Draconis Combine

On fruit, and the consensual nature of reality
an extended metaphor

o/˜ Sit beside the breakfast table
Think about your troubles
Pour yourself a cuppa tea
And think about the bubbles... o/˜

Say I have five friends. (I know that may seem unlikely, but trust me--I actually have a lot of friends, the poor dears. ^_^ )

Anyway, so I have these five friends. And one of them is going to the store.
I want an apple, so I give my friend a buck, and say, "Apple?"
He comes back from the store, and hands me an orange. This is a simple misunderstanding, and I explain that when I said "apple," I was thinking of the round fruits that grow on trees, usually have shiny red skin and whitish flesh--you know, they make cider out of them. And he explains that he thought apples were those round orange things with the leathery hides and pulpy innards, and he really thought he was getting me the right thing. And then we move on, skipping the part wherein I give him a funny look, ask if he speaks English and just what planet he grew up on.

Same situation, except two of my friends are going to the store, and I give them both a buck, and say, "Apple?" and one of them comes back with a can of tuna and one with a potted plant. Aside from the fact that I am beginning to wonder if all of my friends are mad as hatters, this, too, is a simple misunderstanding, quickly cleared up by each of us explaining what we thought of in association with the word "apple."

However, if both of them had come back with oranges, or if I said "apple" on more than one occasion to more than one person and frequently ended up with oranges, or if when my friend who brought me the orange was explaining that that was what he thought I'd asked for, one or more other people had said, "Yeah, that was what I thought you meant, too," then I would really begin wondering about my own sanity. Err, well, I would consider the fact that they might all be playing an elaborate prank on me. But if they really honestly were not, I would be forced to consider that maybe either I was thinking of apples and only thought I'd said "apple," when I really said "orange," or that the word "apple" did not mean what I thought that it meant.

All of this is meant as a way of illustrating the fact that, while the doctrine that "perception defines reality" is not entirely without truth, it is only a small truth, and not widely applicable. "Reality" is a consensual truth, and while it is based on agreed-upon perceptions, and small allowances are and should be made for variances in individual perceptions, it is the consensus that holds more weight. It is no good crying "perception defines reality" when one's perception is at odds with the greater agreed-upon facts--the consensual perception--which is the reality. If someone percieves slander where everyone else percieves nothing of the sort, it is more likely that the first person's perceptions should be called into question, rather than the perceptions of those around him or her. Likewise, if I say something that I meant as joking, and others who heard it thought it was unkind, then my intentions do not matter, or do not matter as much. The consensual truth, and therefore the reality, is that I was unkind.

Just clarifying a point that I think about frequently.

Drunk babies!

So my dad got married last night. At the historic Sun Studio, no less. It was quite a nice ceremony, small and simple, not a lot of fuss, yet heartfelt and loving--just as a wedding ought to be. They seem so awfully happy together, and I'm very glad that my dad and the Lady of Waves found each other. So now I have a step-mom, which is unbelievably cool, actually. She is a terrific person, and I like her a lot.
Right after the ceremony we toasted the happy couple with champagne, and my father gave some to the little-bitty toddler, Allison. Apparently, she liked it, because she kept coming back to him with her mouth open like a baby bird, looking like she was trying to eat the champagne flute -- it was the cutest EVER. So she'd had a couple sips, and was quite cheery and chatty through dinner, and we all giggled at the mock-outrage of her mom, who was accusing dad (laughingly) of making weester-Allison into a lush. "Drunk babies!" said my brother, "I love it!" Which made me giggle.

In other news, I've been having a sense of déjà vu just recently, from some stuff that happened almost 3 years ago. And no, I don't think I care to elaborate on that. Let the dead past bury its dead, and all that.

...Actually, that's untrue. I do care to comment, but I think it would be out-of-place to do so in my weblog.

Still no word on the scholarship. Still no w-2 from one of last year's employers, so still no taxes filed. feh.

Well, my mother actually apologized for being unreasonable. Life is just full of surprises.

ARGH! goddam-fucken-oooh-GRAAAR!
Fucken River's Edge, or Rivers Edge, or RiversEdge, or however the FUCK they are spelling it this week. I HATE THEM! hatehatehate.
We at the Daily Hellsman provide a nice little community service of listing events on and around campus that might be of interest to the student community. It's not something that anybody pays for or anything, and we list what we can and what we have space for. It's kind of a pain to keep the list correct and updated, and fill it out every week, but we do our best.

And then there is Riversedge, an OFF-CAMPUS jesus-thumper group. (Not like we don't have enough fucken jesus-thumping groups on this campus. We have psycho wee little men in peculiar coloured and ill-fitting suit jackets who come and hand out new-testaments and WILL NOT take no for an answer, and about 137 gazillion bible-study and praaaaa-yeer groups that meet every week. Looking at the average U of M This Week column, one gets the idea that there are people on this campus who, honest to god, cannot TIE THEIR SHOES without asking Jay-zus Keer-eye-est if it's the right thing to do in the AAYES UV GAWD. Not that I'm bitter. Wait. Yes, I am. -.-)

Anyway, Riversedge sends us shit to put in the column ALL THE TIME. And much of it is of the deliberately-misspelled-to-be-cutsie-poo variety, which causes my little copy-editor brain to shift without a clutch at the best of times. (I won't even get started on how violent the stubborn determination of the Black History Month coordinators to mangle perfectly innocent and respectable words like "sister" into "sistah" has made me.) On top of this, Riversedge wants to be all bitchy about when we RUN their FREE ADVERTISING, and even things like our wording and how much space we give them.

Miss TroyAnn Poulopoulos, who is their media person, I guess, sent us a good half-a-dozen faxes at the end of January, telling us to start running them now, despite the fact that not one of them was written in a format that I could use in the column (and I'm not much inclined to spend a lot of my time and energy figuring out their cryptic PR bullshit, especially after the semester where she CALLED ME EVERY FRIGGIN DAY "just to make sure you got our fax. Are you going to put it in today? Will it run tomorrow? Well, it'd be really better if you can make sure that it's in and will run tomorrow." Excuse me, while I try and do some actual WORK, like copy editing, at my JOB as a COPY EDITOR). One of the cryptic little pieces didn't even give a time for the event. So I left them for next week, figuring I'd let them percolate a bit and see what came of it.

So she sends us a nasty bitchy email, about how "she's just a little" (she doesn't say what) because they didn't make it in for that week, even though she'd snowed us under with faxes, called a bunch of times, and even come up there (none of this while I was working, though. I'm evil, but that's pushing it). Just a little WHAT? Hateful? Bitchy? Pissy? Annoying?-nah, can't be annoying, because she's certainly more than a little annoying. She's REALLY hugely awfully friggin annoying, and she drives me up a WALL. And what the hell kind of name is TroyAnn, anyway?! I hate her, her PARENTS hated her, I hate Riversedge, and I hope it falls IN the river that it's NOT EVEN ANYWHERE NEAR (how is that for truth in advertising, I ask you?). If you want to be a bitch about it, PAY FOR IT, DAMMIT! If you want it for free, you have to be nice and helpful and shut the fuck up. That's how the world works. You don't get to be a picky bitch about shit what you ain't payin' for.

GAH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tomorrow I promise I'll tell you about my mother, and how she honestly said that one of my best friends in the world "won't even remember in ten years" whether I stand as a groomsman at his wedding or not.

It's been a bad few days for this little star's blood pressure and general hatefulness level. On a scale of one to ten Andromedas, I'm at about a 26.4.

Argh! No time! I bitch tomorrow. >.<

Ha! I know Laris pretty well! Comes of all the Patterson Posse lunches, I do believe.
Actually, the questions were not all that terribly hard, despite the warning that had me quaking with fear and considering giving the test a false pseudonym so that she would not know that the person who got a miserable single-digit score was me. I fear to suck publicly, though not, as I said before, to be boring. n.n

We had snow! Lots, for Memphis -- like, 3+ inches (which is not an offical count, by any means, but a visual estimate from looking at the accumulation on the roof of the purple martin house just outside my bedroom window. So there). Everything shut down, basically, everybody stayed home from work and school, my brother came over (!)--he was really bored at home, and willing to brave both snow and cat, the latter of which he is EXTREMELY allergic to, to come and see me. I am loved--and we ate snow ice-cream and hung out. And it was good. I also found out my dad and Cynthia are getting married on the 25th of February. w007! Cynthia is a cool lady, and it is very sweet of them to get hitched kinda early just so I can be there.

And the day before that, the 5th, was my mother's birthday, so there was also much hanging out. AND she told me she was going to pay my airfare to Japan (fortunately, I have found a couple of places that have airfare much cheaper than ~$3000 American, because there is no way I would have let my mother pay that much to send me to Japan. $700 I will be very grateful for, and better yet, won't feel as bad about). So basically, I am going to Japan whether or not I get the scholarship I applied for, which I have not yet heard about. I still think I have a pretty good chance at the scholarship, though. I should be finding out very soon...

In other news, Ali-chan updated her blog links and left me out. weepweep. I suppose it is a good thing that I am too egotistical to let that stop me from being boring in a public place. ^.^

Dude. I suck. I hope you're not gonna do anything with that friend test, Alliath, 'cos I couldn't even manage to get over 50% on the damn thing, and I've known you for... whee... 10+ years, now, which makes me feel kinda old.
I am of the opinion that I would have done a lot better if the questions had been less about the things you like, and more about the things you loathe. I'm pretty up on many of the the things you loathe.

In other news, I did not find out about the scholarship, because the Study Abroad Coordinator-type person was not in her office, and won't be back until Monday. My joy at spending another weekend fretting about this just knows no bounds. O the joyfulness of me. u.u

I'd write more, but my brother is bugging me because he wants to go home. Twerp. He's skipping class to play Quake3 in the lab, but he's still bitching to get home. Feh.