sardoodledum

I do not believe in this “Obesity Epidemic” that the media has been forcing down our throats, padded by a large helping of shame. I do not believe that the attention that is being paid to it is really about health, I do not believe that as many people are as fat as the media implies, and I do not believe that being fat is as large of a health problem as it is made to be., and I do not believe that being fat is bad, and I am not afraid to proclaim that I am fat! I am obese. I have a BMI (body mass index) of approximately 30, and I am not ashamed.

( tl;dr )

Dear Rude People,

Just because you see someone who deviates from the norm, even the gender norm, doesn't mean you have the right to stare. Nor does it mean they have the duty to educate you. There are plenty of resources, if you are interested in gender issues, with which to do your own research. Please do not approach my friend while we are out minding our own business and ask her what gender she is. She has breasts and is wearing woman's clothing. It's not hard to guess, and it's rude to ask. We were not talking to you. We did not make eye contact with you. We do not want to answer your questions.

If someone is obviously trying to look like a woman, and please don't quibble over what is obvious, please refer to her as a she. Even if you are sure she is a drag queen. This is only polite.

If you suspect someone is trans please don't ask invasive questions about their genitals. It's rude, and invasive.

Please don't tell me that you don't have a problem with trans people, you just wouldn't date them. I don't care, and I still think you're an ass.

Please remember, trans women are women and trans men are men. They are not shemales, or shehes, or someone pretending just to piss you off, and they are not sick in the head, and they were not necessarily abused as children.

And most importantly of all, trans people are people. People. Treat them as such.

I know gender issues can be strange and difficult to understand for the uninitiated. That doesn't change the fact that all people deserve respect, ok? Thank you.

As promised, some pride parade pictures after the jump.

( Warning: This is a picture heavy post! )

I went to my first ever gay pride parade today! (The one in Washington D.C.) :D It was a ton of fun, and I think everyone ever should go to at least one. It's ok if you are hetero and cis, everyone who is not a hater is welcome. Someone even gave me her number today! (Ok, ok, it was because she was an activist in my area, and I wanted to help out, BUT STILL!)

I will post some big gay pictures later.

This article has me foaming. It is all about how people who make $250,000 a year are not actually well off and are actually fearing a tax increase because they are just barely making ends meet AND WHO IS THINKING OF THEM GUIS? WHO IS THINKING OF THE POOR RICH PEOPLE!?!?!?

I will be the first to admit that I know little about making ends meet, as I am just starting to ease my toe into the deep, scary waters of independent living, but I do know enough to know that if you are "barely getting by" at $400,000 a year UR DOIN IT RONG. Really guys. I grew up in an area with very high costs of living. Lots of millionaires and conspicuous consumption. My parents made a joint income of less then half of $250,000. And yet... we lived very comfortably.

How can this be guys!?! Someone who makes a measly 100K a year can afford to save up for college, take the family on yearly vacations AND pay off the mortgage on a house in a reasonable time? NO WAI!!!!! EVIL VOODOO MAGICKS!!!! That man must be a wizard with money! Wait, what? The WOMAN works!?!? The MAN takes care of the children!?! What kind of backwards moon planet are you from!?!

RAAAAAAAAAAAGE!

So, there's this kid. He's 14. And the new conservative whiz kid. He's in the eighth grade, and a home schooled Christian. Right there I have some problems. Home schooling is bad, it closes a person off form society. It's not just an issue of social retardation but also that they well never meet opposing view points. How can one form opinions if one never has them tested? How can one understand social issues if one is so isolated they never meet a minority?

( Read more... )

Note to self: Write more often.

I have finally figured out why the fact .999... = 1 bothered me so much. I have it worked out. THIS IS SUCH A RELIEF!!!


I KNOW that there is a number that is infinitely close to zero without actually equally zero, as is demonstrated in the graph of 1/X, just as there is a number that is infinitely far away from zero. In my head I was subtracting 1 - numberinfinitelyclosetozero, which should equal .999... right? WRONG.

Infinity and a number that is infinitely close but not equal to zero are concepts. Infinity - 1 is still infinity, you can't do normal math with them and expect normal numbers to come up. .999... is not a number that is infinitely close to one without being one. It is one, because that is how the notation works. There is a number that is infinitely close to one, but is not one, I just don't know how to notate it simply.

ARE YOU HAPPY FOR ME? BE HAPPY FOR ME! I AM A NERD AND THIS PROBLEM WAS DRIVING ME NUTS!

(If you still don't believe this check out wikipedia.)

EDIT: OK! The way to notate a number that is infinitely close to zero but not actually zero is 1/∞ so if we try and say 1 - 1/∞ we have to rearrange it to say ∞/∞ - 1/∞ or (∞-1)/∞ which can't be done in normal math. If we were looking for limits we would just say one.

OH MY GOD MY LIFE MAKES SO MUCH MORE SENSE NOW!!!!!

And then there's this. Don't ask. It amuses me. See what happens when I start going through my desktop?

The Princess and the Cow
Once upon a time there was this cow. Now this cow was not a particularly happy cow, nor was he a particularly sad cow. He was just a cow. One day a princess wandered into his field. She was lost. She said, “Oh, woe is me! I am lost! Dearest, brave and noble cow, canest thou help me?”

Now the cow was just a cow and could not help the princess, nonetheless he was pleased by her offer. He lived happily ever after. The princess, on the other hand, got lost, died, and did not live happily ever after.
The End

The Princess and the Cow: II
Once upon a time there was this cow. He was a very happy cow, because once a princess had asked him for help. This cow, so emboldened by the princess’s plea, decided to go on an adventure. The cow looked right. The cow looked left. All he saw was the field he spent his entire life in. The cow said, “Moo!”

This roughly translates too: “This is no good! I will find no adventure in the field I grew up in!”

So the cow set off. He slowly plodded to the edge of his field; there he found a fence. Once more he looked right, and then he looked left. The fence continued as far as his eye could see to the right and to the left. In fact the fence completely surrounded the field. Much dismayed the cow could think of no way around the fence. Finally the cow went to bed to deal with the problem in the morning.
To be continued…

The Princess and the Cow: III
Once upon a time there was this cow. He was a very dismayed cow, because he was trying to go on an adventure, but he could not get over the fence that surrounded the field he grew up in. As the cow stared in a dismayed way at the fence, a miracle happened! A beautiful cow fairy appeared, and with a wave of her beautiful cow wand she made the fence disappear! She said, “Moo.”

This roughly translates too: “Noble and brave cow! Be the first of your kind to go on an adventure! Be proud and save the world.”

Now, truth be told, this cow had never gone to school, and understood only so many translations for moo, but he did get the general idea of what the fairy said. The cow, thus charged, set off on his journey to figure out how the heck an uneducated cow who had never left the field he grew up in before was to save the world.
To be continued…

The Princess and the Cow: IV
Once upon a time there was this cow. He was a very perplexed cow, because a beautiful cow fairy had charged him with saving the world. The cow set off. He looked to the right. He looked to left. He looked straight ahead. He saw nothing but trees, a small pond, some ducks and a dragon. The cow had never seen a dragon before, so thus he had no idea what they were. But the cow had some idea that they were bad news. This dragon happened to be eating a hamburger. Quite outraged at the abomination he saw before him the cow exclaimed, “MOO!”

This roughly translates too: “YOU MONSTER! DROP THAT HAMBURGER THIS INSTANT!!”

The dragon heard the cow, and not understanding him, thought “Oh, goody! Another hamburger!”

The cow, so outraged, lowered his horns and charged. Luckily the cow tripped, because had the cow finished his charge he would have been either blown up, or horribly devoured and then blown up. As it was the dragon stepped and an old mine from the Vietnam War and died. The cow decided he had fulfilled the beautiful cow fairy’s directive and went back to his field where he lived happily ever after.
The End

I also want to post a couple of essaylets, but I thought putting them with the poems was inappropriate. Kind of like putting little boys and little girls in the same post? Or cabin...

College Essay
White. Female. What year will you graduate? In an attempt to get to know you, the college applications inquire, please place one word and a number to differentiate you from all of the other one worded numbers and single digited words. In an attempt to be fair, and in the interest of research - you wouldn’t want to squash that, now would you? - please tell us your race, your religion, your mother’s maiden name, and your favorite type of jam. We want diversity, you see, if you are not diverse enough, you see, you can’t come, you see, for if the percentages don’t work out, you see, we are accused of racism and separatism and accountabilityism, and we wouldn’t want that. So tell us, in 500 words or less, one word is best, if you are part of a unique culture; that way we can add you to our statistics, and you can become a face in a crowd.

Meditations
I am trying to find enlightenment in the written word. Plumbing the depths of human nature, I’m searching literature for some crystal of truth around which to grow an identity. I find many things on the smooth white pages between the crooked lines: humor and sorrow, birth and death, a million experiences beyond my ken. But what I search for is noticeably lacking: answers, truth, fulfillment, maybe even love. Because, of course, I’ve read about love and it’s all consuming nature, but reading is never the same and I want to grab reality and hold on until some little piece rubs off. But it is the tragedies that hide what I seek. In the gaps between Oedipus Rex and Macbeth there lies undiscovered truth; I know this because I read it somewhere. And I shall have to search until I find it; analyzing metaphors and subtexts until literature and human nature line up as an equation and then all I have to do is solve for X and I will have the question. For I already know the answer; it is 42.

So, instead of doing a real update I'm going to post some old poems I have running around wild on my desk top. Because I fancy myself a poet. Exciting, no?

Literature
Literature and poetry:
A wealth of color,
Beauty, plot.
There are a myriad of reasons
To read.
But one of the reasons
Should not,
Is not,
Intellectual.
Do not read for impressions.
Do not read because you should.
Read because you love.
Read because you need to know.
Read for love and liberty.
Read for truth and travesty.
But do not,
Do not,
Read for should or could,
Or some trivial esteem.
Reading belongs to the soul,
Not to the mind.

Crayon Box
Sometimes, when surrounded by colors like
Purple Mountains Majesty,
Mauvelous,
And Macaroni and Cheese,
It’s hard being
Plain old brown.

Rebellion
Sit in classes.
Sipping coffee.
Speaking intellectualisms.

There is a storm outside
beating on the windows.
Rat-a-tat-tat.

The students are deaf.
Their ears are filled with the sedate world of academia.
They read poetry about wild nights of love and fright.
The passion falls flat.
Stale lightening and monotones,
deportment and appropriate attire.
It makes the most fierce of things
collapse into sedition.

On the Enormity of Innovation
A million people have come before,
A million more may come after.
Statistically speaking,
Probability provides,
That every word I speak,
Every letter I write,
Is old.
No new ground to tread,
No clique left unread.
A keyboard to my right,
Paper to my left,
Squashed in the middle?
A tired old brain
Searching for an answer unspoken.
A fruitless search.

I’ve figured it out! This is what I want to do with my life! I want to open a geek café! It would sell coffee and sweets and sandwiches during the day and at night it would sell beer and dinner kinds of things and have games set up. Like guitar hero. And there would be a dice counter. Because dice are awesome. And there would be shelves of used books to browse through, and tables set up for gaming. Maybe some computers. And comfy chairs. And it will be awesome. Yes. Can’t freakin’ wait.

Why do I keep getting calls from no one? I never answer my phone. I look at caller ID and if I deem the person worthwhile I call back. But I keep getting (three today!) calls from someone who is hiding their number. I'm really curious. Maybe I should start answering my phone?

And it should be evidence of how much it bothers me that I'm posting about it here...

I don’t understand. Why am I going to college? What is the point? I let my parents spend thousands of dollars and I study for four to six years (or longer?) and then I have a degree. I can now, supposedly, get a better job. But there are no guarantees. I can’t help but feel this is all just an excuse to avoid the real world and a real job for another few years. But what the hell am I supposed to do except go to college? I don’t want to go back to my parent’s house. I don’t think I could hold down a normal job. I don’t have the first idea about how to get one.

And of course the whole ridiculous thing about this is that I like learning. I find information and intelligence fascinating, pleasurable, sexy. I have been known to spontaneously laugh from the sheer joy of solving a tricky calculus problem. Doesn’t this mean I should continue studying? It’s what I truly love. But I hate school. I hate the pointless pedantry. I hate the self satisfied Cheshire cats who grin at my failure and tell me the best way to get nowhere. (I hate how I’m so paranoid that I actually feel like everyone is laughing at me.) I hate how the beauty and joy and art of learning and academia can be made into something boring and trashy and dusty and dissatisfying. I hate the need to be practical.

I think what I hate most is that I’m terrified that I will fail.

Maybe I should become a hermit. I could set up a tent in the Library of Congress. I would read a new book everyday and live off of coffee and dust mites.

See I started this blog on blogspot, under the name of Bargain Basement Brains. (bargainbasementbrains.blogspot.com) And in an atempt to increase my readership I think I'm going to start double posting, here and there. (And also because I wanted to read the secret posts on my friend's journals. *looks at friendslist* Ok, I wanted to read the secret posts on ONE person's journal.) So I'm going to put some back entries up. Later.

Oh, and Sardoodledum is one of the best words ever. A sardoodledum is a play that is stagey, contrived or unrealistic. I've always had this notion that I would call a blog Sardoodledum and then make the tag-line something like "A Commentary on this Farce We Call Life" or "All the World's a Stage and All the Men and Women Merely Players" or some such puny nonesense.

The gentle hum of electricity hides the vivid movement of electrons. Miniscule particle-waves, barely understood, run our world with such delicate power it has become everyday. What if the electrons decided to revolt? Would we even notice? What if they already have?

I have come up with an idea of cryptology that I think is fabulously clever: convert back and forth from base 35!



I can tell this will need some explaining.




First let us discuss what different bases mean. (Does this need to be explained? I worry about this. I want to keep everything clear and clean, explaining as few things as possible, I also want my writing to be accessible to the layperson. (What a weird construct. Oh, the lengths I go through for gender neutrality.) In my experience what it means to be in a different base is somewhat erudite, (So is the word erudite. God damn it, you can look up your own words!) so I will explain it.)

Normally we count in base ten, this is what we have been conditioned to think in and seems like the natural, nay, the only way to count. What this means is that we can phrase our counting like so:
(the charts don't look good in live journal. If you really really super duper care, cheack it out at bargainbasementbrains.blogspot.com)


10^0
10^1
10^2
10^3
10^4

1
10
100
1000
10000

ones
tens
hundreds
thousands
ten-thousands


As you can see saying that we count in base ten means that our most basic way of dividing numbers is based on the powers of ten. So counting in binary would look something like this:

2^0
2^1
2^2
2^3
2^4

1
10
100
1000
10000

ones
twos
fours
eights
sixteens


This chart makes a bit less sense. But say you wanted to write three in binary. Three is 2^1 (2) +2^0 (1) or 10 + 1, thus three is 11. So what’s twenty in binary? It’s 2^4 (16) + 2^2 (4) or 10000 + 100, thus twenty is 10100. See, isn’t that simple? And using the above mentioned chart one can easily transfer into any base, including those larger then ten. Let’s take a look at hexadecimal, as an example.

16^0
16^1
16^2
16^3
16^4

1
10
100
1000
10000

ones
sixteens
256’s
4096’s
6153’s


So let’s say we wanted twelve, that’s just C. WHAT? A letter? That’s because once the bases get above ten we can’t keep using normal numbers because the numbers have two symbols in them. So new symbols need to be chosen, and the convention is to just use letters. Therefore ten in hexadecimal is A, eleven B, twelve C, thirteen D and so on until fifteen which is F. Sixteen, as can be seen above, is 10. So, what’s 300? Well, 300 = 16^2 (256) + (16^1)*2 (32) + (16^0)*C (13) or 12C. Understand? Let’s try a harder one. What’s 5,000,000,000 in hexadecimal? (What? Just use a calculator!) OK! Let’s go!

5,000,000,000 = 16^8 (4,294,967,296) + (16^7)*2 (536,870,912) + (16^6)*A (167772160) + (16^4)*5 (327,680) + (16^3)*F (61440) + (16^2)*2 (512)

Therefore 5,000,000,000 in hexadecimal is 12A05F20. (I may have made a mistake in my work, but the process is correct!) Isn’t that cool? It was fun too! I like changing bases! (Have I mentioned lately that I am a nerd?)

OK! Back to my wondrous code of wonderment! Now, don’t you see that any phrase can be transferred into base 35? It would create horrendously long numbers, but by using a reasonably simple, consistent, easy to memorize rule these numbers can be transformed back into words! As long as the phrases are written in the Latin alphabet a message of any length and complexity can be coded, and the code is non-intuitive, thus much harder to crack! The big problem is that longer words create numbers that are so long they become difficult to manipulate, even with calculators. (Someone should (someone probably already has) write a program to do this. (I suppose I could. (Hmm…)))

I think it’s clever.

To test you all I’ll put a normal blog post (You know, instead of writing about ideas I’ll write about my life!) in code! To read about the mundanities of my life you’ll have to crack the code!

18 44,269,875 18 27,334 400 653 930,874. 1,393,204 479 18 479?

(If you try and translate that and it makes no sense, please tell me! I’m worried I’ve made a mistake.)

I like words. I think they’re nifty. In fact, I consider myself to be quite a logophile. In my spare time I have been known to read the dictionary. I have a thesaurus right next to my computer. I love looking up words, and reading the list of synonyms; I relish the feeling of precision of knowing exactly what this word means, and knowing the precise word to fit this meaning. I find great pleasure in the shades of meaning between argument, quarrel, squabble, dispute, contretemps and skirmish. And I absorb vocabulary; it becomes a part of me to the extent that loquacious, sesquipedalian, and effervescent are a part of my vernacular.

I consider my language to be my primary source of self-expression; the way I use and put words together defines me. Where some people communicate themselves by the clothes they wear, or the sports they play I try and speak with eloquence. My goal is not to confuse or impress, however, it is to confess. Thus I am quite distressed when people do not know the meaning of the word I use. It simply does not occur to me, unless I think about it, that most people just don’t know what a palimpsest is.

These misunderstandings quite distress me, for one thing, my goal really is to be clear and concise. I swear. But, also, I think that people think I’m arrogant, that I’m using big words just to impress. And I do hate this. I hate it when I hear (or see) someone force a beautiful word into a sentence where it doesn’t quite belong or, worse yet, just completely skewer the word. I use words as tools, as art, but not to inflate myself. And I don’t want to be misinterpreted!

Now, like many things, I have a specific example. The other day in my American literature class we were discussing what it means to be an American. And, predictably, people were coming up with some silly, saccharine sayings such as “to be American is to be free!” Now I by no means hate the United States of America. Overall it seems to be a pretty groovy place when compared with, say, Malaysia, but I get so fed up with the hero worship. The U.S. is not a perfect place! This country has many significant flaws with its culture! So I raised my hand in class and exercised my right to free speech and said some things along the lines of “I have always seen American culture as xenophobic and sensationalistic!”

This, of course, got some people’s goats (I need to stop stealing people’s goats, I’m running out of room in my dorm.), and one guy responded by complaining about my diction! He said something like “just because you use fancy words doesn’t make it true!” This is a college classroom! Aren’t exotic words to be expected?

Oh well. I guess I’m just going to move past my rage and rhapsodize about words for a while.

I really like the word maverick. It’s a pretty common word, but most people just know it’s primary definition of rebel. It has a secondary, slightly archaic meaning of an unbranded calf. See, Maverick was originally the name of a man who refused to brand his cows! Isn’t etymology cool? But whenever I use, or hear someone else use, maverick I have an urge to make a pun involving this secondary definition. Sadly, most people don’t get it.

I also really like defenestration. It’s a great, overly specific, perfectly useless word. It means the act of throwing something out of a window. It has a specific reference to English history, where someone in parliament got thrown out of a window, but it can be used more generally. I’m just not sure how. It’s a noun. Maybe if someone kept throwing eggs at you from the safety of their house you could yell at them in ire, “Stop with the defenestration already!”

Defenestration makes me think of another fairly useless word, floccinaucinihilipilification, which is the longest non-technical word in the English language. (Antidisestablishmentarianism is the longest non-coined word.) Floccinaucinihilipilification means the act of coming to the conclusion that something is not worthwhile. Like defenestration it is a noun and thus has limited usage, however if one were to mutate it into other parts of speech I could see it having quite the plethora of uses. “That floccinaucinihilipilificator!” “I’m tried of all this floccinaucinihilipilification!”
It’s up to you how to pronounce the thing.

And for the record, antidisestablishmentarianism refers to the movement against the movement to get rid of the Church of England’s status as the state church in the 1800’s. I don’t like these sorts of words, as they have very specific context.

Before I quit this behemoth of a post I would like to point out that while I adore playing with entire words and sentences I do not take the same joy with parts of words. My spelling is horrendous and I hate games like scrabble and boggle.

Hi! My name is Sarah and I am a feminist. Because I do not mention this enough. I am sure there is no indication elsewhere on this page that I am a feminist. BUT! The point of mentioning this here is I want to discuss what it means to me to be a feminist! There are many negative stereotypes associated with feminism, a big one is that we hate men. All lies. Despite the fact that I make several mentions of how much men suck, I am actually very fond of men. Some of my best men are friends. Or something like that. I merely mention this suckyness over and over again for laughs. I am trying to be funny. Because I like to pretend that this is humorous blog.


Now, while I don't hate men, I do foam a bit at the mouth. This may or may not be because of the rabies. I am a very angry person, though, (just look at that picture!) so my guess is that the foam is from my general rage. And boy do I have rage! I can rage about so many different topics! From the mundane to the... not mundane. Anyway! I am a feminist because: Sexism exists. It is real. And I hates it.


Now I have a very specific something I want to rant about: Body Image. Still, in today's culture, a woman's power comes from her appearance. As women we are bombarded with the propaganda that we must be SEXY and smart. This is, I suppose, better then feeling pressure to be merely sexy. Now, to be honest, shallow values is a trans-genderal epidemic, but women feel much more pressure to be perfect. (ok, ok, I've never been a man, I don't really know.) This can be seen easily in commercials; there are a myriad of cosmetic commercials selling women glamour, clothing commercials selling her style, cleaning commercials selling her a family, a whole army of unattainable women with unattainable looks, doing unattainable things.


And I hate the whole concept of make up. I resent the implication that women have to paint their faces to be beautiful! (or that women have to be beautiful in the first place!)


The impetus behind this rant was that Saturday night I went out dancing (at the local gay club, which I call the gay bar, so that I can say "I have something to put in you, at the GAY BAR GAY BAR GAY BAR." My diction is ruled by song lyrics.) with a couple of male friends. And I wore my new corset. Because it pleases me. And it makes me hawt. And gives me unbelievable amounts of cleavage. But the point is not that I am one sexy beast, the point is that I normally dress pretty frumpily, and while I was going all femme fatal I met some of my straight male friends. And they acted different around me. They smiled more at me, talked to me more, were generally nicer. And these guys are people I respect. (I'm not even going to mention how the drunken idiots acted around me. God.) They respect me, they talk to me about "intellectual" things. They were still significantly nicer to me when I was beautiful. And this bothers me.


RAWR. I will rage against underlying problems in our culture that I have no chance of fixing!

I created this blog a while ago. And by a while I mean a few weeks. I remember this because I spent a while angsting over the name to a few friends on AIM. My friends never liked the name I picked. I'm rather fond of it. For one thing, it alliterates, for another it connotes zombies. Because there is a basement somewhere, and there are brains. And you can get them for cheap. Zombies.
It also has the purchasing slightly used black market body parts vibe to it, which I love. Plus, I'm totally trying to cultivate the dispossessed hipster feel, and nothing screams "I'm rebelling" quite like cheap zombie food.

The point is, there was a significant space of time between my first post and the birth of this blog. That's because I don't commit well. And I'm scatterbrained. So I may or may not update this blog frequently. Don't the possibilities excite?

Why am I writing a blog? Because I'm just that cool. I like to write about myself. And I like to write about the great injustices. In fact I like to write about most anything. But when I just write and then shove it away into the abyss of my desktop nobody ever says compliments me on my writing. And I do love my compliments. The moral of this story is: I'm narcissistic.

Anyway, the real reason I thought of posting today is that I can feel a feminist rant coming on. But I wanted to post a "first post" first post before I start into why men suck. But don't despair! If you stay tuned in a couple of hours you can get all of the unbridled passion and fury of an amateur social scientist.