One thing I still don't have set up yet at my house is a washing machine (or dryer, for that matter, but I'm not opposed to line-drying if I need to do it). The previous owners had had the washing machine in the kitchen -- apparently this was a bit of a fad during the 1950s, when I guess it was considered wonderful for "the housewife" to be able to stay in the kitchen all day, no matter if she were cooking or doing laundry (yay?).
But I digress. The bottom line is that while eventually I'd like the washing machine hooked up in the garage, at present we don't have one hooked up anywhere -- and while hand-washing would be fine for things like t-shirts and underwear, it's a right pain in the arse for jeans and towels and such, which tend to defy all efforts to rinse by hand and end up very stiff when dry. My partner's parents have been kindly letting us use their washer and dryer, but it isn't always convenient to go over there.
Hence, a few weeks ago when the laundry pile had begun approaching epic proportions, I decided to try out a local laundromat, having noticed just such an establishment about three blocks down the street.
Being a non-driver, though, the matter of how to transport two loads of laundry to even this very close laundromat posed a bit of a creative challenge. Even if that amount of clothes hadn't been too heavy to carry more than a few feet, the bundles were cumbersome and awkward. It was really a job for a wagon or some sort of shopping cart, but I didn't have any of those handy. But then I remembered I still had my old computer chair in the garage, and that it had wheels, so I stacked the laundry baskets (actually one basket and one cloth bag) on the chair and pushed it down the street.
While not wonderful at navigating bumpy curb-cuts, overall this strategy worked great -- it not only enabled me to launder two very necessary loads of clothing, but once I got there I had a nice comfy chair to sit in and read ebooks on my iPod Touch while my textiles dried. So in my estimation the whole situation was a win.
But: apparently, I learned later (based on discussions with several people, including my very bewildered next door neighbors who had seen me), this is exactly the kind of thing that I am prone to doing, but that most other people Just Don't Do. And I have a hard time understanding why.
For me it was actually far easier (not to mention quite economical, as I was able to use a device I just had sitting in my garage for transport purposes) to get my laundry done the way I did than it would have been to try and arrange a ride from someone, etc.
So, I guess I am wondering why that sort of thing is apparently considered so "weird". Is there a social stigma associated with pushing stuff around on office chairs, to the point where most people just wouldn't bother even if all they had was an office chair?
I am not going to speculate with any rigor on how this may or may not relate to my neurology/cognitive phenotype, but throughout my life I've been slowly having it dawn on me that one of the reasons people tend to call me "weird" or constantly ask me "why are you doing [x]?" (when [x] seems perfectly normal to me) is because of this tendency to just do what I think needs doing, using whatever materials I have at my immediate disposal.
Also, I sometimes suspect that some of the social issues I've had come down to people assuming that I must be "trying to be weird on purpose" when in fact I often haven't a clue that something I'm doing is somehow "weird-looking" until someone tells me it is. Moreover, I've yet to encounter anyone who, upon explaining to me "Anne, that thing you did, it was weird!" can also explain why I should care!
Certainly I want to know if something I am doing is somehow harming someone, and I definitely appreciate being told when I'm doing something unsafe without realizing it -- but if the only reason people suggest I "shouldn't" do something is because it "looks funny", I guess I just don't see that as a very good reason to go out of my way to do it in a more standard manner.1
Which brings me to my next point, which is to say that one thing I suspect people don't realize is that the "standard way" is often inaccessible to me -- or, at the very least, so convolutedly difficult for me to do that it really isn't worth bothering with.
It's like it's just presumed that things in List A are "easy" whereas things in List B are "hard". For me it's a heck of a lot harder to "make arrangements" with other people do do my laundry at their house, especially when it's a matter of "z0mg, I'm running out of underwear" like it was the day I made my little chair-jaunt to the laundromat, than it is to push a mound of fabric down the street and stick some quarters in a machine.
And really, one of the reasons I think I've been able to become as (what would be considered by many people) "independent" as an adult as I have is because my dad (among others) didn't raise me in a manner that trained me out of my inherent tendencies toward unbridled MacGyverism.2 There's a whole laundry list (ha ha) of things I know I simply would not be able to do at all if I couldn't do them "my" way, and I guess I'm just really grateful sometimes that despite the imperfections that exist in all families, I grew up in an environment where "pass the duct tape!" was a far more commonplace sentiment than "get someone to buy you a new one".
1- As I get older and learn more I am also beginning to think there's class-related stuff involved here, as well as more general disability and "fear of the other"-ness going on. E.g., in the area where I live, there are very few pedestrians, and (as someone commented to me recently) the mere act of walking almost serves to suggest to the folks whizzing by in their cars that you're either poor/homeless or that you have "something wrong with you".
Which, if true, seems to be a bizarrely region-specific sentiment, as certainly in parts of Europe where public transit actually has a decent infrastructure that people hence actually use (and where cultural/physical layout variables of living/working/shopping areas are more pedestrian-friendly in general) you're going to see pedestrians of all shapes, sizes, neurotypes, and from all walks of life. I also don't recall anything resembling such a stigma being present when I lived in a smallish "college town" on California's central coast whilst a student...students, I guess, are expected to get around without cars at least some of the time. But, again, I digress. And certainly "oh but what if people think you're homeless...or CRAZY!" is not going to stop me from walking to the danged laundromat if I need to! Sheesh!
2- This is not to say I was never given help at all, or that I was just "left to my own devices" all the time. In fact, I had lots and lots of support -- not always perfect support, and not always in all the areas I needed it in, but enough to get me through the worst of the rough patches I experienced growing up alive. And nowadays I still receive a lot of assistance, some of it standard-issue (for people of my background/class/etc.) some of it on the unusual side for someone my age (like when my partner keeps me from wandering into traffic).
But it has taken me until now, really, to realize just how much of what I can do today is sort of contingent upon having had at least some opportunity whilst growing up to figure things out on my own terms.
And it has also taken in some areas, having encountered a few people very similar to me (cognitively/perceptually), but who have ended up experiencing far more struggles than I due to having been in the wrong place at the wrong time, in view of the wrong people (especially as teenagers). The individuals I am thinking of were, among other things, taught in many ways to be very very passive, very dependent on getting "permission" to do everything. And when you already have communication impairments to begin with, this can have disastrous consequences.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Monday, January 18, 2010
On Haiti
...or rather, on the subject of the massive earthquake that struck Haiti on and its indescribably awful aftermath.
I don't know much about Haiti or anyone who actually lives there, or who died there, so I can't say much of substance.
But I do acknowledge the disaster.
These things happen in the world, and having a blog called "Existence is Wonderful" doesn't render me ignorant to this.
I wish they didn't happen, or rather, that when they did happen, we were better prepared for them. But I am by no means sure what to do in the way of preparation, in my own life or on behalf of others (and no, I don't think the solution necessarily involves robots).
Nor am I sure what I can do as an individual to help mitigate the effects of such a cataclysmic event. I mean, yes, there are groups I can donate to, but even if I go that route I don't want it to be in order to assuage my own survivor's guilt or whatnot. When something like this happens, what is needed is a whole lot of very concrete, very practical, very physical assistance. Medical care. Shelter. Food. Clean water. Rescue work to free people trapped under rubble. Clothing. Toys and books. Other stuff I haven't thought of.
So...if you or someone you know has some direct way to contribute these things, hopefully you can find some way to do it in a way that will actually work. As for me I don't know what to do aside from donating to UNICEF or Red Cross. Suggestions that don't involve flying to Haiti (as I expect in my weak nerdy inexperienced state I'd be more of a liability than a help) are welcome.
(Also, please don't think you are being clever by pointing out that "well lots of people die right here in the USA all the time too, what makes this earthquake so special?" I know full well that lots of awful things happen, everywhere, along with the kittens and rainbows that can make life so delightful for those of us who aren't lying bloody in the streets. I'm human, though, and I freely admit that not everything gets my attention. Plus as a California resident for over a decade now I certainly think earthquake preparedness and possible aftermaths of large quakes are very much worthwhile subjects to be concerned about, regardless of where those quakes occur.)
This isn't eloquent at all but I wanted to say something (while holding no illusions that saying something means I am doing anything useful).
I don't know much about Haiti or anyone who actually lives there, or who died there, so I can't say much of substance.
But I do acknowledge the disaster.
These things happen in the world, and having a blog called "Existence is Wonderful" doesn't render me ignorant to this.
I wish they didn't happen, or rather, that when they did happen, we were better prepared for them. But I am by no means sure what to do in the way of preparation, in my own life or on behalf of others (and no, I don't think the solution necessarily involves robots).
Nor am I sure what I can do as an individual to help mitigate the effects of such a cataclysmic event. I mean, yes, there are groups I can donate to, but even if I go that route I don't want it to be in order to assuage my own survivor's guilt or whatnot. When something like this happens, what is needed is a whole lot of very concrete, very practical, very physical assistance. Medical care. Shelter. Food. Clean water. Rescue work to free people trapped under rubble. Clothing. Toys and books. Other stuff I haven't thought of.
So...if you or someone you know has some direct way to contribute these things, hopefully you can find some way to do it in a way that will actually work. As for me I don't know what to do aside from donating to UNICEF or Red Cross. Suggestions that don't involve flying to Haiti (as I expect in my weak nerdy inexperienced state I'd be more of a liability than a help) are welcome.
(Also, please don't think you are being clever by pointing out that "well lots of people die right here in the USA all the time too, what makes this earthquake so special?" I know full well that lots of awful things happen, everywhere, along with the kittens and rainbows that can make life so delightful for those of us who aren't lying bloody in the streets. I'm human, though, and I freely admit that not everything gets my attention. Plus as a California resident for over a decade now I certainly think earthquake preparedness and possible aftermaths of large quakes are very much worthwhile subjects to be concerned about, regardless of where those quakes occur.)
This isn't eloquent at all but I wanted to say something (while holding no illusions that saying something means I am doing anything useful).
Sunday, January 17, 2010
"Verbal Communication Reserves Critically Low" T-Shirts/Buttons
FYI to anyone potentially interested in a bit of helpful armor to ward off annoying store greeters (among others), the Verbal Communication Reserves Critically Low! graphic shown in my post on obnoxious, accessibility-fail-worthy 'store policies' and such is now available on Zazzle.
You can get either a t-shirt (which can be customized to account for different people's shapes, sizes, and preferences) or a button (which you can keep in your bag and pin to your shirt, etc., whenever the need arises).
Of course I make no guarantees as to whether wearing this graphic will actually work.
I remember once at one of my prior jobs, I was really busy with something and did not want to be interrupted. So I put a piece of yellow "CAUTION" tape across the opening to my cubicle and hung a note on it saying I was working on Important Business and for people to please avoid bugging me until I was done (or similar, I don't recall the exact wording I used).
And...within a few minutes of putting it up, I had a manager peek their head into my cube and inquire of me, "So, is this working for you?" It was at that moment it became clear just how factually grounded the Dilbert comic is.
But in any case, I have long thought that there needs to be some equivalent to a "Do Not Disturb" sign for people just walking around in public, especially for those of us with non-standard body language and expressions, etc. I figured out a while ago that I probably tend to get approached (or, paradoxically in some cases, ignored) a disproportionate amount of the time, and I am pretty sure this is due to some intangible factors in how I come across.
E.g., I get told I look "lost", "distracted", or "like [I] don't know what [I'm] doing" on a regular basis. When I was a teenager I got stopped by the police multiple times just walking down the street, to the point where (until someone told me this was rarely done to white teenage girls) I thought that was normal. When I'm amongst a lot of other nerds or other neurologically unusual folks this doesn't happen nearly as much, but it happens a heck of a lot when I am in more general/mainstream situations, and I figure I can't be the only person who this is the case for.
Anyway I am probably going to get a button and try it out next time I'm out running errands, as sort of a field-test. I shall certainly report on the results if I do this!
You can get either a t-shirt (which can be customized to account for different people's shapes, sizes, and preferences) or a button (which you can keep in your bag and pin to your shirt, etc., whenever the need arises).
Of course I make no guarantees as to whether wearing this graphic will actually work.
I remember once at one of my prior jobs, I was really busy with something and did not want to be interrupted. So I put a piece of yellow "CAUTION" tape across the opening to my cubicle and hung a note on it saying I was working on Important Business and for people to please avoid bugging me until I was done (or similar, I don't recall the exact wording I used).
And...within a few minutes of putting it up, I had a manager peek their head into my cube and inquire of me, "So, is this working for you?" It was at that moment it became clear just how factually grounded the Dilbert comic is.
But in any case, I have long thought that there needs to be some equivalent to a "Do Not Disturb" sign for people just walking around in public, especially for those of us with non-standard body language and expressions, etc. I figured out a while ago that I probably tend to get approached (or, paradoxically in some cases, ignored) a disproportionate amount of the time, and I am pretty sure this is due to some intangible factors in how I come across.
E.g., I get told I look "lost", "distracted", or "like [I] don't know what [I'm] doing" on a regular basis. When I was a teenager I got stopped by the police multiple times just walking down the street, to the point where (until someone told me this was rarely done to white teenage girls) I thought that was normal. When I'm amongst a lot of other nerds or other neurologically unusual folks this doesn't happen nearly as much, but it happens a heck of a lot when I am in more general/mainstream situations, and I figure I can't be the only person who this is the case for.
Anyway I am probably going to get a button and try it out next time I'm out running errands, as sort of a field-test. I shall certainly report on the results if I do this!
Saturday, January 16, 2010
A Note On The Direction Of This Blog
Anyone who has been reading Existence is Wonderful for a while now may have noticed that lately I have been posting less in the way of lengthy, serious, citation-laden writing and more in the way of cat pictures and commentary not quite as "weighty", for lack of a better word.
So I just wanted to explain this a bit. Basically what happened was that I got really, really exhausted last year. I had some huge changes occur in my life (moving from an apartment into a house, getting laid off from my job, adopting cats, etc.) and all of those changes necessitated the expenditure of massive amounts of energy in primarily offline contexts.
Moreover a lot of the house-related and work-related stuff has been tremendously confusing. Thankfully I have a lot of help and support from various people I am fortunate to have in my life, but still, I have had to take things very slowly in some respects in order to actually get them right, and the time needed to do that has meant other things (like working to apply language to complex issues) have fallen by the wayside.
None of this means I am not interested in my "usual" topics (longevity medicine, neurology/autism, disability issues, robots, technology and culture, etc.), and I have tried to keep touching on these at least every so often. But all these things take time to articulate properly about, and they take being able to work in a certain sort of brain-mode I've not had the luxury of devoting very much bandwidth to this past year.
Whenever I've been able to post anything reasonably complex it has been a surprise to me...which brings me to the primary reason for this explanation. Essentially I've realize that if I decide never to write anything until I can write something sufficiently well-researched (and cited if need be), serious (or humorous, even, depending on the topic), and explicated to my own satisfaction I would never write anything. Or rather, I would post less and less to the point where my writing skills started to atrophy, which would make it that much harder to start again when I actually had enough information and background and brain to produce something worthwhile.
(This has actually happened to me before...when I got out of college I had practically forgotten how to write, and I was so rusty it was almost physically painful to generate a paragraph saying, for instance, what a particular book was about. I practiced my way through that, but I would rather not have to deal with that again!)
So...what this means for Existence is Wonderful is that while I do aim to produce Serious Business (meaning, posts that have been thoroughly fact-checked, referenced, and disclaimered) posts when I can, not EVERY post is going to be Serious Business.
Moreover, sometimes I may seem to be writing about a given thing (such as longevity medicine) less than I used to. This does not mean my interest has waned but that (in most cases) my standards have gone up, as one thing I am finding is that sometimes the more I research something in my endeavors to write about it, the less I figure I can legitimately say, given the obvious gaps in my knowledge. This doesn't mean I will never write about [thing] again, just that I've developed a greater appreciation for what ought to go into a high quality post about [thing].
In any case, what all of this ultimately comes down to is my wanting to keep my writing ability from getting rusty but realizing I cannot consistently blog about specific subjects in ways that do those subjects justice. And the best way I can think of to deal with this is just sort of not be overly concerned with how many big, complex, heavily-referenced posts I can generate, but rather follow my brain's lead regarding what it can produce words on at any given time. And sometimes, it seems, that's going to be cats, or sf films, or whatnot.
Finally, I realize that I can do whatever I want with my blog. I don't HAVE to explain why my writing veers off in the directions it does. However, I thought it might be useful to provide some small explanation for the sake of anyone who thought this was a "life extension blog" or an "autism blog" or anything so specific. It isn't, and it hasn't been for a long time.
What it is, and has been from the beginning, is an ongoing exploration of existence and being in the world and observing things from one person's perspective. That is very vague, I realize, but it makes sense to me and in that sense does encompass everything I might happen to write about. E.g., after writing about longevity specifically a lot it started to dawn on me that a life of any length is made worthwhile by its content, so why not focus sometimes on that content?
And of course, no matter what shows up here, I figure people who feel like reading will read and those who don't, won't, and I am totally fine with that.
EDIT: Comments closed on 3/12/10, as for some strange reason this post seems to be attracting gargantuan amounts of nonsense-spam.
So I just wanted to explain this a bit. Basically what happened was that I got really, really exhausted last year. I had some huge changes occur in my life (moving from an apartment into a house, getting laid off from my job, adopting cats, etc.) and all of those changes necessitated the expenditure of massive amounts of energy in primarily offline contexts.
Moreover a lot of the house-related and work-related stuff has been tremendously confusing. Thankfully I have a lot of help and support from various people I am fortunate to have in my life, but still, I have had to take things very slowly in some respects in order to actually get them right, and the time needed to do that has meant other things (like working to apply language to complex issues) have fallen by the wayside.
None of this means I am not interested in my "usual" topics (longevity medicine, neurology/autism, disability issues, robots, technology and culture, etc.), and I have tried to keep touching on these at least every so often. But all these things take time to articulate properly about, and they take being able to work in a certain sort of brain-mode I've not had the luxury of devoting very much bandwidth to this past year.
Whenever I've been able to post anything reasonably complex it has been a surprise to me...which brings me to the primary reason for this explanation. Essentially I've realize that if I decide never to write anything until I can write something sufficiently well-researched (and cited if need be), serious (or humorous, even, depending on the topic), and explicated to my own satisfaction I would never write anything. Or rather, I would post less and less to the point where my writing skills started to atrophy, which would make it that much harder to start again when I actually had enough information and background and brain to produce something worthwhile.
(This has actually happened to me before...when I got out of college I had practically forgotten how to write, and I was so rusty it was almost physically painful to generate a paragraph saying, for instance, what a particular book was about. I practiced my way through that, but I would rather not have to deal with that again!)
So...what this means for Existence is Wonderful is that while I do aim to produce Serious Business (meaning, posts that have been thoroughly fact-checked, referenced, and disclaimered) posts when I can, not EVERY post is going to be Serious Business.
Moreover, sometimes I may seem to be writing about a given thing (such as longevity medicine) less than I used to. This does not mean my interest has waned but that (in most cases) my standards have gone up, as one thing I am finding is that sometimes the more I research something in my endeavors to write about it, the less I figure I can legitimately say, given the obvious gaps in my knowledge. This doesn't mean I will never write about [thing] again, just that I've developed a greater appreciation for what ought to go into a high quality post about [thing].
In any case, what all of this ultimately comes down to is my wanting to keep my writing ability from getting rusty but realizing I cannot consistently blog about specific subjects in ways that do those subjects justice. And the best way I can think of to deal with this is just sort of not be overly concerned with how many big, complex, heavily-referenced posts I can generate, but rather follow my brain's lead regarding what it can produce words on at any given time. And sometimes, it seems, that's going to be cats, or sf films, or whatnot.
Finally, I realize that I can do whatever I want with my blog. I don't HAVE to explain why my writing veers off in the directions it does. However, I thought it might be useful to provide some small explanation for the sake of anyone who thought this was a "life extension blog" or an "autism blog" or anything so specific. It isn't, and it hasn't been for a long time.
What it is, and has been from the beginning, is an ongoing exploration of existence and being in the world and observing things from one person's perspective. That is very vague, I realize, but it makes sense to me and in that sense does encompass everything I might happen to write about. E.g., after writing about longevity specifically a lot it started to dawn on me that a life of any length is made worthwhile by its content, so why not focus sometimes on that content?
And of course, no matter what shows up here, I figure people who feel like reading will read and those who don't, won't, and I am totally fine with that.
EDIT: Comments closed on 3/12/10, as for some strange reason this post seems to be attracting gargantuan amounts of nonsense-spam.
Photopost: Caturday Edition
Just some new pictures of my (now 5 month old!) kitties, being their awesome cattish selves:
Brodie resting on the bed, in partial curled-paw kittyloaf configuration
Brodie (L) and Coraline (R), showing their mega-napping prowess
Cora in the living room (in a rare moment of sitting still while awake...she is actually very hard to photograph as whenever she isn't asleep, she is usually exploring or darting around the room chasing toys, etc.!)
Brodie and Shadow (who are brothers) snuggling on the bed.
Shadow enjoying the electric blanket (electric blankets, of course, being a point in favor of the notion that cats engineered the human race to do their bidding :))
(see my Flickr page for more cats and such, this is only a sampling here in this post).
Brodie resting on the bed, in partial curled-paw kittyloaf configuration
Brodie (L) and Coraline (R), showing their mega-napping prowess
Cora in the living room (in a rare moment of sitting still while awake...she is actually very hard to photograph as whenever she isn't asleep, she is usually exploring or darting around the room chasing toys, etc.!)
Brodie and Shadow (who are brothers) snuggling on the bed.
Shadow enjoying the electric blanket (electric blankets, of course, being a point in favor of the notion that cats engineered the human race to do their bidding :))
(see my Flickr page for more cats and such, this is only a sampling here in this post).
Thursday, January 14, 2010
A bit of a curmudgeonly rant...
So, I don't know if this is a regional thing (I live in Northern California, USA) or whether it's more widespread, butlately I've been noticing a lot of the following:
- More and more shops employing "greeters" (and more often the sort that stand two abreast on either side of the entrance, waving flyers in your face as you attempt to pass between them).
- More salespeople accosting customers in gauntlet fashion with "are you finding everything okay?" inquiries as one attempts to make one's way through the aisles.
(Doing this once is fine. Having it done by no less than five people between one side of the store and the other is obnoxious and in my case makes it practically impossible to think straight about why I'm there in the first place.)
- A preponderance of what I would call "fake helpfulness" (wherein the clerk offers to help you, but has no more information than you do, or worse, has less information than you do.
E.g., if you ask a FakeHelpful clerk if they have Philips screwdrivers of a certain size, they will tend to do something like point to the very obvious display of screwdrivers you are standing next to and say "oh yes, screwdrivers are right here!"
Or, in another variation, FakeHelpfuls who clearly have no clue what you are actually looking for will follow you around from one display to the next, chattering all the way as if to provide moral support or something.)
- More and more solicitors hanging around storefronts imploring passerbys to sign their petition for X, or "help keep teens off drugs" or whatnot.
(I actually ended up yelling "Don't ACCOST me!" at some Petition Guy outside the grocery store recently. Yes, free speech and politics and all that, but ye gads, do not scamper up to me with your flyer and yap like a terrier at me to sign it when I am trying to, you know, focus on getting into the store without colliding with anyone, etc.)
- More stores blasting extremely loud music throughout the establishment, and/or displaying video screens or TVs playing cartoons or advertisments.
(For example: there is a pizza place nearby where I live that, I kid you not, has a little flat-screen TV in EACH BOOTH. And each TV can be set to play something different.
And on top of that, they have satellite music or something (set to some kind of atrocious "Smooth Jazz" channel, no less) piping throughout the place.
The one time I went in there I spent the whole time waiting for my food with my head down on the table and my fingers in my ears, trying to block out the combined Finding Nemo-Noggin-SpongeBob-Kenny G onslaught. Needless to say, I don't plan on going back there again!)
In any case, all the above mean that whenever I need new socks, or a replacement sprocket for my gadget, or a loaf of bread, etc., I am subjected to a veritable barrage of demands on my capacities to verbalize, respond quickly to incoming inputs, process sensory information, etc. And this would be true even without all this "extra" stuff I've noted here. The "extras" simply make things much, much worse, to the point where it starts pushing into "I cannot enter this establishment, let alone actually shop/eat there".
Which is why I am considering it an accessibility issue, as I know I can't be the only person (autistic spectrum or otherwise) who experiences problems in this realm.
Of course I am not blaming the clerks themselves for what is, more than likely, "store policy". This should not be taken as a rant about cashiers or even greeters, as generally they aren't the ones with the power anyway.
Having spent some time working in a coffee shop (Peet's) myself, I know that in at least some establishments, employees are monitored by managers watching to make sure they greet every person who enters the shop straight away (and that clerks are definitely not the ones responsible for the "turn the music up to 11!" thing or for installing TV screens everywhere).
I actually got put on "employee probation" within my first few weeks at Peet's for (among other things pertaining "standard social skills" and my apparent lack thereof) not automatically greeting everyone who came in. After that I was given a script ("Hi, what can I help you with?" or something along those lines) to recite whenever a customer came in.
So I dutifully spoke the Words of Greeting from then on, as soon as each incoming patron shut the door behind them.
I didn't particularly like doing this, knowing how disorienting and annoying I found the Immediate Greeting when I walked into stores and such, but I felt very lucky to still have a job at all; a lot of places would have just fired me, I figured, rather than doing the probation thing. Plus, that job gave me free coffee, which was a nice perk (pun intended).
Moreover, while it was flabbergasting to consider, being told so emphatically that customers liked to be greeted right away got me wondering if perhaps a lot of people did appreciate that sort of thing.
Which is what I'm wondering still now, and even more so lately given the aforementioned apparent upsurge in hyper-(un)helpfulness, demanding doorway solicitation, and eardrum-and-eyeball evisceration courtesty of massive speakers and ubiquitous LCD screens.
So, I offer this query to the readership:
Do some people actually enjoy this kind of thing?
Do most folks aiming to pop out to the market for tomatoes or cheap underpants genuinely wish they were going to a throbbing-walled nightclub staffed by armies of Care-Bears on MDMA?
Or does it just not feel like that to most people? I honestly have no idea, but I do know I'm exceedingly glad for online vendors these days. It's not that I think nobody should talk to anyone in public, or that store personnel should ignore all their customers completely...but just, gah, can't someone at least consider toning down the excessive Helpiness (especially when it isn't actually helping!) and turning down the volume on the speakers?
(end rant, and yes, I still really do think Existence is Wonderful...doesn't mean I can't find certain things really annoying!)
Sunday, January 10, 2010
The Week In Review
Well, it's officially the second week of 2010, and lacking shiny domed cities or flying cars to write about, I offer a few pictures of what (other than filing for unemployment / starting on my Quest For A New Job) I've been up to lately:
Exhibit A: Awaiting the Flushularity...
Who'd have thought in 2010 we'd still be pooping, (yes, I'm joking) let alone sealing our toilet-sewage-pipe junctions with wax "ass gaskets"? Where are my cleanup nanobots, dangit? :P
In any case, the commode here was leaking recently around the base so Matt and I spent a fascinating Monday evening getting very closely acquainted with the underside of the porcelain throne.
Here I am scraping off the old wax ring in preparation for applying the new one and replacing the toilet in its rightful place. This was totally disgusting and I am very very glad the new wax ring supposedly has a 10 year lifespan, as I don't relish doing this again this century, let alone this decade. As much as I appreciate the technological wonder that is the sewage system, man, when that stuff gets flushed I never want to see it again.
Oh, and I also found this pictorial tutorial on replacing the wax toilet ring (on a cool do-it-yourselfer site called "Hammerzone) to be really useful and clearly written.
And despite the grossness of the task, I should note that it's good to know at least I can perform light plumbing repairs if the need arises...eventually I want to replace the bathroom's vinyl floor with ceramic tile, and one thing I was dreading was removing the toilet, so it's a bit of a relief to find out it's not actually all that complicated or time-consuming.
Exhibit B: Cat #4 Has Arrived
As of last Sunday, ours is now a four-cat household. My parents (who just moved out of state) brought Nikki (an eight-year-old Chocolate Point Siamese kitty) over and she has since been settling in (she is shown below patrolling the kitchen).
Nikki spent the first few days in her own room so she could get used to the sounds and smells of the house without being accosted by the resident kittens Coraline, Brodie and Shadow (who are now five months old and utterly full of energy)! She was very scared and (quite understandably) peeved at first, but settled down a lot the second day and by the third day was jumping into my lap and purring. :D
She has now met the kittens and (much to my shock) even spent a short while napping on the couch right next to Shadow the other night! Brodie mostly stares at her and wants to play, but she isn't ready for that yet and usually hisses at him.
And she and Coraline are probably going to take a while to negotiate whatever cattish things they need to, as they're both rather strong personalities (Cora is tiny but wants to be Boss Cat, and is currently a bit miffed that she can't show Nikki what-for, as Nikki is about twice her size). But overall I am really relieved that so far we've had nothing beyond totally expected hissing, growling, and swatting; no actual fighting has taken place, yay!)
Exhibit C: An Exercise in Refurbishing
When my parents brought Nikki over they also brought her very old and very broken-down cat tree. These things can be really expensive new and given my current state of employment (or lack thereof) I figured it was worth a try refurbishing it. Plus I figured this way there would be less waste, as I'd be re-using the basic structure of the thing. Below is the finished result, set up in the living room:
In order to get it to this state, I had to take the whole thing apart, strip off all the old carpet (which had been disintegrating due to weather exposure as my parents had had it outside for a while), re-upholster it, and then put the tower back together in what I hoped would be a more stable configuration. So far it seems to be holding up well, and it actually looks pretty good in the living room, almost like some sort of weird art project.
I applied a variety of materials to the surfaces -- some carpet (my dad gave me some leftovers from when he and my stepmom re-carpeted their house), some sisal twine, some burlap, some old dish-towels, a bit of canvas, and some gaffer's tape holding various edges and seams together.
So, yeah, overall the first bit of 2010 has been very, shall we say, grounded in the physical.
Exhibit A: Awaiting the Flushularity...
Who'd have thought in 2010 we'd still be pooping, (yes, I'm joking) let alone sealing our toilet-sewage-pipe junctions with wax "ass gaskets"? Where are my cleanup nanobots, dangit? :P
In any case, the commode here was leaking recently around the base so Matt and I spent a fascinating Monday evening getting very closely acquainted with the underside of the porcelain throne.
Here I am scraping off the old wax ring in preparation for applying the new one and replacing the toilet in its rightful place. This was totally disgusting and I am very very glad the new wax ring supposedly has a 10 year lifespan, as I don't relish doing this again this century, let alone this decade. As much as I appreciate the technological wonder that is the sewage system, man, when that stuff gets flushed I never want to see it again.
Oh, and I also found this pictorial tutorial on replacing the wax toilet ring (on a cool do-it-yourselfer site called "Hammerzone) to be really useful and clearly written.
And despite the grossness of the task, I should note that it's good to know at least I can perform light plumbing repairs if the need arises...eventually I want to replace the bathroom's vinyl floor with ceramic tile, and one thing I was dreading was removing the toilet, so it's a bit of a relief to find out it's not actually all that complicated or time-consuming.
Exhibit B: Cat #4 Has Arrived
As of last Sunday, ours is now a four-cat household. My parents (who just moved out of state) brought Nikki (an eight-year-old Chocolate Point Siamese kitty) over and she has since been settling in (she is shown below patrolling the kitchen).
Nikki spent the first few days in her own room so she could get used to the sounds and smells of the house without being accosted by the resident kittens Coraline, Brodie and Shadow (who are now five months old and utterly full of energy)! She was very scared and (quite understandably) peeved at first, but settled down a lot the second day and by the third day was jumping into my lap and purring. :D
She has now met the kittens and (much to my shock) even spent a short while napping on the couch right next to Shadow the other night! Brodie mostly stares at her and wants to play, but she isn't ready for that yet and usually hisses at him.
And she and Coraline are probably going to take a while to negotiate whatever cattish things they need to, as they're both rather strong personalities (Cora is tiny but wants to be Boss Cat, and is currently a bit miffed that she can't show Nikki what-for, as Nikki is about twice her size). But overall I am really relieved that so far we've had nothing beyond totally expected hissing, growling, and swatting; no actual fighting has taken place, yay!)
Exhibit C: An Exercise in Refurbishing
When my parents brought Nikki over they also brought her very old and very broken-down cat tree. These things can be really expensive new and given my current state of employment (or lack thereof) I figured it was worth a try refurbishing it. Plus I figured this way there would be less waste, as I'd be re-using the basic structure of the thing. Below is the finished result, set up in the living room:
In order to get it to this state, I had to take the whole thing apart, strip off all the old carpet (which had been disintegrating due to weather exposure as my parents had had it outside for a while), re-upholster it, and then put the tower back together in what I hoped would be a more stable configuration. So far it seems to be holding up well, and it actually looks pretty good in the living room, almost like some sort of weird art project.
I applied a variety of materials to the surfaces -- some carpet (my dad gave me some leftovers from when he and my stepmom re-carpeted their house), some sisal twine, some burlap, some old dish-towels, a bit of canvas, and some gaffer's tape holding various edges and seams together.
So, yeah, overall the first bit of 2010 has been very, shall we say, grounded in the physical.
Saturday, January 02, 2010
Movie Review: Avatar
I hadn't actually heard a whole lot about the film Avatar prior to seeing it today, and as of this writing I have not even read any "professional" reviews. All I knew as I headed into the theatre was that I was going to see something involving "blue aliens" and humans who "download" into alien bodies and end up "going native", so to speak.
Anyway, though, now I've seen the film I figure I might as well comment on it a bit. Anyone who has not seen this film or who cares about being spoiled might not want to read further, as this review will contain spoilers.
The Good
So, to start, here's a list of some things I liked about Avatar:
1. It is definitely a very pretty film. Unfortunately I did not get to see the IMAX or 3D versions (those were both sold out) but even on a regular 2D movie screen I found myself quite thoroughly dazzled by the visuals.
The jungle, forest, and mountain landscapes of the alien planet Pandora look like the stuff I wish my dreams were made of, particularly the night-time jungle scenes where everything is all glowy. Whee!
2. Even though the film takes place in a projected year 2154, the lead character (Jake Sully, marine-turned-researcher played by Australian actor Sam Worthington) is a paraplegic who uses a wheelchair. The point is made at the outset of the film that while it is possible to repair spinal injuries like his, Sully can't afford to have this done.
This is somewhat unusual (at least from what I've seen in sf) -- that is, to have it actually acknowledged that no, just "having the technology" does not imply everyone can or will use that technology to do a particular thing. I bet there are a lot of people right now who anticipate there won't be any actual wheelchair users in 2154 "because of that stuff they're going to do with stem cells", and I bet they're very very wrong.
(There's also an aspect of the film's treatment of disability that irks me, but since this isn't the complaint section I won't get into that here.)
3. There is a plausible rationale given for why Pandora's native people can speak English -- that is, the film doesn't open with a "first contact" between Earthlings and Na'vi, but rather with a situation-in-progress.
It is explained that at some point along the way there was indeed actual work undertaken to teach the natives English, and some human characters have clearly also spent some time studying the Na'vi tongue.
Which might all seem fairly trivial but it was a nice change from the "universal translator" trope (or worse, that really careless thing where everyone just speaks English straight off with no attempt at explaining how or why).
4. They actually refer in the film to the requisite "Valuable Alien Mineral Needed For Human Military Endeavors But Alas Is Concentrated Beneath The Natives' Village" as "unobtanium". Hee.
5. Pandora's native humanoids, the Na'vi, had some nifty and very expressive tails. Since adopting my three cats I've certainly seen a lot of tail-borne language around the house, and hence I found it kind of neat to see one of the Na'vi characters who was obviously really pissed off doing the "rapid swishy tail" thing.
(I have secretly -- well, I guess not so secretly now -- always wanted a tail. And cat ears. So it tends to make me squee a bit to see humanoids in sf/fantasy running around with tails!)
6. The Pandorian "universal nature link-up" thingies were really cool -- basically it was like every native plant, animal, and humanoid had a little tendrily USB port sticking out of them, which permitted very direct communication between all sorts of disparate life forms. I figure this was probably meant to be some kind of over-wrought metaphor for "all life is connected", or something, but the execution was still incredibly neat-looking.
(Also, it reminded me strongly of parts of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, which I played with relentless obsession circa 2001. Mind worms FTW!)
7. The whole "consciousness download" thing was handled better than I've seen it handled by many of those who make a habit of speculating about this sort of thing on the Internet.
For one thing, bodies are (mostly) not just hand-waved out of significance. You don't, as a rule in this film, have people wantonly "shedding their meatflesh" and existing as data-ghosts in a giant metal mainframe. Rather, for the majority of the movie, the viability and agency of the avatars depend completely on there being humans in actual bodies "driving" them.
Of course things do get a little weird when some characters ended up attempting (with variable success) to permanently "install" their frames of reference into their avatars, coincidently with the deactivation (i.e., death) of their original, human bodies.
This is rationalized, in the context of the story, as being possible due to the fact that the avatars themselves were "grown" for particular individuals with a particular genome and nervous system, and the fact that the whole planet of Pandora is basically "networked" in such a way that memories and consciousness and such are already somewhat "distributed". Which isn't the worst rationale for that sort of thing I've seen in sf, and despite the plot-necessary bit of handwaving it does include, at least stays grounded in the physical somewhere.
The Eyeroll-Inducing Bits
...and here's a list of things that I was a bit less than enthusiastic about:
1. The plot was not only not exactly original, but like...gah, did anyone even bother trying in this department? I mean, I know some themes are invariably going to be repeated throughout film and literature, and sometimes it's a lot of fun to see different "takes" on a particular archetypical storyline, but it doesn't seem like Avatar's writers put much thought into the overall storyline.
Half the time I felt like I was watching some weird amalgamation of Captain Planet and the Planeteers, Disney's Pocahontas, and FernGully: The Last Rainforest.
Which wouldn't necessarily be a complaint, but I guess I just think Avatar had the potential to be a lot more compelling and "deep" than it turned out.
2. Despite surprising me in some areas with its deviation from common sf trope-traps (see the above list of positives for a few examples), Avatar definitely has its share of "oh geez well I guess we just weren't thinking about that" cliches with regard to the depiction of the resident humanoid natives of Planet Pandora.
E.g., you never got any sense that there were, you know, different cultures or countries or languages amongst the Pandorians. No, everyone was blue, hunted with bows and arrows, spoke a particular language, and lived in the woods.* Sure, there might well have been more diversity on Pandora in terms of its humanoid population, but there was absolutely no suggestion of this made anywhere I could see.
And yes, I understand science fiction stories can't always be about a whole planet, but especially since mainstream sf started actually acknowledging the existence of non-white, non-male, and even the occasional disabled character, it now stands out a lot to me when I see a lot of very diverse humans running around but folks from all other planets are represented as being highly homogenous.
(And yes, I also realize that maybe potentially some planet could evolve a worldwide monoculture, but this portrayal is just...way more common than it needs to be, which leads me to figure writers are just being lazy most of the time when I see it.)
* EDIT: commenter fubarofusco points out that:
(So I stand corrected on the matter of whether all Na'vi live in the woods, and I most certainly welcome this sort of "nitpicking" from any commenter who finds themself compelled to offer it...accuracy is good!)
3. Another "alien homogeneity" issue: while there was some variation in Na'vi facial appearance and body structure, there certainly wasn't much. I did not see any Pandorian humanoids who looked very old, or fat, for instance, and disabilities were conspicuously absent.
(And again, yes, I realize when you're making up a fictional species you have the leeway to "write in" a high level of homogenity and justify it, or to create forms of heterogeneity that aren't particularly "human" in nature -- but I didn't really see much of the latter here at all, which again leads me to suspect somewhat lazy writing.)
This also figures somewhat into the disability-related thing that particularly bugged me about Avatar...yes, yes, I realize it probably wasn't intentional, but just...the whole idea of a disabled character becoming nondisabled as a result of "proving his virtue" is kind of tired, not to mention obnoxious if you actually happen to be a disabled person in the real world.
Avatar's Sully actually had two routes via which his paraplegia could have been remediated: that is, Evil Military Boss-Human promises to arrange for the treatment if Sully completes his original mission to enable the humans to get at the unobtanium deposits, and somehow he is able to walk in his alien-avatar body which he ends up permanently installed in by the film's conclusion.
(Which, you know, doesn't stop me from enjoying the movie or anything overall, it's just another eyeroll-inducer in the sense that so. many.times. I seem to encounter ideas in real life to the effect of "disability is either a punishment OR something that is somehow tied into your character, and if you manage to become strong enough in character your disability will go away". Which just...isn't reality, and which can have negative impact on people when mistaken for reality.
Not that I actually think people are going to run out and see this film and expect all disabled people to Rise Up And Walk (or hear or whatnot) so long as they're Really Really Good, I just think this stuff is worth pointing out on occasion, and furthermore, as a blogger I figure it's my job to "over-analyze" things! :P)
4. They NEVER explained how people went to the bathroom when they were situated in the "links" (the pod-like beds that comprise the interface between a human "driver" and an engineered alien-body "avatar").
This is just one of those "little things that bug me", but it's a peeve I've had for a very long time and one which sf seems particularly rampant with. I mean, they SHOWED both the humans (during "breaks" from avatar activity) eating, and they showed Sully's avatar eating some sort of purple squishy pomegranate-looking thing at one point as well -- but the whole matter of what happened at the other end was dismissed without even so much as a cursory hand-wave.
And while I certainly have no desire to watch close-up shots of actors taking a crap, good grief, you'd think they could at least have an implied dash to the men's room or something now and then when Sully "woke up" in his human body. I mean I know bathroom stuff is gross and all, but it's sort of an inevitable consequence of metabolism, and it has always struck me as bizarre how weird people get over it and how often it's glossed over. What is this, some sort of leftover of the Victorian era?
5. There was definitely a bit of "noble savage archetype" stuff going on. Again, this is stuff that to me smacks of laziness in the creativity department, as well as a lack of appreciation for the complexity of issues like inter-culture communication in merely human settings.
While (yep, another disclaimer) I do realize that the film was primarily intended as a fun, special-effects-laden sci-fi flick, I also got this unnerving sense of the Na'vi suffering from "Tauren Syndrome" (the Tauren being a race of anthropomorphic bovines in the online roleplaying game "World of Warcraft", whose culture seems entirely comprised of highly Disneyfied "Native American" stereotypes, i.e., the NPCs actually stand around saying things like "How".).
I mean, yeah, they seem like neat people and all, but they just aren't portrayed as being properly complex. I just get this impression in my brain that the denizens of Tauren-Syndromey cultures are always sort of waiting for the tourists to leave so they can do something that does not entail elegantly leaping through the trees or establishing bioelectrical bonds with the local reptillian ponies.
(One of my favorite examples of a film that, in my opinion, actually fairly decently portrays the aliens is Enemy Mine, which just...I don't know, somehow managed to give the aliens their own presence, in such a way that they seemed very convincingly themselves, though that could of course just be a matter of personal taste).
So, in summary I would have to say that while it did have its problems and eyeroll-inducing moments, Avatar was definitely at the very least an entertaining film, and moreover it did spark a few interesting lines of thought in my head while I was watching that were quite enjoyable to follow.
E.g., I got to thinking about the whole concept of "avatars", and the way you can have an idea (or intention to do something) that starts with one person in one context, and then ends up being enacted by a whole chain of others.
(Specifically, I found myself considering how for this particular movie, you first had a person come up with the idea of the character Sully, who in turn passed that intention along to the actor who played him. Then the actor had to project his notion of the character into the role, and then that character had to enact his will through an alien avatar, and then on top of that, while in the avatar body, there was this whole weird thing about communicating his will to the aforementioned reptilian ponies (along with some fairly kick-ass flying pterodactylish creatures). And I don't really know if there ended up being much of a point to that brain-tangent, but it was at least fun to meander down, and if a movie can do that to me, I have to give it at least some points on the "whee, fun!" scale.)
Also, again, it was a very very visually appealing film. In Anne's Book of Preferred Aesthetics you can't really go wrong with giant chunks of mountainous rock floating in a gorgeous planet's atmosphere, nor with midnight jaunts through multicolored luminescent jungles, nor with vaguely plausible-appearing mecha-robo-exoskeleton things (which, while used for evil in the film, were still nonetheless really nifty to look at). Or tails on humanoids.
While I don't know if I'd pay to see this entire film again in IMAX, I would definitely love to see the zooming-through-the-atmosphere scenes in that or some similar format at some point, because I am sure it would definitely lead to that supercool "illusion of movement" thing.
As for whether I would recommend it to others: that depends, really. If you like pretty sf adventure flicks and aren't overly picky about plot or characterization (or can suspend pickiness for the sake of gawking at the pretty) then I would say go for it. If, however, you are after something really deep and complex and can't abide lazy writing or "indigenous culture" stereotypes, then you might want to skip it.
As it is, I am glad I saw Avatar, and I had fun watching it, but I also was left feeling like the writers could have tried a heck of a lot harder in some areas. Even if the target audience was children or teenagers, there's still no excuse for putting all your budget into special effects and little into getting some of the cultural stuff to a more appropriate level of complexity.
Anyway, though, now I've seen the film I figure I might as well comment on it a bit. Anyone who has not seen this film or who cares about being spoiled might not want to read further, as this review will contain spoilers.
The Good
So, to start, here's a list of some things I liked about Avatar:
1. It is definitely a very pretty film. Unfortunately I did not get to see the IMAX or 3D versions (those were both sold out) but even on a regular 2D movie screen I found myself quite thoroughly dazzled by the visuals.
The jungle, forest, and mountain landscapes of the alien planet Pandora look like the stuff I wish my dreams were made of, particularly the night-time jungle scenes where everything is all glowy. Whee!
2. Even though the film takes place in a projected year 2154, the lead character (Jake Sully, marine-turned-researcher played by Australian actor Sam Worthington) is a paraplegic who uses a wheelchair. The point is made at the outset of the film that while it is possible to repair spinal injuries like his, Sully can't afford to have this done.
This is somewhat unusual (at least from what I've seen in sf) -- that is, to have it actually acknowledged that no, just "having the technology" does not imply everyone can or will use that technology to do a particular thing. I bet there are a lot of people right now who anticipate there won't be any actual wheelchair users in 2154 "because of that stuff they're going to do with stem cells", and I bet they're very very wrong.
(There's also an aspect of the film's treatment of disability that irks me, but since this isn't the complaint section I won't get into that here.)
3. There is a plausible rationale given for why Pandora's native people can speak English -- that is, the film doesn't open with a "first contact" between Earthlings and Na'vi, but rather with a situation-in-progress.
It is explained that at some point along the way there was indeed actual work undertaken to teach the natives English, and some human characters have clearly also spent some time studying the Na'vi tongue.
Which might all seem fairly trivial but it was a nice change from the "universal translator" trope (or worse, that really careless thing where everyone just speaks English straight off with no attempt at explaining how or why).
4. They actually refer in the film to the requisite "Valuable Alien Mineral Needed For Human Military Endeavors But Alas Is Concentrated Beneath The Natives' Village" as "unobtanium". Hee.
5. Pandora's native humanoids, the Na'vi, had some nifty and very expressive tails. Since adopting my three cats I've certainly seen a lot of tail-borne language around the house, and hence I found it kind of neat to see one of the Na'vi characters who was obviously really pissed off doing the "rapid swishy tail" thing.
(I have secretly -- well, I guess not so secretly now -- always wanted a tail. And cat ears. So it tends to make me squee a bit to see humanoids in sf/fantasy running around with tails!)
6. The Pandorian "universal nature link-up" thingies were really cool -- basically it was like every native plant, animal, and humanoid had a little tendrily USB port sticking out of them, which permitted very direct communication between all sorts of disparate life forms. I figure this was probably meant to be some kind of over-wrought metaphor for "all life is connected", or something, but the execution was still incredibly neat-looking.
(Also, it reminded me strongly of parts of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, which I played with relentless obsession circa 2001. Mind worms FTW!)
7. The whole "consciousness download" thing was handled better than I've seen it handled by many of those who make a habit of speculating about this sort of thing on the Internet.
For one thing, bodies are (mostly) not just hand-waved out of significance. You don't, as a rule in this film, have people wantonly "shedding their meatflesh" and existing as data-ghosts in a giant metal mainframe. Rather, for the majority of the movie, the viability and agency of the avatars depend completely on there being humans in actual bodies "driving" them.
Of course things do get a little weird when some characters ended up attempting (with variable success) to permanently "install" their frames of reference into their avatars, coincidently with the deactivation (i.e., death) of their original, human bodies.
This is rationalized, in the context of the story, as being possible due to the fact that the avatars themselves were "grown" for particular individuals with a particular genome and nervous system, and the fact that the whole planet of Pandora is basically "networked" in such a way that memories and consciousness and such are already somewhat "distributed". Which isn't the worst rationale for that sort of thing I've seen in sf, and despite the plot-necessary bit of handwaving it does include, at least stays grounded in the physical somewhere.
The Eyeroll-Inducing Bits
...and here's a list of things that I was a bit less than enthusiastic about:
1. The plot was not only not exactly original, but like...gah, did anyone even bother trying in this department? I mean, I know some themes are invariably going to be repeated throughout film and literature, and sometimes it's a lot of fun to see different "takes" on a particular archetypical storyline, but it doesn't seem like Avatar's writers put much thought into the overall storyline.
Half the time I felt like I was watching some weird amalgamation of Captain Planet and the Planeteers, Disney's Pocahontas, and FernGully: The Last Rainforest.
Which wouldn't necessarily be a complaint, but I guess I just think Avatar had the potential to be a lot more compelling and "deep" than it turned out.
2. Despite surprising me in some areas with its deviation from common sf trope-traps (see the above list of positives for a few examples), Avatar definitely has its share of "oh geez well I guess we just weren't thinking about that" cliches with regard to the depiction of the resident humanoid natives of Planet Pandora.
E.g., you never got any sense that there were, you know, different cultures or countries or languages amongst the Pandorians. No, everyone was blue, hunted with bows and arrows, spoke a particular language, and lived in the woods.* Sure, there might well have been more diversity on Pandora in terms of its humanoid population, but there was absolutely no suggestion of this made anywhere I could see.
And yes, I understand science fiction stories can't always be about a whole planet, but especially since mainstream sf started actually acknowledging the existence of non-white, non-male, and even the occasional disabled character, it now stands out a lot to me when I see a lot of very diverse humans running around but folks from all other planets are represented as being highly homogenous.
(And yes, I also realize that maybe potentially some planet could evolve a worldwide monoculture, but this portrayal is just...way more common than it needs to be, which leads me to figure writers are just being lazy most of the time when I see it.)
* EDIT: commenter fubarofusco points out that:
In the scene where Sully and the Omaticaya go out to rally the Na'vi to war, we do see Na'vi who live in different environments. One is on the seashore, one on the plains, one in higher mountains. They also appear to have different face-paint designs and weapons, and it's suggested that they have different relations with the animals.
The plains people are referred to as (IIRC) "horse-tribes of the plains" which suggests that they are nomadic riders rather than living in a permanent settlement like the Omaticaya. The mountain people appear to be even more symbiotic with the ikran.
In any event, these other Na'vi groups don't live in the woods.
(So I stand corrected on the matter of whether all Na'vi live in the woods, and I most certainly welcome this sort of "nitpicking" from any commenter who finds themself compelled to offer it...accuracy is good!)
3. Another "alien homogeneity" issue: while there was some variation in Na'vi facial appearance and body structure, there certainly wasn't much. I did not see any Pandorian humanoids who looked very old, or fat, for instance, and disabilities were conspicuously absent.
(And again, yes, I realize when you're making up a fictional species you have the leeway to "write in" a high level of homogenity and justify it, or to create forms of heterogeneity that aren't particularly "human" in nature -- but I didn't really see much of the latter here at all, which again leads me to suspect somewhat lazy writing.)
This also figures somewhat into the disability-related thing that particularly bugged me about Avatar...yes, yes, I realize it probably wasn't intentional, but just...the whole idea of a disabled character becoming nondisabled as a result of "proving his virtue" is kind of tired, not to mention obnoxious if you actually happen to be a disabled person in the real world.
Avatar's Sully actually had two routes via which his paraplegia could have been remediated: that is, Evil Military Boss-Human promises to arrange for the treatment if Sully completes his original mission to enable the humans to get at the unobtanium deposits, and somehow he is able to walk in his alien-avatar body which he ends up permanently installed in by the film's conclusion.
(Which, you know, doesn't stop me from enjoying the movie or anything overall, it's just another eyeroll-inducer in the sense that so. many.times. I seem to encounter ideas in real life to the effect of "disability is either a punishment OR something that is somehow tied into your character, and if you manage to become strong enough in character your disability will go away". Which just...isn't reality, and which can have negative impact on people when mistaken for reality.
Not that I actually think people are going to run out and see this film and expect all disabled people to Rise Up And Walk (or hear or whatnot) so long as they're Really Really Good, I just think this stuff is worth pointing out on occasion, and furthermore, as a blogger I figure it's my job to "over-analyze" things! :P)
4. They NEVER explained how people went to the bathroom when they were situated in the "links" (the pod-like beds that comprise the interface between a human "driver" and an engineered alien-body "avatar").
This is just one of those "little things that bug me", but it's a peeve I've had for a very long time and one which sf seems particularly rampant with. I mean, they SHOWED both the humans (during "breaks" from avatar activity) eating, and they showed Sully's avatar eating some sort of purple squishy pomegranate-looking thing at one point as well -- but the whole matter of what happened at the other end was dismissed without even so much as a cursory hand-wave.
And while I certainly have no desire to watch close-up shots of actors taking a crap, good grief, you'd think they could at least have an implied dash to the men's room or something now and then when Sully "woke up" in his human body. I mean I know bathroom stuff is gross and all, but it's sort of an inevitable consequence of metabolism, and it has always struck me as bizarre how weird people get over it and how often it's glossed over. What is this, some sort of leftover of the Victorian era?
5. There was definitely a bit of "noble savage archetype" stuff going on. Again, this is stuff that to me smacks of laziness in the creativity department, as well as a lack of appreciation for the complexity of issues like inter-culture communication in merely human settings.
While (yep, another disclaimer) I do realize that the film was primarily intended as a fun, special-effects-laden sci-fi flick, I also got this unnerving sense of the Na'vi suffering from "Tauren Syndrome" (the Tauren being a race of anthropomorphic bovines in the online roleplaying game "World of Warcraft", whose culture seems entirely comprised of highly Disneyfied "Native American" stereotypes, i.e., the NPCs actually stand around saying things like "How".).
I mean, yeah, they seem like neat people and all, but they just aren't portrayed as being properly complex. I just get this impression in my brain that the denizens of Tauren-Syndromey cultures are always sort of waiting for the tourists to leave so they can do something that does not entail elegantly leaping through the trees or establishing bioelectrical bonds with the local reptillian ponies.
(One of my favorite examples of a film that, in my opinion, actually fairly decently portrays the aliens is Enemy Mine, which just...I don't know, somehow managed to give the aliens their own presence, in such a way that they seemed very convincingly themselves, though that could of course just be a matter of personal taste).
So, in summary I would have to say that while it did have its problems and eyeroll-inducing moments, Avatar was definitely at the very least an entertaining film, and moreover it did spark a few interesting lines of thought in my head while I was watching that were quite enjoyable to follow.
E.g., I got to thinking about the whole concept of "avatars", and the way you can have an idea (or intention to do something) that starts with one person in one context, and then ends up being enacted by a whole chain of others.
(Specifically, I found myself considering how for this particular movie, you first had a person come up with the idea of the character Sully, who in turn passed that intention along to the actor who played him. Then the actor had to project his notion of the character into the role, and then that character had to enact his will through an alien avatar, and then on top of that, while in the avatar body, there was this whole weird thing about communicating his will to the aforementioned reptilian ponies (along with some fairly kick-ass flying pterodactylish creatures). And I don't really know if there ended up being much of a point to that brain-tangent, but it was at least fun to meander down, and if a movie can do that to me, I have to give it at least some points on the "whee, fun!" scale.)
Also, again, it was a very very visually appealing film. In Anne's Book of Preferred Aesthetics you can't really go wrong with giant chunks of mountainous rock floating in a gorgeous planet's atmosphere, nor with midnight jaunts through multicolored luminescent jungles, nor with vaguely plausible-appearing mecha-robo-exoskeleton things (which, while used for evil in the film, were still nonetheless really nifty to look at). Or tails on humanoids.
While I don't know if I'd pay to see this entire film again in IMAX, I would definitely love to see the zooming-through-the-atmosphere scenes in that or some similar format at some point, because I am sure it would definitely lead to that supercool "illusion of movement" thing.
As for whether I would recommend it to others: that depends, really. If you like pretty sf adventure flicks and aren't overly picky about plot or characterization (or can suspend pickiness for the sake of gawking at the pretty) then I would say go for it. If, however, you are after something really deep and complex and can't abide lazy writing or "indigenous culture" stereotypes, then you might want to skip it.
As it is, I am glad I saw Avatar, and I had fun watching it, but I also was left feeling like the writers could have tried a heck of a lot harder in some areas. Even if the target audience was children or teenagers, there's still no excuse for putting all your budget into special effects and little into getting some of the cultural stuff to a more appropriate level of complexity.
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