Friday and saturday were spent quickly cleaning the apartment (and may I say that regan and I did an amazing job given, all things considered). Prepared dinner for party on Saturday. Failed to prepare in terms of dishes and silverware. Also, inadequate lighting. Bleh.
Sent James and Jane out to find solutions to these problems at target. I misestimated time it would take them, and by the time they got back food was cooling, and people were grumbling. Doh. Also, my place is simply not adequately spacious for full out potluck parties with 8 friends (James, Jane, Laura, Nat, Shelby, Virginia, Regan, and Kevin, did I miss anyone?). Still, a good time was had by all. The food was tasty and varied. Much was the teasing. And discussion. I was teased about not being able to tease well, and now Laura and Nat have embarked upon a mission to teach me. This is, btw, not quite true. I’m very good at teasing a few people. Tom and Seth spring immediately to mind. Josh I’m too quick to go for blood. Not bad with Aaron either.
Virginia brought up the great “You [who went to cmu + my little sister apparently] are Geeks, We are Nerds, and there is a fundamental gap between the two. It is possible to go from Nerd to Geek, but not the other way around. It has something to do with how you were raised. blah, blah, blah.” And she’s partially right, and partially wrong, which is why it was such an inflammatory debate to get started on. Partially right: It’s a subculture thing. Once you’ve been indoctrinated in the ways of a particular subculture, you never really completely unlearn that subculture. You may be a dormant Geek, Fag, SCAdian, CMUer, Pitt-student, whatever, but you’ve still incorporated the identity elements into yourself.
I have never been indoctrinated in the ways of sports fan-ness, and may be the posterchild for the effectiveness of passive resistance with regard to such indoctrination (I fell asleep in the middle of my first baseball game, and haven’t been to another one since), but I suspect it follows the same sorts of patterns. Passion about stuff that outsiders don’t really care about, specialized jargon and references that may be inaccessible to outsiders, blah, blah, blah. And, like any subculture, you can choose how deep to go.
CMU does, or at least did, tend to attract (though not exclusively) a certain segment of the population, specifically high school outsiders. We identified as non-normal, and sometimes vehemntly so. I never got into the KGB (a cmu club) crowd, because it seemed to me like a group of people getting around and doing unto others and themselves what was done unto them historically. I have set to myself the challenge of sitting through an entire KGB meeting multiple times. And every time I’ve left convinced that I could sit through the remainder if I really wanted to, but that to do so would simply unneccessarily piss me off.
As a high school outsider, I liked the laissez-faire attitude of cmu’s social environment. Over time I grew to appreciate the diversity that initially I simply ignored. As Dan Savage said about the former appelation for his column (“Dear Faggot” to the uninitiated): “At some point in time, we have to get over what we were called in high school.”) I embraced the term geek awhile ago. Just as I more recently embraced gay, fag, etc. But, all these words can still be used to divide, as much as describe (or celebrate in some cases). And it is that division that I object to.
At some point in time, discussing the last time I physically attacked someone (I slapped a friend across the face, after she game me a ‘friendly’ punch to the solar plexus, circa 92) I was told that meant I was “so gay”. And that a straight guy would have punched her. And I vociferously denied this, getting up on a chair to demonstrate why, from the exact layout of the people involved, slapping her as I did was a perfectly normal reflex. Laura noted that it was deeply ironic that someone so completely out of the closet as I am would get so worked up over being called gay. And I don’t think it was so much over being called gay, as it was over the notion of the distinction being so carefully drawn between gay and straight. I think it has more to do with my pacifism than my sexuality. And, yeah, I get kinda cranky about stereotypes.
But I digress. =)
Dinner cleanup went remarkably well. All that remains are a load or two of dishes in my sink, and some food in my (and other people’s) fridge(s). Which is much better than the dishes with glued on food sitting around in the sink for weeks, as has happened in the past. Maybe I’m getting more responsible. Hmmmmmm. =)