From a future starving linguist

First, an explanation of the origin of the term "future starving linguist." I would like to be a linguist, ideally. At the very least, to study linguistics even if I do not end up being a linguist specifically. Linguistics is not on the level of say, mechanical engineering or computer science or something like that in terms of demand in the job market. So, theoretically, if I am to become a linguist, I won't be able to get a good job and I'll be a starving linguist. Kind of like the concept of a starving artist, but instead with linguistics in place of art. 

Anyways, on to the main topic of this post. As the reader may be aware, last weekend there was a march for science in DC, the ideals/goals of which were to promote the idea that science/facts backed by science is important. Which is fine and good, mostly. I agree that facts are important and that our current president is fact-challenged. And sure, science is important and has done lots of good things to improve society, like making innovations in medicine to treat diseases. However, it's also worth thinking about the not so beneficial things that science has given us. (I use science broadly to include innovation and technology and all that as well) Science has developed ever more powerful weapons which allow us to kill people with more efficiency and effectiveness. Machine guns, nuclear weapons, drones, all that. 

On to another point. My impression of science as a field in general/the march is that it is heavily focused on the so-called "hard sciences" (is that because they're difficult and tedious to understand/learn about??), meaning chemistry, biology, physics, etc. In other words, areas that I have no interest in and don't care to study. For people who do have an interest in and a passion for these things, more power to them, but it's just not for me. I think that the "soft sciences" are not taken as seriously - psychology, sociology, linguistics (three areas which do interest me). In addition, as far as I'm aware people in professions relating to hard sciences get paid more. I do understand that there are reasons behind this, economical stuff, which I'm not super knowledgeable about and that it may not necessarily be plausible for linguists to paid as much as chemists. 

I look at the march with... I don't want to say disdain, but perhaps bitterness is a better word. It disappoints me that certain types of science are not as respected/valued as others. In addition, "science is already seen by society as something that's more valuable than the arts," - A Very Fantastic Artist which is a whole nother can of fish. If I were a biologist I wouldn't be worrying about being a starving biologist, probably. Science is already valued in society even if the particular president doesn't have a very good grip on reality. If it were up to me, I would organize a march/protest to promote valuation of the arts and linguistics/other soft sciences. 

And to the next thing. Science/similar fields are heavily dominated by men, which is a documented issue/fact. It's been recognized that (isn't this an interesting sentence structure right there?? Sort of??) there should be more women in those fields, which is something that I agree with - it would be good for that to happen. However, I also personally have minimal interest in being in such a field, so I will not be contributing to having more female scientists. Which I sort of feel slightly bad about, since I do think it's important, but I also don't have an interest in those subjects. Alas. 

The thing I wanted to add here: it's possible that my lack of interest in science is because of how I was socialized (this is the sociology class talking). It's not possible to know if/how things would be different (meaning would I be interested in and enjoy science) had I been socialized differently since I can't go back and time and live an alternate universe where somehow I am socialized differently and come to like science. I am trying to figure out how I came to have the interests that I do have, however. I don't really know what could have been done differently, say, 10 years ago in my life or whatever that would have made me like science. I remember in elementary school we grew plants in science class, which was nice. I like plants. (fun fact: the German word for weed (not the marijuana kind, by the way) is "Unkraut") But that's quite different that studying science at a college level. Maybe I should do a sociological study of what causes people to like science... huh. Could be interesting. It might end up being an informal study and draw more upon the area of journalism than scientific research though. That's a possibility. Hmm. Now I just have to find some scientists to study. Studying the scientists - scienception.

An ending thought... My only chance for success as a linguist would be if aliens come to earth. Then maybe I could make it big as a linguist. If only. 

Edit: The previously mentioned Very Fantastic Artist complained that I hadn't properly attributed the quote. So I have fixed that. I hope that's enough to prevent any lawsuits. 

Songs

Songs that I dislike with a decent amount of passion:

Creep, by Radiohead. This one is a perfect description of that horrible thing, so therefore I don't like it because I would prefer not to listen to music that is reminiscent of that horrible thing.
Every Breath You Take, which is a creepy song if you pay attention to the lyrics.
Pumped Up Kicks, which I dislike because it sounds annoying. It isn't necessarily because of the subject matter, seeing as I enjoy other songs about murderous matters.
A cover of Love Will Tear Us Apart by Fall Out Boy, since it is an awful cover that butchers the original song.
David Bowie gets an honorable mention because he looked weird (for the very most part) and his music was weird (also for the very most part). However, there are two exceptions - one song of his that is actually fairly decent is Something in the Air, and (very surprisingly) he looked... good, at least compared to how he usually looked, in some science fiction movie he starred in back in the 70s.

In addition to these, an assortment of annoying pop songs that have been on the radio in the last 5 to 10 years.

Have you ever considered online dating?

An alternative title: why are people on the online dating website so ugly/otherwise unappealing????? (maybe it just means that I am too picky? I mean, I have standards, you know) 

Have you ever considered the idea of using an online dating website? If yes, my candid advice to you is... don't. If you absolutely must, don't go into it with high expectations at all. Go in to it with the mindset that it is a somewhat unique/more in depth form of people watching (and the people that you see will most likely be no more than average looking at best), which is what I treat it as currently. 

Most people that you see on there will probably be ugly, or no better than average looking (based on my experience) and therefore, they are not particularly appealing to me. This might make me shallow (a topic I have mentioned in the past) but I think it is somewhat important for a person you date to be good looking (meaning better than average at least by somewhat). 

If you are me, you have a certain person with very blonde margarine-colored hair in mind who is definitely good looking and could be a model (not to mention various actual European models that I know of, or certain favorite actors); the appearances of the people on the online dating website will certainly pale in comparison. 

Alas. Anyways, I have pretty much mostly given up on the idea of actually finding someone that I would actually want to date on the online dating website and I use it mostly out of boredom here and there. 

Here is a theory: all of the good looking people have already found people to date in real life without the help of an online dating website, so therefore all the average and below average people end up on the online dating website. Does this therefore mean that I'm below average looking?? I think at the very least I am average looking. I certainly am better looking than that horrible thing, for one. 

Things to ponder

Here are a few obscure and somewhat minor things that occasionally come to mind and worry me.
1. That there will be someone hiding in the bathtub behind the shower curtain
2. That my hair will catch on fire, probably while using the stove
3. That somehow one of my favorite shirts will get ruined.

This is more of a thing I wonder about: will I someday be watching Intervention (as I am now, writing this during a commercial break) and see someone I know on the show? Nobody plans on becoming a drug addict. It's possible. I do wonder.

Here is something that I doubt the person in question worries about, but if they knew that I think it would be interesting to dye their very real pale blonde hair a bright unnatural color, I think they would worry about it. That someone (me in particular) will dye their hair when they're not expecting it.

I also wonder if I will become a drug addict.

Edit: I just thought of a new thing that I have worried about in the past that would fit well on this list. I was watching a documentary on PTSD and I remembered thinking in the past that I worry if there will for some reason (which, let's be honest, is perhaps more likely in the current political climate) be another draft and I will have to be in the military. I don't want to be in the military. I don't want to end up like a female version of that poor translator character in Saving Private Ryan. Eek. I believe this is a (relevant) quote from Full Metal Jacket: "War is hell" and therefore I would not like to experience it firsthand as a solider. Maybe as a journalist, but certainly not as a member of the military. I will end this with another quote that I find rather memorable: "Signing up to get killed doesn't sound like much fun." Guess who said that! [Incidentally, the person who said it originally said it just about exactly 2 years ago to this day! Imagine that! 2 years ago we had a discussion about the military which included that quote. And me speculating on what compels people to join the military: "I think perhaps part of it is because men want to feel tough and macho and stuff and they think the army is a good embodiment of those qualities. And/or they're patriotic and want to fight for their country. Or, in other circumstances, they got drafted."]  

Musical opinions

Here are some opinions for you. They are regarding David Bowie, who was a famous singer and is dead. He died sort of recently. In any case, I watched a movie that he had provided the soundtrack to although it was hard to really discern the music in the movie. So later, I decided to listen to some various songs of his. The short of it: they were weird. I am not quite sure why he got so famous. He seems like him as a person and also his music was weird. Michael Jackson could also be described as such although there are a couple songs of his that I think are actually halfway decent and not horrible weird. 

If anyone would like to convince me that David Bowie is worth my time to listen to more, I welcome you to try. As it stands, I don't have a particularly interested impression of him. Also, I think he was kind of creepy looking, in a bad way. This could also apply to Michael Jackson post-plastic surgeries. Still, a song like Man in the Mirror is actually fairly decent and makes me feel like dancing even though I don't really know many songs of Michael Jackson. On the other hand, the songs that I listened to of David Bowie just made me think that they were weird. 

So, for the time being, my opinion is that David Bowie is overrated and he looked strange and his music is/was weird. It doesn't exactly fit with a genre that I can easily discern, but maybe that was the point of it? Who knows. I think I may have read somewhere that Muse have been influenced by him, but I might be misremembering and even if I'm not, it doesn't show that much in their music which is a good thing. Sure they have a number of songs about apocalyptic subject matters but at least those songs are enjoyable to listen to. 

For the final thing in this post, I will mention that one of the models I like had a picture taken of him (I think for a magazine or something) where he was made up to look like David Bowie. I wonder what he (the model) thinks of David Bowie. 

3 weeks later

(approximately; it is actually slightly less than three weeks)

3 weeks later, that encounter that I wrote a post about (which is how I know it was around 3 weeks ago) is still apparently making an impression on me. So much so that I have decided to write a handwritten note on a card regarding said incident. Incident seems like it has a bit of a negative connotation, so maybe the word 'event' or 'occasion' or 'encounter' is more apt. This note is a compliment and I am going to mail it and hopefully it will reach its intended recipient. The compliment is about the occasion (covered in the previously mentioned post) when I was walking outside of a store and a police officer walked by in the opposite direction and I looked at him and he smiled at me. And I was very pleased by that and I still am quite pleased by that even weeks after the event. So I figured that I might as well attempt to compliment this officer. A few days ago I looked at the county website for when you want to complain about the bus service, for one thing, or otherwise find out about county related things like recycling bins, for example. However it was down for maintenance so I had to wait a few days and only now did I get back to that. For bus service complaints, you can submit them via an online form and I thought that it would be the same for police officer compliments. However, it is not and apparently the way to send in a compliment must be done via the mail. There are addresses provided to mail the compliment to and that's what I'm doing. Apparently, after they received my complimentary letter I am supposed to get a letter notifying me of that. So I think that will be interesting, theoretically. Again, hopefully the compliment gets to who it's supposed to get to and hopefully he is pleased because he got a complimentary letter and perhaps it will encourage him to continue to smile at random people and perhaps those other people will also feel compelled to write in complimentary letters and so on. I think the last part is the least likely to happen because I feel like other people probably do not feel compelled to write in complimentary letters to police officers because they got smiled at by one. However that event made my day and could even possibly make my month of February, which seems quite likely, considering this post. Thankfully I made a note of this police officer's name from his name tag when I was looking at him as I walked by him. That way the compliment has a higher chance of getting to the right person instead of it being directed to some nameless police officer who happened to be at Walmart a few weeks ago. 

mtt dmns tth

Try to decipher the title!
Here is a post about (un)important issues like:

"Teeth

Roberts: He does have nice teeth.

Kimmel: I mean, they can't be real, right? They're so perfect. They're obviously something that some Hollywood witch doctor put into his head somewhere along the line, possibly on one of his jaunts to China where he disappears for six months and suddenly has a whole new look. One day he's Jason Bourne. The next day he's Liberace's fiancé.

Damon: True.

Larry Rosenthal, D.D.S., declined to respond to multiple requests for comment."

-GQ

Like a previous post on a different body part, I don't think it's a mystery why this one would be interesting to me. I decided to look up about Matt Damon and this came up. It is from a story in GQ. I just wanted to put that out there. Matt Damon I don't have a negative opinion of like I do of George Clooney, but I haven't watched as many movies of his as I have of Leonardo DiCaprio. In my hierarchy of actors I like/dislike, he's probably somewhere a little bit above Brad Pitt. Definitely above Johnny Depp because he doesn't look creepy like Johnny Depp does. And it goes without saying that he's above George Clooney.