thankfully, i knew it then

postsecret.

i think i just fell in love

my mancrush has done it again.

"something russian"

Emily: did you rub buddha's belly this morning?

me: i rubbed attipuss's belly. he's quite like a wise, old buddha. a hairy one.

11:40 AM

Emily: aww da baby attipuss- cutie patootie

11:41 AM me: don't front

i am now aware that u hate cats

so don't even pretend to care about him or his overwhelming beauty

Emily: oh totally not
he's still cute
no i don't like cats but some are cute

me: he's GORGEOUS

he's one of the most beautiful cats ever, and EVERYONE tells me that

SAY IT.

Emily: umm i take it back
i've never noticed his supposed overwhelming beauty

11:42 AM me: u HAVEN"T?

Emily: nope

me: omg

i will cut you.

Emily: i will do the same back to you

i will do something russian to you

hahaaa. this chick cracks me UP!

brought to you via Gchat, without which every work day would be utter hell. utter, productive hell.

my morning smile

a boyfriend would be cool right about now.

hahaaa. silly girl. but yeah, i hear 'ya...

sweaty before 8 am

i've said it before, and i'll say it again

i. hate. summer.

okay, maybe i should be more specific: i hate summer weather in the lower northeast.

this level of humidity is unhealthy, unnerving, and - worst of all - unfreshening. a perfectly pressed shirt turns to wrinkles in 60 seconds flat. finely detailed hairstyles fall like melting snow cones onto a boardwalk. a freshly showered back is soon dewy - NAY, worse than dewy: outright wet.

mornings like these i can't talk to anyone in the office for about a half hour after arrival, for fear of snapping.

but i'm glad i have you to talk to.

malraux says...

The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.

thanks, far-left liberal celebs!!

A Gaythering Storm from Jane Lynch

"...I also have an issue with their hot lunch program."

dylan says...

Last night I danced with a stranger, but she just reminded me you were the one.

my afternoon smile

after a frustrating day waiting for, then reading, then heatedly arguing about the California Supreme Court's ruling on Proposition 8, i had to smile at this:

"Luckily, each of us had just gotten a new pantsuit."

isn't that just the lesbianist thing you've ever read? such cute words, spoken by the first Californiesbian to get married.

she doesn't seem to be very phased by today's decision, so 'ya know what? i'm not going to be, either.

entire cute article here.


UPDATE: if you want to maybe cry a little (happy tears), or just have some extra time on your hands, read THIS LA Times story about that first couple ever married, and their 50-year love affair.

old man baby wisdom

For what it's worth: it's never too late... to be whoever you want to be. There's no time limit. Stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing.

We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of.

If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.

(benjamin button)

visually enjoyable

but i still wasn't impressed with Wolverine.

and you'll make me smile

love this video.

an aspiritual journey?

when our parents were young and Eastern religions were all the rage among America's hippies, Herman Hesse's novel Siddhartha rocked popular culture. ask them; they'll tell you.

i saw it as i wandered around one of my favorite little book stores, and before i knew it i was at home reading it.

i'd like to share with you a few portions of it. it isn't a page-turner, nor would i count it among my favorites, but i found it valuable. and quite personal.

it's the story of a young man destined for a devout life who decides he must give it all up, wander alone through the world, and experience real life in order to find his way to "god," as i would call it.

Govinda said, "...I believe you and know that you never followed a teacher. But have you not yourself found, if not a doctrine, then at least certain thoughts, certain insights that belong to you and help you to live? If you were able to tell me something of them, you would fill my heart with joy."

Said Siddhartha, "I have had thoughts, yes, and insights, now and again. Sometimes for an hour or a day, I have felt knowledge within me, just as one feels life within one's own heart. There were several thoughts, but it would be difficult for me to hand them on to you. You see, Govinda, here is one of the thoughts I have found: Wisdom cannot be passed on. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to pass on always sounds like foolishness...

Listen, my dear friend, listen well! The sinner who I am and who you are is a sinner, but one day he will again be Brahman, he will one day reach Nirvana, will be a Buddha -- and now behold: This one day is an illusion, it is only an allegory! This sinner is not on his way to the state of Buddhahood, he is not caught up in a process of developing, although our thought cannot imagine things in any other way.

No, in this sinner the future Buddha already exists -- now, today -- all his future is already there... The world, friend Govinda, is not imperfect, nor is it in the middle of a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect in every moment; every sin already carries forgiveness within it, all little children already carry their aged forms within them, all infants death, all dying men eternal life...

Therefore everything that is appears good to me. Death appears to me like life, sin like holiness, cleverness like folly; everything must be just as it is, everything requires only my assent, only my willingness, my loving approval, and for me it is good and can never harm me.

I experienced by observing my own body and my own soul that I sorely needed sin, sorely needed concupiscence, needed greed, vanity, and the most shameful despair to learn to stop resisting, learn to love the world and stop comparing it to some world I only wished for and imagined, some sort of perfection I myself had dreamed up, but instead to let it be as it was and to love it and be happy to belong to it."

Siddhartha didn't find god through listening to the teachings of others, through meditation or fasting or "scripture." he found it through living, wandering, eating, drinking, making love, failing, feeling pain... in other words, through living his own life, and living hard.

i'm just sayin'.

childlike wonder

i'm not at all knowledgeable about architecture, but this article about Tiny Houses fascinated me nonetheless.


i think my interest has something to do with my childhood dream of living in a tree house like the Swiss Family Robinson...


speaking of which, i think i need to plan a vacay in Kentucky just to stay in this dreamy treehouse hotel. it would also be a good time to finally visit Dollywood, eh E?

my morning smile

haaa.
so dumb.

what i wish i had said, part III

he asked, "what exactly is 'cafeteria buddhism'?" clearly referencing my facebook-info explanation of my religious views.

i wish, in that moment, i could have recalled the words of walt whitman, which almost perfectly - and so concisely - sum up the spiritual journey i've been on for the past decade:

Re-examine all that you have been told. Dismiss that which insults your soul.

background noise

always been a storm

i'd like to leave you with something warm
but never have i been a blue calm sea
i have always been a storm

one of my new favorite songs.



(hat tip to liam, who told me to download this fantastic song and who will not see this because he does not read my blog.)

i decided

starting tomorrow, i'm going to like the Ting Tings.

str8s 4 gay marriage

this has potential.

are you stupid or something?

just wanted to share a few excerpts of a fascinating article in The Atlantic that considers the effects our everyday internet usage and heavy reliance thereon are having on our brains, or at least our thought processes.

it's much too long for any of you internet-affected dummies to read the entire thing, so here are a few chunks i appreciated while impatiently skimming through it ;-)

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

* * *

Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice. But it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking—perhaps even a new sense of the self. “We are not only what we read,” says Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University... “We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.

* * *

The idea that our minds should operate as high-speed data-processing machines is not only built into the workings of the Internet, it is the network’s reigning business model as well. The faster we surf across the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements. Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link—the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction.

i have to admit i've noticed similar changes -- i'm sure we all have. (some of you probably couldn't even make it through those three excerpts above.) but i am also skeptical of these theories.

just think about the fact that millions of people will still sit for hours -- days, even! -- after a Harry Potter book hits the stands, reading feverishly and getting lost in the story. people do it every day, just minutes after stepping away from their computer screens.

and maybe we're not memorizing the Twilight novel, but doing that would probably dumb us down worse than the internet does. no offense...


what are your thoughts? or has the internet robbed you of them all?

mcwilliams says...

It is a risk to love. What if it doesnt work out?

Ah, but what if it does...

rule for life #32

don't play games, even if your motive is to avoid hurting someone. in the long run, you'll both wish you had been honest from the start.

hemingway says

I love sleep. My life has a tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?

i hear that.

fully integrated

for the first time this morning, thanks to my new CNN application, i read the news and took the daily opinion poll (one of my favorite things!) as i walked to work to work, rather than at my desk. how efficient!

then i arrived at my building, looked up for what seemed like the first time today, and felt guilty for what i'm at risk of becoming.

skip to 1:00.

secrets, secrets

a special edition today.

new favorites

i think these two might be one of the most attractive celebrity couples on the market today.

he's not conventionally handsome, but he's definitely hot when he tries and hilarious all the time. she's flawless and even quite funny.

that's all.

rule for life #948

don't believe a promise that can only be broken.

random rant

it amazes me that, in the 6th largest city in the US, with at least a couple million people roaming the streets every day, i see the same people all the time.

i don't just mean the people i share the elevator with, or the morning regulars at starbucks. or even the girl i see every morning on spruce street as we head our opposite directions for work. it's perfectly normal to see those types of people regularly.


but other times it's a bit eerie. seeing a guy at a mexican restaurant one night, and then again the next morning, on the other side of town. noticing a runner on the river path on tuesday and remembering her face at a restaurant a few nights later.

i often find myself saying to my friends, when we're out and about, "ohh that's the guy we saw at ___" or "weird, that's the same girl who was at ___."

it's not just me. my friend Emily has seen the same Greenpeace street moocher (no offense. i know they're doing good work, but stop asking me for money, especially when i'm listening to my iPod. god...) multiple times, in totally different locations, in the past few weeks. often enough that it's getting weird. she sees him so often, she's developed a crush.

my primary complaint is that this sort of thing never happens when you need it to happen.

the cutie who flirted with me at the grocery store a few weeks ago: WHERE IS HE NOW?!? because you know i've been trying that whole same-time-same-place trick, and he hasn't been there since. don't cute guys shop on a set grocery schedule? i mean, i didn't, but i do now.

and that adorable guy on my block, the one who did the half-turn-around smile. i ran into him two times in one weekend, and not once since then. DID HE MOVE?? who moves in April?

i realize these are the types of situations that Missed Connections are made for. i'm just not ready to resort to that yet, 'ya know?

i would just like it if something a little more romantic, more coincidental (or so it would appear, such as in the grocery stalking scenario) panned out every now and again. i want to run into the people i want to run into, not all those other bitches.

and that's what really grinds my gears.

give a single man a chance!

descartes says...

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

amen.

now will somebody try to explain this to the religious right? thanks.

my morning smile

haa.

tsfunny.

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

***

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

a little Pablo Neruda to get your mind working, hopefully your heart as well.

on this rainy day, i could think of nothing more important to share with you than something beautiful and rich and full.

i hope you, too, found it to be so.

under the radar

We just get the one life, you know. Just one. You can't live someone else's or think it's more important just because it's more dramatic.

What happens matters. Maybe only to us, but it matters.

who knew? this box office flop is one of the cutest - and most underrated - movies i have seen in quite a while.

greg kinnear is cute, as always.
tea leoni is lovely, as always.
kristen wiig is hilarious, as always.


you can catch it on DVD.

a frou-frou kinda night

not in the lavish way

So how do i do normal?
The smile i fake, the permanent wave of
Cue cards and fix-it kits
Can't you tell?
i'm not myself

I'm a slow-motion accident
Lost in coffee rings and fingerprints
I don't wanna feel anything
But i do
And it all comes back to you

dear me

How filled with true feeling, fury, despair, joy, anxiety, shame, pride and above all, supremely above all, how overpowered it was by love. My eyes fill with tears just to think of you. Of me. Tears splash on to my keyboard now.

I am perhaps happier now than I have ever been and yet I cannot but recognise that I would trade all that I am to be you, the eternally unhappy, nervous, wild, wondering and despairing 16-year-old Stephen: angry, angst-ridden and awkward but alive.

Because you know how to feel, and knowing how to feel is more important than how you feel. Deadness of soul is the only unpardonable crime, and if there is one thing happiness can do it is mask deadness of soul.

actor Stephen Fry writes a letter to his teenage self. it's worth reading, trust me.

in fact, i wish i had read this ten years ago.

hmm...

i might have to watch Star Trek for the first time in my life.

roger that.

It smells like vodka in here... Oh wait, that's just the air through my nose.

american dad is my fave.