Okay, look, seriously, if you're a Star Wars fan, and you haven't listened to A Different Point of View, you need to. It's little vignettes about the SW universe... from the perspective of a Stormtrooper. Funny, smart, and thought-provoking!

childofsnow

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.

My dear friend bard_bloom has a fantastic entry about living in the Real America. Although I don't live Back East, I also live in the Real America. I live in Flagstaff, Arizona. Flagstaff is home to Arizona's other university, Northern Arizona University. This institution is home to thousands of students from all around the world, living and learning together in an atmosphere of cooperation and camaraderie.

Flagstaff is also home to one of the largest medical devices manufacturing plants in the US. If you know someone who has a stent in an artery, chances are, it was made in Flagstaff. Purena also has a plant here, and Wallgreens, the drug store, has a major distribution center here. These places employ people who make things, people who drive forklifts and trucks, and people who design the things which are made.

If that's not the Real America, I don't know what is. And I join bard_bloom in voicing my disdain for any candidate who doesn't understand that every thread in the tapestry is important to the whole picture; that every American is part of the Real America.

ETA: Tell me about your Real America? Or your Real England? Or Real Germany? Or....