Best New Word of 2010

The year's not over quite yet, but I think we've got our winner. Ready?

RETROSEXUAL (n.) a man who adopts a traditional masculine style in dress and manners.
Antonym: Metrosexual (n.) a usually urban heterosexual male given to fastidious grooming, beauty treatments, and fashionable clothes.

This is genius. As a woman who would much rather look like Mad Men's Joan Harris than Jenna Jameson, the only (obvious) improvement would be to expand this definition to members of both genders.

Perhaps we could expand this to behaviors as well? I don't care about your car or your phone or your iPad, but I'd swoon if you held the door for me, or stood when I entered the room.

Here's to ladies and gentlemen!

Utúvienyes!

Facebook's new profile format emphasizes your multilingualism and a number of fiction's best constructed languages are legit options in their drop-down menu. So far, you can flaunt your fluency in:

• Klingon (Star Trek)
• Na'vi (Avatar)
• Esperanto (various)
• Newspeak (1984)
• Nadsat (A Clockwork Orange)
• Sindarin, Quenya, Westron, Khuzdul, and the Black Speech (Lord of the Rings)

Still missing:

• Huttese (Star Wars)
• Orth, Qwghlmian (Neal Stephenson various)
• Fremen, Gallach (Dune)
• High D'Haran (Sword of Truth)
• Parseltongue (Harry Potter)
• Dothraki (Song of Ice and Fire)
• ...many I've forgotten, I'm sure.

It's just another way to let your geek flag fly. For personal enjoyment, you can also change your Facebook display language to Pirate (avast!).

BSG @ SFM

Science Fiction Museum! Battlestar Galactica exhibit! Days later, I'm still nerding out.

If you're in the Seattle area and looking for fun things to do while it pours for the next six months, I highly recommend this. It's like Mecca for sci-fi geeks: first editions, props, costumes, screenplays, scale models, historical context... it's all there. The real danger is not finding your favorites in SFM's wealth of memorabilia (Dune, anyone?).

While I hardly need additional incentive to spend a rainy day in Nerdland, the newest exhibit showcases Battlestar Galactica, a '70s reboot that ran between 2003 and 2009. This exhibit is a treat for BSG enthusiasts, but a bit tepid for casual fans (frak!). The realism of the newer BSG universe, one of the show's greatest strengths, makes for a shallow exhibit. No hallmark, futuristic weaponry; no intricate prosthetics; and no furry, animatronic sidekicks here! The real gems are the life-size fighters (BSG is at its best when re-imagining exactly what we have now just a century into the future). The few contributions from the '70s series seem downright childish in comparison.

So, by all means, go to EMP|SFM—just don't go there to see only this exhibit. So say we all!

Chary

CHARY (adj.) - discreetly cautious: as
a: hesitant and vigilant about dangers and risks
b: slow to grant, accept, or expend <e.g. "a person very chary of compliments">
(pronounced like "cherry"... now go use it!)

Oh, how I love Saturdays! Time for all the things I'm too tired to do when I have work the next day: blogging, bodhrán practice, feats of culinary excellence...

...and dating. If I'm done with gym and chores (or not) Saturdays are also for adventures of a romantic nature. Sometimes dating feels like going adventuring, sometimes it feels like making war. Lately, dating has actually been enjoyable because I started officially seeing one person in particular about two months ago. I can't think of a witty alias for him at the moment, but I'm sure to mention him again.

The other day, one of my favorite blogs, Seraphic Singles, suggested "If you really love a woman, ask her to marry you within a year." and this stopped me cold. A year? It seems so... short. It seems like such a finite period of time to discern if someone is the One. The one I spend the rest of my life with, have children with, grow old with. I don't know that I could come to such a decision within a year. I'd be surprised if any of my ex's had.

And, in some ways, I'm glad for that. If my first big ex had proposed after a year, I would have said "yes" and we would be miserable and divorced by now. If my second big ex had proposed after a year, I would have said "yes" and we'd be miserable by now. First big ex and I dated (off and on) for six years, second big ex for just over two years.

Mom would say this is because my "picker's broken". I would say that my being chary makes it difficult to know someone well enough for that kind of decision. And if the person I'm dating is also chary... it takes a while. At this point, I wouldn't trust myself or another to make that decision after just one year. Maybe that's because I haven't spent a year with the right person? Or maybe I shouldn't be worrying about this only two (official) months in!?

Empathy

EMPATHY (n.) - the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and/or vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and/or experience of another without having those feelings, thoughts, and experience explicitly communicated; also : the capacity for this

Perhaps an odd subject for a holiday associated with "tough", and "hard", and "dark", but today I was reminded of the importance of empathy. It is empathy that enables us to show compassion to others, that allows us to anticipate the needs of those important to us, that helps us communicate our love and friendship.

Utter crap, you say? Let me put it this way, would something be lost from the gesture if you had to ask someone to open a door for you? To bring you flowers? To say "I love you"? Unless you are one of those gifted people who spontaneously do (the exactly right) things for others, empathy is key.

There's a person in my life lacking in empathy. Noticeably, consistently, painfully lacking in empathy. I've known this for ages and I also know that they're fabulous otherwise. It's just that the empathy-lack crops up in unexpected places, or with astonishing severity, and knocks me on my butt.

And that pisses me off. Today I was inwardly stewing over their empathy-lack and the unfairness of it, the predictable, unchanging nature of it. But after I stewed a bit, I realized this must be harder on them than it is on me. Imagine going through life pissing people off and not knowing how you did it?

So, next time, I'm going to borrow a sentiment from one of my favorite bloggers and inwardly repeat "God bless their little heart" until I'm no longer upset. Or I fall asleep (whichever).

Shameless Plug

I promise not to make a habit of it, but sometimes something is too wonderful, too enjoyable not be endorsed in a public forum.

Given the number of times The Oatmeal has reduced me to tears and/or snorting, I feel obligated to shout his genius from the mountaintops. The offbeat examples and poignant visuals should be mandatory daily viewing; the grammar-related comics make me want to have his babies. Or—if The Oatmeal is reading this—I want us to ride off into the sunset on grizzly bears towing party gorillas that know how to use semicolons. Or em dashes (either will do).

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_changes

"We have found a witch. May we burn her?"

"I'm not a witch, I'm not a witch!"
"Er, but, you are dressed as one."
"THEY dressed me up like this."
"No! Nooo! We didn't! We didn't!"
"And this isn't my nose, it's a false one!"
"Well... we did do the nose." Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail

As soon as I sent out the previous post, I realized I hadn't addressed one of my blog's possible associations. No, I am not a witch. I am not in a cult or a coven, and I won't be posting things of that nature. I'm a practicing Catholic, actually.

Also, I do know that the proper spelling is "Morgan le Fay" (so please don't comment endlessly on this). I'm more "fey" than "fay" and that's that.

So why involve her at all? Because Morgan le Fay is a wonderful badass, and a great feminist study. She wasn't really a villain until the French got hold of the Arthur legends. Mordred is the son of her sister Morgause in the earlier versions, and in some versions, she even nurses Arthur back to health on Avalon. However they differ, most agree that Morgan Le Fay is powerful, accomplished, and a worthy adversary for Team Merlin-Arthur. She's so much more interesting than Guinevere! She's also had a couple comic book appearances and that thrills my little nerd soul.

Plus, I bet you'd recognize her before Morrigan, the Celtic goddess of battle, fertility, and cats. So there!