What Foster Is Actually Thinking All Day

[ncarraway]

Has this ever happened to you? You're sitting in class, or in a meeting for your business, and suddenly a new thought occurs to you. You scan the faces in the room, looking at each one in turn as a quiet panic starts to rise. My God, you realize, I'm trapped in a room with a bunch of hairless, talking apesPerhaps you've experienced this state of

Comments

[lesisputnik]

You'd make a good anthropologist. :P They love the whole self-alienation, "my own culture is just as bizarre as anyone else's" thing.

[ncarraway]

It's funny, sometimes I think I should have been an anthropology major. It's a nice mix of hard science and social science, and it's a natural place for evolutionary theory. It's just too close to sociology for comfort, though.

[lesisputnik]

Hey, I majored in anth, and I have a strong dislike of sociology.

[ncarraway]

I knew there was a reason I liked you!

[jessefivey]

I get like this every first snow of the year. "Holy shit, tiny particles of ice shaped like some sort of modern art are falling out of the sky. The sky."

I guess that's sort of the opposite of your impulse.

<3

-Jesse

[ncarraway]

No, I wouldn't limit weirding to cultural items. I just happened to pick some examples that were sociocentric, I guess. That's a good reminder. The really weird stuff is in physics - I mean, easiest way to get the heebie-jeebies is to consider the proportion of actual matter to empty space between molecules in the human body. Why are my organs not sluicing out between the other hydrocarbons? AUGH

[reedybeanz]

isn't that what we like about pets?
it is entirely bizarre, but provided we don't kick or otherwise abuse them, food and a roof is all they require to love us unconditionally. they don't care if we say rude things to them, they don't get offended when we spend the day out and don't tell them where we're going, and they don't run off to live under the roof of some other random hairless talking ape. they are always happy to see us, even when we are at our very lowest.
no wonder we embrace them so much.
that doesn't strike me as weird. a little sad, maybe. but entirely understandable.

what strikes me as weird is that there is a certain combination of sounds that is generally and almost universally accepted as a marker for me. i am a concept that is labeled in the minds of those i know by three syllables (five if you know my middle name). those syllables can never describe me as a person, they will never tell anyone who does not know me that i am short, redheaded, a cynical bitch, or that i love orange-flavored chocolate. without

[ncarraway]

Language breaks my head sometimes. I can understand why people would devote their lives to trying to figure out exactly how language works; even empathy for Stephen Pinker almost seems possible, in that context.

[myopian8]

OH GOD. Do you ever look at your hand? I mean, really look.

In all seriousness, HELL YES I GET THAT ALL THE TIME TOO. Or like, I'll look in the mirror and go, "Wow, it's so weird that we grow long hair only on our heads. WAIT, it's so weird that I can have silent conversations with myself! WAIT, it's so weird that I can CONVERSE AT ALL! What does 'converse' really mean, anyway? Duuuuuuude ..."

Happens most frequently early in the morning or late at night when I'm tired (of course). :o)

[ncarraway]

I think it most often happens to me when I'm ... no, wait, it happens all the time.