May 18, 2010
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I find myself thinking about Columbia a lot lately. Even though our apartment here is much nicer (and contains no remnants of dead squirrels) and even though we have met some very amazing people here I really do miss Columbia so much more than I ever expected I would. When I first got here, I thought it would be just like Columbia since it's comparable in size and in the fact that it is a college town. However, what I forgot to factor in is that I am no longer an undergraduate student. I am no longer a free agent full of the wild eyed joy that is self discovery. I am a graduate student. I have work to do. I don't have time to gallivant around town playing DDR and otherwise nerding it up in a manner conducive to meeting like minded people. I don't have time to make hoards and scads of friends or even really make enemies. It's actually rather depressing.
And when I think on it my life isn't going to get any less complicated. Career, children, home ownership, true "adulthood", they all get in the way of even our most intimate of social connections. Families become islands. I don't like that concept. Maybe it's the tribal nature of my native ancestors that motivates me, but I don't want to be an island. I want to be someone on an island with lots of other people who I enjoy spending time with and even some I don't. Maybe we all have our own huts on the island, but that doesn't mean we are completely isolated from one another by any means. I think that tribal concept is predominantly lost in American society. People have their house and their car and their dog and their stuff, even though all those things required countless other people to create and provide. I want to feel like I'm part of a community without going to church. I want to experience being handed something by someone that they made themselves and then handing them something back that I've made. I think I hate money. I want to trade things to people for other things. I want to feel needed because I am providing a service or producing a product that others need and cannot make and getting the same in return for my efforts. Maybe that sounds weird, but to me it sounds somewhat magical. Maybe I like small towns more than I think.
Regardless, all that isn't my point. The point is that I don't see ever making as good of friends as I did as an undergraduate. Life was the least complicated then and I had the most time on my hands to simply meet people for the enjoyment of doing so. Like I said above, it's actually rather depressing.
I miss you guys, and I can see us spreading apart slowly, living our own lives, making our own islands. Well, I say no! I won't stand for it! I don't want to live on an island if you aren't going to be there with me! Let's make a big communal island together. Let's raise our families together and go to our jobs together and eat our meals together and laugh and smile and remember the good times together. I don't want to be an island. I don't want to secretly cry while I'm typing this. I don't want to only interact with you over the internet and pretend that's good enough. I want to see you! I want to be close enough to reach out my hand for a high five! I want to be there to hug you when you're sad and smile with you when you are happy!! Most of all, I want to know you in a way that can never be generated electronically. Even if you read my blog you don't truly know me. I'm just a bunch of words spread out across a computer screen. I want to know you in the way that your eyes give away that you want to go get ice cream or that your body language says you agree with me. I want to know what you are thinking without you having to say it. I don't want to be an island. Please don't let society shape you into an island. Please. Togetherness is all we have left that hasn't been tainted by capitalism or social networking websites and I don't want it to slip away. I don't want to lose the only piece of humanity I have left. Please don't let it slip away.
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Anime Central, what can I say? I had a lot of fun. I think our costumes turned out great, we saw a lot of cool stuff and we got some soul searching out of the way for next year.
Soul search fact #1: We are probably too old for Anime Central to be a three day event.
Soul search fact #2: I can't actually live on non-perishable foods only.
Soul search fact #3: I can't sleep when planes are taking off very near to me.
Soul search fact #4: No one is immune to furries given enough exposure.
Soul search fact #5: I have no respect for fan girls.#1 just means that we got bored before the end of the trip. Without the draw of meeting and subsequently becoming intimate with other attendees, we found that the charm of walking amongst a large number of other costumed humans wore off quickly. Additionally, we found that a once through of the exhibit area was enough and that we didn't really need to go and look at all the stuff for sale again the next day. We weren't spending "Mommy and Daddy's" money, so we didn't feel the need to spend every last cent we brought before we left.
#2 is very important in that one cannot remain feeling healthy and spry when all one is consuming is junk food that doesn't require refrigeration. By the middle of the second day, the pop tarts, cereal, and granola bars were wearing on our stomachs and we had to cave in and buy some actual protein containing foods. This, too, I feel, is a function of our ages. Trying to save money by bringing our own food was a good idea, but could have been executed better. I think next time we will go as a day trip, so it shouldn't be so much of a problem. We'll bring some kind of lunch and then get dinner at the event, resulting in only a limited amount of overpaying for food.
Keep #3 in mind when booking a hotel. A day trip will remove this problem, but as it was all three of us got very poor sleep. Via a combination of loud 16 through 21 year olds running through the halls and planes taking off every 30ish minutes, I probably got a total of 6 hours of sleep over the entirety of the trip. The hotel was very close the the convention center, and therefore very convenient for all the events we wanted to attend, but it was also close to the airport and full of other attendees, so there really isn't any way to reconcile the situation other than not to stay long enough to need a hotel.
While #4 may seem trivial to some, let me tell you that furries wear on your psyche. The first few are just kind of awkward and funny...but as the hours passed and we saw more and more it became rather haunting. So many furries, so many people being lead around on leashes, so many strange children holding signs that said they would come home with you for food. It was pretty messed up. One of our party members was actually propositioned by one of the sign holders, and by propositioned I mean the girl came up to her, held a sign up and made a kind of squeaking noise. Creepy...
#5 comes from the horrendous Pokemon panel we attended. Basically, instead of the panel being made up of people who helped design the games or write the anime, it was just four super fans there to answer questions. Of the four, two of them took the panel over. Both were very into the anime and the female of the pair talked about nothing but "shipping" and other equally trivial stuff. Shipping is a term for choosing characters you want to become involved in relationships and then writing/reading stories about these relationships. So, needless to say, I have no interest in such things. I mean, most of the characters are children anyway! Neither did some of the audience members, as they were asking questions about the games, which were to be directed to the other two quieter members of the panel. However, every time a question like this was asked, one of the quiet panelists would answer followed by them being drowned out by the crazy girl and her shipping. It was awful. It was like a horrible fan girl from a forum ranting on and on about her fandom, only in person! I couldn't just navigate away! Well, actually I could, and did, in that we got up and left before the fucking thing was over because it was so annoying to hear that girl ramble on and on about shipping. Lesson? Don't go to panels made up of super fans.
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Since I got back from ACen I've been working with my new undergraduate student. He seems like a really hard worker and I definitely appreciate that. I can already tell that he will get ramped up quickly and become a valuable asset to my research. I'm just worried that I'm not at a stage where I can provide him with enough background information for him to really understand the research, as I'm extremely new to it myself. We'll see how it goes in the next few days. I'm hopeful that he can reproduce the experiments I've taught him successfully, and that will really be more of a test of my own skill than his. Fingers crossed I suppose.
Also, while I was in the lab today I asked someone about ligases that we had on hand and discovered I'd been using the "wrong" one. There were three containers of T4 DNA ligase from three different companies, and I was using the only one of the three that no one can get to work. No wonder my experiments are repeatedly failing even though I follow the protocols to the letter! It actually made me feel a lot better. Now I'm rather excited about running the experiment instead of apprehensive because I'll just be wasting reagents.
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