A Toast to the Alchemists

Alchmists, you were right, it is possible. We have the proof now. There are equations.

If you could come back for a day, if you could conjure yourself into this chemistry classroom, if you could read the textbook or watch the professor writing the answers on the board…

Alchemists, you would see that you were right, even though you didn’t know about alpha and beta radiation, even though you didn’t understand isotopes, you knew it was possible, that some elements can change into other elements, that transmutation can occur.

Alchemists, there is proof now that it is possible, although each new element, having a brief half-life, would keep changing into other things.

Alchemists, you were right, you can make anything, anything, uranium, plutonium, tel- lurium, mercury, copper, cobalt, platinum, silver, and gold, you can make gold, an isotope so radioactive it would sparkle before your eyes.

Alchemists, you were right. It is magic.

Think about things you know. Think about the things that live in your head, that got encoded into your memory without being learned.

My parents will get on YouTube and look at compilations of Top 80’s Songs and sing verses of every last one. They quote SNL skits that aired 20 years ago.

People in my generation quote Vines the same way. We know jingles from infomercials we haven’t seen in over a decade. It’s been months and I still find the words humming in my head, Turtleneck and blazer, on point like a laser…

I can sing songs I never intentionally listened to. It’s going down, I’m yelling Timber tumbles through my head without me knowing where it’s from. As an adult, I looked up “apologize” on youtube because of a vivid memory of being in the dentist’s chair as a child and hearing, It’s too late to apologize, it’s too late… I have always instinctively known that Boots with the fur follows Apple bottom jeans.

I can’t hear “What do you want” without the overwhelming urge to say “I want to sing and dance!” because of a Ray Stevens song. I can’t hear “What does the fox say?” without feeling something. I dare not say “Dumb ways to die” in front of my siblings.

Did you ever sit down and intentionally memorize the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody? Were you ever a fan of Owl City or do you just know that “You would not believe your eyes” is followed by “If ten million fireflies?”

Why do mnemonics work on us? How often do you say to yourself, “Thirty days hath September” or sing the ABC’s to yourself quietly? My dad told me, “If red touches black, he’s a friend of Jack, but if red touches yellow, he can kill a fellow” and I remember it. I can count by threes without thinking about it because of a video I had in elementary school. I can sing the alphabet in Greek and in Spanish because I listened to alphabet songs for them. I still know Be, am, is, are, was, being, have, has, had, could, would, should, may, might, must, shall, can, will, do, did, does, having are almost all English “helping verbs” because of a video I watched in high school. The only reason I know anacondas are found in Ecuador is because of a CollegeHumor parody of Nicki Minaj’s song Anaconda.

Study advice tells you to make up rhymes to memorize information. Commercials have jingles and slogans and rhythmic phrases because we automatically memorize them. It’s batshit that “make a mnemonic” is standard advice for students. How is that not harder than just remembering?

You know what follows “Hey diddle diddle,” but why? You can probably name most, if not all, of Santa’s reindeer. You know what Superman can leap in a single bound whether or not you’ve ever given a shit about Superman. You know “Ring around the rosie” is followed by “Pocket full of posies.”

I posted about this a while back, but you know that song about murdering Barney that you or your siblings used to sing? That song has been sung for over 30 years. Across multiple continents. There’s a tree of variants based on the same basic theme, There’s even multiple versions in Spanish based on the Spanish Barney theme song.

Where I can’t remember poems, there are little indents in my memory where their syllables should be. But I have multiple poems memorized that I never memorized on purpose.

You have definitely heard about how The Iliad is an epic poem. Before writing, everything was passed down orally. Everything. “How on earth did they do it?” people wonder, and bitch about how technology has ruined our memories, which is hilarious, because how they did it is obvious.

We are WIRED to memorize. If something rhymes or is rhythmic, our brains are terrifyingly good at making that shit last FOREVER. We can’t make it stop. “Damn it, I can’t get this song out of my head!” we will say. I have had this happen to me after hearing a song literally once.

Rhythm, rhyme, meter, the basic components of poetic structure, are VERY fundamental to how our memory works. Somehow. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” is in trochaic meter. If it was “Teenage Mutant Samurai Turtles” it wouldn’t stick around the way it did. But if you sing it, it sticks around.

Why does this work?

Do you know anyone that never gets songs stuck in their head, that can’t remember jingles and poems and theme songs? Is there anyone you can think of that just…doesn’t have that lightbulb light up when you sing half of something they should remember? Dyslexia, aphantasia, prosopagnosia, disabilities where faculties we think of as “things brains do” are missing are pretty common, but are there humans that can’t do this?

and many people who try to make little mnemonics and jingles to make things memorable, even important things, don’t know how syllabic stress patterns work and fuck it up.

If you haven’t taken a writing class in college, you probably know about rhyme but not about rhythm and meter. This is why “poems” written by non-poets who are TRYING to create a poem will include extremely forced rhymes but the mouthfeel is off because there are forced places where the syllables are off.

Almost any good book title or name of a thing is in iambs. When people say something has a “ring” to it. It’s the Fucking Iambs

https://libcom.org/blog/work-rule-11052014

“The day after Starbucks workers met at the Bat Cave we found ourselves working an understaffed morning shift but this time it was different. Instead of feeling the normal frustration, those of us who were at the meeting exchanged knowing glances and began implementing our plan of following every rule, thereby slowing down service. We also whispered to partners who were not in the know to slow down, don’t kill yourself. It was as if everyone took a deep breath and began working at a safe and thorough pace. The effects were instant. The speed of service dropped immediately. We ran out of brewed coffee because we were only brewing when the beeper signaled it was time. Everyone stayed in the positions they were assigned and acted only at the directions of the Store Manager. Every 10 minutes when someone was assigned to clean the lobby, we did a thorough job, ensuring everything was clean and properly stocked. Every drink and food order was perfect.

It’s older then you are, it’s older then I am. The leather community is responsible for pride. Leather daddies were the ones chasing away cops when they tried to arrest us for being queer in public back when Pride Parades were illegal in the US. They are still the ones chasing away cops and corporations from smaller pride events and those that aren’t sanctioned by Wells Fargo. The leather community is essential to the queer community and has a long and rich history.

Please fuck off if you’re not going to learn the actual history of pride.

Here is a photograph from 1998, displaying the leather pride flag, the bear gay pride flag, and the rainbow flag. This is our history.

Source.

Here is a photograph from 1987: three queer women entering into the Ms. National Leather Association Contest, or simply gathering as spectators.

Source.

A flyer from 1989, rallying the leather community to march in a Stonewall anniversary protest.

Source.

A photograph from 1988: Tony Deblase, the creator of the leather pride flag, and a gay man, embracing a fellow member of the leather community. Over his shoulder is Judy Tallwing McCarthy, a Native American woman who was part of the leather community from 1959. She co-founded the first lesbian BDSM group in Portland, along with her partner, Sashie Hyatt.

Source. Source.

Just because you don’t know the history, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Be humble, and always assume you have more to learn. Hatred, and outright dismissal of communities you know nothing about, is the most aggressively anti-LGBT thing I can imagine.

Do you have any. Any idea. Any god damn clue. How kink intersects with LGBT and queer community. Queer history. Do you know why the community pushed for, and against, closing the bathhouses during the 80s? Do you know who organized awareness campaigns about HIV, even way back when it was still called GIRD. Do you know who created the safe sex pamphlets, the classes, who pushed for disclosing your health history to partners, who distributed contraceptives and condoms and dental dams at parties and meetings and baths? Do you even know where the safe sex education we have now comes from? Do you know where a bulk of the language about consent came from? Do you have any good god damn idea what the kink communities have done for us, and continue to do for us?

Don’t be so quick to sanitize your queerness and make it corporate pride daytime TV-friendly. Don’t be so quick to jump on the purity bandwagon. Don’t be so quick to speak on what your community should look like before you’ve actually learned the history of your community, and always be aware that there are things you probably don’t yet know.

These things will not protect you. They never have. And all you’re doing is isolating yourself from community, from support, from the strength we all have when we stand together in a world that would gladly pick us off one by one.

Queerness isn’t as hidden or embattled now (in some places) as it once was, but make no mistake: when our existence was illegal everywhere the people you have this knee-jerk “hide the weirdos” reaction to are the very ones who would’ve had your back against the cops and the gay-bashers.

Hey, Maybe If You Hate Something A Lot, You Should Just Not Engage With It

It’s Okay To Just Dislike Something, You Don’t Have To Make Your Loathing It Your Entire Identity

Fandom Should Be Fun But It Seems Like It’s Making You Miserable; Maybe You Should Step Away

or how about this banger: