Sometimes when I cuddle Gertie, it's so nice I want to take a selfie of us. By the time I get my phone set to camera, she is so done and has reverted to staring into the middle distance with empty eyes.
Years ago when I had my first significant heartbreak, a my friend played this song for me to help get over it. It worked! (For pretty much the length of the music video, but still, a few minutes of respite was much-needed.)
HEARTBREAKER
by Mariah Carey ft. Jay-Z
Give me your love
Give me your love
Give me your love
Give me your love
Give me your love
Give me your love
Give me your love
Give me your love
You gotta bounce to it like this
You almost gotta walk to this
Uh huh
Escape
Boy your love's so good
I don't want to let go
And although I should
I can't leave you alone
'Cause you're so disarming
I'm caught up in the midst of you
And I can not resist, and oh
Boy if I do
The things you want me to
The way I used to do
Would you love me, baby
Hold me, feeling now
Go and break my heart
Heartbreaker, you got the best of me
But I just keep on coming back incessantly
Oh why, did you have to run your game on me
I should have known right from the start
You'd go and break my heart
Give me your love, give me your love
Give me your love, give me your love
Give me your love, give me your love
Give me your love, give me your love
Give me your love, give me your love
Give me your love, give me your love
Give me your love, give me your love
Give me your love, give me your love
It's a shame to be so euphoric and weak
When you smile at me
And you tell me the things that you know
Persuade me to relinquish my love to you
But I can not resist at all
Boy if I do
The things you want me to
The way I used to do
Would you love me, baby
Hold me, feeling now
Go and break my heart
Heartbreaker, you got the best of me
But I just keep on coming back incessantly
Oh why, did you have to run your game on me
I should have known right from the start
You'd go and break my heart
She want to shop with Jay, play box with Jay
She want to pillow fight in the middle of the night
She want to drive my Benz with five of her friends
She want to creep past the block spyin' again
She want to roll with Jay, chase the skeeos away
She want to fight with lame chicks, blow my day
She want to inspect the rest, kick me to the curb
If she find a strand of hair longer than hers
She want love in the jacuzzi, rub up in the movies
Access to the old crib, keys to the new crib
She want to answer the phone, tattoo her arm
That's when I gotta send her back to her moms
She call me "Heartbreaker"
When we apart, it makes her
Want to get a piece of paper, scribble "I hate ya"
Friends share! We share our our fruit roll-ups, popcorn, and, it turns out, our neural responses to external stimuli. A new study has shown that people who are friends have similar brain-response patterns, and that this holds across factors like ethnicity, gender, or nationality. So much so that you can predict the closeness of a friendship by how similar their neural responses are.
So far this appears to just be correlational, so now I'm curious: do our responses meld as we get closer, or are we more drawn to friendship with people similar to us?
Loner Cells
Scientists have recently discovered a new single-celled organism, one with no known relatives. It seems that this throws the generally held view of mitochondria evolution into a bit of disarray.
Hilary Clinton posted an "apology" for her protection of a man accused of sexual assault (her 2008 faith adviser was accused of sexually harassing women in the office), and it's a great example of how not to apologize. Here's a breakdown of what you can learn from her un-apology.
Interestingly, despite the fact that Buddhist scholars said they ought to, the more devout Buddhists used no self-doctrine to cope with the notion of death.
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It's been a while since the last Receptionist Book Club!
The book I would currently like to discuss with you: Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins.
The story is about a princess whose country revolted and her family was transferred to America. She goes to a regular high school, joins the cheerleading team, has a bunch of bad sex, and then swears off men in favour of political activism. Then she meets a gross outlaw who somehow she can't help but be attracted to, and then love and heartbreak and pyramids happen.
Spoiler alert: I hated it. So much. I stopped reading about 75 pages before the end because I just couldn't anymore. Not necessarily because of what was happening in the story, but the way it was all written. No ending could have redeemed that annoying writing.
If you look up quotes from the book it seems like it's a stunning collection of prose. For example:
“We are our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.”
“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.”
Oooooh, right? It verges on poetry! The insight! The wordplay! Magic!
All those good feelings only come if you read it out of context. If you read the actual book it feels like it's written by someone trying to show off how well he can write. And how much he likes to objectify teenage girls.
Leigh-Cheri (the princess) is described in really uncomfortable terms. It's classic male-writer-genius, talking about the teen girl's perky, half-globe breasts, long legs, soft curves, blah blah blah under the guise of showing how her body suddenly matured without anyone realizing it was happening.
There's even a segment where her body is described from the perspective of her father who can't help but become a little aroused. SERIOUSLY. It's tiresome. No wonder generations of men think that women are nothing but temptation wrapped in skin, all the "great literature" describes us like sexy statues.
The Woodpecker (the outlaw) is an anti-feminist mansplaining man who convinces her, among other things, that she just needs to sync her body up to the moon to have perfect birth control.
His age isn't given, but he has to be at least in his forties, and he comes into this TEENAGER GIRL's life in full creep-mode. She is talking to a cute boy on an airplane, and he leans over and says, "yummmmm" in her ear. Then he proceeds to make the "deep" statement that there are two mantras in the world, yuck and yum. His is yum. OH BOY HOW DEEP AND SEXY. Gross.
Also, he "teaches her how to be free."
Also, the book might be a bit racist against Arabs? At one point she gets engaged to an Arab tycoon and the way he is described and used in the story feels pretty wrong.
From reading this book I can only assume that Tom Robbins is an insufferable know-it-all who loves the sound of his own voice and thinks he has brilliant insights about everything, but instead of sharing them with you to see what you think, he tells them to you. No thanks, bud.
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Physical activity is referred to by many medical support professionals as "the most under-prescribed medication" because it helps with sleep, mood, and all sorts of other issues.
Anything is better than nothing. Ideally, we should aim for 150 mins of moderate activity per week (like walking, cycling) or 75 mins of vigorous intensity (running, sports).
75 mins a week is 10 mins a day. That is pretty doable.
A little bit every day can get lead to more consistency and better results than a big chunk a couple times a week.
Rethink rest - to be good to our bodies and actually feel refreshed, it's often better to do something light or moderate (like go for a walk) than nothing.
Takeaways and homework:
Fit in whatever - do ten squats every time you go to the bathroom.
Plan ahead. The things that matter to us get put in our schedules. This means that every week/day/whenever, you have to actually look at what you have planned and think about what kind of activity you can put in there.
Pick a few activities you like and do those. "You don't want to feel like you're punching yourself to be active."
You are less likely to reschedule if it's in the morning.
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This Week's "I want to go to there": Camping! I want camping weather and camping to happen!
Photo by Alex Holt.
Japanese Space
This article on the Japanese concept of space is fascinating and beautiful! If you are unfamiliar, give it a read and then see how your mental relationships to space, objects, and architecture subtly shifts. I especially love the concept of ma, or negative space - "the free zone that allows for dissimilar things to co-exist."
Uneven Growth
“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. we grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. the past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.”
― Anaïs Nin
Because
I love this comic quite dearly. A good reminder for when we want ask questions with obvious answers (that also maybe aren't our business).
(PS: If you aren't familiar with Instagram, there are multiple panels! Just click the little, almost-invisible arrows!)
I get really excited about little things sometimes, and so I wanted to lean into those small joys and wonders and get really really ridiculously enthusiastic about them! So begins... Ridiculous Enthusiasm.
I'll be posting to Instagram at @ridiculousenthusiasm (twice a week for now), and then occasionally sharing here as well.
Here's the first enthusiasm, posted today on the Insta:
Follow! Love! Share! Do ALL THE THINGS!!!
PS: I am posting this at 11:11am on purpose, because that's like FOUR EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!
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Guys! Canada's national anthem is now gender neutral! Yay!!!!
The big line in question USED to say "in all thy sons command", but now it says "in all of us command."
Naturally, there are some very upset people who think that Canada's history is being ruined by this change. The funny thing is that this line has been changed before. According to the good ol' CBC, the line was originally "thou dost in us command" and got changed to the gendered term during WWI, presumably to help rally troupes or some other warlike purpose.
When I was a kid there were a lot of unsuccessful attempts to make this change. Being the little conservative that I was, I thought it was silly, that it was just a few words, and that it's part of history so it's not really sexist.
It's kind of weird to say that sexism today doesn't matter if it originated a long time ago, isn't it?
Needless to say, my entire outlook has changed. Words matter! Anything can be rewritten!
Now the more interesting question is how "democratic" the change was. Debate was shut down in the Senate, putting the bill to a vote, something the opposition is calling undemocratic.
Also, the guy most vocally opposed to it has said that he sees that anthem as being gender neutral already, because the way it was written was "accurate for the time" (that's what I used to think, and it's not how gender neutral works), that he is worried people will go after the God reference next (maybe), that doing things like this erases the rich tapestry of our culture (or maybe it stops forcing an official monoculture), and that people can sing the alternate words on their own if they want (if that's supposed to be good enough for us, then you do it).
So, not so worried about that one.
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In my dreams, someone will use this song to tell their partner that they love them. Maybe in karaoke, singing the song? Or they will make a mix CD for the person but it's all this song. (Do people still make mix CDs? How do you send people music they should listen to otherwise?)
I LOVE YOU
by The Pipettes
There used to be a lot of things
That I didn't know
And although they still exist
I try not to let them show
But I think that now you've seen me
For my true colours
I'm sure you recognise i'm more stupid than the others
But I love you
Oh I love you
And I will love you
'Till the day I die
There will never be a time when we have to say good-bye
I've seen you try to laugh at all of my bad jokes
And I've cooked you seven meals six of them one on which you've choked
But it has taken me a while
To get used to this new feeling
When I woke up with a smile
Oh, I nearly started screaming
That I love you
Oh I love you
And I will love you
'Till the day I die
There will never be a time when we have to say good-bye
Because I love you
Oh I love you
And I will love you
'Till the day I die
There will never be a time when we have to say good-bye
Never be a time when we have to say good-bye
There will never be a time when we have to say good-bye
This sounds horrible to me, but apparently there is a rising trend of using video games in interview processes. Major corporations already use them to screen applicants, and as torturous as playing a balloon-inflation game in the stress of a job interview sounds to me, apparently this practice has seen an increase in female candidates overall. So, good for feminism at least? The Agelessness of Naked Mole Rats
I honestly never thought I would write about naked mole rats, but apparently they don't age. The females can reproduce throughout their lives, and their risk of dying does not go up with age (unlike all other mammals.)
How to Maintain a Friendship
Since loneliness and isolation are basically becoming the main causes of death in developed nations, maybe we all need a primer on how to maintain our friendships. The advice is pretty straightforward: communicate your expectations and availability, and then actually make time for people.
How to Meditate Wrong
With all the research coming out about the benefits of meditation, you've probably wanted to give it a shot, if you haven't already. Why wouldn't you, knowing that you can be happier, healthier, at peace, less stressed, more imaginative, and sprout angel wings just by sitting quietly for 10-60 minutes a day??? Well, turns out that's all a mistake. We're doing it wrong.
It's week two of my health class! (Aside: I love saying I am going to health class, because it makes me feel like a teenager in an American TV show.)
Last week I shared the things I learned and my main takeaways regarding stress management. This week we talked about nutrition. (There was also a little bit of wrap up about stress, so it's all mixed in here.)
I should admit that I have always hated the idea of having to take nutrition seriously. I know, guys, I know. I KNOW, nutrition freaking matters. Healthy eating is the most important thing for being a healthy person. I just really don't want it to be so I defiantly choose to not care.
Here are my notes:
We have to notice when our bodies are displaying stress and ask ourselves what is really stressing us out? Generally we will get to an insecurity or other emotional issue, although sometimes it is just a circumstance. Then we have to figure out if we can change it, or if we need to just let it go.
Nutrition is pretty much 80% of healthiness. (FINE.)
The secret sauce is to be active and eat well.
Protein pacing is a thing where you eat protein-rich meals and snacks throughout the day to keep your blood sugar even and feel full and happy.
Dietary fat doesn't make you fat. (I already knew that one!)
Caffeine increases cortisol and can stay in your system for 8 hours.
50% of your meal should always be veggies and eat veggies all the time (with protein and healthy fat so you feel satisfied).
Pay attention to your body when you eat and stop when you feel satisfied. Not full.
Questions to get at the heart of things:
How do I want to feel? How do I actually feel right now? What do I need to do to change that feeling?
Why am I eating? (Stress? To be social? Because I'm lonely? Am I really thirsty?)
Takeaways and homework:
Don't try to change everything all at once, because that is just frustrating. Pick one or two things to change and try them for a week or two.
Ideas on things to change: drink 2 cups of water first thing in the morning; eat a protein-rich breakfast every day; before eating, pause and ask yourself why you are eating and identify what the real issue is; eat smaller portions of nutrient-rich food throughout the day; limit caffeine or alcohol intake.
I am committing to avoiding caffeine after 2pm.
I am feeling resistant to everything else right now (I already have eggs for breakfast every day and drink water first thing in the morning, although I could probably drink more. What I need to do is ask myself why I am eating before I eat and do something about the junk food I eat at work, and I feel rebellious against that.)
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What if there really are invisible people? Like, a lot of them.
They could be everywhere, walking around us and we can't even tell.
They probably have better things to do than stand around looking over our shoulders while we write notes to each other in class, but maybe not. Every culture is different. Is the culture of invisible people one based around spying?
Maybe they like to help us, pushing us out of the way of cars or nudging important reports into more prominent view.
Maybe they like to mess with us and that's what happened to the pen I put it down on my bed five seconds ago.
Maybe they are smarter than us and get so frustrated and want to scream, but can't, because then we would know that they are there and the first rule of invisibility is to not get caught.
Maybe we are like their pets, or maybe they don't even pay attention to us and do all these invisible things we can't see and don't care about either.
Maybe they have parties sometimes, and that's why you walk into a room with music pumping and no one is there.
Maybe sometimes they forget that they are invisible and try to hold something behind their backs to hide it, and that's why we have ghost stories.
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