Category: Word lover

Who lives, Who dies, Who tells your story?

I haven’t talked about this here yet. I think it’s because I wasn’t ready to. I was trying to figure out my relationship and feelings about the hit musical Hamilton.

I’ve only been listening to the music for a few months now, but things changed drastically when I decided to write about it for one of my classes. Somehow that decision gave me permission to fully immerse myself in everything I could find. Since then, the paper has gone from an academic analysis of the musical to an autoethnography about “my descent into Hamilton fandom” as I like to put it. Basically, I’m going to be writing about becoming a fan, with academic analysis thrown in.

On Tuesday, the #Hamiltome arrived. It’s actually titled Hamilton: The Revolution. It is a beautiful book. I will definitely be writing a post about it when I’m done reading it. The fact that I’m actually going through and reading it, page by page, is surprising me right now. I thought I’d be too excited and jumping all over the place. But I am enjoying it immensely!

I still feel like I need to get the academic paper written before I go full fangirl on here. Maybe it’s partly because I feel like this is more of an academic interest than fangirl. Don’t get me wrong, I listen to it all the time for enjoyment. But the thing that allowed me to fully immerse myself in it and why I am so in love with this work and the people who bring it to life is deciding to look at it as an academic, as a popular culture scholar. It’s weird. I’ve never felt like this about anything. It’s kinda cool. Like I’ve gone through some rite of passage or something. Like I’m one step closer to being a “real scholar”, as if there’s a point where you become one.

Sorry, that got rambly. But it’s how I feel, so there it is. Stay tuned for more Hamilton love!

In my car, holding my copy of Hamilton: The Revolution to my face in pure joy of finally having it. It just arrived.

Werds: Bohemian

Bo·he·mi·an (noun): a person who does not conform to generally accepted standards or customs.
(Merriam-Webster Thesaurus)

Usually I don’t like to label myself as one thing or another when I think of myself as a whole. I label parts of myself (Catholic, Dudeist, cosplayer, geek, ASL speaker, language lover, student, wife, sister, daughter, etc.), but I haven’t found a word that sums up everything that I am.

Until I read that definition of bohemian.

When I was in high school our band played a medley of songs from the new hit Broadway musical Rent. Yes, I am that old. 😉 I loved playing the music and our director played a few of the songs for us. The ones appropriate for Catholic high school (and 8th grade) students to hear, of course. I loved them. So I got the soundtrack out of the library and was hooked. Something about the plot really resonated with me.

One day my mom walks past my room while I’m listening to “La Vie Boheme” and tells me that I shouldn’t let anyone call me a bohemian. That’s just how she works. I’ve accepted that.

But over the years, no one ever called me bohemian. Probably because people think of the more ‘traditional’ definition from Merriam-Webster:
2 often not capitalized
a : vagabond, wanderer; especially : gypsy
b : a person (as a writer or an artist) living an unconventional life usually in a colony with others

Neither of those definitions really apply to me. But the one from the Thesaurus does. Of course, I’m writing this wearing men’s jeans, black Chucks, a women’s cut “Doctor Gru” t-shirt, a Ministry of Silly Walks watch on my left wrist, and my new leather charm bracelet with a dangling TARDIS charm on my right.

Now to see what people think of when they hear the word. This is going to be fun!

Handicapped

They say: “We’re not handicapped, we’re handy capable!”
~George Carlin

The man has a good point here. The word “handicapped” is a really stupid word. It’s right up there with “disabled”. I really hate those words. I’ve hated those words since I took my first Disability Studies class in college. Kinda ironic, huh? A class for a degree in Disability Studies makes me see how stupid the word “disability” is.

This weekend my husband’s uncle died. He was an amazing man. When he was born, the doctors didn’t think he would survive the night. He proved them wrong by surviving over 40 years of nights. As my husband said “For a man who spent his life sitting down, he was so very tall.” So true.

This man may have spent his life in a wheelchair, but he did not let that handicap him. He has lived life more fully than I have and he was only about 20 years older than me. He traveled all over the country and to Ireland. He was very involved in his community and with his family. He lived his life almost in spite of the wheelchair.

When the priest was talking about him at the funeral Mass, he kept using “handicapped”. I understand that is the word he uses to simply describe someone who has a physical difference from others. But I kept thinking that man was anything but handicapped. He simply got around in a different way than most of us. He used a wheelchair while we walked. That’s all.

That’s really all a “disability” or a “handicap” is: a difference. I am really looking forward to the day where all we see are the differences in others and accept them, not label them a “disability” or a “handicap”.

Technology

As I was listening to episdoe 39 of Ben Gleib’s Last Week on Earth, something Kevin Smith hit on something in my mind.

Technology is really becoming the great equalizer. Technology is allowing me to simply write out my thoughts here for anyone to come and read. Technology is allowing anyone to create a series or a movie and put it out there for everyone to watch with really minimal costs. Technology is bringing the world much closer together than ever before. Technology is allowing people to write novels and putting them out there without having to try to get a publisher to publish it.

Maybe the fact that I’m re-reading Feed (again) helped a little bit. George was just talking about how important the bloggers were in humanity’s survival during the rising. I do think that if something like a zombie apocalypse were to happen and we still had our computers and the internet, we will stand a much better chance of surviving as a species. But that’s just me.

Escape

Sunday, Fr. Joe made a comment during his homily about using drugs, alcohol, and partying to escape. That got me thinking. That seems to be what everyone thinks of when the idea of escaping from reality. But those are only a few, and not healthy, ways people escape.

I never understood the desire to do drugs and party to escape from things. I admit, I have, at home, had just enough to drink to allow the stress of life to go floating away. Sometimes some of it manages to stay away. But that is my last resort.

One thing I have always enjoyed is reading. I know this is going to sound so cliche but it’s true, when I read the world goes away and I’m totally in the book. It’s wonderful. I just have to pick up a good book and the world goes away. Definitely my way of “escaping” from the world.

Another way of escaping is using costumes or cosplaying. There are many people, myself included, who gain a level of confidence when they are dressed as someone else. It’s not quite escaping for me. But some people do use it to escape from the world.

Really, escaping from the world can be a good thing. As long as you don’t take it too far and harm yourself and/or others. You should be escaping from the world, not causing more problems in it.

English

Listening to all this wonderfulness that is Kelly Carlin’s Waking from the American Dream and various George Carlin and learning American Sign Language (ASL) has me looking at the English language in a whole new way.

English is such an overcomplicated language! In ASL, for example, one sign can have the same meaning as 5 different words. But there may be three signs for one word, but it has so many meanings. For example, like. You can like something, or that shirt is just like one I wore the other day. One word, two meanings, two signs. On the other hand, great, amazing, and wonderful all use the same sign.

When did English get so complicated?

It actually makes learning ASL interesting. It takes a while for you to understand that when you’re translating into ASL, you don’t translate the exact words so much as the concept. My instructor can sign a sentence for a test and everyone in the room can write down a different, and correct, answer. I do feel for the people who take ASL because they think it’s a simple language of gestures. That couldn’t be farther from the truth.

But I’ll go on about ASL later. Back to English.

Everyone probably knows George Carlin’s “Seven Dirty Words” bit. Right? Say them with me now: shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. But my favortie part of that track off of Class Clown actually happens before then.

I want to tell you something about words that I think is important. They’re my work, they’re my play, they’re my passion. Words are all we have, really. We have thoughts but thoughts are fluid; then we assign a word to a thought and we’re stuck with that word for that thought, so be careful with words.
I like to think that the same words that hurt can heal, it is a matter of how you pick them.

He says so much with those few sentences. So many people have issues with certain words. They don’t want you to use that word. Fag. Nigger. Retarded. Those are just a few that pop into my head. But, the thing that people have a problem with is not the word, but the meaning behind them. Why they’re being used. The majority of the time, if someone straight is saying “Fag”, it’s with hostility in their voice. Same goes for the other two. But there are gay people and black people out there who use those words. They’re “taking them back”. Well, why not let the rest of us use them the same way you do?

Retarded is the word I remember being told never to use when I was growing up. And it wasn’t that I couldn’t say, for example, that Forrest Gump is retarded, if I was simply stating the fact. He is. He is mentally retarded. It is a medical term. Mental Retardation is used when someone is diagonsed early in their life. I wasn’t allowed to use it to call someone retarted when they were being annoying or stupid or idiotic. Yet, stupid and idiot are words that people used to use to describe people who we now refer to as mentally retarded or developmentally disabled. It’s all in the context.

And that is the problem. So many people in America today do not have a proper context for so many words. Retard is simply another way of saying something was stunted or slowed in growth. Nigger comes from Negro which comes from the French word for the color black. In Britain, a fag is a cigarette. Fag is short for faggot which used to mean a bundle of twigs. How did these become words that we use to be mean to each other? Seriously. We all need to start looking into the meanings and roots of words that we use without thinking. If we all started to be more aware of the words we use, the world would be a better place.

Who am I?

Today I decided to wear my “Trust me I’m a Doctor” t-shirt. And that got me thinking. Also listening to Kelly Carlin and her podcast Waking from the American Dream and her thoughts on the polymind. It’s a great thought of hers that we all have multiple minds going on, and I couldn’t agree more! So a thought came to me. Who am I? And there are a lot of answers.

I am…
a Roman Catholic
an American
a spouse
a partner
a best friend
a daughter
a sister
an Ohio State alum
a Columbus State student
a future Speech Therapist
a future interpreter for the Deaf
a geek
a sci-fi fan
a book lover
an artist
a cosplayer
a Trekkie
a Whovian
a photographer
a human being

Breastfeeding

I was listening to Last Week On Earth #26, and they were talking about the Time cover about breastfeeding, I know what they’re getting at but they’re not saying it.

The problem with the cover isn’t what it’s showing, it’s why. They didn’t put a woman breastfeeding on the cover because they thought it was something that needed to be addressed. They did it because it caused people to pick up the magazine and for all of us to talk about it. It’s for the controversy around it.

And it’s really sad that there’s all this controversy around breastfeeding. I can respect those moms out there who decide to let their children wean themselves off instead of doing it for them. Yes, some kids like to breastfeed for longer than others. I say if the mom can handle it, keep doing it. If I ever have children, that’s my plan. Obviously they’re going to start on solid foods at some point, but I want to give my child all the nutrition and help that they can get. Now, will I be comfortable breastfeeding them in public? Possibly not, but that’s simply my comfort level. It’s not hurting anyone, so what’s the problem?