The Daily Adventures of Mercat

My final senior capstone civil engineering design presentation was yesterday. 3 hours, 43 people, some couple-hundred (at least 250) powerpoint slides, and a seven minute video. It went, for the most part, pretty well.

However, the night before, I started freaking out. Which, to me, did not make rational sense as I had presented my slides at least six different times this semester. I knew the information. But the fact that I spent the seven hours of "sleep" in that half-awake state where you are waiting for your alarm to go off so you don't miss it, waking up every hour to freak out for 30 seconds before turning over and begging for it to subside, and giving up on trying to get any real sleep 20 minutes before my alarm was set to go off... To me, that is solid evidence that my public speaking anxiety is far beyond your average public speaking anxiety.

You take public speaking classes and they say, "oh, everybody gets nervous," and yeah, I believe it. But does everyone get uncontrollable shakes of their knees, their hands, their voice? Get dry mouth? Okay, yes, some people do. But what about shutting down into Emergency Mode when it is your turn to speak? Here is what happens (slash, happened yesterday morning). I start panicking. My stomach starts jumping, I start trying to control my breathing, even three years of drum corps can't help. I sweat and shake (and try not to bounce my knees in high heels so I'm not making noise backstage). When it is my immediate turn, I go into survival mode. My adrenaline decides it wasn't pumping high enough before and jumps off the high dive. No matter what I'm thinking about--slowing my speech, making sure I hit every bullet point of information-- my brain immediately shuts down the ability to analyze questions and focuses only on Not Presenting Any Information Wrong. If, in that instant, someone got hit by a car, I am the person you want. I jump into action and call for doctors and call 911 and try to do what I can. But public speaking? No way. And yesterday's experience was enough to let me know, as everyone in my group told me "you'll do fine!"--yes, rationally, I know that. But this is an irrational fear, and as someone once explained panic attacks to me in a similar light (or that was my experience with the one that I ever had--a zombie under your chair is NOT rational), this irrationality tells me that it is maybe not a normal level of anxiety for such a situation.

The interesting part is, I have to wonder if it's Nature or Nurture. I don't know anyone who seems to have such profusely strong reactions to public speaking as I do, but of course I could be wrong and they could just be very good at hiding it. But in fourth grade I got called out for messing up a reading in church, and in our eighth grade play the guy playing the lead antagonist decided to not memorize his lines. Which was fine and hilarious since he could ad lib pretty well, except for the part where I can't and there was a scene with just me and him and he STARED OFF INTO SPACE FOR AT LEAST A FULL MINUTE.

So, yes. There's that.

But also, I am done with engineering! (Except for passing this last tech elective and getting my paper degree.) HURRAH, on to better and brighter things.

I do have to say, my conceptual design for our convenience store was FUCKING FABULOUS and the site/civil team that decided to tell us the wrong site data so we had to rotate the building and kind of destroy the view can go fuck itself. The facade, that glass elevator, ALL MINE, BITCHES <3

I love Discovery's survival shows. I don't know if I mentioned this before but I read A TON of survival books (both fiction and non-) in gradeschool and I think that is the reason I am actually interested in zombie movies. Not because they are horror films, but because they are all about being prepared.

It probably helps that my dad is an Eagle Scout.

BUT, I digress. Bear Gryffin or whateverhisnameis (Grylls) is trying to survive on an island, and as a desperate last attempt to prevent himself from becoming dehydrated, since you can't drink seawater, he is giving himself an enema. I DID NOT KNOW THIS. And now I do.

And now you know that I mean business. =)


Also, Stan Lee is going to be on Big Bang Theory! EXCELLENT.

A good article on that ridiculous facebook color crap that was going on yesterday or Thursday or whenever. And another. I always find these things too late. I just blew it off because I felt it was pointless and attention-whorish (the message I recieved had nothing to do with awareness, it was ~just because~), and I'd have liked to know it was possibly even moreso misguided. I like staying informed of these things and doing my best to boost the signal. =/

IDK, I AM A RAGING FEMINIST I guess =/ lol

Also, Craig Ferguson bashing a Twihard. Honestly, I wouldn't hate these so much if their fanbase weren't so ~rabid~ (PUN NOT INTENDED BUT STILL HILARIOUS)



In the weird world of... well, the world, it turns out one of my high school friends knows one of my drum corps friends because they go to the same school. Which, I suppose, is exactly like Marie being Mark DeBrosse's R.A. freshman year. This time, Seibert asked how Esteban knew me. What the fuck do you know, this world is a damned small place.

Which is amazing considering how fucking large it actually is, you know? =/

So I saw Zombieland. It was hilarious and adorable and awesome but horrifyingly more gory than I expected it to be. Which, it struck me, is exactly how I would expect the zombie apocalypse to be in real life. A horrifying version of normal life.

So in the car ride home, Jon and Jerome and I started trying to determine the source of the "viral" zombie, as it seems to have come out of nowhere. The old-fashioned zombie, the one we all knew growing up, was the cursed dead back from the grave. Which I think my only exposure to was the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror III, and the fact I remembered the number off the top of my head is rather odd, considering I only remember the zombies and none of the plot. Anyway. So in the 90s zombies were still culturally the "undead", right? So, we wondered, where did these apocalyptic stories come from?

I did some research (Wikipedia) and what I can seem to determine is that though the term zombie grew out of sheer numbers into a genre, all the first zombie media had little in common. Night of the Living Dead being the first "hit", it had back-from-the-dead "ghouls" that ate human flesh. But earlier things labeled with "zombies" were straight up voodoo stories (sometimes not even dead but just bewitched and therefore mindless drones), or Lovecraftian horror films, or even alien films. Also, there is an interesting tie to Frankenstein and vampire tales, which apparently both stem from Germanic tales of the undead, which is interesting considering the precursor to the modern "virus zombie", the "undead zombie", was based off of I Am Legend (the original book)'s spread-by-disease-mutated-vampires.

So, there is a lull in zombie pop culture in the 80s except for the Asian underground film attraction to it which is interesting considering they used them as warrior army thralls, which I find fascinating considering the modern Asian army stereotype of the terra cotta army. Completely fascinating ties; zombies seem to come from so many sources, and yet, have little unifying description!

Anyway, so the modern zombies didn't seem to come about popularly until 2002 when both Resident Evil and 28 Days Later were released. Which seem to come out of NOWHERE. I can't find anything to make the jump into these apocalyptic fictions. Some zombie lit gained popularity in the 90s, but nothing outstanding that seems to have lead the way for these movies. I mean, maybe the King novel (Cell?) but I am lost as to how that led to the EXPLOSION of the "new zombie" genre.

WHICH, and here is my main point, if you asked the modern person to explain a zombie to you, it seems to me you get two descriptions: "old-fashioned quote-unquote 'slow'" zombies and "modern apocalyptic 'fast'" zombies. How can a definitive cultural icon--the fast, modern zombie--be around for only seven-ish years and SO MUCH DEFINE A GENRE? A HORROR FILM ICON? This is completely unfathomable to me, and hence, I find it fascinating.

On a completely different type of fascinating, the fact that my once and only panic attack involved zombies, before I knew what a modern zombie was, and that Becky Belknap thought I was "a weirdo" who was obsessed with zombies (this being before I knew what a modern zombie was and hence had no outstanding interest in the zombie/horror genre) simply from a comment saying "I'm so tired I feel like a zombie". This is facsinating because my whole life I have never been attached to any horror genre and I dislike gore to the extreme, but the new survivalist popularity of the genre has completely hooked me. I obsessed over survival tactics when I was little. I read My Side of the Mountain and dreamed of running away so I could live in the woods. (That is to say, day-dreamed. Very different than my actual sleep-dreaming. Of which tonight I will probably have very violent or escapist ones, though still no sign of nightmares.)

ANYWAY. On top of all that I have discovered that unique typography is completely awesome. The Ethiopian sarcasm mark is rather saddening in that it looks like the Spanish inverted exclamation point, BUT in even better news the French have a "secondary level of understanding" mark for sarcasm or irony, a backwards question mark, which is amazing. Except that sometimes I think sarcasm is best left its facade, because it separates the over-serious from those with a sense of understanding or a sense of humor.

Though the French came up with a lot of weird marks. Authority, rhetorical questions, love accents, et cetera?! Oh, you, French.

Back to cleaning up links because I have way too many tabs open, and that doesn't even include all the interesting stuff I have sitting in my Google reader.

Fighting litter one kid at a time. Good idea, hopefully it actually teaches some good lessons. =)

Derringer Cycles; someone needs to buy me one of these. Or all of them.

New explosion creates new island in the Pacific, near Tonga. That is a sweetass picture.

So bandicoots are fucking adorable.

Poor hedgehog with no spines. :C

First Lady starts garden at the White House, can I just say I am extremely excited about this? I hope it helps support another branch of a sustainable living trend.

A really good video on the Ex-Gay movement. I think the best thing is that after 30 years of creating and participating in the Exodus ex-gay movement, the creators had no successes and APOLOGIZED PUBLICLY for it. GO THEM. True scientists who did not bend the facts to their will.

The most beautiful wave shots ever. Truly beautiful. I'm pretty sure #4 is Waimeia Bay on Oahu. (I remember that tower.)

A very fascinating photo-journal of North Korea. I may have already posted this, but no matter, it is really cool.

New rainbow jellyfish! Cool beans.

Mountain Dew and Pepsi will have a throwback (with omg sugar). Hooray! I am interested to try it.

WOAH HOLY SHIT HARRISON FORD JUST SHOWED UP MY TV IN A WILDLIFE TRAFFICKING AD. That was unexpected, lol. It was like "oh cool some random dude is talking about extinction, going back to blogging nowWAITAMINUTE I KNOW THAT VOICE"

I weird myself out sometimes.

Selling Girl Scout cookies online: I'm actually against it. The troops get money from each box sold and if you're taking over some other troop's market by making it available online, that is rather unfair. Especially if you're one of those obsessive sellers who sells hundreds (or thousands) of cookies. I could never understand those girls. Do they have issues or something? Anyway.

Whew, atheists make up roughly 15% of the US population. That's nothing to scoff at. I'm just compeltely surprised by how high that number is, and I'm sure reading the article gives you an idea as to why that is.

How to survive falling through ice. I probably love survival guides too much.

Rolcats! That is, Russian lolcats.

This guy wants to retool government media, and he seems to have his shit together. We need people who know what the fuck is going on in the world of technology.

Mac OS 7 on an iPhone! I miss MacPaint :C

Retooled youtube mashups: fucking amazing.

I love visual tricks; I'm still trying to figure out what optical illusion was used here.

Irrational Geographic, a photojourney through Mardis Gras.

I love this shirt more than I should. Threadless really does have so very clever tees every so often.

Zec Efron as Prince Philip: the fuck? Sorry but that shot is just... weird. And I really hate Vanessa Hudgens. The only reason I don't hate Zefron is because he actually showed some talent outside shitty Kenny Ortega HSM crap with Hairspray and stuff. Although apparently he's not doing Footloose because he doesn't want to get typecast? Which is too bad, I guess, but hopefully they find someone else that can make musicals popular to Hollywood again. (As for the audience, particularly if you look at Disney fans, I think you'll see musicals never went out of style.)

Nite Owl I saves the Waynes? Can I just say I fucking loved that movie? Mostly for little detail reasons like this.

Okay, that's like 40 tabs, I think that's enough for now. Even though I still have 79 open to clean up...