Friday? Really?

Well, today was a proper Spring day - it rained. Enough that the roast that was planned was cancelled. It may reschedule, though. I got some really good pizza for lunch, though. That'll also be dinner tomorrow, most likely. Mmm-mmm... at least it wasn't served by someone who was trying to get fired. That would have been interesting.

I also spent a good amount of time watching the second day of the Lightworks Festival. The last movie of the night was a zombie short. which is funny, because I was just reading about zombies this morning. Strange how the Synchronicity Drive works, isn't it?

And then I read a pair of articles - one about how in any conflict that has boundaries, the boundaries are fractal... there's a fuzzy zone in between the two camps where one is not entirely sure what side is in charge, if any side at all. That might describe my natural state. and perhaps in that uncertain state there exists the power to reshape reality, through the creation, manipulation, and re-casting of images. Controlling both images and their meanings allows someone to create reality. Depending on how you apply your images (if you apply them at all), you create the real. As Conforth would say, "Define Yourself."

On an unrelated tangent, my art skills were cheered by a visit to the museum, reminding me that I need not even think about drawing figures at all, and that I can simply apply a color uniformly to an otherwise unremarkable object and still have it be called art. Perhaps my limited drawing skills really are an improvement over what I could be. You'd be surprised what can be considered art, especially in the twentieth century.

Finally, I've been doing a dangerous thing - thinking. So once again I will assault your brains with my ideas. You are free to discard them, adopt them, or ignore them as you like. This current brain-pattern revolves around the idea of the Impostor Syndrome that I referenced in the previous post. While the link I gave probably didn't have much in the way of detailing the theory, it did make mention of some of the characteristics of the mindset - downplaying one's own intellect or skill, attributing successes to good fortune, et cetera. The more I think about it, the more I wonder why more people don't claim it, since it seems that our entire society is geared toward reinforcing the impostor's mindset.

It's coded in our maxims - "The squeaky wheel gets the grease." Why? To shut it up. That the wheel receives benefits is secondary. "Sticking out like a sore thumb" - obviously in need of some "healing" to bring it back to being normal. In the news, the stories play out that great successes get lucky, no matter how much planning or effort or expertise they put into their projects - all that does is minimize the chance that something goes wrong, really, at least according to them.

So where does this insidious bastard get his start? The school system, I suspect. In an environment where the slow are sequestered away and the quick are told, in no uncertain terms, to be like everybody else (or at least to make themselves useful by helping the slower kids stay on the wave), what signal does that send? In a place where the unique are actively targeted, how do you avoid being one of the victims if you've got an unpopular eccentricity, like intelligence? "George just lucky, I guess." "No, I'm not smart, I just happened to get the questions I had studied for on the test." "I'm normal, just like you... I just happened to have favorable circumstances."

This extends out into society... if you say, with honest conviction, that you're skilled at something, there will invariably be a backlash that says you're being arrogant, or proud, and that something must be done to remind you that you are only fortunate, not skilled. It may stem from jealousy (and I'll admit to being jealous of people more skilled at things than I, but I hope that I turn it into a motivation for me to improve my own skills, instead of wishing ill fate on someone because they're more skilled), but one of the first learned and most socially acceptable ways of avoiding being called an arrogant jerk is to downplay your achievements. Yes, I did save that girl from the burning building, but anybody could have done that. Sure, I climbed Kilimanjaro, but anyone else could, too.

Get my point? The Impostor Syndrome should be an epidemic! Perhaps it's just that nobody's put a name to it yet, and in future years, we'll see a giant spike in the number of people being treated for no self-confidence. (Or maybe it's already here and we just hide it well) Fixing the problem shouldn't be too hard - all we have to do is get people to stop holding up an arbitrary "normal" as the ideal state for a person to be in. Once we can accept eccentricities as integral parts of a person, rather than foreign material to be excised, we can cut the need for the Impostor. It's all part of the master plan, you see, to get people to look at other people as a whole greater than the sum of its parts, rather than as a collection of characteristics, all compartmentalized, some desirable, some not. Silly me, right? That idea's not normal.

So, in closing, I'll exercise another one of my eccentricities - my tendency to go to bed after finishing a journal entry.

Snow. That's right, snow.

There was snow falling for a large majority of today. This is generally considered to be Winter's last gasp before finally letting in Spring. So we'll brave it patiently, like we always do. Went to a local establishment to watch some of the draft picks. We're happy with the positioning of our draft candidates. The teams they go to, maybe not so much. Our team also picked up another hot wide receiver - after those above him passed and took defensive guys. So, perhaps the way for our team to win is to do what Fritz did - Point-A-Minute offense. All we need is a decent blocking line and a quarterback that can throw relatively on target. We might be able to do the rest. And we'll need a defense that doesn't injure itself... actually, we just need not to have injuries. That would be nice.

There's lots of interesting science on the way - like this exoskeleton. The name could have used a little work, though. I guess it won't be sold to anyone by the name of Dave. The Zombie Synchronicity continues, as well - a Zombie Survival Guide crossed my desk today, with a plethora of links to other materials. Should we ever have a Day of the Dead, perhaps we'll be able to keep the losses down, since everyone will know what to do.

In political science, it appears that we really don't care about the issues at all. Well, not most of them, anyway. We might also want to keep an eye on the repetition of certain words by peoples in authority - it's rather probably that their truths and ours don't line up - but they'll want to enforce the idea that their truths are absolutely always true. Keep in mind a potentially Discordian maxim - "All things are true, false, and meaningless at the same time."

Speaking of people who want to wield the power to define truth, the newest Pope has expressed his disapproval of a bill in Spain that would both legalize marriage between homosexuals and give those couples the right to adopt. Notice the position being taken... that Roman Catholic officials should be prepared to "lose their jobs" rather than to let such a thing pass or enforce it. This is the same stance of someone who worked out a way to deny any pro-choice person Communion and then wanted to ensure that the priests did, indeed, do just that. The Inquisition has arrived, ladies and gentlemen of the Catholic faith, and it looks like their intent is to cleanse the church of errant thinkers as well as try to undermine the secular governance of nations. They can just do it from the Pope's office as well as their own, now. Catholics might be getting a firsthand account of what it feels like to have been a liberal over the last four years as well as these four.

Shifting gears, I had a stray thought enter my head yesterday, when I commented to uncle_pervy that I was Piro to his Largo in our friendship, especially in our relations to c|-|1X0r5. And then, well, the cast developed a bit, or something. On a whim, I decided to try and see if I could construct a cast listing out of the people I know that would fit the Megatokyo cast. Here are the results:

( My life's MT cast )

If I've missed any of the major cast, let me know - if you've got ideas for the other potentially minor cast members, then let me know.

Out of that thought came things like yesterday's thoughts about the Impostor's Syndrome and some other material like the stuff to follow. Since it's really me talking to me, it can probably be best played-out as a conversation between the various entities inside my brain. I have no idea who's speaking in the not-me cast, so you'll have to try and puzzle it out yourselves. If you think you can transcribe the various speakers, do let me know.

( Only those with interest in my personal dramas should read... really. )