Happy Christmas, &c.

I wish you all the very best in life.




Michael

upasaka has discussed in the past how horrible it can be when celebrants decide, in the spirit of the sanctity of an occasion, to use incense during Mass. Tonight was such a night.

Now, mind you, I've learned to keep my mouth shut about the numerous things that disappoint me when I go to Mass with my family on important Days of Obligation, and generally speaking there were no big surprises this year, other than the incense.

Let's get this straight, though. I like incense. It is a very important, ancient, powerfully symbolic, and visceral part of worship in the Roman Catholic Church (and many faiths, of course). When used tastefully, in the right quantities, it can be sublime and add another element of focus to important and powerful services. When abused, it makes large portions of the congregation unhappy, screws with the choir, and can drive people with chemical sensitivities and smoke allergies out of the building.

The latter situation? Yeah, totally what happened tonight. In addition to coughing very frequently and painfully, I felt ill during Mass. I still have the remainder of a headache and my lungs feel like I spent the evening smoking a cigar. I tried to get my mother to give me the priest's email address so I could send him a polite reminder that overdoing the incense is bad on a normal day and worse yet when you have people joining the congregation who only come to church on Christmas and Easter (if they remember).

There was too much incense right from the get-go during the procession to the altar. The priest and/or altar boy added more incense at least three times during Mass, to my count. And not just a sensible little dash to keep the thing smoking. No, a freaking heaping spoonful (or whatever measure it was) every time. And the thing would go nuts spewing out noxious spicy-sweet smoke and haze.

Ugh.





Michael

I guess this is a complicated thing, eh?

Gender is something that is, overall, poorly understood by most elements of society. We seem to have these attitudes that it is made up of a set of concrete things, but in reality the concepts of gender are much more fluid, both in the individual and in society. Male and female are not completely concrete things - they are more like complex multidimensional probability distributions. There are a multitude of factors that contribute to create a unique expression of gender in each of us, though some factors are more important than others. Gender isn't just a single spectrum, but a spectrum of spectra.

We value things like chromosomal/physiological/anatomical sex as strong components of gender, but those three things don't always coincide, nor are they always expressed in a definitive m vs. f way. When we start to add in all the minute details of anatomical variation that we cannot change about ourselves - our body size, bone structure, facial features, breast development, genital structure/function, the picture already starts to become quite complex. Add to that the things that we do have some control over - the way we cut and style our hair, the way we walk, the way we talk, the way we gesture, and when we choose to use certain forms or memes over others...

All of these things contribute to the gender we each express. And because of the fluidity and changeability of some of those last things in particular, we can express a different gender concept from one moment to the next.

Things get a little more complicated when we are looking at factors that are influenced by society and culture. Cultural gendering is very real and very powerful; even just traveling to Mexico this summer exposed me to a society with some differences in gender expectations and definitions. These things change over time, too, as Global Sociology Blog notes reporting on changes in attitudes about gender associations of colours in Western society.

( How do I fit into this? )

Regardless, we have a long way to go before society at large is receptive to and understanding of the fact that we have so much gender diversity. It's a tough thing, though, since our human brains seem to be programmed to look for oppositional differences and create hierarchies. A lot of our societal paradigms are bizarre extensions and co-optings of these patterns, but the real beauty and substance of cultures, I think, comes from how those paradigms and patterns are subverted.



Michael.

Well, I'm left earlier than expected. Tonight, to be exact.

It's fine, I guess. Most of what I planned on doing this evening and tomorrow morning was laundry, which I can do at my parents house just as well. I wanted to do some cleaning, though. I guess it will have to wait until I get back. I brought all the plants in the house to bring back with me, though, because I'm a little worried about leaving them unwatered for an entire week.

I spent a good chunk of the ride home trying not to fall asleep. My father was driving, and we went back and forth between conversation, awkward conversation and silence. He still doesn't get me. Or what I do. Is it sad that I'm most comfortable in these rides when he is describing things going on at his work? I don't know. Maybe the awkwardness is all in my mind. I have my doubts, though.

I have a few goals for the next week or so:

1) finish the workshops I've been making for WLU:SSSI
2) set up my lab notebook for the anatomical work next semester, including research notes
3) finish writing Spiral Ch. 26
4) read a plant evolutionary developmental genetics textbook
5) get started on the statistical analysis of the combined data from my lab mate's work and my pollen counts
6) get started on the intro to my thesis, and maybe some methods sections

And yes, I know that's a lot. It's a prioritized list. Though, #4 will likely be an evening thing the whole week, and #5 depends on whether or not my lab mate finally sends me his raw data. My goal for tomorrow is to finish most of #1 and do a little bit of #2 and #4.





Michael.

I've had the music from the concerts last weekend stuck in my head all week. Not necessarily a bad thing, but kind of annoying at the same time. At least it is 'seasonally appropriate'. I really have felt like this week was when the holiday should have started. I really did not succeed in getting much done.

My mind has settled today from the turmoil over the last couple days. Started back on steroid drops for my eyes again tonight. Going to see the optometrist tomorrow to get my pressures checked and to see how much the anterior chambers were affected this time. I doubt much is going to happen, perhaps other than my optometrist giving me a request letter for a steroid scrip to take to my family doctor in Chatham.

Meh.

I don't think I will be back from Guelph early enough for it to be worthwhile to go in to work. I have to leave around 9am on the bus, but unless my appointment is miraculously quick I won't be able to return until 4pm-ish. I guess I'll just go home and do some cleaning and laundry. Much needed stuff, yeah, but still...

I'm feeling detached and useless right now. I guess it's odd that I also feel fairly upbeat. Maybe that's the 'OMG I GET TO LEAVE TOWN FOR A WEEK' excitement creeping up. Or maybe I just don't care right now.




Michael