This is just a really nice column over at the New York Times:

“Light Years,” James Salter writes: “For whatever we do, even whatever we do not do prevents us from doing its opposite. Acts demolish their alternatives, that is the paradox.” 

"Can you fucking believe this guy?"

What's that you say? For some reason you haven't checked out these Women Rejecting Marriage Proposals in Western Art? Friend, you are missing out. Get into it over here at The Toast.

well you’re too late, Richard
I’m a lesbian now
WE’RE ALL LESBIANS NOW
ARE YOU HAPPY
YOU LEFT AND NOW WE’RE ALL LESBIANS AND EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE

Places I got chocolate icing while making this vegan chocolate cake

1. My face.

2. My hands.

3. The white sugar flowers that were supposed to adorn it.

4. The floor.

5. The bench top.

6. The oven.

7. The oven door.

8. MY FACE. LIKE ALL OVER IT SERIOUSLY.

9. The cookbook.

10. The keyboard of this laptop.

Overheard in the Office

“Sure he’s got a mental illness now. If you’re on coke for 15 years you’re going to give yourself a mental illness.”

These are a few of my least favourite things

Mondays (Garfield and I are so alike that way).

Rudeness (Really? I mean really?).

Insomnia (Zzzzz).

Headaches.

Needles.

Blood tests.

More blood tests.

So many blood tests.

Horrible, insensitive awful people (Seriously what is wrong with you?)

“There was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and listening with that plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream.” 

― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“He wasn't a complete human being at all. He was a tiny bit of one, unnaturally developed; something in a bottle, an organ kept alive in a laboratory. I thought he was a sort of primitive savage, but he was something absolutely modern and up-to-date that only this ghastly age could produce. A tiny bit of a man pretending to be whole.” 

― Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

“Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window.” 

― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn't heard us calling, still do not hear us, up here in the tree house, with our thinning hair and soft bellies, calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time, alone in suicide, which is deeper than death, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together.” 

― Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

“I wrote at the start that this was a record of hate, and walking there beside Henry towards the evening glass of beer, I found the one prayer that seemed to serve the winter mood: O God, You've done enough, You've robbed me of enough, I'm too tired and old to learn to love, leave me alone forever.” 

― Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

“You do care a little for me, I know... but nothing to speak of, and you don't love me. I was yours once till death if you'd cared to keep me, but I'm someone else's now... and he's mine in a way that shocks you, but why don't you stop being shocked, and attend to your own happiness.” 

― E.M. Forster, Maurice

Things I thought but did not say to the dude at the park this morning:

Mate. I mean maaaate, what are you doing?

I'm sure that's your kid playing on the playground right there and a good time he's having too. Also I think it sucks that society's knee jerk reaction is too often to regard dudes hanging around playgrounds as would-be paedos.

That much said. If you're going to hang out inside the fenced-off playground waiting for your kid and you don't want people to give you Side Eyes you should maybe consider doing the following:

1. Put on your shirt.

2. Stop doing planks.

3. If you must do shirtless planks on the grounds maybe at least turn around so you're facing the fucking playground.

Thankyou and good day.

Things I want to say to my work colleagues

"If you've noticed me driving in or out of work lately and you're concerned I'm maybe living out of my car and am not okay please don't worry about me: I've got some home opens going on right now and this is my attempt to get all the random clutter out of the apartment and... into my car. Honest. I swear."

Don't get me started on the day I realised my calorie count for Cadbury Creme Eggs was out by 30. Dark times.

This article over at The Atlantic on calories was an interesting read that nonetheless left me agreeing with this random reader's comment more than anything else:

Mr. Fusion

It reminded me of the old saying that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest. Counting calories is the worst way to lose weight, except for all the rest.