“Diana Aisling,” came that same tone of complete sincerity. “I need you to locate the Heart of the Many.”
“This is an actual job offer?” I asked. “Pardon my incredulity, but most people who have jobs for me usually call my cell or make an appointment at the office.” The man's hand relaxed around my arm and I made a show of pulling it free. I wanted to walk away, just because of this breach of decorum, but I really, really needed the job. The office wasn't going to be mine much longer without being able to pay the bills. With a sigh of regret, I saddled the stool in front of me again, hands wrapped around the remnants of my drink. “What do you want?”
“The Heart of the Many,” he repeated in that same earnest voice, as though this matter were of significant importance. “I am aware that you can locate it.”
“Never heard of it,” I answered, tipping the glass back and emptying it out. “What the hell is this 'Heart of the Many' thing, anyway? And why do you need someone to find it for you?” The man's head tilted as though he couldn't understand what I was asking. “Look, guy, I don't work for free, and I sure as hell don't do snipe hunts. You're going to tell me what this thing is, or I'm just going to walk out of here, and your little hearts can just go hang themselves for what I care.”
“Not hearts. Just the one.” He turned his head to face away from the bar, a scowl of concentration on his face. “It is... not something easily explained. But I can tell you where to find it.” He stretched a finger out to the door, pointing beyond it. “It's out there, somewhere.”
I'd had enough. “Do you really think,” I spouted angrily, fetching my tab out of my wallet and slamming it down on the bar, “that I'm going to put up with this crazy act? Look, man, I don't know who you are, but I'd suggest to take your stalker habits elsewhere before I call the cops.”
It was at this point that he reached up to remove the glasses. “Is this an act?” he asked in a thoughtful voice, turning his gaze to look at me. His eyes were completely silver, like staring into a pair of pools of mercury. Such was my surprise that I stumbled back, still tangled with the stool beneath me, only managing to catch myself from falling by dint of luck.
“Just—look, just stay away, okay? I don't need this job, I don't want to deal with you and your creepy, fucked up little... everything!” I screamed, drawing glances from the other patrons of the bar. As each of their conversations stopped at my interruption, every single one of them gave me this horrible rictus grin, each and every one of them sharing the same silver eyes as the man at the bar.
I'm not a proud woman. I know when it's time for me to run away, and it was that time. Bolting through the door, I didn't even check to see if any of the crazy silver-eyed people were following me as I burst out onto the street. A street I'd never seen before, in point of fact. I may not live in the best neighborhood possible, but even where I live wasn't this... decayed.
The street was a wrecked cobblestone ruin, fungal caps sticking out of the mortar between the broken blocks like weeds. Even the stones themselves were stained nearly to black, though what would have caused such a thing I couldn't say, as there was no traffic going by, neither vehicle or pedestrian. No signs, no lampposts, no fire hydrants marred the street; only the broken blocks of the shattered skyscrapers around me, crumbled and left as nothing more than the skeletal steel frame, their stone facades wrecked and littering the ground before.
All up and down the street that I could see the same story played out, and not a soul beside myself. Not that I could see very far; without any artificial lighting, the only thing that was providing any contrast for me to see by was the pink sky above, that salmon color that cities get at night when it's going to rain hard, providing just enough light to see by and certainly not enough to dispel the worries of things haunting those shattered spires above.
I backed nervously into the wall behind me; whatever door that I'd walked through moments before had disappeared, leaving me in this desolate nightmare landscape with only a jacket and my wallet in hand.
“I am so very screwed,” were the first words out of my mouth.
“Screwed? Nah, that'll come later,” came a voice from the shadows behind me, causing me to jump out into the cobblestone street, straining to glare at wherever the voice had come from.

Despite the title, this isn't exactly a psych paper of any sort, but just something that I kind of intuited. It's something that amuses me greatly to think of it, because as far as I can tell, it fits because of the interleaving of the kinds of social mores and the way they're handled as a matter of drama coming out.

Not that this will be a surprise for those people more involved with psychology as a practical field; this is hardly new ground I'm breaking. However, it's an interesting look, and something I'm going to share with you lot in hopes that those of you who aren't familiar with it have some measure of expanded learning.

Everyone in my social circles is vaguely familiar with the concept of the social norm and normative behavior, or at least think they are. I've had charges of engaging in normative behaviors leveled at me in the past, and it's for that reason alone that I'm going into this.

Normative behaviors aren't behaviors which match up to social norms. They are, instead, the little social influences which are leveled to try and influence people to engage in those self-same norms. Behaviors such as shunning, gossiping, or the resultant loss of face in social circles is, by and large, the effect of normative behavior on the offending individual by their social circle. It's not always done intentionally, or rather, it's not necessarily done with the thought of 'making that person do the right thing'.

The behaviors in question which lead to normative influence are mostly social information trafficking and nitpicking for social face among groups. The more insular and tightly knit the group is and the more certain they are of their own social identity, the more stringent these unwritten rules are going to be. A failure to live up to these unwritten rules by both those involved in the group and those aspiring to the group result in this information being spread around the group, effectively forming the pecking order of authority as it comes from a group.

Drama, as it's known, is typically the intersection of this social information traffic meeting opposing camps of thought within the same general school. Drama in this instance is almost a sorting mechanism or training procedure to determine by means of public influence and debate the way that a certain group's developing social norms are going to be.

It's worth noting that social norms are not static, and not all members of the social group may hold the same ones; in essence, this is the root of all drama- the disparate ideals of 'what is right' among the members of these groups and the response given by those people who are offended among differing degrees.

Sorting out drama- or rather, how it comes to rest- depends on the group. Largely, isolation is the answer as the social groups splinter, unable to reconcile their differences, as at least one party's norms are too stringent for participation by the others if not both. The secondary effects of drama are little more than reinforcement of the social norms in play, reminding everyone involved via gossip and the usual social information trafficking of what the expectations of belonging to the group are.

In essence, drama serves an important part in social identity, as well as developing and determining the limits of behavior that certain groups are expected to go through and into.

Chris got the job. Good money, good transit, good people, salaried, and something more interesting than resetting the passwords for flight attendants.

That is all.

Of course, I expect at least someone to throw a fit at me for this, but I don't expect that I've done wrong, and that I've done more good than not by this. And for those of you with an understanding of how this works, I hope you'll appreciate this.

I got a self-diagnosed (read: someone who claims to have it but never received professional diagnosis) Aspie to consider and eventually acknowledge that he didn't have Asperger's. In the middle of an argument with someone else who was trying to abuse it out of him, which, as my understanding goes, is a bit like trying to convince Rush Limbaugh that socialism is good while he's ranting about the glories of capitalism. (Well, perhaps not that bad, but to give an idea.)

I dissected his argument, displayed understanding, provided context for what he thought was Aspergers, gave him information as to what Asperger's is, and provided him an alternative to his situation which fell more in line with what he was trying to get across as to what his issue with dealing with other people was. (In this case, namely that he had insufficient experience to build a sufficiently real probabilistic model of other people's behavior-- he could posit reasons and understand why they might act the way they were, but he didn't have sufficient social experience outside of furry circles in order to put together a working model of social norms. The proofs demonstrated by me were that he could function and readily understand other furries' behavior because he was cognizant of their norms, having been exposed to them. This was reinforced in my opinion by his comment of his continually being a shut-in, coming out only in the furry fandom.)

So yes. I'm a little proud of this, perhaps inordinately so.

The disclaimer: Yes, I do know that Asperger's is real and that it can be severely crippling to those that have it. I don't make the assumption that just because someone claims to have it that he's making it up. In this case, I could read this guy like a book, and he displayed none of the signs that I've come to associate with Asperger's. Besides, I maintain that, if he were genuinely Asperger's, he wouldn't have changed his mind in light of my comments. In my opinion, he was only looking for a reason as to why he didn't get along, and lacking a broad enough body of knowledge to be able to reference, took the first thing that came up as a means of explaining why he didn't get along well in public. On providing a more complete framework, he adopted the new one in favor of the old, considering that it fit better with his own experiences, and hopefully will give him sufficient consideration that he can build a working model of dealing with others, instead of being locked in the belief that he can't.

And this has been my good deed for the day. Cheers!

Pushing 90 again today. Sitting around half naked (again) because of this, trying to keep cool. There are days when I wish I could stand to do the whole nudist thing! (And we pause now as people claw their eyes from their sockets at that particular mental image! <3)

I got out today for the first time in a while, just to wander downtown for a bit. Didn't get anything, but that's okay. I got to people-see. Someone with a day's stubble in PINK- a pink pullover blouse, a pink skirt, and pink dangly jewelry everywhere. There was also, on the same bus, someone in a shirt that could have doubled as a negligee. I just didn't want to see his nipples through that shirt. I probably could've seen an appendectomy scar, if I'd decided to actually *look* for it.

I mean, it sounds like I'm complaining, but I'm not. Seeing people like that remind me that the world is weird and strange, and there's sufficient weirdness about to keep things at least interesting. Or, in another way, that deviance is alive and well in Seattle still.

So I finally got to play my first Shadowrun game ever. I've been GMing it for two months, but today I got to whip my cybernetic hacking machine out, and ended up with gigglefits over what I'd done. Invading and raping computer systems, shutting down IC through nuking it to death, and driving the Magic School Bus From Hell via VR remote control was fun. Oh, and I got to use Blackout on some poor soul who didn't even see me. So Very Fun.

I'm looking forward to actually GMing again in two weeks, though. Just so many things going on in the world with the PCs that they're not entirely geared up for, as they have a cyberzombie from Aztechnology on their asses (along with a significant amount of resources dedicated to ending their existences), as well as a smaller Mitsuhama contingent (a guy who's looking to cover his ass from selling them out to the aforementioned Aztechnology, and is currently on the face's death list). I've more or less left it to them in order to figure out what they'll be doing in order to get these monkeys off of their backs--if they succeed, they'll be famous in the shadows for surviving in the face of overwhelming odds. If they fail... well, they'll be dead. It's SR! \o/

The worst part about today is that it's currently 91 degrees. While not as nasty-hot as the rest of the country, this is the hottest it's been all year, and for once in my life I've had to get partly naked just to deal with it. (Though I'm indoors, but even so.)

Anyways. More later, after I've had some time to think about stuff.