I am a Nickname Jerk

Coble has a name. I don’t call her it. Coble’s husband has a name, the defining part of which he brought into the marriage and yet, to me, it’s Coble and Coble’s husband. Not for great feminist reasons, but because I’m a midwesterner and in my culture, when you like someone and kind of like their swagger, you call them by their last name as a term of endearment.

Unless you’re a gym teacher, then you just call everyone by their last names.

But the Professor. She introduces herself, “Hi, I’m the Professor.” Everyone calls her “The Professor.” I call her “Proffy.” And I cringe when I do it, but I still can’t break myself of it.

Tonight, I found out that the Butcher, who I have obviously known since he was a suckling babe, whose pee I failed to wipe off the ceiling when we were both children, who my other brother and I wanted to name Bubbles when we thought he was going to be a girl, would much rather be called by his full name. Basically, he would like to be The Butcheropolis… No, that’s not long enough to give you the flavor of what he wants, because “the Butcher” is longer than his actual name. If we’re keeping it proportional, he would rather be called The Mega Monster Butcheropolisapocalypse, which is how he introduces himself, and then everyone proceeds to call him “The Butcher.”

I never knew this. But my insistence on calling him “The Butcher” has, apparently, contributed to an atmosphere where no one seriously ever calls him The Mega Monster Butcheropolisapocalypse. And I feel bad about that.

But not bad enough that I’m going to be able to break myself of it.

One Eye and No Better View of Fate

I finally decided today, upon coming back to work after being out of the office since Thursday noon, that there’s something not quite right with my right eye. I don’t know if it’s my contact or my eye or what, but it’s not working.

The thing I find most intriguing, though, and I can’t stop fucking with it, is that, when I look out of both eyes, I have the sense that something isn’t right. I don’t know how to explain it. I feel like something’s wrong, but everything looks fine.

But here I am, my normal distance away from my computer and when I shut my right eye, I can see the screen fine, though maybe the letters look a little thin. When I shut my left eye, things are blurry, some things are slightly doubled, and I can actually start to see the blackness in my shared field of vision, I actually notice what my left I would normally see. I don’t really see this with my left eye. It isn’t missing the contribution of my right.

But what really freaks me out is that, say I’m sitting here, as I am, facing forward. When I shut my left eye, I can see that things in my peripheral vision to the right are blurry, as they are, because my right eye is fucked. But when my left eye is open, they are not. Same with this text. I can see–left eye clear; right eye strange blurry mess; both eyes open, fine.

Which means part of why I’m off-kilter is that I somehow am aware of how much my brain is just making shit up. Somehow, my brain is showing me a clear world, and also somehow signalling me that something is amiss with my vision, which causes me to frequently wink to convince myself, yep, something’s fucked.

It’s amazing. My brain is hell-bent on showing me what I expect to see–clarity.

It’s sometimes a little scary to realize how illusory our perceptions are. I mean, I can prove to myself I’m not seeing what I know I’m seeing, but I’m still seeing it. I see clearly out of both eyes, even though I don’t.

Anyway, I’m hoping she can just clean this lens and give me some drops or something and we’ll be good as new. But I’m worried that my eye is producing toxic sludge that eats contacts, which is really just a step down from needing blood in order to grow another pair of legs.

White People Jokes

I make ’em, both because I think they’re funny and there is such a thing as white culture (or cultures), other than just being “default” American culture, and the only way to bring that into focus (other than just letting the racists define what white culture is) is to articulate it.

Anyway, go laugh over at Pith. Or don’t laugh if you don’t find it funny. Either way.