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conulyThe first is make weird noises and strings of words that sound like they ought to be meaningful but ultimately aren't. If I'm very tired, I also get a light show. This doesn't help me fall asleep even a little.
If that doesn't work to keep me up, it likes to throw out random questions and try to make me think about them. This is an asshole move, because I've long since learned that thinking is a sure way to stay awake, so at bedtime I practice *not* thinking. This is tricky, because the underthought is something like "Am I doing it yet? Am I? Wait, shut up. Hm. Hm. Yay I did it! Crap." It is hard to get the underthought to stop thinking, but the effort makes me sleepy. Anyway, a couple of these asshole questions in recent weeks are actually kinda interesting, even though I'm not myself interested in doing the work to come up with answers, so here they are in case anybody else is:
1. So, how would world history have been different if Europeans really had had widespread potatoes and Native Americans had tame/tameable horses prior to 1492? Potatoes are a way more productive crop than grains, really, and don't require you to subsidize a miller, and gosh, horses are just useful amirite? But horses aren't that likely, because you can't carry them on boats (well, unless they're big boats), unlike potatoes and, more importantly, sweet potatoes which is how we know for sure sure sure that there was some contact between Polynesians and (South) Americans in prehistory, the sweet potatoes. I wonder if Polynesians could've given them chickens, though. They certainly could have carried potatoes back to Asia. How much contact was there between Asian and Polynesian cultures anyway?
2. Is the reason so many rite of passage/coming of age stories in kidlit/ya take place during summer vacation because it's a liminal period between one grade and the next? Or, better yet, one type of school and the next? Wait, in order to answer that we'd first have to better define "rite of passage/coming of age" story... and I'm also thinking of stories involving, like, divorce or losing friends due to growing apart or sickness stories, so maybe I mean growing up stories? But like, hardcore growing up stories, because obvs all stories are about maturing as a person or else what the hell is the point? - and then we'd have to show that they ARE more commonly set during summer vacation than other times and who wants to spend the time to do that? Am I only thinking all this because I like the word "liminal"? (Yes, yes I was.)
This was a strictly defined "couple", not a permeable "couple". Most of the questions my brain throws out at bedtime aren't very good at all.
*******
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If that doesn't work to keep me up, it likes to throw out random questions and try to make me think about them. This is an asshole move, because I've long since learned that thinking is a sure way to stay awake, so at bedtime I practice *not* thinking. This is tricky, because the underthought is something like "Am I doing it yet? Am I? Wait, shut up. Hm. Hm. Yay I did it! Crap." It is hard to get the underthought to stop thinking, but the effort makes me sleepy. Anyway, a couple of these asshole questions in recent weeks are actually kinda interesting, even though I'm not myself interested in doing the work to come up with answers, so here they are in case anybody else is:
1. So, how would world history have been different if Europeans really had had widespread potatoes and Native Americans had tame/tameable horses prior to 1492? Potatoes are a way more productive crop than grains, really, and don't require you to subsidize a miller, and gosh, horses are just useful amirite? But horses aren't that likely, because you can't carry them on boats (well, unless they're big boats), unlike potatoes and, more importantly, sweet potatoes which is how we know for sure sure sure that there was some contact between Polynesians and (South) Americans in prehistory, the sweet potatoes. I wonder if Polynesians could've given them chickens, though. They certainly could have carried potatoes back to Asia. How much contact was there between Asian and Polynesian cultures anyway?
2. Is the reason so many rite of passage/coming of age stories in kidlit/ya take place during summer vacation because it's a liminal period between one grade and the next? Or, better yet, one type of school and the next? Wait, in order to answer that we'd first have to better define "rite of passage/coming of age" story... and I'm also thinking of stories involving, like, divorce or losing friends due to growing apart or sickness stories, so maybe I mean growing up stories? But like, hardcore growing up stories, because obvs all stories are about maturing as a person or else what the hell is the point? - and then we'd have to show that they ARE more commonly set during summer vacation than other times and who wants to spend the time to do that? Am I only thinking all this because I like the word "liminal"? (Yes, yes I was.)
This was a strictly defined "couple", not a permeable "couple". Most of the questions my brain throws out at bedtime aren't very good at all.
Where you should move to feel young forever, in one chart
The First Dog Ascent of a 7,000-Meter Himalayan Peak
He couldn't hack it as a drug-sniffing dog. Now he's conservation's best friend
These 42 Characters Are Identical No Matter What They're In
Faxing is old tech. So why is it also growing in popularity?
Immigration is beneficial to economies, even after 100 years
How Driving is Encouraged and Subsidized — By Law
On the late-Victorian fetishization of india rubber dildos
In Catholic Rome Italy's Mormons get their first temple
Rabid animals don't always foam at the mouth — here's what to look out for instead
Can Zuckerberg really make a privacy-friendly Facebook?
Zuckerberg's Privacy Manifesto is Actually About Messaging (The article links to another one about the decline in personal posts at FB, but that one is paywalled. Take this link instead.)
Facebook’s new move isn't about privacy. It’s about domination
The Consequences of Teen Motherhood Can Last for Generations
The Right-Wing Weaponization of Classical History
Medicine has a status anxiety problem: The male-dominated and intensely hierarchical field has allowed professional tantrums to feel normal
Actually, Women Do Ask for Money. They Just Don’t Get It.
The Real Aliens in Our Backyard
The NRA Welcomed Maria Butina — Even As She Worked to Arm Anti-American Thugs Abroad
Global 'pandemic' of fake drugs killing children worldwide, report says
Research Shows Alabama's Drug Testing Bill Would Harm Those SNAP Is Supposed to Help (Oh, gosh, no! And it won't save a penny either! Well, now that Alabama knows that they surely won't go ahead with this dastardly plan!)
Freed Yazidi woman in Syria endured years of Islamic State slavery
The Western Erasure of African Tragedy
Popular support for militants complicates Pakistan crackdown
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no subject
Date: 2019-03-12 08:31 pm (UTC)I too have to mentally edit out the edible nightshade family from tales with medieval settings. It's like in the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta Xena, or, The Warrior Princess (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~valkyrie/parody/xena.html):
1.B. If the Native Americans had had tame horses before the Spanish brought them, the entire history of the world might have been quite different. One reason the American tribes fell so easily to conquest was because they were all isolated from each other - a horse culture would have linked tribes over wider distances. Of course, just as in Europe and Asia, 'linking' means raiding as well as trading; a horse culture tends to be a warrior culture, so European invaders would not have gotten the initial foothold they did - maybe no foothold ever.
2. A. Summer vacation is intrinsically liminal. Anything can happen in that space between leaving one grade (or school) and starting another, away from the daily/weekly/monthly grind of the school year, and away from the critical eyes of peers and teachers. In summer the weather is warm, the days are long, and - not having school - kids are more at liberty to go do things on their own.
2.B. All stories are not necessarily about maturing as a person, unless one defines 'maturing' as 'whatever happens to a person over time'. Plenty of stories are plot-driven rather than character-driven: the point is the action, and how it affects the protagonist's personal development isn't really pertinent, especially if the protagonist is doing well just to survive from one chapter to the next.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-13 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-13 09:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-13 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-14 01:42 am (UTC)"I think of them as necessary vehicles for reluctant readers"
... consider that some of them may only be 'reluctant' because they don't much care for character-driven stories. Guys of the tech/engineering mindset are often that way. My daughter's fiance writes beautiful descriptions of settings with nobody in them - it's like the literary equivalent of Myst, if you remember that game. He mostly finds character-driven fiction tiresome and sticky.
One of my former students would tell me long, rambling tales of the book he was "writing" - actually only thinking about writing, without all the bother of putting pen to paper. The stories were pretty good, though, except that all his characters were nameless, faceless cardboard. I finally insisted that he give ONE of them an actual name, and write a chapter in which that character does something - he did it, but it was incredibly hard for him even to think of a name and a rudimentary personal history for a single character.
Hard for me to grok, because names and personal histories and complicated relationships spring instantly to my brain when I start spinning stories. My problem is the opposite: my characters have way too much inner life, while outer life is passing them by - which is very authentic when one's writing immortal Elves in an enchanted forest, as I was, but really, SO much navel-gazing! Talk about 'sticky'; my chars were always wading through the Bog of Eternal Angst. A good story really needs a balance of plot, character and setting, which is not so easy to achieve.