Happy Fourth Y’all
Punch and Judy
A place for pictures of the “old rascal” himself, and his friends.
The Kissing Experiment
Here’s what to do: Below the fold you’ll see a 15 photos (labeled A-O) of couples kissing. We need you to help us categorize them into three groups:
1) erotic – passionate/sexually-charged kiss
2) friendship – kiss between friends
3) relationship – affectionate kiss implying commitmentTo participate, email me (srkirshenbaum@yahoo.com) with the list of letters (A-O) and corresponding rank (1, 2, or 3) based on how you perceive each image.
Solitude v. Loneliness
Loneliness is harsh, punishment, a deficiency state, a state of discontent marked by a sense of estrangement, an awareness of excess aloneness.
Solitude is something you choose. Loneliness is imposed on you by others.
We all need periods of solitude, although temperamentally we probably differ in the amount of solitude we need. Some solitude is essential; it gives us time to explore and know ourselves. It is the necessary counterpoint to intimacy, what allows us to have a self worthy of sharing. Solitude gives us a chance to regain perspective. It renews us for the challenges of life. It allows us to get (back) into the position of driving our own lives, rather than having them run by schedules and demands from without.
Solitude restores body and mind. Lonelinesss depletes them.
This struck a chord with me. Recently I overextended myself — something I do too often, honestly — which resulted in a period of intense “aloneness.” Like a rubber band, I stretch and stretch and stretch …until I snap, recoiling so far inward that it can take days before I’m myself again. In times like this, I question my need for solitude. Is it excessive? And considering I’m single, how do people in relationships manage to so healthily balance the need for solitude with the desire for companionship?
So, y’all. How much alone time do you need? If you’re in a relationship, how do you make time for yourself?
New York’s Bad Manners
New York’s bad manners are often condemned and often very deservedly. Even though the cause is carelessness rather than intentional indifference, the indifference is no less actual and the rudeness inexcusable.
It is by no means unheard of that after sitting at table next to the guest of honor, a New Yorker will meet her the next day with utter unrecognition. Not because the New Yorker means to “cut” the stranger or feels the slightest unwillingness to continue the acquaintance, but because few New Yorkers possess enthusiasm enough to make an effort to remember all the new faces they come in contact with, but allow all those who are not especially “fixed” in their attention, to drift easily out of mind and recognition. It is mortifyingly true; no one is so ignorantly indifferent to everything outside his or her own personal concern as the socially fashionable New Yorker, unless it is the Londoner! The late Theodore Roosevelt was a brilliantly shining exception. And, of course, and happily, there are other men and women like him in this. But there are also enough of the snail-in-shell variety to give color to the very just resentment that those from other and more gracious cities hold against New Yorkers.
Everywhere else in the world (except London), the impulse of self-cultivation, if not the more generous ones of consideration and hospitality, induces people of good breeding to try and make the effort to find out what manner of mind, or experience, or talent, a stranger has; and to remember, at least out of courtesy, anyone for whose benefit a friend of theirs gave a dinner or luncheon. To fashionable New York, however, luncheon was at one-thirty; at three there is something else occupying the moment—that is all.
Nearly all people of the Atlantic Coast dislike general introductions, and present people to each other as little as possible. In the West, however, people do not feel comfortable in a room full of strangers. Whether or not to introduce people therefore becomes not merely a question of propriety, but of consideration for local custom.
(Thanks, sc)
Red Rabbit
Noisy Idiots
One of my classmates is trying to figure out how to keep trolls from ruining the Internet for everybody else. The problem seems to be that people who are not trolls have a great deal of respect for the rights of trolls.
In studying various threads on the various fora, it became apparent that attempts had been made to address the problem of these Noisy Idiots dominating debate. In one example, a contributor to the Intercultural Dialogue forum known as filosofia, clearly fed-up with the Noisy Idiots, with their one repetitive view point, posed a question to the forum: what was to be done to address the problem? . . .
What followed in the debate was incredibly interesting. People responded to filosofia’s ideas initially two ways.:
a) By suggesting ways of dealing with the problem, such as a YouTube-style voting system or otherwise ignoring the ‘trolls’, or
b) Reminding filosofia that just because people didn’t go along with her ideas or style of debating, it doesn’t mean their views shouldn’t be voiced. After all, isn’t this the point of a forum?
A Noisy Idiot then began a rant against Muslims, mentioning Mein Kampf and the phrase ‘let the deportations begin.’ Followed by EurophileAmerican (a more moderate voice) trying to engage in some form of intelligent debate on the topic. Filosofia then waded back in saying how interesting it is the debate has followed down an Islamic route when she actually was meaning the ‘UKippers’ (UK Independence Party supporters) as the people she was initially talking about, she then declared she has had enough and was leaving the forum. The Moderator then stepped in trying to assert some control. The discussion ended with two Noisy Idiots intonating that filosofia is uptight, that the BBC probably have documentary about such people, and the other concluding the thread with the phrase ‘laughing my ass off.’
. . . people in the forum seemed more concerned with the protection of the principle of free speech and democracy and of not allowing anyone to be silenced – i.e. the democratic process, rather than a rational, intelligent debate or even indeed concern over the final decision made by the group.
quote from last weekend’s footage (unfilmed)
Do you think your husband will want to do a documentary on me? I was José Eber’s lover.
On the Lam (Another Random Episode)
She got what she wanted, but she lost what she had.
Life and Death in Kritsa, Crete (Κριτσά, Κρήτη)
Γεώργος Αποστολάκης (Yiorgos Apostalakis). Age at death: 40. Valedictory gunfire both at the church and at graveside.
Read more
Everything You Need to Know
Figurine. Calcite. Circa 10,000 BCE. (Mesolithic.) Found/acquired: Ain Sakhri. Small cave in the Wadi Khareitoun, south-east of Bethlehem in the Judean Desert.
A clustercommenter introduced me to this Mesolithic figurine, now held by the British Museum. I thought it might get buried in the great midden-heap of commentary, so I reckoned I’d bring it to the surface.
“Awesome and humbling,” says the commenter. I concur.
from the comments
A long time ago I was in a store waiting for a clerk and I looked up to make eye contact with an older lady who was also waiting. We smiled at each other. Now, usually that would have concluded one of millions of utterly forgettable casual encounters with a random stranger, but this woman kept smiling and didn’t look away so I didn’t look away either.
I said, “Do we know each other?” And she responded, “Our people always know each other.”
I didn’t have any idea what she was talking about, but I kept smiling and nodded knowingly as if I did. She said, “Our People, dear. We know each other.”
another adolescent fantasy down the drain
A recent email exchange with the late Farrah Fawcett reveals the unlikely friendship between the Charlie’s Angels star and the novelist Ayn Rand, who helped the actress understand her place in culture—and longed to cast her in a TV version of Atlas Shrugged.
assault with cheetos x 2
Googling more information on this:
Authorities said a couple got into a fight using Cheetos. The Bedford County Sheriff’s Department said a 40-year-old man and 44-year-old woman became involved in a ‘verbal altercation.’ Somehow, the orange puffy snacks were used in the assault.
Led to this:
Twenty-two-year-old Patrick Hamman was arrested after the bag of cheesy chips hit his father, Michael Hamman, in the face.
Police said the bag hit his father’s glasses, causing a cut to the bridge of his nose.
The police report said — quote— “Michael’s T-shirt was also covered in Cheeto dust.”
this just in
A woman sentenced to five years in prison for using a stun gun on a high school cheerleading sponsor called the ruling unfair as she was led to jail in handcuffs.
“I love my children, my family, my friends. I don’t deserve this,” LeShawn Cathlene Fisher said after sentencing Wednesday, tears streaming down her face.
Dear clusterflock: Mastic ambrosia
Ephemeral and insubstantial food of the gods.
“It makes you immortal,” says Flickr contributor ghostbore of this exquisite confection.
Is there an almost extinct treat that drives you mad with desire and longing?
The Obama Way
In the early 1970s a geneticist called John Maynard-Smith invented the Hawk-Dove game to try and shed light on why animals don’t fight each other to death at every chance they get, in an attempt to maximise their own personal gain. In his game — actually a mathematical model but we needn’t go into that — Hawk is always up for a fight. He easily beats Dove. But he gets badly wounded in a fight with another Hawk. Dove, which is programmed to cooperate, reaps benefits when it meets another Dove. But when it meets a Hawk it gets killed. In the short term, the Hawk strategy is the most rational — and evolutionarily successful — strategy. But when the game is played over and again, the Dove starts to do better. A third strategy, called Retaliator, proves best of all. Retaliator is a Dove — until it meets a Hawk, at which point it turns into a Hawk too.
More from my favorite blogger turned author.
From the comments
…
I harken back to something I heard that resonates with me. When we love, we are called to perform in that expression.
I can say “I love you” as many times as I like and have it mean as many different meanings as the number of times I say it. But when I am, willingly and often without forethought, moved to move on another’s behalf, that’s when I know it’s real.
Did he deserve it? Hell, yes.
I am a very PA person myself, and while I try to hold it in check with coworkers, this man really and truly pissed me off. He berated me, belittled me, constantly criticized my work (which he would then turn in as his own, without making changes), and he was rude and offensive to students, which count for 90% of our customer base since I work on a college campus. Some days, I would push his buttons just to see how far I could get, and how red I could make him turn (think cooked lobster). He gave me a bad review, stating that while I was excellent at my job and with customers, I didn’t treat him with the proper respect (understandable) and spoke too often about things like Viking helmets and zombies. He actually put the following comment in my annual review. “While I appreciate D’s enthusiasm for subjects dear to her, sometimes she talks too much about Zombies, and shows a lack of respect for me as her manager and an internationally published poet by suggesting I wear a Viking helmet.”
. . .
Did I try to get him fired? You bet, and everyone knows it. Did he deserve it? Hell, yes.
—Diane, comment 16.7 on the post no good deed…, Passive-Aggressive Notes, May 12, 2009
Y’all? I love Diane.
I never sought anything in you but yourself
From a NY Times review of Cristina Nehring’s book A Vindication of Love.
“We have been pragmatic and pedestrian about our erotic lives for too long,” she writes, and in an examination of real and invented figures from the Wife of Bath to Frida Kahlo, she revels in love affairs that do not rely on our more hackneyed narratives. The result of Nehring’s literary and historical inquiry is a celebration of the wilder, messier connections. Her heroes and heroines tend to die, like Young Werther, who shoots himself; or try to die, like Mary Wollstonecraft, who throws herself off a bridge; or suffer, like Abelard and Heloise, one of whom is castrated and one of whom ends up in a nunnery. And yet Nehring admires these flamboyant men and women for the creative force of their affairs, for their ability to live outside the lines, for the ferocity of their feelings. She sees our modern goals of marriage, security and comfort as limited and sad, and quotes approvingly Heloise’s statement to Abelard: “ ‘I looked for no marriage bond,’ she flashed. ‘I never sought anything in you but yourself.’ ”
(via marginal revolution)
Nero, Life Outside the Game, unedited
Prusik-Parkin
On the one hand:
She said, ‘I will guide you.’ I therefore have had to put on her things and represent the part of me that is her in order to fight for our rights and our home.
On the other:
“That wasn’t me,” Prusik-Parkin said from Rikers Island when asked about surveillance images that show him dressed in his mom Irene’s clothes.
“That was an impersonator.”
Father’s Day with Dodson and Ross
Orange Crate Art: Brian Wilson & Van Dyke Parks
From I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times (1995), directed by Don Was.
unparalleled in its scope and brazenness
It’s stories like this that restore my faith in human-kind.
Irene Prusik has been dead for six years. But in April, someone showed up at the Department of Motor Vehicles in Brooklyn to renew her driver’s license. The explanation given by prosecutors rivals the Hitchcock classic “Psycho”: It was her son, in drag.
Any final thoughts?
Authorities claim that following his arrest, Parkin told them that because he held Prusik when she breathed her last breath, “I am my mother.”