"Not that we were incompatible: we just had nothing to talk about." — Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)

Monday, September 20, 2010

Start your day with positivity

"It's so easy to be negative than stay positive all the time"...just by that statement you'll say its NEGATIVE by itself...


I woke up this morning feeling very energetic to start my day...and what a great day to start it by reading Rhonda Byrne's "THE SECRET" with coffee on the side:

YES! Life is good and I love contemplating on this idea of "The Secret". I checked out my little garden outside and found I have some new bloomed in my garden:


"Whatever you give out in life is what you receive back in life. Give positivity, you receive back positivity; give negativity, you receive back negativity."

I tried to test that statement by checking out Facebook statuses this morning. I found out that most people focus on what's bad in their life, whining about their job, complaining about the traffic, hating someone from the office, worrying about money, not being happy with their relationships. You stay too long in negativity that you probably not noticing your becoming so negative and toxic to other people.. and when you look at you life in whole, all you see is nothing but FAILURE. 

"Life doesn't happen to you; you receive everything in your life based on what you've given."

"It's so easy to stay positive than be negative all the time.".. it's so easy to see when things are not going our way but isn't it easier to deal with it if your positive towards life? For an easy Monday, I think this is something to think about.


Friday, September 17, 2010

Imagination is a lost art

"I thought the first Harry Potter was great,"

"I liked the second one better," someone said.


"I never saw any of them," someone else said.


In that moment I realized everyone but me was talking about the movies, not the book. Later in the conversation, someone brought up Twilight.


"I haven't seen it," was the response.


ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.


It happens all too often. I'll mention Stephen King and find myself surrounded by people talking about movies based on his books. It gets worse than that, though. When you start talking about To Kill a Mockingbird or Pride and Prejudice and the person says, "Oh, Keira Knightley was GREAT in that," you know they rather see the movie than...READ.


We're a visual society. It seems, if you want your book to be read, you'd better get a movie deal out of it, pronto. THEN the world will rush out to buy the book, reading it AFTER they've seen the movie.

"I like to be able to picture the characters in my head," someone once told me. "If I've seen the movie, then I know how the characters look."


Imagination is a lost art, I guess. In fact, after the movie comes out, usually the book covers are revised with the film's actors, like this:







Or this:







I understand the power of cinema, but isn't part of the fun of reading being able to make up your OWN mental image of the characters and scenes? Isn't it the author's job to bring it all to life for you?


I remember as a kid, loving to read. I remember being told by the grown-ups that I needed to be outside playing rather than cooped up inside reading. Good point, but all of that reading paid off handsomely later in life. Even reading commercial fiction enriches someone. I visited places in my imagination I'd never visited before. I learned about things...and I developed a vocabulary and writing ability that I notice many non-readers lack. In fact, if I hear one more person saying words like "irregardless" and "a whole nother" I'm going to start handing out books on the street.


What do you think? Are we raising generations of couch potatoes who have no idea A Christmas Carol was a book before it was a movie? Who think Charles Dickens was a famous actor and William Shakespeare was "a great character in that Gwyneth Paltrow movie."

Jar Of Hearts





I know I cant take one more step towards you
Cause all thats waiting is regret
And don't you know im not your ghost anymore
You lost the love
I loved the most

I learned to live, half alive
And now you want me one more time

Who do you think you are
Runnin round leaving scars
Collecting your jar of hearts
And tearing love apart
You're gonna catch a cold
From the ice inside your soul
So don't come back for me
Who do you think you are
I hear you're asking all around
If I am anywhere to be found
But I have grown too strong
To ever fall back in your arms 
I learned to live, half alive
And now you want me one more time

Who do you think you are
Runnin round leaving scars
Collecting your jar of hearts
And tearing love apart
You're gonna catch a cold
From the ice inside your soul
So don't come back for me
Who do you think you are  
It took so long just to feel alright
Remember how to put back the light in my eyes
I wish I had missed the first time that we kissed
Cause you broke all you're promises

And now you're back
You don't get to get me back

Who do you think you are
runnin round leaving scars
Collecting your jar of hearts
And tearing love apart
You're gonna catch a cold
From the ice inside your soul
So don't come back for me
Don't come back at all
And who do you think you are?
Runnin round leaving scars
Collecting your jar of hearts
And tearing love apart
You're gonna catch a cold
From the ice inside your soul 
Don't come back for me
Don't come back at all

Who do you think you are?

Who do you think you are?

Who do you think you are?

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

The Year of Spagetti


Nineteen-seventy-one was the Year of Spaghetti.In 1971, I cooked spaghetti to live, and lived to cook spaghetti. Steam rising from the pot was my pride and joy, tomato sauce bubbling up in the saucepan my one great hope in life.

I went to a cooking specialty store and bought a kitchen timer and a huge aluminum pot, big enough to bathe a German shepherd in, then went around to all the supermarkets that catered to foreigners, gathering an assortment of odd-sounding spices. I picked up a pasta cookbook at the bookstore, and bought tomatoes by the dozen. I purchased every brand of spaghetti I could lay my hands on, simmered every sauce known to man. Fine particles of garlic, onion, and olive oil swirled in the air, forming a harmonious cloud that penetrated every corner of my tiny apartment, permeating the floor and the ceiling and the walls, my clothes, my books,
my records, my tennis racquet, my bundles of old letters. It was a fragrance one might have smelled on ancient Roman aqueducts.

This is a story from the Year of Spaghetti, 1971 A.D.

As a rule, I cooked spaghetti, and ate it, by myself. I was convinced that spaghetti was a dish best enjoyed alone. I cant really explain why I felt that way, but there it is.

I always drank tea with my spaghetti and ate a simple lettuce-and-cucumber salad. Id make sure I had plenty of both. I laid everything out neatly on the table and enjoyed a leisurely meal, glancing at the paper as I ate.
From Sunday to Saturday, one Spaghetti Day followed another. And each new Sunday started a brand-new Spaghetti Week.

Every time I sat down to a plate of spaghetti especially on a rainy Afternoon I had the distinct feeling that somebody was about to knock on my door. The person who I imagined was about to visit me was different each time. Sometimes it was a stranger, sometimes someone I knew. Once, it was a girl with slim legs whom Id dated in high school, and once it was myself, from a few years back, come to pay a visit. Another time, it was William Holden, with Jennifer Jones on his arm.

William Holden?

Not one of these people, however, actually ventured into my apartment. They hovered just outside the door, without knocking, like fragments of memory, and then slipped away.

Spring, summer, and fall, I cooked and cooked, as if cooking spaghetti were an act of revenge. Like a lonely, jilted girl throwing old love letters into the fireplace, I tossed one handful of spaghetti after another into the pot.

Id gather up the trampled-down shadows of time, knead them into the shape of a German shepherd, toss them into the roiling water, and sprinkle them with salt. Then Id hover over the pot, oversized chopsticks in hand, until the timer dinged its plaintive note.

Spaghetti strands are a crafty bunch, and I couldn’t let them out of my sight. If I were to turn my back, they might well slip over the edge of the pot and vanish into the night. The night lay in silent ambush, hoping to waylay the prodigal strands.

Spaghetti alla parmigiana

Spaghetti alla napoletana

Spaghetti al cartoccio

Spaghetti aglio e olio

Spaghetti alla carbonara

Spaghetti della pina

And then there was the pitiful, nameless leftover spaghetti carelessly tossed into the fridge.

Born in heat, the strands of spaghetti washed down the river of 1971 and vanished.

I mourn them all — all the spaghetti of the year 1971.

When the phone rang at 3:20 p.m. I was sprawled out on the tatami, staring at the ceiling. A pool of winter sunlight had formed in the place where I lay. Like a dead fly I lay there, vacant, in a December spotlight.

At first, I didn’t recognize the sound as the phone ringing. It was more like an unfamiliar memory that had hesitantly slipped in between the layers of air. Finally, though, it began to take shape, and, in the end, a
ringing phone was unmistakably what it was. It was one hundred per cent a phone ring in one-hundred-per-cent real air. Still sprawled out, I reached over and picked up the receiver.

On the other end was a girl, a girl so indistinct that, by four-thirty, she might very well have disappeared altogether. She was the ex-girlfriend of a friend of mine. Something had brought them together, this guy and
this indistinct girl, and something had led them to break up. I had, I admit, reluctantly played a role in getting them together in the first place.

Sorry to bother you, she said, but do you know where he is now?

I looked at the phone, running my eyes along the length of the cord. The cord was, sure enough, attached to the phone. I managed a vague reply. There was something ominous in the girls voice, and whatever trouble was brewing I knew that I didnt want to get involved.

Nobody will tell me where he is, she said in a chilly tone. Everybody's pretending they dont know. But theres something important I have to tell him, so please tell me where he is. I promise I wont drag you into this.
Where is he?

I honestly dont know, I told her. I havent seen him in a long time. My voice didnt sound like my own. I was telling the truth about not having seen him for a long time, but not about the other part I did know his address and phone number. Whenever I tell a lie, something weird happens to my voice.

No comment from her.

The phone was like a pillar of ice.

Then all the objects around me turned into pillars of ice, as if I were in a J. G. Ballard science-fiction story.

I really dont know, I repeated. He went away a long time ago, without saying a word.

The girl laughed. Give me a break. Hes not that clever. Were talking about a guy who has to make a lot of noise no matter what he does.

She was right. The guy really was a bit of a dim bulb.

But I wasnt about to tell her where he was. Do that, and next Id have him on the phone, giving me an earful. I was through with getting caught up in other peoples messes. Id already dug a hole in the back yard and buried
everything that needed to be buried in it. Nobody could ever dig it up again.

Im sorry, I said.

You dont like me, do you? she said suddenly.

I had no idea what to say. I didnt particularly dislike her. I had no real impression of her at all. Its hard to have a bad impression of somebody you have no impression of.

Im sorry, I said again. But Im cooking spaghetti right now.

Im sorry?

I said Im cooking spaghetti, I lied. I had no idea why I said that. But the lie had already become a part of meso much so that, at that moment at least, it didnt feel like a lie at all.

I went ahead and filled an imaginary pot with imaginary water, lit an imaginary stove with an imaginary match.

So? she asked.

I sprinkled imaginary salt into the boiling water, gently lowered a handful of imaginary spaghetti into the imaginary pot, set the imaginary kitchen timer for eight minutes.

So I cant talk. The spaghetti will be ruined.

She didnt say anything.

Im really sorry, but cooking spaghetti is a delicate operation.

The girl was silent. The phone in my hand began to freeze again.

So could you call me back? I added hurriedly.

Because youre in the middle of making spaghetti? she asked.

Yeah.

Are you making it for someone, or are you going to eat alone?

Ill eat it by myself, I said.

She held her breath for a long time, then slowly breathed out. Theres no way you could know this, but Im really in trouble. I dont know what to do.

Im sorry I cant help you, I said.

Theres some money involved, too.

I see.

He owes me money, she said. I lent him some money. I shouldnt have, but I had to.

I was quiet for a minute, my thoughts drifting toward spaghetti. Im sorry, I said. But Ive got the spaghetti going, so . . .

She gave a listless laugh. Goodbye, she said. Say hi to your spaghetti for me. I hope it turns out O.K.

Bye, I said.

When I hung up the phone, the circle of light on the floor had shifted an inch or two. I lay down again in that pool of light and resumed staring at the ceiling.

Thinking about spaghetti that boils eternally but is never done is a sad, sad thing.

Now I regret, a little, that I didnt tell the girl anything. Perhaps I should have. I mean, her ex-boyfriend wasnt much to start with an empty shell of a guy with artistic pretensions, a great talker whom nobody trusted. She sounded as if she really were strapped for money, and, no matter what the situation, you’ve got to pay back what you borrow.

Sometimes I wonder what happened to the girl the thought usually pops into my mind when Im facing a steaming-hot plate of spaghetti. After she hung up the phone, did she disappear forever, sucked into the 4:30 p.m. shadows? Was I partly to blame?

I want you to understand my position, though. At the time, I didnt want to get involved with anyone. Thats why I kept on cooking spaghetti, all by myself. In that huge pot, big enough to hold a German shepherd.

Durum semolina, golden wheat wafting in Italian fields.

Can you imagine how astonished the Italians would be if they knew that what they were exporting in 1971 was really *loneliness*?

**Translated, from the Japanese, by Philip Gabriel. From newyorker.com

~Haruki Murakami, The Year of Spagetti. 
 
***Spaghetti makes guest appearances in many of Murakami’s tales (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle seems as though it starts in the same kitchen that’s being described here, for example) but this is the story where it is put front and center. The paragraph quoted there is more than an evocative look at someone sinking themselves deep into a pursuit—it sets the tone, it’s an exclamation of loneliness. Spaghetti sauce the one great hope? This seems from the start like a guy sinking himself into something to block out something else.

The narrator gets a late afternoon call from the ex-girlfriend of a friend, looking for their shared acquaintance. He evades her: “I was through with getting caught up in other people’s messes. I’d already dug a hole in the backyard and buried everything that needed to be buried in it. Nobody could ever dig it up again.” The plot moves forward incrementally from there, and then peters out, but—as usual—that’s beside the point.

It’s a story of different kinds of loneliness, and it’s as simple as can be.

Ten Ways Being a Geek Makes You More Attractive


1. You’re probably very smart.

2. It’s hip to be geek. Everyone is familiar with the stereotype of thick glasses, a pocket protector, an obsession with star trek, and social skills akin to a sack of potatoes. Times have changed: geeks are often fashionable, hip individuals who are very aligned with the trends of their own generation

3. You geek out on more than just your computer. Ever seen the movie collection of a film geek? Ever had an automotive geek work on your car? Ever seen the body of a fitness geek? The tenacity of someone like us, when applied to hobbies outside computers and the like, can yield impressive results.

4. Geek humor is the best humor. This is perhaps a biased opinion, but I’ve never laughed as hard as I have while reading some of the random, funny things that came out of geek culture.

5. You listen to good music. Geeks have access to tools that allow us to hear music that extends well beyond top 40 radio. Want the entire discography of Aphex Twin by tomorrow afternoon? Ask a geek. Not only do they listen to good music, they can find just about anything you’re looking for in a heartbeat.

6. You make good money. If there’s one stereotype about geeks that usually rings true, it’s that they rarely have trouble earning a decent income.

7. You fix stuff. Everyone loves a handyman, especially one that can fix one of the most frustrating devices ever conceived: a personal computer.

8. You’ve got your own stuff going on. You’ll never meet a geek who runs out of things to do, they’ve got lots of hobbies and interests and are more than happy to dive head first into one of those when they’ve got some spare time. In other words: they won’t rely on you to give them a life.

9. You’re very articulate. Compulsively reading a few hundred RSS feeds a day yields a vocabulary that could put most college English majors to shame.

10. You’re passionate. When a geek becomes interested in something, they tend to immerse themselves in it entirely. They’ll strip a new gadget down to nuts and bolts and re-build it with an xhtml compliant grappling gun. This intense passion can extend to many areas of a geek’s life, not just computers and hobbies.



Monday, September 13, 2010

MEN KEEP THINGS FOREVER...





What IS it with men and their nasty, tattered stuff? Socks that have holes in them, underwear that has skid marks, furniture that's falling apart?

Many a woman has tried to separate a man from his stuff...and many a woman has failed. You can try bribing him with new stuff to replace it, but he won't hear of it. He likes his old stuff. He doesn't see it as broken DOWN. He sees it as broken IN.

Is it biological? Part of the "hunting and gathering" instinct? Or is it simply man's way of being sentimental about things?

You see, women save things too. We're just more likely to save letters, photographs, greeting cards... We tuck them away in an old shoe box in the back of our closet, rarely seen. Every now and then we pull them out and sit and cry over old times, while our men stare at us as though we're from another planet.

He's not holding onto that old coffee cup for sentimental reasons. There's nothing sentimental about it. Guys, in case you haven't noticed, coffee, over time, STAINS a cup, so it looks something like this:






There's no way I could drink out of a cup like that. I'd just toss it and buy another one. My sofa is only ten years old and already I'm feeling it's in bad need of replacing. And most men wouldn't care about that...but try and replace his favorite chair. Just try. You'll be in for the tug-of-war to end all tug-of-wars.

Men, more than women, tend to still have clothing hanging around from high school and college. Some may even be lucky enough to still fit into them. Their socks get holes in them, they keep wearing them. Women throw them away and go buy new.

Or, in the words of Jerry Seinfeld: "Men wear their underwear until it absolutely disintegrates. Men hang on to underwear until each individual underwear molecule is so strained it can barely retain the properties of a solid. It actually becomes underwear vapor."

What is up with this phenomenon? Is it just a fear of shopping? Or does it go deeper than that?

♫♥♫♥♫ Let it rock, yeah Let it roll, Let it go ♫♥♫♥♫


There are people who can walk away from you... And hear me when I tell you this! When people can walk away from you: let them walk.




I don't want you to try to talk another person into staying with you, loving you, calling you, caring about you, coming to see you, staying attached to you. I mean hang up the phone.



The single hardiest thing I deal with in my life is letting go of loved ones within relationships, I work so hard in my own life to make things work and accomplish the goals I set forth. I have hung on too long within relationships and it takes a toll on you emotionally and physically. Over time and a lot of heart ache I had came to the point that I have zero patience with new people I may meet if they play games or I have to chase them then I LET GO, the whole "dont chase, replace" motto. I live a super healthy and positive life so bringing someone into my life that has drama or doesn't live the same way will not happen. You need someone that pushes you forward someone that make you a better person. Someone who makes you SMILE someone on your level, not someone you have to change.


When people can walk away from you let them walk.


Your destiny is never tied to anybody that left.


People leave you because they are not joined to you.


And if they are not joined to you, you can't make them stay.


Let them go.


And it doesn't mean that they are a bad person it just means that their part in the story is over.


And you've got to know when people's part in your story is over so that you don't keep trying to raise the dead.


You've got to know when it's dead.


You've got to know when it's over. Let me tell you something... I've got the gift of good-bye. I believe in good-bye. It's not that I'm hateful, it's that I'm faithful.. And if it takes too much sweat I don't need it. Stop begging people to stay.
Let them go!!!

If you are holding on to something that doesn't belong to you and was never intended for your life, then you need to......

LET IT GO!!!

If you are holding on to past hurts and pains .....

LET IT GO!!!

If someone can't treat you right, love you back, and see your worth.....
LET IT GO!!!

If someone has angered you ........

LET IT GO!!!

If you are holding on to some thoughts of evil and revenge......

LET IT GO!!!

If you are involved in a wrong relationship or addiction......
LET IT GO!!!

If you are holding on to a job that no longer meets your needs or talents

LET IT GO!!!

If you have a bad attitude.......

LET IT GO!!!

If you keep judging others to make yourself feel better......

LET IT GO!!!

If you are struggling with the healing of a broken relationship.......
LET IT GO!!!

If you keep trying to help someone who won't even try to help themselves......
LET IT GO!!!

If you're feeling depressed and stressed .........

LET IT GO!!!

Sometimes putting a period is better than putting a comma because it’s better to see a complete sentence than a hanging one that doesn’t make sense. Courage is measured equally by both holding on and letting go...

♫♥♫♥♫ Let it rock, yeah Let it roll, let it Let it go ♫♥♫♥♫



Saturday, September 11, 2010

HE'LL NEVER LEAVE HIS WIFE FOR YOU




How many of you have known a woman who found herself in a relationship with a married man?

How many of you thought to yourself, "He'll never leave his wife for you" even when your friend was sure he would? "He just wants to wait until his youngest is in college. Then he'll leave."

It never happens. Not for your friend. But then I can name at least four situations I know of personally where the man was married and having an affair, then he left his wife for the other woman. So why does it happen for everyone else, but not your friend?

And why is it, when a woman cheats, she's more likely to leave her marriage than a man is?





Many experts feel the answer to that is simple. Women cheat for emotional reasons while men cheat for physical ones. In other words, for men it's about sex. For women it's about feeling loved. It's easy to see, of those two choices, which one would tempt someone into thinking the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. If a man can get wild, passionate sex on the side while still having all his other needs met at home, what incentive does he have to climb over that fence? But a woman gets a taste of the romance, the passion, the EXCITEMENT, and suddenly it looks more inviting than her boring, dissatisfying married life.

It's rarely ever that simple. In fact, in this case men are actually the wiser of the two. If you leave your marriage for another person, and you marry that person, your chances of that marriage lasting fall BELOW 25 percent. Why? It's not rocket science. You began your relationship on a foundation of mistrust and deception. How can a relationship on that foundation last?

There are other reasons, too. Say a man does leave his wife for his mistress. Or say a woman leaves her husband for her affair partner. How long until this "ideal relationship" becomes just like the marriage that preceded it? Real life brings real problems. Kids, housework, budget issues. Once the affair is no longer "fun time," the couple is subjected to the same problems as any other relationship...only with the added stress of that cracked foundation.




Think about it. If YOU were the other woman (or man), how could you trust the person you're with, knowing that person has a history of cheating? "But that was a bad marriage; this is a good one" can only go so far. You know that somewhere, in the back of that person's mind, he or she is always wondering if it will happen again. Every time someone new enters the picture, you would wonder... Every time your spouse had to work late or had a mysterious call that had to be taken out of your earshot, that tiny seed of doubt would begin to grow...

What about all of these affairs that don't end a marriage? What happens? Everyone knows about the woman over in accounting who's been sleeping with her married boss for ten years. Or the rep who use to be a bootie call of his manager. Since most affairs last an average of 1-4 years, something has to kill it.

In some cases, an affair ends because one or both of the married participants get caught. Nothing will kill an affair faster than it becoming public knowledge. And if it's a choice between a man having sex with that hot girl at work or keeping his home and being able to see his children every night, most men are going to choose the latter. So they will do whatever it takes to make the spouse happy, which usually means cutting off all contact with the other person.






Then there are the many affairs that go undiscovered. What ends those? Oftentimes if one of the partners is single, that person finally gets tired of always being second best. He or she meets someone new and ends things. But surprisingly, most of the time, affairs simply fizzle out. The passion starts to die, the deception becomes too much work, or guilt finally breaks through the thick skull of the person who had vowed to love only one person until death. In that case, the cheater's spouse will probably never find out about the affair...he or she may even go to the grave believing his/her spouse was always faithful. You've got to wonder about that. Would most people rather know? Or is it possible that, in most cases, what you don't know won't hurt you...?

***sassy**

Thursday, September 9, 2010

How I Become Stupid A Novel by Martin Page

"Antoine had always felt he was living in dog years. When he was seven he felt about as playful as a man of forty-nine; by eleven he was disillusioned as an old man of seventy-seven. Now, age twenty five, Antoine was hoping to start taking it easy, and he resolved to shroud his brain in stupidity. He had already realized that intelligence was just the word people used for stupid remarks that were well presented and prettily pronounced, and that intelligence itself was so corrupt, there was often more to be gained from being dumb than from being a sworn intellectual. Intelligence makes you unhappy, lonely, and poor, whereas disguising it offers the possibility of immortality in newsprint and the admiration of those who believe what they read."



At 160 pages -- smallish pages with pretty big type and huge margins -- it certainly wasn’t the length that held me up. The novel is about the size of a collection of Archies comics. The paragraphs are short. The chapters are broken up into little story-chunks.This book has only one drawback: its title, How I Become Stupid, is misleading advertising, since when you finish it you feel much smarter than before.




Twenty-five-year-old Parisian Antoine is sick. The disease? Intelligence. Desperate to find a cure for his overactive brain, Antoine considers alcoholism, suicide, and lobotomy, but none seems quite right for his special needs. A new job, though, is just the ticket. Accepting a position in his high-school friend's brokerage firm, Antoine finds the burdens of consciousness gradually slipping away. This delightfully over-the-top debut novel was a smash when it was published in France in 2001, but will it play as well stateside? After all, the mediocrity that Antoine deems essential to being happy in today's society features many elements common to mainstream American culture. Still, there is always an audience--if not an enormous one--for novels that skewer thick-headed simplicity, and this absurdist comedy mounts a formidable attack. Only an abrupt and puzzlingly optimistic ending detracts from the note of cheerful pessimism that drives the story.

Tortured by the depth of his own intellect, plagued by his overwhelming sense of self-awareness and the moral implications of every action he makes, Antoine, a twenty-five year old Aramaic scholar, is at the end of his rope, with only one viable solution in sight: HE MUST DENOUNCE HIS INTELLIGENCE, by any means necessary . What follows in Martin Page's wickedly funny satire is an odyssey unlike any other as Antoine walks the streets of Paris trying everything from alcoholism to stock-trading to the prescription drug Happyzac in order to lighten the burden of his mind on his soul, and to fulfill his dream of becoming stupid enough to be happily functioning member of society.

In a letter that Antoine has written to his friends to explain his mission of becoming stupid, Page writes:  

“Men simplify the world with words and thoughts, and that’s how they create their certainties; and having certainty is the most potent pleasure in the world, far more potent than money, sex, and power all combined. Renouncing true intelligence is the price we have to pay for having these certainties, and it’s an expenditure that never gets noticed by the bank of our minds.”

Yes, dude, I am so totally with you. :)

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Sara Bareilles King Of Anything

Keep drinking coffee, stare me down across the table
While I look outside
So many things I’d say if only I were able
But I just keep quiet and count the cars that pass by

You’ve got opinions, man
We’re all entitled to ‘em, but I never asked
So let me thank you for your time, and try not to waste anymore of mine
And get out of here fast

I hate to break it to you babe, but I’m not drowning
There’s no one here to save

Who cares if you disagree?
You are not me
Who made you king of anything?
So you dare tell me who to be?
Who died and made you king of anything?

You sound so innocent, all full of good intent
Swear you know best
But you expect me to jump up on board with you
And ride off into your delusional sunset

I’m not the one who’s lost with no direction
But you’ll never see

You’re so busy making maps with my name on them in all caps
You got the talking down, just not the listening

And who cares if you disagree?
You are not me
Who made you king of anything?
So you dare tell me who to be?
Who died and made you king of anything?

All my life I’ve tried to make everybody happy
While I just hurt and hide
Waiting for someone to tell me it’s my turn to decide

Who cares if you disagree?
You are not me
Who made you king of anything?
So you dare tell me who to be?
Who died and made you king of anything?

Who cares if you disagree?
You are not me
Who made you king of anything?
So you dare tell me who to be?
Who died and made you king of anything?

Let me hold your crown, babe

Birdwatching




A very productive day to hang out in Wendell, in my in-laws place.. this Swainson's Hawk was kind enough to pose for a little while. Many birders will tell you, that this species is a lot more tolerant of us humans than the other common raptor of the prairies, the Red-tailed Hawk. Bird watching is really FUN :)

Facebook Confessions

She's having trouble in her marriage.


She needs to speak to someone.


So she posts her marital troubles as cryptic status updates on Facebook.


Facebook is as private as you want it to be. Someone can see your page only if YOU allow them to. So what's the harm in letting your high school friends, your best friend from grade school, and a couple of cousins know your husband is taking you for granted?



Is it bad if THEY know more about your marital troubles than your husband does?


The thing about marriage is that in a healthy marriage, one spouse goes to the other for support. When one spouse is unfaithful, the biggest betrayal comes in the fact that the spouse went to someone outside the marriage for emotional support. Granted, there are situations where a spouse brings up the problems and the other spouse doesn't want to hear them. But in that case, is it ever wise to blast those troubles to 400 of your closest friends?


Isn't it bad enough when she chooses to tell her three best friends? Her officemates? A stranger on the morning train?



Here's my problem with it. Your cryptic messages get on my LAST NERVE. Out with it already. I don't know if these people simply want to prepare their friends and loved ones for the upcoming divorce or separation announcement or what...but this "Not sure how much more I can take" and "Need strength to get through this" messages just leave me concerned at first...then annoyed after a while. I want to know what the heck is going on but most of all, I want to know why YOU want us to know something is going on, but you don't want to tell us the full story.


I guess, like everything in life, there are simply people who want the world to know they suffer. That's understood. We all suffer from time to time...some choose to do it in private and some want the world to watch. (Hence the overabundance of people willing to star in reality TV shows.) There's power in prayer...I get that. You post your status update and 20 people immediately tell you they'll pray for you. There's comfort in that. But what about the family members who read this? What if your husband's Aunt Betsy reads it, tells everyone else in the family, and then you have to face all of them at the next family reunion?


Is there anyone in your Facebook circle of friends who engages in this behavior? How do you feel about it?

Monday, September 6, 2010

Blog Me..Blog Me Not..



I'm now MARRIED, but even when I was in a serious relationship before we tie the knot, my now husband learned of my blog on Multiply. I didn't hide it from him -- in fact, I felt writing was such an integral part of who I was, anyone who was right for me would be supportive right from the beginning.

Not a smart move. You see, back then my blog, located on Multiply, centered around the difficulties of dating in your 30s. I wrote about the losers. The jerks. The whacko first dates with men not suitable as co-workers, let alone soul mates. Can you imagine dating Multiply''s Carrie Bradshaw? Your every thought would be, "Is she going to write about ME next?"






He didn't think that.


Of course, by that time I wasn't writing about bad dates because I wasn't having them. For the first few months I didn't mention him at all, and when I did, it was with the utmost caution. All was well for about a year...


Then I became lax in my writing.


It was normal for me to write about common relationship dilemmas. Things I've written about here. What if you're dating someone who doesn't want children? What if you're dating someone who doesn't call as often as you'd like? What if things aren't progressing as quickly as you'd like? What if you're still the "other woman"?


Most of the time these situations were inspired by readers, who would write in for advice. He'd miss that point, though, and ask, "Was that about me?" Soon I realized even prefacing it with, "A reader sent this in," wasn't enough. I was making him paranoid.


I began censoring my writing. I'd come up with topics and decide it wasn't wise to write about that with him reading. He read along, every day, with that e-mail notification coming to his e-mail inbox.




Then I moved to Blogger.


And he lost my blog.


Soon I discovered, though, that there's a freedom in the fact that he's not reading. I can write whatever I want without worrying he'll ask if today's blog was about him.


Of course, I don't... You never know who else might be reading.


Exes. Relatives. Friends. His co-workers...


I think that's another reason why naming my blog from the character of my favorite novel is much better. 




Now it's your turn. Does your significant other read your blog? How does he feel about it? Does knowing he's reading influence what you write?

Sunday, September 5, 2010

THE HATER TRILOGY

HATE, a feeling related to one's perception of having been offended/wronged and a tendency to undo that wrongdoing by retaliation. What happen when this emotion become a basic instinct to survive?



I stumbled on Hater by accident and couldn't put the book down for 3 straight days. I love the way it was written in modern language, like it was spoken. The book is AWESOME, I don't exaggerate when I say it was truly one of the best books I've ever read. I just finished Dog Blood, the last chapters where so gripping. I can't wait for the third book of the Hater trilogy..THEM OR US



********

Rampant rage, termination of trust, and paralyzing paranoia are all components in a frenzied, febrile fiction created by David Moody. In his novel Hater, the world has gone malignantly mad. Seemingly normal people suddenly feel compelled to attack others with the intent to kill. The violence is motivated by fear; those who kill, or attempt the act, are driven by the notion that the person they must murder is a personal danger to them. This virulent virus of hate causes carnage on a grand scale. There is much detail of the devastation. The killers, labeled “Haters” by the media, are not delicate in their dispensation of death. That, in a nutshell, is the plot. To his great credit, author Moody manages to sustain the tension. It is a brilliant achievement to have a premise that is static in its nature move so well as a story. Hater is an exercise in maintaining mood and incrementally increasing interest by emphasizing the lethal anarchy itself. The reason it is occurring is secondary to surviving it.
The tale is told mostly from the point of view of a parking enforcement worker named Danny. Danny has seen his share of flared tempers and exasperation. None of this prepares him for the odd occurrences which slowly start to unfold around him. He sees a little old lady brutally beaten by a man in the street. At a rock concert, Danny witnesses more unprovoked violence; this time it is one band mate attacking another. When the realization literally hits home that it could happen to anyone: A beloved family member, a spouse, the neighbor upstairs; it leads to a revelation. Danny understands the division; it boils down to them versus us. Initially, this repulses him: “To stand and fight against them would mean displaying the same emotions as they do. It would be self-destructive. To fight back is to risk being called a Hater too. All we can do is keep to ourselves and not retaliate.”
Circumstances later prompt Danny to adopt a different stance. He embraces the “us” and “them” mentality, and becomes emotionally and physically empowered. His perception is radically altered, and he finds how absurdly easy it is to kill. It is no wonder that this book, which was first self published in 2006 without the benefit of an agent, attracted the attention of movie makers. Guillermo del Toro, and Mark Johnson (who produced The Chronicles of Narnia) bought the film rights. Esteemed director, J.A. Bayona (The Orphanage) is helming the production. Compound all that with the knowledge that Hater is the first book in a trilogy, and it is obvious that David Moody is in a very enviable position. Hater is a fascinating book that ponders the potential for violence in each of us. It also is a timely treatise on how facile it is to separate, delineate, and alienate ourselves from one another. All it takes is fear.

Review by Sheila Merritt http://hellnotes.com/hater-book-review

Friday, September 3, 2010

The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures

To write this piece, we cataloged over 7,000 photographs on OkCupid.com, analyzing three primary things:
  • Facial Attitude. Is the person smiling? Staring straight ahead? Doing that flirty lip-pursing thing?
  • Photo Context. Is there alcohol? Is there a pet? Is the photo outdoors? Is it in a bedroom?
  • Skin. How much skin is the person showing? How much face? How much breasts? How much ripped abs?

In looking closely at the astonishingly wide variety of ways our users have chosen to represent themselves, we discovered much of the collective wisdom about profile pictures was wrong. For interested readers, I explain our measurement process, and how we collected our data, at the end of the post. All my bar charts are zeroed on the average picture. Now to the data.
MYTH 1
It’s better to smile
One of the first things we noticed when diving into our pool of photos is that men and women have very different approaches to the camera.

Women smile about 50% more than men do and make that flirty-face four times as often.
Now, you’re always told to look happy and make eye contact in social situations, but at least for your online dating photo, that’s just not optimal advice. For women, a smile isn’t strictly better: she actually gets the most messages by flirting directly into the camera, like the center and right-hand subjects above.

Notice that, however, that flirting away from the camera is the single worst attitude a woman can take. Certain social etiquettes apply even online: if you’re going to be making eyes at someone, it should be with the person looking at your picture.
Men’s photos are most effective when they look away from the camera and don’t smile:

Maybe women want a little mystery. What is he looking at? Slashdot? Or Engadget?

It’s interesting that while making flirty eye contact is relatively okay for men, flirting away from the camera is the worst thing they, too, can do.
MYTH 2
The MySpace Angle Is Busted
The universally-maligned MySpace angle is achieved by holding your camera above your head and being just so darn coy.
We were sure these pictures were lame; in fact, the prospect of producing hard data on just how lame got us all excited. But we were so wrong.

In terms of getting new messages, the MySpace shot is the single most effective photo type for women. We at first thought this was just because, typically, you can kind of see down the girl’s shirt with the camera at that angle—indeed, that seems to be the point of shot in the first place—so we excluded all cleavage-showing shots from the pool and ran the numbers again. No change: it’s still the best shot; better, in fact, than straight-up boob pics (more on those later).
Weird.
MYTH 3
Guys should keep their shirts on
The male “Ab Shot” has the same reputation as the MySpace Shot—it’s an Internet cliché that supposedly everyone thinks is only for bozos. To wit: a journalist was visiting our office recently, and when we told her we were researching user photos, the first thing she said was “please tell me people hate it when guys show off their abs.” We hadn’t finished running the numbers yet, so we confidently reassured her that people did. The data contradicted us.

Of course, there is some self-selection here: the guys showing off their abs are the ones with abs worth showing, and naturally the best bodies get lots of messages. So we can’t recommend this photo tactic to every man. But, contrary to everything you read about profile pictures, if you’re a guy with a nice body, it’s actually better to take off your shirt than to leave it on. We would never suggest to a Fitzgerald or a Dave Eggers to limit his profile to 100 words, and so why should guys with great bodies keep their best asset under wraps?
Dating, both online and off is about playing to your strengths, and it should be no different for men with muscles, even if the classic pose is kinda hard to take:

After weeks of sorting through pictures, I started calling these guys headless horsemen.
An interesting caveat here is that a six-pack does seem to have a short shelf life: the effectiveness of the “abs pic” decreases sharply with age.

A 19 year-old showing his abs meets just under 1.4 women for every women he reaches out to, meaning that not only are females responding to his messages, but many are actually contacting him first. For a 31 year-old ab shower, that ratio has regressed to much closer to the average.
Because of our restricted data set for this post, we can only make confident claims for 19 to 31 year-olds right now, but it’s our strong suspicion that this downward trend continues with age. In the future perhaps we can investigate what’s behind the decline: is it because older guys and their older abs are inherently less attractive, or because women as they age find body shots less interesting?
One final point, vis à vis men, their torsos, and the clothing thereupon: if you’re not the type of guy who can show off your muscles, don’t veer off in the opposite direction and get all dressed up. Outfits more sophisticated than a simple collared shirt fare poorly:

The Cleavage Shot

There are no clear myths associated with showing cleavage in your picture. Most “experts” recommend you don’t, but everyone knows that breasts get attention, so to treat that recommendation as a “myth” would be disingenuous. But since the Cleavage Shot is the feminine analogue of the Ab Shot, and an undisputed online dating archetype, we thought we should discuss it.
Like the Ab Shot, the Cleavage Shot is very successful, drawing 12.9 new contacts per month, or 49% more than average. But unlike the Abs Shot, this positive effect actually trends against the effects of age.

As you would expect, women get fewer and fewer new messages as they age (which is a topic for another whole post!), but this decrease in new contacts is substantially slower for women with cleavage pics. A 32 year-old woman showing her body gets only 1 less message a month than the equivalent 18 year-old; an older woman not showing off gets 4 messages less, a large relative fall-off in popularity. The older the woman, the more relatively successful she is showing off her body
We find this anti-aging trend surprising. When we look further into the data, we can see that as women get older, they are more hesitant to emphasize their bodies, despite its still being a good strategy (at least in terms of message volume). Instead, they increasingly choose to show themselves in non-sexual contexts, like being outdoors:

For women in their late teens and early twenties, body pictures are the most popular type of shot; outdoor pictures are second. This ordering is reversed by the mid-twenties.
To wrap up our cleavage discussion, let’s assess the kind of messages the cleavage-showers are getting. A message like “Hey nice rack” isn’t really gonna lead anywhere, and isn’t very valuable to the recipient. We looked a level deeper and analyzed what resulted from the incoming contacts. Did the messages go unanswered? Did they turn into legitimate conversations? We didn’t go through anyone’s inbox to do this; we mathematically modeled a “conversation,” based number of messages back and forth. And we discovered the following:

This chart gives excellent insight as to why to the subject of this picture:

gets many more meaningful messages than does the subject of this one:

even though the two women are basically the same age, spend the same amount of time on the site, have similar profile length and quality, and have the same “attractiveness” as rated by OkCupid’s male population. If you want worthwhile messages in your inbox, the value of being conversation-worthy, as opposed to merely sexy, cannot be overstated.
MYTH 4
Make sure your face is showing
We used to think that the one iron-clad rule of Internet dating photos was to at least show your face. In fact, we used to give this very advice on OkCupid’s own photo upload page:

That page reads differently now because we found that all other things being equal whether you show your face really doesn’t affect your messages at all.

When at first these results came back, we didn’t believe it. We installed all kinds of sophisticated photo analysis software libraries, ran scripts to measure the percentage of face in each of our photos, generated diabolically meaningless scatter plots:

But the facts were stubborn: your face doesn’t necessarily matter. In fact, not showing your face can in fact be a positive, as long as you substitute in something unusual, sexy, or mysterious enough to make people want to talk to you.

All of the above subjects get far more messages than average, and yet none of them have outstanding profiles. The pictures do all the work: in different ways, they pique the viewer’s curiosity and say a lot about who the subject is (or wants to be).
Of course, we wouldn’t recommend that you meet someone in person without first seeing a full photo of them, that still seems like a recipe for disaster. In the near future, we’re going to be arranging series of blind dates through the site, and profile photo accuracy vs. the success of the date will be a big part of the report. Thanks for reading.

How we collected and evaluated this data

Our data set was chosen at random from all users in big cities, with only one profile photograph, between the ages of 18 and 32. We then lopped the most and least attractive members of the pool, fearing that they would skew our results. So all the data in this post is for “average-looking people;” here’s a graphical representation of that concept for the female pool.

After a bit more sifting, we finalized our data pool at 7,140 users. Aside from running each picture through a variety of analysis scripts, we tagged, by hand, each picture for various contextual indicators. We double-checked the tags before generating our data.
To quantify “profile success” for women, we used new messages received per active month on the site.
We had to do something different than this for guys, because of the fundamentally different role they play in the online courtship process: they are the ones reaching out to new people; women send only a small fraction of the unsolicited “hellos” that men do. As you’ve seen, the metric we settled on is, “women met per attempt”, which is:
(new incoming messages + replies to outgoing first contacts)
/
outgoing first contacts
Basically, this is how many women a guy has a conversation with, per new woman he reaches out to, and we feel it’s the best way to measure his success per unit time on OkCupid. Note that if a guy has a particularly compelling photo, this ratio could exceed 1, as he’d be getting messages from the women who come across his profile, as well as the women he himself is reaching out to.