Names, Nicknames, and Identity

Due to discussion about names, nicknames, and the importance we ascribe to them here, I got to thinking about mine, especially my first real online handle.

Somewhere on that thread, someone named Rebecca gets told maybe it would be cool if she went by "Reb."  This was, in fact, my first handle, short for both my middle name and "rebel" (not the Southern kind, but stemming from an odd occurence in my youth group*).  I loved that name, really, even though I haven't thought about it in years.  It felt very "me" at the time--maybe still does in some ways--and I wanted badly for my friends to call me by it, but that would be (like Buck) violating the First Law of Nicknames.  Plus, self-ascribed nicknames rarely stick.

"Seraph" was thought up for me partly by a friend of mine in highschool (The Mastermind), when I was making my first-ever online journal.  I tend to overthink screennames because I want them to convey my identity more fully than a lot of people tend to bother with, and I had trouble thinking up that one because I felt that my social identity was in flux at the time.  Mastermind suggested some combination of "shadow" to express that gray area, and "seraph" because I'm religious and it sounded cool.  Eventually the shadow part got dropped but Seraph stuck somehow.

In a lot of ways I think of myself more as Reb or Seraph than my real name.  But there's no way calling myself by those names in social situations would fly.  This comes from very early personal experience, when I tried to get everyone I knew to call me by the name of a candy that I liked, and which sounded vaguely like my name in some contexts.  I think only two people ever called me by that name, and one of them arrived at it on his own instead of having me try to tell him.

Maybe names aren't something we're meant to pick for ourselves, somehow?

*One time, my youth group in the course of a Bible study was asked to think up a bunch of people they would call "rebels" to write up on the white board.  My name ended up there alongside Che Guevara and Saddam Hussein, probably due to my perpetual tendency to play devil's advocate in discussion rather than immediately swallowing the usual doctrine.  Maybe they should have called me "Buck"?  The actual point of the exercise was to demonstrate that while most people that youth-groupers will call rebels are "bad," there is a good way to be rebellious, especially since Jesus was portrayed in that study as "The Ultimate Rebel."

Filler post, woooo

I am taking a salsa dance class this semester.

If you don't think this counts as exercise, think again.  The way you have to move for that Latin rhythm is just...unnatural.

Ow my back.  Ow my thighs.

Picture to the right is Wulfy's sister and brother-in-law, not doing the salsa.  They're dancing a rumba, actually, but it's the same family of dance.  Imagine how strong she must be to hold that position.

Oh gee, Thanksgiving.

My extended family is a confusing morass of great-aunts, removed cousins, adoption, marriage, remarriage, re-remarriage, and random unrelated folk tacked onto the edges. The English language needs more specific terms for cousin relationships and chosen-family relationships. There were at least twenty people, maybe twenty one, swarming the house today--we had people eating in the dining room, the den, the living room (which should be called the parlor) and the foyer. I hadn't ever met one of them before today--my grandmother's cousin's daughter's boyfriend's son. It sounds like the route traveled by urban legends.

I don't even really feast fully on Thanksgiving--turkey isn't really good until at least the next day. But my extended family are generally Moravians (instead of Baptists--we're in the Baptist church because of my dad) so there was no long drawn out blessing and giving of thanks, just the short and simple Moravian blessing, said in unison:

Come Lord Jesus, our guest to be,
And bless these gifts bestowed by thee.

Bless our loved ones everywhere
And keep them in thy loving care.

The second verse is even optional. Sometimes when there are enough people who know it, grace is sung:

Be present at our table, Lord,
Be here and everywhere adored.
From thine all-bounteous hand our food
May we receive with gratitude.

It's sung to one of the melodies of the Doxology; not the Old 100th, the other one. In searching on YouTube I've found it sung to the Talis Canon as well.

Obviously, I'm rambling. But I like the communal aspect of the Moravian blessing; which is a lot like the Moravian church in general, the motto of which is:

In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; and in all things, love.


I'll have more to say later; this blog is getting dusty with disuse.

The Ballad of Jimmy

My freshman year, I took a Creative Writing class. At one point, we all, as a class, selected six words (some of which ended up being phrases) without knowing what we were going to use them for. It turned out our homework for that evening was to write a sestina with the words: (phrases):

Jesus H. Christ
shafted
Chuck Norris
wobble
mustard
Catholic Boy's School

Mine ended up being about a boy named Jimmy who got in trouble at St. John's Catholic Boy's School, because a priest who looked like Chuck Norris caught him saying "Jesus H. Christ." Oddly enough, another girl in the class wrote about the exact same thing. It wouldn't seem so odd, because there are probably a limited number of coherent stories that can be made up with a group of words like that, if she hadn't picked the name Jimmy for her protagonist.

And if we hadn't come to class on multiple occasions wearing the same outfit, and had not picked the same poem to read to the class when we started the Poetry unit and had to bring in a favorite poem (the poem was "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes)

Perhaps "homemaker" is a better word than "housewife" or "stay at home mom"...

-11 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

Hah. Letting my bra strap show totally did me in. How fucking nitpicky is this test? "Wears red nail polish"? "Seams on stockings often crooked"?

67 As a 1930s husband, I am Superior Take the test!

A much shorter and easier test, indeed. Were all 1930s husbands complete wifebeating louts, that I am so superior?

...actually, considering what I've heard from my family, that's entirely likely.

oh btw

I should have noticed this before now, but...




buy harry potter toys


Yay! I love the way she writes.

It's a little bit Spacetalk, a little bit poetry slam, and a whole lotta raw cool.

And horses and fluffy kitties and one very big dog.

and oh, another btw: the font of the sparkly stuff is called "Space Toaster." I don't know why it's a toaster.

What a jerk...

I may be behind in my web surfing (in fact, I know I am) but

Somebody needs to kick this guy's butt.

He's just so proud of being a total ass.

The RIGHT column, imbecile! RIGHT!

My job is annoying me. I like it well enough when I'm there, it's just little things that patients do annoy me way more than they should.

Here's a tip for my ever-so large constituency of loyal readers: when you are at the eye doctor's office and you have to use the accuities machine (the thing with the bar you put your forehead against, like the thing you use to look at roadsigns at the DMV) please listen closely to the person conducting the test, and if she says "read the smallest line you can see in the right-hand column," read the smallest line you can see in the right hand column. Do NOT use the left hand column, do NOT start at the top and read down, and do NOT read from right to left. Oh, and don't come into the office and expect us to give you contacts if you haven't had an eye exam in three years. My office only gives out contacts if you've had an exam within a year--that varies, but we need to know we won't blind you by giving you something your eyes can't handle. And yes, this applies if you're wearing color contacts, even if you don't have any Rx in them. They're still a medical device that comes into direct contact with your eyes (they're called contact lenses for a reason) and your eyes have to be healthy in order to wear them. There's a lot more that can be wrong with your eyes than needing glasses.

Oh, and that one condition? It's "astigmatism," not "a stigmatism." And it's not "a stigma", or "stigmata". Yes, people call it that, and while it's funny, it makes me want to smack you in the forehead like those V8 commercials.

In other news, my brother is an ass. My parents and I are visiting him over the weekend, and his intellectual condescension is getting really obnoxious. He makes me feel incredibly stupid. I keep trying to nurse my self-worth by telling myself that, after all, my IQ is supposedly higher than his. But it doesn't stop there--he manages to find something he doesn't like about the books I read, the music I like, the clothes I wear, the way I laugh, my glasses, my skin, my hair, my build...it never ends.

However, my dad bribed me out of acting terribly annoyed at everything at large this morning (I had a pre-noon relapse into moody teenager mode--after all, being around mon frere makes me feel like the least popular kid in high school again) by saying we'd go by Beowulf's town on the way back home. So I suppose it's worth it.

I've also been having migraines in the past few months, which I've never done before. Today's ended up just being a medium-strength headache that two Advil knocked out, but it was accompanied by a light sensitivity, and yesterday's was light-sensitive and nauseated, but I headed it off by going to bed early. Sleep remains the best thing for a migrain, apparently, other than supposedly snorting hot pepper. The idea behind the pepper is that it short-circuits the brain's pain receptors by being incredibly ouchie. I suppose it's similar to biting your tongue when you stub your toe.

I'm not in my normal time zone, so I'm getting really sleepy. Maybe my next post will have more of a point.

Oh, btw, thanks DBB, I'd actually been thinking about reading some Ayn Rand sometime soon. Honestly, I haven't even gotten around to reading anything on that list; my mom derailed me by finding a few books by Madeleine L'Engle that I hadn't read.

I'll Think You Properly

...the next time I see you. Thus typos Vanilla the Theatre Boy.

This is a Random Post.

C.S. Lewis wrote in the nineteen thirties that the notion of romantic love was invented by Medieval troubadors. Interesting enough, this was long before he met his great love, Joy Gersham.

Courtly love was silly.

The Song of Solomon was less silly, though I'm not sure how I would feel about having my breasts compared to baby deer. Not to mention the whole teeth-as-sheep image; I mean, I get the whole snowy-white thing, but sheep are kind of...wooly. When my teeth feel fuzzy, it means I need to brush them.

I want to have WildRampantSex (tm) with Beowulf. But he is several hours away, and tired from the even longer drive from M.O.U.S. land, and we're good Xian kids who know better. But still. A girl has needs. Silly vows of abstinence.

I still haven't really started that dang essay--it's a five-pager--so I'm going to be up for a while. With no caffeine. God help me.

I think I will add a blogroll to this thing. Hm.

Beowulf is online and telling me how much he wants to fuck me, so...