pippinsrosy was doing a meme, where someone picked five things that they associated with her, and then she offered to choose five things about other people. And, if you comment, I'll pass it on. In the mean time, I have insomnia, so here are her five things, and what I have to say about them:

• The SCA. The TLA stands for the Society for Creative Anachronism. The Society grew out of Diana Paxson's graduation party from UC Berkley. Boiled down to its base elements, it's about people dressing up in funny clothes and having a good time pretending to live in an idealized version of the middle ages. But the details... ah, the devil is in the details.
  
  I first became aware of, and active in, the Society in Bisbee, Arizona, when I was living there with my biological father. I think I was thirteen the first summer Bisbee had a renaissance fair, and invited SCA folks down from Tucson to do a demo. By the time I was a freshman in high school, I was active with the local organization. I fell madly in love with dorinda2212, who was also an active member, and got myself halfway across the Phoenix metro area on a regular basis to see her, and participate at fighter practice -- a not inconsiderable feat, when you remember that I didn't own a car in those days, and Phoenix mass transit is a bad joke.
  
  Along the way, though, I discovered kind of the negative face of the SCA... there are pockets of people involved who forget they are playing a game. At a certain point in my life, that really alienated me, and I wandered off, and developed a bit of an attitude about the majority of SCA folks.
  
  However... after coming home from New York City, a large number of the friends I made, or reconnected with, were active members of the SCA. And I kept having cognitive dissonance between my image of the society, and the kinds of people I knew who were involved. So, on my birthday this year, with no one in Flagstaff who knew (or cared) that it was my 40^th birthday, I found myself drawn out to Crown Tourney (there's one held every six months), and I had a good time. Not in a dramatic way, but in a quiet way. And I talked with some people who made me feel welcome, which is something I haven't felt much of in a while. People whose eyes didn't glaze over when I started talking about the history of tartan.
  
  So I rejoined that day. And since then, I've become an officer in the local branch, the College of Sankt Vladimir. And while I still face some isolation issues, and I'm still twice as old as virtually everyone I know in Flagstaff, at least I have people I can call and say, "Hey, I'm lonely and feeling isolated, and think you should come with me and eat too much chocolate."
  
  And really, what else does one want from a social organization?
  
  
• Love. Um. This is some kind of sick joke, right? I haven't been in a serious romantic relationship in over a decade. The last thing she said to me as she was leaving was, "you know nothing of any importance, and on topics I consider important, you're woefully ignorant." Oh, and just before that, she said, "You're good at romance... it's all the other stuff you suck at." Love? Really? You associate me with love? Huh.
  
  
• Nursing. Well, okay, yes. I am a nurse, like my father before me. (Should I dramatically throw my stethoscope aside?) I was working as The Computer Guy, and one day I realized how much it sucked. How I woke up every morning wondering if I could call in sick. So I looked for something that would make me happier. And, when I'm doing the work, and being a nurse, I usually am happy. It's just this damn Nursing School that has me ripping my teeth out.
  
  
• Anime. I like anime. I particularly like silly anime. It's such a stress reliever... they live in a much simpler world than I do. They have friends, and even when they're going through tough times, there's a feeling of camaraderie and optimism that, all too often, seems lacking in my own world. They make me smile, and forget about the real world for a little while. And did I mention that the sillier, the better?
  
  
• Literature. I read a lot, it's true. It's not that I'm indiscriminate, as anyone who's ever heard me rip into Stephen King or James Fenimore Cooper can attest. It's that there's a lot of pretty good writing out there. My mother tells me that I initially had a hard time learning to read, because of my agraphia (you should see me write without a spell checker, some time) but I don't remember that. I remember always having been enthusiastic about books. If I hadn't let my 50 books list go by the wayside, you'd see that the stuff I read is pretty eclectic, though with a strong bent towards SciFi.

So. There's my five things. Comment, and I'll trot out five for you.

Driving home from the game, I was thinking deep thoughts about Meriliths and vampires, when my phone rang. Normally, I don't answer the phone while I drive, but it caught me by surprise, and I did.

It was Jeni. (Yes, she dots it with a heart).

Blue Hamaguchi died this afternoon, and Jeni was working her way through her list of people to contact.

She died of meningitis.

I'm at hamner's house, reaping the benifit of having helped him set up his wireless network the other day. In a little while, we're going to play some D&D.

---

I went by the hospice to see Blue.

The nurse said she hadn't woken up in a couple of days.

There was a nice flower arrangement by her bed.

---

In the last couple of weeks, I've twice heard "$Woman's_Name is very picky about the men she dates."

I find this rather insulting, upon further reflection. What it's saying is, "You're not possibly good enough for $Woman's_Name, so don't be a schmoe and try."

Even if I'm wrong, and that's not actually what's being said, it's what I hear.

That, and "You're such a loser, you must not be very picky about who you date."

Then again, I've spent years being not good enough for one thing or another. Most of my adult life, in fact.

So I guess I should feel used to it, by now.

---

I woke up early this morning, cold. Given that it's now close to 90F outside, I find this newsworthy.

The more I think about it, the more I think being a corpsicle is a bad idea.

The technology is unlikely to preserve you long enough for you to be an archeological curiosity.

But let's say that the cryogenic people are right, and someday, we come up with a way to reawaken corpsicles.

You could never be anything but a historical curiosity, lost in a time that wasn't yours.

We spend all our lives learning to fit into our cultural mileux. We learn the inuendo of our times, the culture of our times, the beliefs of our times.

If we were to wake the mummy Asru, somehow, how could she possibly fit into the modern world? How can we presume that we'd do any better in some future world?

We are products of our times.

Over the last couple of days, driving to work, I've heard news items about Ted Williams, the dead baseball player. His children are fighting over what should be done with the Corpus Tedus, with his son (who has control) having him cryogenically frozen, and his daughter being incensed about it.

The other day, I saw a television news bit, in which they actually entered the facility where Ted is being frozen and stored. They talked about how each of their cylinders could hold one complete body and ten heads. Aparently, having your severed head frozen is a rather less expensive option.

Ted's daughter, quite rightly, points out that this process is not even science; that it's a hope of a future science that leads people to choose to be frozen themselves, or to have their relatives frozen.

Is that hope realistic? Even if future science could come up with a way to repair the damage done by the cryogenic process itself, can we, could we, ever come up with a way to restart a dead mind? To refurbish, if you will, the brain?

While thinking on these topics, I watched an episode of a PBS series I've become somewhat fond of. The series is Secrets of the Pharohs, and it's about the application of modern scientific principles to the study of Egyptology. The other night, I watched an interesting episode in which they used DNA typing from various mummies to prove that the 18th dynasty were (mostly) related to each other, though there had, evidently, been at least one illegitimate child.

Tonight's episode was Unwrapping the Mummy, in which an intense pathological examination was made of the mummy of a three-thousand year dead temple chantuse named Asru.

Asru's mummy lead the team to all sorts of interesting knowledge about the society of Egypt, three thousand years ago. There was evidence of arthritis, evidence of a spinal injury probably caused by her years as a temple dancer, and evidence of various parasitic illnesses.

There was some interesting discovery of the properties of the Blue Lotus.

All of which was made possible by Asru's relatives having her mummified and placed in a tomb which stayed more or less safe until nineteenth century British busybodys came and dug it up.

It's tempting to draw parallels. Three thousand years from now, could Earth as a whole be regarded in the same light which we now regard Egypt? A backwater, nowhere kind of place which is none the less fascinating for what it used to be?

Might there, those three millenia hence, be some Cowboy R analog, lying in bed when he couldn't sleep, watching whatever edutainment media he has, about archeologists stumbling across the preserved remains of long-dead Terrans, and what those remains told us about their society?

It's an attractive notion.

Unfortunatly, the means that Ted's son has used to preserve him has a couple of obvious flaws.

Asru's children subjected her to a one-time treatment, and stuck her in a naturally-preserving environment... to whit, a desert tomb.

Ted's son has placed his father's corpsicle in an environment which requires technology to maintain. If the power goes out in Scottsdale, all the corpsicles are lost.

What's the likelyhood of those cryogenic tanks surviving three millenia intact?

I find myself fascinated by the idea, though. By the thought of that Future Cowboy, watching edutainment about a long dead corpse... maybe my long dead corpse, and the horrific conditions we lived in, all these long years ago.

Maybe I should start chisling a tomb in the desert.

Meet Joe Black is one of my favorite movies. First of all, because it's about Death... not as a remote, featureless uncaring personification, but as a friendly, caring one. As Brad Pitt, in fact.

I like to think of Death as friendly. I'd rather think of Death as Brad Pitt, or even better, as Sandman's perky goth everyone's-sister personification. I'd like to think that at the end, you'll be greeted by someone friendly, someone understanding and sympathetic.

Plus, I like the message of the movie. "Sing, dance, laugh, whirl like a dervish. Look for lightning to strike. Try. If you don't try, you're not living."

If I were recasting this movie, I'd cast Anthony Hopkins again, but I'd cast Audrey Hepburn (circa 1960) as Death, and change Claire Forlani's role to a male one... casting maybe a young Harrison Ford.

On the other hand, Audrey Hepburn's last role, in Always was as Death. She was marvelous as an older figure, talking with Richard Dreyfuss. (I saw it at a time I was coincidentally still hung up on a woman named Dorinda). So maybe I'd cast the older Audrey, and make her a romantic interest for Anthony Hopkins.

Anyway. Yes, I love this movie. Anthony Hopkins is an amazing actor, and so are the other cast members.

I find the message exciting and frightening. How often in my life have I backed off of things because I might fail? Because I might get hurt?

How many women have I met, and had a crush on, and done nothing about it, because I thought that they surely wouldn't want me? How often have I passed up the possiblity of a better life for myself because I was frightened of the possiblity of failure?

Or the possiblity of success?