The Electoral College and Trump, post-election

My fondness for John Oliver has only grown with the Trump election, which has also helped me really get into Stephen Colbert. I say this because both of them have very eloquent evening shows where they express roughly where I stand on the election results, but far better than I could, so I shan't be repeating them.

What I'd like to talk about is some thoughts I had recently after coming across a petition urging the Electoral Congress to reject Trump as the president elect (as is their right to do).

Firstly, I didn't sign it, despite my feelings about Trump.

I'm not going to make any apologies for him; I think he's only gone down in my estimation as his campaign has progressed. One good argument I thought of and heard for not signing that petition is the fact I'm not a US citizen or resident in any way. (I have no objection to other people who aren't either of those signing it as a country's president affects more than its own citizens, but it is a reason which can be enough for some.)

What I'd like to talk about is my reason for not signing the petition. Namely, I worry that the Electoral College overturning the election results at this point would be far more catastrophic for the USA and, likely, the world, than them upholding them. And yes, I say that as someone who never even wanted to imagine Trump being a Republican nominee, let alone anything more.

But, as many people have pointed out, the election results highlight a significant divide in the US population. And while I'm pretty confident which side of the divide I would sit in, were I a voter, I'm also pretty confident that so are a huge percentage of the actual voters on both sides. I obviously disagree with half of them, but that is equally clearly not sufficient to change their minds (why would it be?!).

My worry is that, should the Electoral College exercise their right now to decline Trump as the president elect (for one of the many valid reasons they could cite from his populist rhetoric, complete lack of relevant experience or knowledge, terrifying conflicts of interest, stubborn unwillingness to follow established rules and protocol for his role, etc.), that will only inflame that divide.

And this is another reason I am very angry with Donald Trump and his campaign as he basically ensured that this would be the case. Had he won the popular vote, but not the election, I expect the USA would've had to deal with riots, violence and even more hate crime than the post-election surge or the peaceful protests they actually had. But I think it would've died down soon enough, it would have been manageable, if hard. Now, however, if all of those same angry, disenfranchised-feeling people are told that "yes, they may have won the election, but the politicians up top are going to go against their vote", I worry the damage will just be too much. And even if that damage somehow, miraculously, remains entirely on US soil... Even if all it does is collapse it from the inside... There is no such thing these days as a standalone state. And I do believe the implosion and collapse of the USA will hurt everyone.

So when I see articles like this one:

Electoral College must reject Trump unless he sells his business, top lawyers for Bush and Obama say

I keep being torn between "Yeah, I'd love that, I'm so glad there's such a solid reason!" and "Crap, I think that will actually do more damage than good."

The Sound of Altos

In high school, I joined the school choir. In my first year, we had over a dozen sopranos, so I (I think a mezzosoprano?) got made one of the three (myself included) altos. For the longest time I really struggled - not as much because I couldn't sing a tune (though I'm sure my conductor could tell you many an embarrassing tale), but because I found it really hard to hear the melody, but sing the harmony.

I never actually got better at that. I developed a coping strategy that actually worked out best for everyone, which was simply to sing loud enough to not hear the sopranos. It wasn't blatant to the audience I don't think (I hope...), but it meant I could focus on my part and our conductor had a little bit less of a discrepancy in the sopranos overshadowing us. It can't have been too bad as I only continued being encouraged as we got a few more altos the following year.

I have a version of The Sound of Silence on my phone, an MP3 that has followed me from a desktop computer in another country. And it has the two parts separated by channel: tenor in the left ear, bass in the right. For years now, I've been studying the bass part of this song, intermittently, whenever it comes on. I always sing along with that one, hum that one, listen to that one.

I think I've almost got it :)

Spoiler free review of The Martian

I attended a Cineworld Unlimited screening of The Martian last night, having recently inhaled the book and thought I'd share my thoughts with anyone considering whether to go see it. The review will be spoiler free, for both book and movie.

Exercise

For a while, what seems like an age ago now, I did a chunk of cardio. Not a lot by fit people standards, but there was a high school girl inside me who cried at the thought of running 300 metres who was immensely proud I could run for 30 minutes at 8km/h. That was only at the end, of course, after completing C25K at a slower speed than was really intended, as my goal had been increased fitness and endurance rather than specifically running 5km. I never got what some refer to as an "endorphin high" (a rush after doing exercise), but I did really enjoy feeling less challenged by some of my more active hobbies and, combined with some healthy dieting, the effects it had had on my figure.

Then I switched to a different form of exercise (more fun, but also more challenging) and I ran a LARP event, organised a wedding, organised a lot of exciting paperwork that required a visit abroad, organised another LARP event and suddenly realised I was massively unfit again and no longer attending my fitness class due to the challenge it now posed, particularly with my decreased fitness levels.

So I attended my first visit back to the gym and started C25K over again. I decided to always run at 10km/h this time around, even if it involved redoing more weeks as I'm not on any kind of timeline and I found it hard to speed up last time. It was hard, my feet went numb, but it worked and I was okay. Exhausted, but okay.

---

At that same time, I was struggling with my mood.

I was having more and more bad days, one after another, and it became apparent to me that I had been blaming a long succession of short term, temporary factors for something that was clearly not incidental.

I worried because I know (as much as someone who hasn't experienced it first hand, anyway) how hard depression is. How hard it is to face needing help; how hard it is to push for that help against ignorance and prejudice; how hard it is to cope with the fact that there is no magic trick to "fix" it all, that it will likely get worse before it gets better... I pictured myself trying to make time for therapy, while still making time to see the people I like, do the things I like and have time to myself, all of which I desperately need to stay okay, and I winced. I pictured going through medication with all sorts of exciting side effects from weight gain, to having an upset stomach, to struggling to stand and walk, to insomnia and vivid dreams, and I winced again. And all of this was assuming I didn't get any worse, because depression can do some really awful things to people. (Of course, without seeking help, I had no idea if that was even applicable to me. It's hard to balance not devaluing the term with not disregarding what I was experiencing and recognising the fact the two may or may not overlap. Feedback welcome.)

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A couple of days after my first gym visit, I was having a hard day. This wasn't news; most days were hard by then. My husband who's also my gym mate had had a bad day, too, and I suggested we skip because running is hard when you'd rather curl up in a corner. He insisted we go regardless and... I realised something.

After I came out of that run, I was exhausted. I was still quite unfit and I was working my way through the program. But I realised that things now felt... okay. Like things could be funny again. Like I smelled and ached, but a hot shower, some dinner and my sofa would be enough to make for a fantastic evening.

I realised my brain hadn't been needling me for over half an hour as I couldn't afford to think about anything much more complicated than "Run. Breathe." while running just yet. And I could recall the kinds of things it would say, but it seemed quite happy to sit quietly in a corner if I didn't bother it. The things it would say seemed less real now, too.

It wasn't a "rush" and it wasn't a "high", but something had definitely messed with my brain, in a good way.

---

Cardio is not a cure for depression; cardio is not a cure for anything other than bad cardiovascular fitness. But all those things doctors say about how, if you're feeling a bit crap, you should try some exercise? Turns out, they know they're stuff.

And yes, it's still hard to actually get started and you won't be jumping off walls when you're done - hell, I can't even promise it will do anything for you. But today, I treat cardio as my own personal, positive-side-effect-only medication/therapy combo. It eats some of my free time, but it's not that much and I do get increased cardio fitness out of it as well, so it's not that bad a deal. And... it's been good for me.

LARP 2014-2015

This post is rather heavy despite a cheery beginning. If you're having a tough day, maybe leave the tab open for another time or bookmark it or set a reminder... It also discusses mental wellbeing, if that affects your decision in any way.

Miss Saigon

This past weekend, along with a handful of friends, I attended my second ever musical (well... more on that shortly). We saw a matinée performance of Miss Saigon, a show at least a couple of my friends have unequivocally labelled as a favourite. (I will not include spoilers in this review, though I will reference the mood/genre of the piece.)

Miss Saigon is considered a musical, though the phrase "technically an operetta" came up in our discussion of it. After some time on Wikipedia, I'm willing to retract my support for that statement, but not the intent behind it: like, say, Repo or Les Mis, Miss Saigon is entirely sung (excluding dramatic spoken lines, which clearly formed part of songs). Musicals like Wicked also feature an amount of play-like, spoken word expository scenes, augmented by song (and occasionally dance) numbers. Miss Saigon, while it had the kind of involved choreography that seems typical for musicals over operettas (and probably lacked many performers with operatic singing backgrounds, though I'm only guessing inexpertly here), was entirely composed of sung scenes.

I will admit at this stage my significant preference for musicals with unsung exposition. I don't feel they are in any way superior, but I am personally more fond of them. I feel like they give me a better insight into the characters, let me see more depth and story, compared to the medium of song, but that may be due to my limited perception of song. This almost certainly factored into my final opinion, which can mostly be summarised as "unimpressed". The piece is meant to portray a tragic love story and I just didn't feel involved enough with the characters to care enough (my inbuilt excess of cynicism probably didn't help overmuch).

Obviously, this is the only time I've seen this show, but a couple of things have made me wonder if perhaps my issues here are not with the source material (or at least not entirely). The vast majority of the show and character did in fact seem to be part of a tragic love story production. Unlike some of the friends I attended with, I thought the performances of what I would consider the lead roles in the story were quite good (maybe not mindblowing, but certainly beautiful and carrying across the right emotion - perhaps my threshold is lower). That kind of mood, however, is fragile, much like horror in a tabletop setting: all it takes is one person laughing to break the mood and remind everyone they're sitting in a room rolling dice and being silly. Most of the characters, most of the music/dance numbers supported this: even the bordello scene at the beginning, which by necessity had to be cheerful had an undercurrent of despair only fortified by "Movie in my Mind". The Engineer, however, seemed to have other ideas. He was a character that seemed to have been plucked from a satirical, humorous musical and plopped in here, in the midst of strife and heartwrenching decisions. (I'm looking at you, "If You Want to Die in Bed" and "The American Dream".)

And the thing is... I can see those songs having that undercurrent of despair, that feeling of laughing to stop yourself from crying and falling apart, the defense mechanism from insanity... But this Engineer didn't bring that to them, for me. And worse yet, I don't think I was the only one to focus on him (and the mood he brought) over the rest. A few of my companions picked him out as the highlight of the show and, in the final applause order, he was last, over all the participants in the tragic love story that was supposedly central to the plot.

So... yeah. He was fun and I'll probably still hum "If You Want to Die in Bed" today because it's catchy, but I think its rendition (and the character's as a whole) may have heavily impacted the perceived quality of the musical as a whole, at least for me.

Still... I'm not sure I would see it again to check that theory.

Survivor syndrome

The UK (which I live in) recently had a general election.

I am aware I live in a small and biased corner of it, but I was genuinely surprised when they elected a conservative government. As in... actually unsettled and taken aback. I was very off-kilter that Friday, completely... confused, I guess.

I have this little echo chamber, you see, and I'm aware it's there, but apparently not as keenly as I thought.

Sexism and misogyny are bad in my echo chamber, as is poverty and people who try to cut support to vulnerable people (poor, ill, what have you). Mental health is real, and MH prejudice is bollocks. Prejudice based on sexual orientation is practically absurd and open relationships are a valid life choice.

It's a good corner. I like it.
I mean, sort of.

The whole point of an "echo chamber" is that the real world remains the same. It's still full of prejudice against all of those things, including a handful which I personally am. So, when I interact with the world at large, I should have my expectations challenged and reset, right?

I don't really. It's starting to get a bit survivor syndrome here...
I've had one instance of being treated differently for my sexual orientation (though I haven't dated people who don't identify as male that much, to be fair). I've had... very little sexism thrown my way. The last time anyone made any sort of unwelcome suggestive comments was... maybe a decade ago, in another country? I can think of two instances of anyone ever not respecting my space.

I mean... I'm grateful... But it makes it a tiny bit confusing when I fight for specifics (wolf whistling is bad, yo) within causes I truly believe in (feminism, because equality is the best).

What am I doing wrong? Or is it right?