hashing

I was just watching a YouTube video of a bunch of guys dancing around in their underwear and what appear to be army-surplus cargo vests, and realized that they were probably hoping to hit it big as the next Internet celebrities or, at the very least, yet another particularly annoying meme.

That reminded me of an overarching ambition once suffered by a friend of mine, which generally involved an easy road to fame and fortune by putting me on there. I managed to talk him out of it by reminding him once again what it was like to listen to me talk. And talk. And talk. And talk. Add in to that the fact that I'm not at all photo- or telegenic, and you've got the makings of an Internet celebrity--but not the good kind.

His idea involved putting me in front of a webcam, giving me a topic, and turning me loose. For some reason, I feel as though these days, I have a lot to say that might be better communicated through a few hours of verbal rambling rather than through a blog post, but A) I have no camera; and B) I have shame. I am therefore probably going to start speaking out loud right now and doing my best to transcribe what I say verbatim.

Okay, so, um, hi. [giggles] My name is Jim and, uh, welcome! To, uh...whatever the hell this is. [giggle] I just kind of figured I might as well, you know, uh, like start sharing my thoughts with, you know, you-all. So, here I am! Heh. Heh.

So, heh, okay. See, I've been thinking a lot lately about stuff. And, uh, this is more or less, uh, typical. There's a big old presidential 'lection goin' on and, uh, also we have like a bunch of hurricanes going on. Or, well, okay, not so much hurricanes as a lot of tropical disturbances, and obviously, uh, I live in Florida, I don't think I told you that yet, so you know, clearly it's kind of important that I pay attention to, uh, hurricanes. Tropical disturbances, yeah. And of course, you know, right around this time a-year, you get to be sort of an expert, you know, in hurricane tracking and, uh, storm forecasting and stuff like that. You learn about the various models that they use to predict the behavior of these massive, massive systems which incorporate a lot of chaos and stuff. They're very chaotic systems. And, you know, as I go along and watch all these storms form and spin off on their various tracks, uh... [pause] ...well, you get to thinking--or, well, I get to thinking at least, I do that kind of thing from time to time. I don't know if you do, but I do.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, the, uh, the presidential election. So obviously, there's a whole lotta uncertainty type thing, uh, goin' on there. There's a big giant sort of industry that's built on, you know, predicting the behavior of a huge mass of voters, which I find interesting because, like, the poll results--and that, that's what, you know, what I mean by the whole predicting-voters thing--anyway, poll results tend to be very homogeneous representations of very heterogeneous groups of people, so, you know, they're just numbers that, you know, like--they, they, they seem to assume this-this sort of behavior can be, you know, quantified with very little context. I've been wondering if, you know, like maybe, like, that's why they don't work as well as they, like...should? So obviously this is, uh, kind of, uh, kind of problematic.

What has this got to do with, uh, hurricanes? Well. [pause] See, the thing is that I keep wondering about whether one method could somehow be applied to the other. I, I know that that doesn't sound very, uh, kosher. The most obvious reason, really, would be that, you know, hurricanes are discrete events, like, you know when one is happening when it's happening and you can look at the weather and go, okay well the, you know, the outflow from this system here is affecting this system here, and there's all this shear over here and the convection is all exposed and stuff so this thing here will probably happen. You really can't, you know, say that about human-directed events, because those sort of have a really fucking, you know, irritating tendency to require, you know, uh, sort of, uh, historical perspective as well as, uh, some very deep study of not only that, that event but also, you know, the events leading up to and affecting it. They're like hurricanes in that way, you know, they don't really occur in isolation at all, but, uh, wait. Oh, right. So human events aren't quite as simple to, uh, point out that this is a, uh, a seminal moment in history when really, you know, five or ten or fifty years from now, you know, nobody might give so much of a shit about it. Obviously, there are exceptions, but, uh...well, like Pepsi Clear or Crystal Pepsi or whatever the fuck that thing was, people thought it was gonna be basically a new, you know, totally new paradigm in, in, well, in soft drinks, but, uh, I think we all know, you know, what happened to that.

So basically... [pause] Like...the defining characteristic held in common by hurricanes and human societies is, uh, is-are-is, is, uh, is that--that they're both unpredictable in a very fundamental respect. They're heavily contextual, understanding the single event itself really, you know, depends on understanding all the millions of tiny little factors and hundreds of big assed factors that go into bringing them about.

So, the point, the point that I was trying to basically make was, was that although y-yes, superficially both phenomena--that is to say, you know, uh, th-the-the, uh, the, th-th-both-both phenomena being hurricanes--or at least big tropical storm systems, yeah--and, uh, human events in general--both of these phenomena would seem to be, you know, apples and oranges. One's discrete and easily measured and pointed out, the other's totally messy and sloppy and kind of, just, uh, you know, just kind of, uh, gross. Yeah. Also, uh, arbitrary. One of the more interesting things about history is a lot of it is a matter of, uh, interpretation. You know, there's, this, this historian who said Henry VIII was a, uh, a genius for establishing the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the-the C of E while another historian is all, you know, ew he was drunk and fat and yucky and selfish and caused a lot of, you know, damage to the English people by, uh, decoupling them from the Roman Catholic Church and a, uh, a central ecclesiastical authority, which, I guess, could be argued by yet another historian as being a good thing for, uh, England for, uh, wholly different reasons than the first.

I don't actually know if that's actually a, you know, an actual debate going on or anything like that. It's straight from my, uh, my ass, fresh, hot, and steaming, uh, for you. [giggles]

So, uh... [pause] So human history, I guess, could be said to be, you know, a large piece of, uh, like, arbitrariness. Although there certainly seems to be, uh, a consensus on the, the delineation of, of historical eras, that just mostly strikes me as, you know, a, uh, I guess, uh, you could call it like a mnemonic device? That's the impression that comes across sometimes, in like history class, when you're taught about this Age and that Age and the other Age, you come to think of human history as being an, an orderly, linear process from one clearly-defined period to the next when that's not at all the case. It's just a, a sort of way of, uh, classifying groups of, uh, contemporaneous related events in ways that make it easier to remember. Like, like we know the Stone Age has, has nothing to do with the Information Age, right? They're-they're separated by thousands of years, and, uh, you know, we all know they're not, like, side-by-side, temp-temp-historically speaking, but, uh, why, why not? A lot of our tech really, really, it really does, uh, depend a lot on the, the silicon and stuff, which is the, uh, the primary component of most stones if I, if I remember correctly. Or the, the Copper Age and you look at all our wires and stuff and a lot of those are made of copper. So really those, those periods of human history are not, in my head at least, it's kind of weird, they aren't at all that separate, in my head. There's sort of a linkage kind of thing happening there, uh, for me.

So that's where it seems to, uh, seems to fall down, I guess. You can tell one hurricane from another, but at a fundamental level, events in history aren't so easy to distinguish.

And then, uh, you know, uh, no, I have to backtrack on that one, because, obviously, you know, the more I think about it, and that's really, really, it's, uh, that's kind of, uh, the point of this whole, whole thing you're watching here is that I'm just thinking out loud and just sort of going on and on. But, uh, anyway, uh, so, you know, it's kind of interesting how, uh...No, right.

Well, uh, hmm. I guess what I am, at the middle of it all, uh, I guess, umm, is would it really be all that, you know, difficult applying forecast modeling principles to human history in order to, uh, predict where things may be going in the end? The interesting thing is that a lot of model-based forecasts really rely on, you know, past experiences. Like, hurricane forecasts tend to, uh, take previous instances of hurricanes that, uh, show similar behavior under somewhat similar circumstances, and then not only do they, uh, they-they take that, they also look at other pertinent, uh, well, uh, permin--per--meteorological phenomena--like high-pressure ridges or upper-atmosphere shearing--that have shown to have had, uh, uh, specific effects on a hurricane before and, and they take those things into account as well as those previous, these prior hurricanes that were similar and they combine it all into, uh, well, I guess, uh, you could say they sort of, uh, average it out into sort of an, uh, a, uh, a, a best-fit line that, that they think falls right into the middle of the, uh, the zone of probability as far as the potential, the hurricane's potential behavior is concerned.

So, why can't we do that to human history, you know? That's what I'm wondering. The, uh, the obvious answer to that question, I guess, would probably be that it's, uh, it's not like specific events keep repeating themselves predictably so that we can take the baseline and apply the, the various permutations dictated by the course of ancillary events while knowing that the basic phenomenon is one that's definitely occurred before and will occur again, like the essential hurricane. There is no, really, no, no "essential" human event.

Or, uh, or isn't there? Heh, uh. Perhaps--maybe--perhaps, perhaps events can be, be boiled down to the, uh, well, uh, I guess, uh, you could call it the, uh, the lowest common denominators? Like, uh, this category concerns politically significant marriages like John and Cindy McCain and that category concerns territorial conflict like Russia and Georgia and this category concerns resource depletion like, uh, like depending on foreign oil, and that category concerns, uh, eruptions of religious belief of one kind or another, like, uh, like, like the, uh, the evangelicals, and, uh, this category concerns the, the impetus for local or global hegemony of some kind and, you know, stuff like that. So much, though, so, so, depends on, uh, individual human interaction, though, so, so that in turn depends on various aspects of human personality, which sort of, uh, wrinkles up the issue a bit. But the truth is, although we, uh, we do seem to place a premium on being individuals and that although, that, that is true on a certain level--the, the combination of events over the course of individual lives can never be precisely duplicated among each other, between, uh, between each life--there do seem to be, uh, does seem to be a certain amount of similarity in, uh, personality aspects. We see this in various psychological tests and, and things like that, and there's like a whole industry based on the whole idea that, uh, people are essentially the same with minor variations.

Just as, you know, hurricanes are essentially the same with minor variations. So, uh, if-if we take that understanding of the basic nature of personality and, uh, uh, find some way to take that to a larger level, of treating humanity as a whole, or, or at least just, you know, just the United States in the case of this year's election, as a single, a single orga-organism of some sort that behaves according to fixed, fund-uh, fund-uh, well, fixed rules depending on the context for each one of its, uh, its constituent parts, it doesn't seem to be too, uh, far-fetched to contemplate the future within a cone of possibility.

You know?

clouds and food prices

On top of the parking garage today, I did something I'd never done before.

I lay down in the bed of my pickup truck and watched the sky. It was blue. As usual. There's always been something about the color of the sky for me that probably has affected every other human being who's trodden this planet. It's blue.

There was a large fish-shaped congerie of cloud making its way to the east, looking somewhat stormy. As I lay there, half the sky was covered with the mass's fluffy white outriders, the other half flawless except for the golden gradient where it shaded into the sun, which was blocked by the cab, throwing my eyes into shadow. As I watched, the whiteness congealed into an almost-fractal crystalline shape, evoking the glory of the Julia Set. Just as I was pondering the complexity of n-dimensional iteration, a large military transport plane with four buzzing propellers flew over, and my thoughts turned to matters of fate.

I am admittedly and unabashedly solipsistic. It is, in the end, all about me. Each time I hear about some fresh disaster which has befallen someone--a plane crash (one of the many occurring these days), a bridge collapse, whatever--I imagine it happening to me, and marvel at the many small occurrences which could have let me to that particular juncture. As I drive, I cross several bridges, and I think that at any moment, a too-large boat could pass under the bridge I happen to be on, ripping away a key segment just as I'm crossing it, and away I go. All the things that have led up to that moment--leaving work five minutes earlier than planned, the stop for gas at a slowly malfunctioning pump, a red light that changed just a second too late to catch me--would, it would seem, have very deliberately and specifically directed me to that point in time at which I would fall victim to catastrophe. As though it all happened for the single purpose of wiping me out.

Lying there in the bed of that truck, I came to a realization that has been burgeoning in stages over the past several days: The people who have actually experienced--and survived--such disasters probably feel the same way, as though they were meant to suffer their calamity, as though it were staged to change the course of their lives.

That may have happened, certainly, but it wasn't why such a hideous thing could have occurred. Shit happens. If I should narrowly escape death in some freakish accident, taking it personally would be foolish.

It's a relief. The world isn't out to get me. There's an abdication of responsibility involved, as though I'm no longer accountable for the tragedies that happen to befall others as a result of the one that finally does me in--or comes close to it.

That aside, I encountered a shocker today. I had gotten a gift card for the local megamart as partial payment for a portrait, and planned to go grocery shopping today. My supervisor retires on Friday afternoon, and she demanded a potluck for her farewell. Consequently, I decided I would contribute some homemade guacamole along with tortilla chips, and figured it would be expensive; the recipe requires quite a number of vegetables and spices, and I had some kitchen utensils and items for personal consumption to buy besides. So much for the gift card.

Once I had finished my circumnavigation of the store, I felt something ghostly slap my forehead: I had left the card in my truck! I didn't feel as though I could very well just abandon my cart and go get it and come back and find the carload of foodstuffs intact. Damnation. I was fully expecting it to cost upwards of $50--it was really quite a lot of food by my standards, mostly vegetables I don't ordinarily buy. With prices these days, I was quite accustomed to passing through the 10-items-or-less express checkout while being parted of thirty bucks, having it tide me through two or three days, then not eating at all until the following week.

Imagine my shock when I wound up spending less than usual for twice the amount. It made me wonder: perhaps food prices have only risen significantly for processed foods, the kind of stuff whose only culinary requirement is a preheated oven? And why don't I buy more fresh plant matter? Something to mull over.

And why is cilantro so goddamn hard to find? It's only available at the store for $5 in a tiny little container. I really don't want to go to a bodega; I can't help but feel that I risk being misidentified as a maricón and getting knifed for my trouble, thanks to my effete gringo-intellectual manner. Slightly racist, I know, but why tempt the likelihood of winding up in the hospital with my guts spilling out like a Georgian who mispronounced do svidaniya? Now that I've finally recognized that such things can happen without recourse to prevention, why, really, tempt fate?

extrintrospection

A paragraph from last night's post is stuck in my head.

It's the one where I mention my deafness and the strength of its associations with the significant events in my recent past. It's truth.

It's not often that I reach a point where I feel prompted to seriously examine the role my ability to hear (or lack thereof, or both) has played in my personal growth. I've heard it so many times from people: It shouldn't matter, it has nothing to do with the person you really are, and if anyone thinks so, well, they're plain ol' wrong. For a long time, I thought that was about right: this liability shouldn't matter. Only recently have I come to terms with it, stopped seeing it as a "liability."

This is mostly because it's as intrinsic a part of my inner makeup as is, say, being male or white. I'm deaf. It makes life hard and, occasionally, unpleasant in many ways. It has also shaped who I am as a person. I'm used to struggling just to speak. I'm used to dependency. I'm used to solitude.

Consequently, I'm forced to think about what I have to say before it comes out, to figure out how best to say it in order to both avoid the sibilants that seem nearly impossible to form properly and get my point across with concision. I've cultivated a tendency to draw in the kind of people whose very natures make life easier for them; gregarious, brilliant, wise in the ways of the world and in charming others to think along tightly-controlled lines--so I can draw on their strengths to compensate for my weaknesses. And they make wonderful, stimulating, fulfilling friends. I've learned the value of silence, of the long, quiet moments in which I turn inward and become better-acquainted with what sits inside me. Squeezed and constrained by a small life across the years, the intellect erupts.

The position in DC also mentioned yesterday also led to a slight reconnection with an old college friend--an exemplar of the kind of person listed above. Bright, outgoing, charismatic...I turned to him for help and advice at two particularly difficult points in college, and he came through both times. These days, I notice he's made a name around deafness: its study, understanding, examination, advocacy. It's a lifestyle. His involvement nears activist levels. Even now, I see a reference to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group I worked with briefly on a project for my last semester of graduate school, and which I see often on my Reader in various contexts. He presents at conferences about, by, and for deaf people on connecting to one another on the Internet, via deaf blog aggregators, portals, and discussion sites. It's a whole subculture--more so, really, than it used to be.

Looking at his example, I have to ask myself: Where am I as a deaf person? Am I anywhere at all? Does it matter in the end? I ask that last one because of one thing: invariably, people I associate with for a certain length of time, whether deaf or hearing, will ask me why I don't get a cochlear implant. The same question, asked for two very different reasons depending on which end of the curve the asker lands on.

I keep thinking about a long list of other people I know who might be considered well-read, well-educated--and deaf. They seem to fall on either end of a continuum: they fold themselves deeply into the notion of deaf empowerment--and the many who aren't as genuine as the example above hold deeply-rooted private attitudes of contempt and pity for those whom they claim to support--and build their lives around educating deaf children and advocacy and working in deaf-only environments, or they disappear into jobs among hearing people, finding either success or failure in the same distribution as among any other human subtaxon, their deafness turned into something like a theater director, unseen but powerfully influential in what plays out on the stage.

Where do I fall? A few weeks ago, I would have said theater-director. Now, this whole thing with Gallaudet--and the burgeoning anxiety about hearing back--has me wondering. Is it really just a job? Or is it the assertion of a hidden impulse to confront something I thought had long since been integrated? Is it the continuing search for some sort of singular identity through the exploration of alternatives and experiences? Or am I, once again and as always, overthinking things?

Four days to go. Then the sweet release of the bookstore and time to think on top of the world...

apply thyself

It's funny. You spend a few weeks sitting in your workspace, thinking about how maybe it's time you got out of here. Out of this job, out of this town, out of this state. Nothing's bad, precisely--in fact, things are looking better than they were a few weeks ago when the spectre of downsizing had "lurking" penciled in on every day in its August calendar.

And then, one day, one of the very institutions you had at the top of your short list for the Next Step announces an opening in your field. To boot, that institution is a university for the deaf in Washington, D.C. To boot even more, the base salary is half again as large as your current pay.

It's not something you expected to happen sooner rather than later, if at all.

I applied for the position yesterday. Therefore, mixed feelings. On the one hand, it's exciting and new and different and I know I'm more than sufficiently competent and well-educated and -trained for a job like this. On the other hand, it's not quite the schedule I was going for (why couldn't the posting have cropped up in, say, November?) and it's expensive just for the interview that I may or may not get and it's far away from my cat and my family.

Complicating it all is the sense I've been getting lately that I'm comfortable where I am because it's safe. It's secure. I easily outperform my coworkers. My job is in no danger. The weather is usually pleasant. My family is less than an hour away in case of catastrophe or loneliness. It is, in other words, a classic case of stagnation. I have no future where I am now that doesn't involve more of the same, just in a different apartment.

I'm not a risk-taker. I obsess and overthink and take one tremulous step at a time. I hate stepping outside my comfort zone. But I can remind myself that where I work these days is about as far out of my old comfort zone as Washington is out of my new one. A year ago, I never would have thought I'd be so...settled in such an exclusively hearing environment.

And then I think, Come on, you big giant pussy. Take a risk. Do something stupid. Uproot yourself from the metro area you grew up in and throw yourself someplace far, far away. There's more money--albeit a higher cost of living--and more to explore. Don't you miss the inexhaustible wonders of the Smithsonian? The grandeur of the planned city? The home of power that once bestrode the world? The seed, planted in the fertile Potomac soil, of the legends of the future?

There is, of course, that old wanderlust, that need to conquer the next peak. I lived in New York on my own for three years, in an all-deaf environment with which I had had only very unpleasant experiences. I then worked for a social-services organization, before quitting for no good reason and going on vacation for six full months. After that was graduate school, where I was the only deaf student. At the same time, I made...deaf friends and survived an enormous amount of crazy relatively unscathed. Then there's the job I have now.

You may have noticed that just about all of my personal milestones since graduating from high school--the point at which I think my life actually began--seem to have a lot to do with the difference between deaf and hearing people. Yes. They do. In fact, virtually everything significant in my life rotates, to some degree, around my deafness.

Anyway. All of this is why I have a Short List for the Next Step, and this place is on it. The process of getting this job--if they seem interested--will set me back for years on my personal student loan repayment plant.

You know what, though? It's worth it.

Pending a response e-mail expressing interest in arranging an interview, Thundercats are, I think, go.

clowns and beasties

I used to have a thing for Kyra Sedgwick.

I'm not sure what it was. The blonde curls, the soft, light-filled eyes, the generous lips that nevertheless avoided disingenuous pouting. I first discovered her in Heart and Souls, a poor Downey Jr. flick about some guy who gets followed around by souls laboring under the onus of a spectral bus driver with lewd tastes.

These days, I see her in ads for The Closer and I feel horrified. It's Meg Ryan syndrome. Something to do with the structure of the lips stretches them out horribly as the owner ages and loses the fatty padding in the cheeks. They look like Heath Ledger on Halloween. And Kyra no longer looks as warmly beautiful, Meg as glowingly vivacious. On the whole, I find that I prefer Samantha Brown.

I started Twilight today. I'm not proud of it, but I will, however, defend myself by making it clear the only reason I'm reading it is a book review I came across a couple of days ago by an English teacher who detailed how Stephenie Meyer had, surprisingly enough, managed to pull a number of teen readers into the classics, like Wuthering Heights and such. I'm not a big fan of fiction along those lines, but anything will do in a pinch, I suppose.

So I made it through the first six chapters, managing to ignore the poor grammar and slipshod editing, and have had some time to mull it over. What I found most interesting was that the werewolf Jacob doesn't appear until the sixth chapter, and his was the character that I, surprisingly, was looking forward to the most.

Why was this?

In general, it seems vampires get all the good press, really. In my (very) unscientific study of Google's search results, the masses are overwhelmingly in favor of hemophagia. Words that come up often run along the lines of "cool," "sexy," "civilized," "refined," "sophisticated," "aristocratic" ... you get the idea. I suppose part of it also involves the carnality of the most basic act of vampirism that appeals to people; there's an intimacy in burying oneself in someone else's neck and drinking of their essence. Few, if any, seem to be concerned with the immortality factor; some have actually noted that indefinite animation requires reliable funding. I also believe there's a slight tinge of necrophilia related to this phenomenon; death suffuses life, and it thrills people to have it so close at hand--even inside oneself, for that matter. Goths especially seem to dig it, the whole paleness thing.

Whatever. For my part, I've never been quite that fond of vampires in any interpretation. They've always struck me as being sickly, effeminately fragile, constantly moody and brooding and making with the aura of death. The hypnotism also does not sit well with me; it smacks of cheating. The lack of sunlight is also a deal-breaker; I am, almost literally, a sun-worshipper. At the very least, I'm a day person; bursting into flames at dawn is not my idea of a decent Vitamin-D infusion. And why be supernatural without the ability to shapechange?

Werewolves, on the other hand, have always been a favorite. I remember reading this book when I was younger, probably fourth or fifth grade, about a couple of city kids who encountered a pack of werewolves, and being fascinated. Fascinated, really, to the point of writing an autobiographical essay for a school assignment that mentioned my (fictitious) love of raw meat, which elicited an alarmed comment from my teacher along the lines of "This is disgusting and not healthy!! See me." The rest of the essay got an A, though. I don't remember the meeting with the teacher; I do remember my mother's perplexity over the note sent home with me and a judicious exercise in discretion by ignoring it utterly. My parents did that a lot where my reading habits and resulting eccentricities were concerned.

There's something about werewolves. They, more than vampires, give off a sense of strength, of vitality. They're primal, actualizations of the animal living in the oldest parts of our anatomy. Vampires are almost evolutionarily predisposed to suicide; all they need to do is go outside, bathe in the wrong water, eat some Italian food, go to church, or accidentally impale themselves. They're the freakin' walking dead--oh, yes. Sorry. I do mean undead. Now get your greasepainted hands off me.

One of my favorite dreams involves running through a field of tall silvery grass in the moonlight. The liberation is exhilarating. I've had weird experiences that were associated with the full moon--although I will cheerfully acknowledge the blatant selection bias involved here--and have always appreciated its cold light. I once dreamed of its terraformation, but now feel that that would kill that lovely crystalline glow, dim it somehow into blues and greens. Better to domesticate Mars.

I've never understood the predilection shown by many modern fantasists towards depicting werewolves as a lower caste of supernatural creature, a subtaxon to the vampire. Fleas are associated with them, and animalistic filth, yes, and the arbitrary limitation of the circled orb. I suppose the association involves the domestication of the canids, a loss of respect commensurate with greater control; vampires, on the other hand, tread their own path, a superior being to human and werewolf alike. This is silly. Obviously werewolves are more than capable of domesticating themselves. Fleas are hardly an issue when you spend the majority of your time without significant body hair, and the "filth" probably refers to the gouts of blood involved with hunting down live prey and tearing it apart as you NOM. That's what showers are for. And you can even use holy water if you've got a clerical buddy. The upshot: Much more freedom of movement than vampires.

Frankly, there's a hierarchical bias here that has little or no basis in reality (such as it is). If a comprehensive taxonomy of supernatural creatures were to be undertaken, vampires and werewolves would be in two separate groups; vamps would probably go into something like the, uh, Amortus zoophagia family or something (yes, unashamedly mixing Greek and Latin; so what?) along with zombies. Werewolves, though, would probably go into the, like, Homibestia misturum family with other werebeasts and, to a lesser extent, centaurs and harpies and the like.

Actually, a taxonomic family tree would probably be really interesting. I'm no good with Latin, though. A new project...