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There are so many things I'd love to study that I don't think I'll ever be able to get to them all.  I just finished a (very brief) linguistic study of police slang.

Some day I'd like to get speakers of various languages into MRI machines to take a look at minute differences in the development of the muscles in the throat and tongue.  I want to study the effects of different genres of music on social vectors such as empathy.  I want to hook people up to EEG machines and see if concern trolling* triggers the parts of the brain that light up when helping, or the areas involved in insults; and if the person is aware of which action they are actually performing.  I want to look at long-term cervical-spinal damage in habitual smart phone users.  Etc, etc...

I may never find the comfortable corner of study for me.

Learn all the things!



*For instance, telling an overweight person that you're concerned about how their kids see them as a role model.

One of the perks of switching to an anthropology education is that anything involving humans--and other primates--is a valid research topic.  That does not mean I should write about every topic that occurs to me.  Some that I probably not pursue:

The occurrence of votive pleas around midterms and finals.
eg, "Dear God, if you let me pass this exam, I swear I'll quit drinking.
Estimated to occur in 63% of students.  Less than 1% follow through.

Has "fuck" lost all impact in the modern veracular?
Overheard at the bus stop, "And he was, like, so whatever you fuckin' want.  I don't fuckin' care.  And I was like,  I will do what I fuckin' want and you can't fuckin' stop me."
Has cursing become so common as to be meaningless?  Can we revive real cursing, eg "May the fleas of a thousand squirrels nest in your tenders"?

Reaction of potential mates to men who skip leg day, by age.
Am I the only one who rolls my eyes when I see a man with a muscular torso and teeny legs?  These guys are, "built like an apostrophe" according to a football player near me on an airplane.  Or does that look work for younger women?

Whoo, Nigel!

Also, I feel your pain on the prereqs.  I just found out that switching my major means I need three semesters of the same foreign language.  I took two semesters of Latin.  That was thirteen years ago.  I'll likely have to audit Latin 1, then re-take Latin 2 (since I got a C the first time).

On the upside, the anthropology department is way more active than the school of social welfare was.  They have a whole forensic anthropology lab, chock full of bones for me to classify (in a few semesters).

I am now an anthropology major.  Also, I didn't forget as much math as I expected.  The placement test says I just need one college-level course rather than that plus two remedial courses like I thought.

It's not mine, but I thought ya'll might appreciate this.

Goddamn furries!

Darnit!  Scooped by llama-heads! 

This comic made me think of you.

We spend a lot of time in my criminal justice and political science classes talking about the social causes of crime, but very rarely consider neurological bases.

It seems like any time it's brought up, the professor think you're talking biological determinism and hide under the desk.

The root words dictionary looks delicious.  I love words.

For what it's worth, I'm just not a fan of my mom.  I find the RWHN hate a tad perplexing.  I came after the supposed fall to batshit, so it all seems to me as though many of the posters here are attempting to shame a man who has none, which seems fruitless.

When I was in school, the word 'remedial' was used euphemistically.  It was a bad thing that we were too polite to talk about.  It was not until I was an adult that I made the connection between 'remedial' and 'remedy'--as in to fix that which is not as it should be.

I will likely be taking remedial mathematics courses in the near future.  I am actually looking forward to them.  When I was supposed to be learning algebra the first time, my problems were a bit more "life and death" than "solve for x."  I mention that not to evoke pity, but to remind us that there are a great many reasons our skills may need repair beyond "not good enough" or "not smart enough."

Probably the most common cause of skill decay is atrophy.  There's a quote from the Witchblade television show:  "Skills are like fruit.  If you don't take them off the shelf and use them, they rot.  They go soft.  They stink."

It seems to me that no set of human skills is more prone to decadence than the social.

When we are children, most of us are allotted limited time for play between classes.  This recess is that same length for all of us, and we all need the same break to unwind amidst lessons.  We are all aware of this.  So we take turns on the slide.  Each of us waits patiently--if noisily--while the others have their fun.  Should one of us attempt to bypass the line, the others shout and shame him back to his place.  There is a tangible social consequence for breaking the unwritten rules of behavior.

As adults, however, it is not uncommon for one of us to deem his time more important than the others'.  People cut across lanes of traffic, endangering other drivers, because they believe their desire to reach their destination greater than that of their fellows.  On the highway, this often results in a honked horn.

In a situation without the fiberglass shelter of our cars for protection, however, we tend to pretend we have not noticed the breaches of etiquette.  Why do we feign engrossment in our phones when someone pushes their way to the front of the queue?  As children we had no trouble imposing social order.  Perhaps remedial classes in socialization would help.

For myself, I could use re-education in the making of friends.  When I was a child, friendship was easy, "I like your binder.  I too enjoy the artistry of Lisa Frank.  Let us split a Twinkie and be inseparable henceforth."  Now, I often see people with whom I would like to talk.  I want to yell at them, "You seem awesome!  Let's talk about geeky things and politics and the nature of self!" but I have lost the trick of it.  I am mired in, "What if it's creepy, and what if she just wants to be left alone and what if I smell funny?"

So I say, bring on the remedial.



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I like words.  I like that each of them is a story.  I like to pick them apart and see how they work and where they take me.  If no one finds them terribly tiresome, I may do this sort of many essay regularly.  I have thoughts percolating on "talent."

You've all been very helpful.  I realize I have a rare opportunity to decide who I am while shredding the baggage of who I was.

I'm not really that old.  I'm just 32.  I have this unrealistic notion that everyone who is not me had their identities all sorted by the time puberty was over.

Jez heats her home by having Her People throw orphans in the furnace.

Well of course.  You can't expect me to actually touch the little rodents, with their sticky little hands and their constant selfish demands for food and penicillin.

I do have a therapist, which I think is how I managed to peel away enough layers to get to this point.

I'm just having a hard time being in the world right now.  I'm vacillating between fearing that others can see I am not what I was and feeling they are laughing at me because I took so long to realize what everyone else seems to have already known.

It is all fresh wound stuff, and I will find my footing eventually.  If only this life thing came with a user's manual.

I've been knee-deep in repressed memories and PTSD for about a year now.  First there was a thing, then it turned out the thing happened a lot more than I remembered, and eventually it turned out the reason for the thing was not what I thought at all.

My whole world view has gone sideways.  I haven't the faintest idea what I am anymore.

You look at your friends and you see the smart one, and the rich one, and the ladies' man.  That isn't the whole of them, of course, but it helps you keep the people in the little boxes in your head so you have some idea how to react to them.

You keep yourself in a little box, too.  When you think of yourself, you stick adjectives on you so you think you can understand how you'll react to things.  Maybe it does not happen to everyone, or maybe they don't notice when it does, but sometimes the adjectives fall off.

Sometime it is not a big deal.  You thought you were a decent singer, but then you heard yourself on tape and realized you are not.  So you do not sing in public again.

But what happens when the your adjectives are all wrong?

It turns out that I did not spend my childhood saving the princess from the monster.  The princess was a monster.  I was not protecting her.  I was bait.  I was a nice distraction to keep the monster busy so he would not bother her.

So now all my adjectives are gone.  I do not know what box I fit in.  Worse, I do not know which box the other people put me in.

So I start over.  But I am so old.  And so tired.

I much prefer my old box.  It was safe.  Familiar.

I need to build my own box, but I have no idea how to begin.

So I sit, and hope the box will settle over me.

Or kill me.