Women are raised being told by parents, teachers, media, peers, and all surrounding social strata that: it is not okay to set solid and distinct boundaries and reinforce them immediately and dramatically when crossed (“mean bitch”) it is not okay to appear distraught or emotional (“crazy bitch”) it is not okay to make personal decisions that the adults or other peers in your life do not agree with, and it is not okay to refuse to explain those decisions to others (“stuck-up bitch”) it is not okay to refuse to agree with somebody, over and over and over again (“angry... Continue reading

Found this in a short story written by Cory Doctorow. Did Adams really say this? It's a great concept. I was thinking it sort of explains the attitude of gamers toward the X-box, Kinnect, other innovations, though I'm not sure the gamers in question are actually over 35. "But you know what Douglas Adams said: everything invented before you were born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything after your fifteenth birthday is new and exciting and revolutionary. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.... Continue reading

Another quote I'm always reaching for: ....Fey's observation that women of a certain age in comedy are always labeled "crazy." Fey writes: I know older men in comedy who can barely feed and clean themselves, and they still work. The women, though, they’re all 'crazy.' I have a suspicion — and hear me out, because this is a rough one — that the definition of “crazy” in show business is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to fuck her anymore. Found here: Tina Fey Explains What ‘Crazy Lady’ Really Means in Hollywood Continue reading

I enjoyed today's Diesel Sweeties comic: Diesel Sweeties The phrase "chum bucket of disappointment" reminded me of my favorite Dave Barry quote: "I do think we need to explore the commitment problem, which has caused many women to mistakenly conclude that men, as a group, have the emotional maturity of hamsters. This is not the case. A hamster is much more capable of making a lasting commitment to a woman, especially if she gives it those little food pellets. Whereas a guy, in a relationship, will consume the pellets of companionship, and he will run on the exercise wheel of... Continue reading

So why is the Internet, and the nerd-Internet in particular, so awful? I'll posit a few reasons. It mimics the same anonymizing conditions that lead to inhume treatment in jails. It carries over the same slanted cultural weights that appear in the non-Internet, despite being conceived as a tool to level the playing field. It receives a constant influx of new teenage boys who are, believe you me, inherently awful people who do not understand their own privilege -- and then markets to those awful people, because they're there. And finally, the Internet is full of nerds: people who actively... Continue reading

"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists that control the fool To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery." Continue reading

On Metafilter, a discussion of a fire department that charges property owners $75 a year, which they must pay of the fire department won't put out their fire. http://www.metafilter.com/96324/The-Fire-Department-is-not-a-right-it-is-a-privilege A very interesting comment: This is an example of larger problem with straight libertarianism: the punishment for learning lessons is death, serious injury, or total bankruptcy. So, if life throws you a curveball, which it often does, there's no safety net to catch you, especially if you're low or lower middle class. For instance, we have excellent food safety regulations. Take away those regulations, and sure, the cost of doing business will go down. But when your kid dies from food poisoning, the "libertarian lesson" there is to not go to that restaurant again. If you lose your job and your health insurance, and then find out you have cancer and you die because you can't get coverage, the lesson there is don't lose your job and don't get cancer. Continue reading

Fitness and health articles have been getting me down lately, so I particularly <3 this comment (on the Awl, in response to an article about how bacon is unhealthy -- I know, right? -- by commenter Art Yucko [#1321]) I'm supposed to live longer so I can do what exactly. Chew on bitter styrofoam-flavored, dry vegetables with no dressing with my dentures at age 110? Consume spoonfuls of pulverized, steamed white-meat chicken paste with the assistance of a nurse that would probably rather stab me to death with the other end of the spoon and take all my money because they are underpaid? I mean I hate to be a bummer! But: The PARTY is NOW. Be sure to pay your tab and leave at an appropriate time! Continue reading

From Gene Weingarten's Pulitzer-Prize winning article, "Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime?" The article quotes Ed Hickling, a clinical psychologist from Albany, NY: Humans have a fundamental need to create and maintain a narrative for their lives in which the universe is not implacable and heartless, that terrible things do not happen at random, and that catastrophe can be avoided if you are vigilant and responsible. [...] We are vulnerable, but we don’t want to be reminded of that. We want to believe that the world is... Continue reading

From: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/02/dont_settle_for_the_man_you_wa.html You can never have a good relationship with anyone when your focus is the relationship. There's a human being there who existed well before you got to them, and they weren't built for you or your needs or your parents or your future dreams as an actor. If you want to be happy with someone then your body and mind have to instinctively adapt to their happiness. If you're not ready for this kind of sacrifice, then you're simply not ready. I don't know if I agree with the first sentence. He clearly doesn't like the author of... Continue reading

I always misremember this quote (from Princess Bride, of course): "Life is pain, Highness! Anyone who says differently is selling something." I always think it should be "Life is hard, Princess..." Anyway, today I found a good followup quote: "Life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic." ~ Cesare Pavese ~ Continue reading

Today it does not. “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson At least, today, I recognize that I OUGHT to think this. Continue reading

Best blog post opening line I read today (wrongbot.com, writing on "Schrodinger's rapist"): Someone on the internet is wrong, and so I feel obligated to enumerate my disagreements with the author... The first 6 words of that post are a link to this XKCD comic: http://xkcd.com/386/ Best snarky internet comment of the day, in response to his post: Can I use your internet? It appears to have the same pages on it as mine, but they evidently say completely different things. Love it. Continue reading

This is from a "zombie" story. I found it here: http://shadowpress.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/shadowcast-016-those-below-jeremy-c-shipp-interview/ Hafwen’s nickname is Zippy. She likes to skip and sing about the dishes as she’s washing them and write poetry with waterproof paper in the rain. She’ll call me up just to tell me that she’s discovered the name for those imprints left in the skin when you press it against a textured surface too long. A frittle. So when I see her sitting cross-legged on my bed, motionless, not frowning, but not smiling, I know something’s wrong. I sit beside her and kiss her. “What’s up, Haf?” She... Continue reading

The title isn't very romantic, is it? I saw this on the internet but I wasn't able to find a citation. It seemed like a pretty definitive list, but it's probably from someone's self help book. The six stages of relationship development:Attraction Compatibility Trust Intimacy Loyalty Love Continue reading

These are other people's favorites from a blog that was having a contest to give away a Sony ebook reader. "In my own worst seasons I've come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. And then another: my daughter in a yellow dress. And another: the perfect outline of a full, dark sphere behind the crescent moon. Until I learned to be in love with my life again. Like a stroke victim retraining new parts of... Continue reading

A simple mistake, one that anyone could make, and isn't that true of all of them? Divorce, episodes of lousy parenting, dumb-head investments, negligence behind the wheel -- it's all too human, and you have to learn how to admit failure and walk away from it and not torment yourself. Sometimes the remorse is worse than the offense. Google tells me that this is a Garrison Keillor quote. I don't read him, normally, so I was at a loss to understand where I could have come across it, but it looks like it was here, on Salon: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2007/04/18/keillor/ At any... Continue reading

What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives, acts, and experiences otherwise than we do…? --- Friedrich Nietzsche The most wonderful of all things in life, I believe, is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a growing depth, beauty, and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing; it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of divine accident, and the most wonderful of all things in... Continue reading

When we're incomplete, we're always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on--series polygamy--until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter. Tom Robbins Continue reading

This is from Tom Robbins, "Still Life with Woodpecker", a book I have loved for many years -- 15? 20? This is one of my very favorite passages. I've hand copied this onto slips of paper and used it for a bookmark, pinned it to bulletin boards and handed it to loved ones. Who knows how to make love stay?Tell love you are going to the Junior's Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if love stays, it can have half. It will stay. Tell love you want a momento of it and obtain a... Continue reading

Make yourself happy without hurting others, then help others be happy without hurting yourself. I saw this in the Sunday comics but despite its lowly origin, it has become something of a mantra to me. There's several key points here -- the priority (just like parents, children and airplane oxygen masks), the responsibility (for your own happiness), and the importance of not hurting yourself while helping others. All of which I have forgotten at one time or another. I can't find the comic on the internet. If you want to see it, just look on my fridge. Continue reading

Everything that happens in your life, every single thing, leaves a scar. A permanent scar. You're not supposed to get over it. To get over something, to erase the mark it left on you, erases part of who you are. Ultimately, we are the sum of our scars. --- Matthew Woodring Stover Continue reading

I don't remember where I found this: There's something weird and paternalistic about the relationship between gamers and game-designers. It goes like this: "I will deny you reward until you complete some arbitrary tasks of my devising, because I know that this will make you happier than simply giving you the reward right away" (what's more, the designer is generally right about this). It reminded me of something I read long ago about behavioral training and the concept of inconsistent reinforcement. What I read was this: My wife, Debbie, is a psychologist. She tells me that inconsistent positive reinforcement is... Continue reading

Notes from a blog post (http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/): I’ve never posted a photo of the farm because I am scared to want it. I’m scared to want to live there because I can’t really control if I live there. But today, I’m posting a picture. Because part of coping with adult life is allowing yourself to want something even if you are not sure you’ll get it. So many of the questions I get from people are questions they answer themselves, in the very email where they ask the question. They ask if it’s okay to want what they want because they’re... Continue reading

I liked this article on the Awl: http://www.theawl.com/2010/01/frontiers-of-medicine-would-you-take-dont-drink-pills The discussion in the comments section is also very good, but this comment especially resonated with me: Me, I think the desire to drink is a reaction to a kind of anti-Asperger's - a thing where you notice everything about other people’s emotional reactions and feel totally responsible for it. Sometimes you just want to turn that shit off. I feel that sometimes, that "anti-Asperger's". For me, it doesn't drive me to drink but I certainly see how it could. Continue reading