Day Six of the Old-Year Kicking Party: Something New Every Day!

[capri0mni]

Day Five: If you could invent a holiday ...?

Day Four: Our Pride and Joys

Day Three: My attempt at Party Games for this medium

Day Two: Snacks and treats

Day One: Favorite Things

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So: Here's a thing to celebrate and talk about today: What is something you learned in 2018?

You don't have to answer these questions, exactly... You can treat them as prompts:

1) What did you learn about yourself (that you are willing to share)?

2) What new thing (to you) did you learn about the world?

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1-a) I continued to connect the dots on my asexual-aromantic orientation, especially after I went into the hospital for bronchitis in August [Aside: fun times /sarcasm], and came into contact with well-meaning strangers (Nurses' assistants, mostly) who would happen to make small talk on the subject of flirty things, and I realized my reaction was a deep, and instantaneous, DO NOT WANT. This could also fit under: "What did you learn about the world?" because it made me realize just how deeply ingrained the assumption of sexual and romantic attraction is, in our culture -- it's not just the cherry on top, but the vanilla ice cream in the sundae -- and I realized just how much my aro/ace orientation puts me at odds with the culture I grew up in.

1-b) Looking back on my life, I realized that although I've never been in romantic or sexual love with anyone, I have fallen in love with several people throughout my life, starting in adolescence: on an empathetic and intellectual level. Why yes, Virginia, it is possible to fall in love and not even know, if you don't have the language to talk about it.

2) This may be extra relevant this year, since Koko the Gorilla died.

But, thanks to an episode of a Nova miniseries on PBS, this spring, I learned that scientists are no longer focused on trying to teach our fellow apes some version of human language (either an adapted sign language, or a human-invented graphic symbol system, Because, after studying them in the wild, human scientists are realizing that chimps and other apes have languages of their own. \o/ Can we party down to that, now! Can I hear a Hallelujah from the choir? Here's the trailer for that episode, on YouTube

Comments

[scarfman]

I'm not having answers come to me for day 5 or day 6, so I'm going back to two day 1 questions I haven't addressed yet:

3) Right now and for a few years so far, my favorite holiday tunes are Carol of the Bells and Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. The tracks on my Christmas USB for the car have two or three versions of each, out of eight tracks total. Though of course to this Peanuts fan nothing matches the emotional wallop of Guaraldi's O Tannenbaum.

5) Doctor Who is always my favorite, but even including that Black Panther is the only screen story from 2018 I've yet to watch three times.

Okay then, here's another holiday present for you.

[capri0mni]

This is one of the YouTubers I found though clicking on a recommendation embedded in another video. This guy is a one man barbershop quartet: singing and videotaping all parts individually and editing them together. Not only his singing, but also his acting, is quite impressive: Carol of the Bells

Also, the melody for Carol of the the Bells is actually from a Ukrainian New Year's song. And since I'm planning on making a music post for today's continuation, I might post the original (though the Orthodox New Year isn't until January 14 by our calendar, so you have a little while yet, before the song becomes outdated for the year. ;-)

Re: Okay then, here's another holiday present for you.

[scarfman]

That's pretty cool. ...Cute how in each panel he keeps looking to the side as if to his fellow singers.

Re: Okay then, here's another holiday present for you.

[capri0mni]

Yes. He harmonizes with himself very well.

BTW, here's the video, from Acapellascience (Where he was a collaborator) that I discovered him: Whole New Worlds: An Aladdin History of Exoplanets | A Capella Science, Trudbol, SamRobson, Gia Mora

(This one brought out the proverbial tissues, for me...)