Maybe It's Because I Can't Put Glasses On My Mind's Eye

I recently stumbled across this article, "Aphantasia: How It Feels To Be Blind In Your Mind", and got kind of a kick out of it, partly because this guy's realization, astonishingly late in life, that other people's brains are doing a weird thing his doesn't is strangely hilarious, and partly because it's incredibly gratifying to be able to say, "Finally! Someone who's even worse at visualizing things than I am!"

Because I don't get pictures in my head, either. Or not much. When I try, I might get something really vague. Maybe something a bit like seeing a scene through thick, not-quite transparent glass, where you can get a sense of colors and where things are, but not actually see any details? Except even that seems like too visual a description. Once in a very, very, very great while, I might actually get something like a photograph flashing across my mind, but it's always gone in a split second before I can really look at it, and it always leaves me kind of weirded out. I can imagine colors well enough, though. It's not exactly like seeing them, but I can remember what they look like, if that makes any sense. And other senses are no problem. I can imagine smells and tastes and touches, not perfectly, but well enough. And my auditory imagination is great. I can recall or imagine voices in great detail and at will: pitch, pauses, and everything.

But visuals? I took the quiz linked to in the article, and found it immensely frustrating. OK, I might be able to come up with something vaguely resembling a mental image for some of what they're asking me for, individually -- the color and texture of storm clouds and flashes of lightning are surprisingly doable, by themselves, although the sunset they start out asking me to imagine is almost just an abstract idea of a circle on a flat horizon -- but to ask me to imagine a picture, see it in detail, focus on those details and then change them? Yeah, I'm kind of with this guy: How do the rest of you weirdos do that? (The quiz, by the way, told me I was part of only 5% of the population who sucked this bad at visualization tasks and asked me if I wanted to be part of a study when I was done. I'm not sure if I do or not.)

I do think this is at least part of why I'm not great at faces and why I'm really, really bad with directions and navigation: I don't have a good visual referent in my head to match a person or a street up with.

He also mentions people asking him about whether he's a good speller, which seemed like a weird, out-of-left-field question to me a first, but apparently, when a lot of people are trying to remember how to spell a word, they see the letters in their mind? When I need to think how to spell a word, I imagine myself either typing it or writing it, often with my fingers twitching slightly. So, like the guy says, it's muscle memory.

And now, suddenly, all I can think of is how I read that book called What We See When We Read a little while back and spent the entire time indignantly going, "Whoa there, buddy, what do you mean we?!" Speak for yourselves, you mind-picture-makers, you!

Why Movies Are My Least Favorite Entertainment Delivery System: A Random Ramble Of Rambliness

I watched about half of Mockingjay, Part 1 last night before I got too sleepy to continue, and I'm now debating whether I should even bother finishing it. It's not that it's bad, exactly, but so far it consists mostly of people sitting or standing around in various places with offputting lighting, looking grim and intoning stilted Dialog of Earnest Seriousness at each other. And do I really need more of that in my life? Especially as I did read the books, so it's not like I don't know how it all comes out.

All of which is making me think of this blog post that I read a few days ago. (If you're too lazy to click, the title is, "Too Busy To Watch a Movie? Read A Book.") Reading that gave me one of those "OMG, I am not alone!" reactions, as I have been trying to explain to people for ages how it is that I can binge-watch entire seasons of TV shows or cheerfully dive into a 500-page novel that will take me days to finish, but sitting down to watch a 2-hour movie somehow feels like way too much effort. Generally, people look at me in blank incomprehension when I say that, but, wheee! Turns out it's not just me!

Mind you, I'm not sure the author has the full explanation here. Yes, I think probably a large part of it is that we all feel really busy these days, with a zillion other things we could be doing instead of watching that 2-hour movie, while TV episodes are more bite-sized and thus feel like less of a commitment, and books can be whipped out anywhere and read a few pages at a time. But for me, at least, it's more than that. It's not just that I am (or feel) busy and don't want to commit the time. It's more about committing my attention, and the issue of how much reward I get in return for what that attention costs me. Books, for me, require almost no effort. Reading is almost like breathing for me, and it's pretty much an unthinking default activity for filling any random downtime. Utterly effortless, and often done during times when I wouldn't be doing much of anything else, anyway, so it scarcely feels like an investment. Even if it turns out to be a bad book, I don't really feel frustrated or cheated out of the time it took me to read it. Much.

A TV episode requires maybe 40 minutes of sitting down and actively committing your attention to the screen (or at least, it does the way I watch it). A movie might require a couple of hours. But how does the reward compare? I think this is what makes the difference. I find I have very little patience with movies that don't completely and immediately deliver me a great viewing experience; whereas I can actually have a lot of patience with a subpar episode of TV show I'm following. Why? I think it's this: with a decent TV show, there's at least the prospect of a long-term reward for the time I'm investing. Maybe the pilot episode is rough, maybe this particular mid-season episode is mostly just annoying filler, whatever. But sitting through that episode, even if it's not great in itself, gets me somewhere. At least, it does with most modern TV shows. It's a step along the path in a much larger story, a story that I get to watch play out over time, with characters whose lives I can be a part of for a good long while and a world that my TV and I can explore together at our leisure. It's a part of a larger whole, one that can potentially provide me with days or years of entertainment, which makes it worth sitting through the boring parts and the missteps, as long as that whole seems at all worthwhile. And if the episode I'm currently watching isn't great, the next episode might be a lot better. But I have to get through the current one first, or the story won't work as well. And, hey, I can do that! It's totally worth it to me. And so I'm able to relax and enjoy myself, rather than feeling impatient and frustrated and distracted by thoughts of all the other things I could be doing with my time instead.

With a movie... Well, you watch the movie, and that's it. That's the full experience. The point of watching a movie is to enjoy the movie, and so, if my enjoyment is anything less than complete, it feels like kind of a waste of time. That's even true for movies like The Hunger Games series, where there actually is one story continued over several movies, because these things come out spaced a year or more apart, and generally by the time the next one is available, I've forgotten most of the last one and lost all sense of momentum and most of my interest. Sure, there are exceptions, exciting movies that provide extended enjoyment because afterward I spend a long time thinking about them and discussing them, and can watch them over and over and find new things in them each time. (Hello, Cabin in the Woods!) But those are very, very rare. Most of Hollywood's output is, at best... kind of OK. And two hours of my concentrated attention for the sole reward of having watched something kind of OK is mostly just not good enough.

Well, How About Next Week?

All day, I've had this weird feeling like there's some specific activity I should be engaging in, or something exciting that's supposed to happen today that isn't actually happening. And a little while ago, I finally realized why.

There is no new Doctor Who on today. And apparently some portion of my psyche is simply not prepared to believe or accept this fact.

My brain, ladies and gentlemen. My pathetic fannish brain.

I Have A Weird Brain. Mmmm, Brain...

Today is one of those annoying days where I'm switching over from night shifts to day shifts, and have thus had all of about four hours of sleep. Possibly less. So far, I've spent most of my brief period of consciousness lying on the couch reading Max Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide, which turns out to be a strangely pleasant thing to occupy yourself with while in a state of sleep deprivation. Sadly, though, survival guide or no survival guide, I have few illusions about how well I'd do in the event of actual zombie attack.

Which reminds me of an odd, random thought I have now and then, namely that if a zombie apocalypse were to suddenly erupt, whatever clothes I'm wearing right now could very well be what I'm shambling around biting people in forever, or at least until someone gets a clear head shot. This idea especially tends to occur when I'm wearing a t-shirt that would be just a little too apt in the circumstances. Like my Farscape "Irreversibly Contaminated" shirt. Or the one that says, "Life Is Short. Read Fast." Or my Monty Python and the Holy Grail pajama pants. ("It's only a flesh wound!") In this fashion, I manage to simultaneously amuse myself and kinda creep myself out.

Somebody please tell me I'm not the only person who thinks about stuff like this?

To-Done List

A partial list of things I have done on my days off this week:

Went to the post office.
Bought groceries.
Put gas in the car.
Mopped all the tile floors in my house.
Did four loads of laundry.
Did my taxes (state and federal).
Paid some bills.
Cleaned old leftovers out of the fridge.
Washed several sinksfull of dishes.
Put away sweaters and unpacked shorts.
Finished a longish book and reviewed it for LibraryThing's Early Reviewers.
Started another book.
Watched some DVDs I'd been meaning to get to.
Called two different family members.
Talked to the cable company.
Cooked myself a couple of decent meals.
Did various small, random bits of tidying and housecleaning.
And, oh, yes, rotated my sleep-wake schedule completely around from nights to mornings.

Now, will the nagging feeling in the back of my head that keeps telling me I'm not accomplishing things fast enough please shut up?

My Name Is Betty, And I Am A Biblioholic.

Thanks to the latest round of bookcase purchasing and assembly, there are now empty bookshelves in my dining room. Almost eight of them. Which looks weird. Weird, and kind of wrong. And while part of my brain is contemplating them in quiet satisfaction, thinking, "There, that should do me for the next few years, at least as far as the fiction goes!", some other, more primal part keeps shouting, "OMG, empty shelves! Must fill them up! Must read faster!"

Well. At least it's not the worst possible obsession to have. Right?

Life Is But A...

I just had the strangest experience while I was asleep. I was having some not-terribly-interesting dream about being at work, when one of the people in my dream, who'd been doing an increasingly good job of intruding himself on my attention, mentioned to me that it was, in fact, a dream. I thought he was nuts. Huh? What? Dude, I know solid reality when I feel it! But then he pointed out that every time I looked at somebody they were wearing different shoes. Whaddaya know. They were! He was right. And at this realization, of course, I woke up. (Amusingly, it was only after I woke up that I realized that the fact that one of said people appeared to be Mickey Smith from Doctor Who, and that he was wearing bowling shoes, should have been more of a tip off.)

Man. I've heard of lucid dreaming before, and I've had the experience of escaping from a nightmare by suddenly realizing that it's just a dream, but having people you're dreaming about come up and insist to you that it's not real? That's the sort of thing I thought only happened in unconvincing TV dream sequences.

Freaky. And now, damn it, I'm awake too early. And I'm going to be checking reality for inconsistencies all day.

I'm Much More Burgess Meredith Than Will Smith.

Tonight's DVD viewing was I Am Legend, which I quite liked, although I remember just enough about the book version to be pretty sure that I preferred the original's ending.

What kind of got me about the movie, though, is that I spent much of the first half hour or so thinking, "Dude, the only good thing about the 'last person on Earth' scenario is that there aren't any damned people! I used to have guilty fantasies about that sort of thing! But... Oh. Oh, you poor, poor extrovert." I have to say, it's rather nice to know that in one significant respect I'm more psychologically equipped to deal with the apocalypse than a guy played by Will Smith. Of course, my complete lack of survival skills or physical fortitude would doubtless ensure that I didn't last more than a day and a half, anyway. But, still.

Death Before Drone-dom!

My current DVD-watching is series 2 of the UK version of The Office. And, man, it really bemuses me... Lots of my all-time favorite TV shows (or, for that matter, books, movies, and other forms of storytelling) are chock-full of death, destruction, abject failure, moral compromise, and grand-scale tragedy. If a television show can actually make me cry, it's hooked me in for life. The angstier, the better! I'll happily tune in to watch main characters get killed every week while the survivors wallow in misery. I really, really will.

But the UK's Office I find so incredibly depressing, even while it makes me laugh, that I almost can't bear to keep watching. There are reasons why it's been well over two years since I rented season 1.

What I can't quite figure out is whether this says something profound about the differing emotional resonances of various kinds of fiction, or just something strange about me.

Scientist Humor Makes Me Feel Less Humbuggy.

OK, honestly, I don't like Valentine's Day. Those of you who do enjoy it, good for you, and I hope you have a great day, but personally I prefer to sit out the sappy hearts'n'flowers fest and just enjoy being happily single in quiet.

However, I must confess, this has actually made me appreciate the holiday for once. I almost wish I did want to give someone a card, because how could anyone possibly resist romantic sentiments presented by Charles Darwin or Carl Sagan? Well, OK, I'm sure lots of people could, but I don't think they'd be people I'd want to give a Valentine's Day card to in the first place.

States of Confusion

In 3m 25s

Click here to Play

Yay, me! I would have finished faster, though, if I could only remember how the hell to spell "Massachusetts."

I also did the state capitals quiz, but, alas, I only got 31 of them. There was a very brief period a very long time ago when I could name all the state capitals, so I know that information is in my neurons somewhere. I think I made such a poor showing of it this time for three reasons:

1) I managed to completely blank on the capital of Pennsylvania, despite having been born in Pennsylvania. This fact dismayed and distressed me so much that it was hard to concentrate on anything else. Stupid brain.

2) I was certain I knew how to spell the capital of North Dakota, but I was wrong. And no matter how many times I tried to spell it that way, I was still wrong.

3) I appear to have somehow forgotten the entire existence of Alaska and Hawaii. I'm blaming the Pennsylvania thing.

My Mother Always Told Me I Was The Weird One In The Family.

It seems I have been tagged to do this "seven weird things about me" meme. I thought that maybe I already had done that here at some point, but I guess not. Anyway, here goes:

1. I talk to myself. A lot. I try not to do it too conspicuously in public, but when I'm on my own, I can deliver entire 20-minute lectures to myself, complete with hand gestures. I also sometimes talk to the cats, especially when I'm planning out my day. "OK, kitties, I'm going to take a shower now, and then I'm going to go out to the post office..." Like it's more psychologically acceptable to talk to animals who can't understand me than it is to talk to myself, at least if the subject matter concerns said animals the way my comings and goings (and thus my availability for cat dish-filling duties) does. Also, once in a while I'll read out loud to the cats. I was reading bits of Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos to Vir Catto yesterday, but he seemed sadly uninterested in Hawking's ideas about black holes.

2. I use my car maybe once a month, usually when I have to buy cat litter or drive up to Albuquerque for some reason. Otherwise, I walk everywhere. I live in a small town -- few places I want to get to are more than 15 minutes away -- so this is eminently doable. Walking is the ultimate win-win situation for me. It's good for the world at large, what with not burning up pesky fossil fuels and all. It's good for my body, being the only real exercise I get. And it's good for my mind, as I find it helps to clear my head, lift my mood, and concentrate my thoughts. I do all my best creative thinking when I'm walking. And, if it's light out and I don't have any particular creative thinking I need to do, I can read while I walk. For some reason, people seem to find this strange. I suspect this is mainly because they haven't tried it; it's easier than it looks, honestly. But anyway, yeah, in conclusion, I love to walk. Sometimes -- OK, kind of often -- I'll walk a two-mile round trip at 2 AM to drop a letter in the mailbox at the post office that I could easily have mailed from home, just to give myself an excuse to get out and walk.

3. I don't eat invertebrates. Shellfish are basically just giant underwater bugs -- ick! And mollusks are squishy, slimy things. Also, while I'm ruling out whole classes of lifeforms, I'll add in an entire kingdom and say the same thing about fungus, with the added point that that stuff grows in shit. You may keep your lobsters, scallops and mushrooms for yourself. Thank you.

4. I cannot think properly with the TV or the radio on. The sound moves into the part of my brain that I use to think with and interferes with the words I use to think in, and I do not have the ability to tune it out. The effect is lessened if it's soft instrumental music that's not to my taste but also not actively annoying, or if it's something really dull and quiet playing on the TV, like a golf tournament. It's heightened if it's something I find interesting (even if only in the train-wreck sort of way that you get with a lot of TV programs) or something with strong lyrics. But if I really need to concentrate on something, especially something that involves writing, I really need either silence or white noise. Music is for occupying my brain while I do mindless physical tasks, and I only watch stuff on TV that I actually care about enough to devote my full attention to.

5. I have a book-buying addiction. I had to impose a quota limiting the number of books I buy to less than the number I read, otherwise I would have found myself buried under an avalanche of books. Not that that might not still happen.

6. My idea of getting dressed up is wearing khakis instead of jeans, a sweater vest over my t-shirt, and boots instead of sneakers. If an event requires getting dressier than that, you're going to have a hard time talking me into going.

7. I spend eight hours a day at work in front of a computer. Sometimes twelve. So, what's the very first thing I do when I get home? Sit down in front of the computer. Hey, important e-mail might have come in during that 15 minutes it took me to walk home!

Um, wow. That all makes me sound more eccentric than I thought I was.

I Also Woke Up With A Headache, But I Don't Think That's Related.

I woke up this morning -- well, OK, this afternoon, but it was morning for me -- and was going to get out of bed, but there was a cat lying on top of me. So I fell back to sleep and dreamed about waking up but not getting out of bed because there was a cat lying on top of me. Fortunately, the recursion did not continue past that point, or I might still be asleep.

Yes, I Am White and Nerdy.

I think this is officially Albuquerque's Geekiest Week Ever, between the Mythbusters on Saturday and the Weird Al Yankovic concert tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to the concert, but, man, I am not used to having a social calendar this full. Three fun trips into the city in the past month, and I'm starting to get that overstimulated introvert thing going on. I think I'm close to reaching the point where I just want to crawl into a hole with a stack of books and not talk to anybody for a week.

These May Turn Out To Be Surprisingly Revealing Questions.

That "interview questions" meme that periodically circulates around the web seems to have popped its head up again, and Andrew Ironwood has thus posed me the following questions. (Actually, he gave me a set of "easy" questions and a set of "hard" ones, and invited me to mix'n'match. Which I cheerfully have.)

1) What book have you most recently finished reading?

I just finished Reckless Engineering by Nick Waters. It's um, a Doctor Who novel. Not that I'm obsessed or anything. It was okay. Not great, but okay.

2) What would I most likely find in your refrigerator on any given day?

Coffee. 2% milk (for use in the coffee). I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. Fruit. Possibly some cheese. Well-past-their-sell-by-date eggs. Assorted condiments, most of them left there ages ago by visiting relatives who failed to share my complete lack of interest in condiments. Maybe some orange juice, if I'm lucky.

Gender is an incidental issue; basically, I'm a bachelor. And the fridge, sadly, reflects this.

3) Let us assume a fully grown, completely healthy Clydesdale horse has his hooves shackled to the ground while his head is held in place with a thick rope. He is conscious and standing upright, but completely immobile. And let us assume that-for some reason- every political prisoner on earth (as cited by Amnesty International) will be released from captivity if you can kick this horse to death in less than twenty minutes. You are allowed to wear steel toed boots. WOULD YOU ATTEMPT TO DO THIS?

Probably not, although whether the failure would be due to a lack of faith in my physical strength or my extreme tender-hearted squeamishness is an open question. I can't even help feeling slightly upset about killing cockroaches.

4) You meet your soul mate. However, there is a catch: every three years, someone will break both of your soulmate's collarbones with a Cresent wrench, and there is only one way you can stop this from happening: you must swallow a pill that will make every song you hear-for the rest of your life- sound as if it's being performed by the band Alice In Chains. When you hear Credence Clearwater Revival on the radio, it will sound (to your ears) like it's being played by Alice In Chains. If you see Radiohead live, every one of their tunes will sound like it's being covered by Alice In Chains. When you hear a commercial jingle on TV, it will sound like Alice in Chains; if you sing to yourself in the shower, your voice will sound like deceased Alice vocalist Layne Staley performing a capella (but it will only sound this way to you). WOULD YOU SWALLOW THE PILL?

Bah. That would really suck. But I suppose, being the altruistic, non-horse-killing soul that I am, I would feel honor-bound to put another human being's physical welfare over my own aural enjoyment. And at least I'm getting a non-broken soulmate out of the deal. Not that I actually wanted a soulmate or anything, but if I'm gonna have one, one with functional collarbones would probably be preferable. Also, man, they're gonna owe me, aren't they? That could pay off. Not that I'm basing my decision on such selfish concerns, of course. Not at all.

5) A visitor from the future gives you one free use of a functional holodeck, which he has programmed to be able to simulate *any* sci-fi 'universe' from literature, TV or films. You can choose the location in both space and time, but this holodeck has two peculiar bugs: 1) you have to pick a precise length of time you will be in the simulation before starting (which you cannot change once you are inside and the program is running); and 2) the Mortality Safeguards are, well, not *entirely* reliable. WOULD YOU STILL USE THE HOLODECK, AND IF SO, WHEN AND WHERE (IN WHICH CONTINUITY) WOULD YOU GO?

Aargh. OK, maybe I am obsessive. Because, yeah, how could I resist? And I would go with Doctor Who, not simply because I am obsessive, but because the mortality rate among Doctor Who companions -- the role I assume I would be playing -- is actually very low. Not non-zero, but low. It'd be a hell of a lot safer than, say, Farscape. Hell, I'd feel reasonably safe giving it a few weeks. You know, assuming I had vacation time and someone was feeding my cats, or whatever. Because that would be the single coolest vacation ever. Possibly I would hang around with the Eighth Doctor. (Pre-Time War, obviously. Well pre-Time War. I have no desire to be exterminated by holo-Daleks, although, really, it would be a very me way to die.) And I will steadfastly maintain that my reason for picking number Eight is entirely because he was a cool Doctor who got very little screentime and would thus be interesting to see more of, and not at all because he is incredibly hot. Ahem.

OK. That was... sort of interesting. Anybody want me to ask them questions, now? Because, as I recall, that's how this meme is supposed to work.

Guh!

I watched last weekend's episode of Doctor Who approximately five hours ago, and I am still too keyed up over it to sleep. Possibly there really is a point at which my obsessions become unhealthy. Not that I can bring myself to care.

(Damn it. I may just have to go and watch it again. So hard to resist...)

I'd Probably Like Chick Flicks A Lot More If They Were Geekier.

I appear to have finally figured out how to get in touch with my deeply buried romantic side, because I keep going back to look at this cartoon, and it keeps making me go "awww!" in exactly the way that I think the endings to romantic movies are supposed to and generally don't.

Song Inside My Head

I've been watching Heroes and enjoying it a lot, but there's one thing about it that is driving me absolutely crazy. Every time Christopher Eccleston's character comes on the screen, or even any time I think about him, I get Freddie Mercury singing in my head:

I'm the invisible man
I'm the invisible man
Incredible how you can
See right through me!

Stupid Queen's Greatest Hits album.

And while watching the most recent episode of Battlestar Galactica, which features a character called Dr. Roberts, I kept finding it nearly impossible to pay attention because of the immensely distracting Beatles performance inside my brain:

You're a new and better man,
He helps you to understand,
He does everything he can: Dr. Robert(s)

I really, really wish I knew how to get that sort of thing to shut off.


(Note: I still haven't seen Monday's episode of Heroes, by the way, so no spoilers, please!)

The Time Warp Again

How the hell is it the fifth of February already? Where is the time going lately, and how do I get there so I can take some of it back?

But The Fate Of The Universe May Be At Stake!

I'm trying to convince myself that the fact that I'm having trouble finding some of the BBC Eighth Doctor books, now that I'm within a dozen or so books of finishing the series, does not, in fact, actually constitute an emergency. I'm having a little trouble doing it, though.

Sometimes I worry a little bit about my sense of priorities.