Husband Number Two Should Andy Perish In A Tragic House Fire And After I Have Waited An Appropriate Length Of TIme

Come on. Come ooooon: doesn't this guy (photo via The Sartorialist) seem like the best? Just look at him. Look at that smile. Look at that hair. I want to mess up that hair so badly right now I have an actual ache in my bathing suit area. I also really want to borrow that cute little shrunken jacket that seems like it might be, I don't know, velvet? Corduroy? Either way I'm into it. In my mind the first couple of times I borrowed it he'd be charmed because we were madly in love and I'd look adorable even though it didn't really technically button up over my boobs and was kind of too tight on my chubby arms. Then after we moved in together and made that shit official he'd start finding the jacket put away in my cupboard and get a bit pissy with me. After so many years I'd claim the jacket had always been mine and he'd borrowed it off me. Then he'd show me this photo - taken years before we met - to show me what a liar I was and I'd be sad because a) he was right and I was wrong and also a big exposed liar and b) this photo would remind me of how cute and lovely and charming he was once when he was just a smile and a cute haircut and what a dick he's since become and how much I want a divorce.

Favourite Things I Have Done in Thailand This Week

1. Sat on my balcony listening to this.

2. Not set my alarm clock.

3. Breakfasted alone. For, like, 2 hours with my book.

4. Snorkelled in really deep water and not thought about sharks the whole time. To clarify: I thought about sharks most of the time so I didn't really enjoy this while I was doing it, per se, but I did feel chuffed with myself for not being a total pussy and staying on the boat.

5. Ate a LOT of really good food. Last night's six course meal (seven if you count the little swinging chocolates at the end) was a real highlight, even if I was in danger of having to roll out of the restaurant.

6. Demonstrated iron will power by not drinking every wine or cocktail put in front of me... which was a lot.

7. Encountered charming Aussies running hotels or restaurants or both over here. Once of them grew up a street away from me.

8. Had two of the best massages I've ever had. I still feel a bit like I was beaten up but in the best possible way.

9. Fell asleep in the sun.

My Proustian madeleine

"How to date a brown girl (black girl, white girl, or halfie)"

by Junot Diaz

Wait for your brother and your mother to leave the apartment. You've already told them that you're feeling too sick to go to Union City to visit that tia who likes to squeeze your nuts. (He's gotten big, she'll say.) And even though your moms knows you ain't sick you stuck to your story until finally she said, Go ahead and stay, malcriado.
Clear the government cheese from the refrigerator. If the girl's from the Terrace stack the boxes behind the milk. If she's from the Park or Society Hill hide the cheese in the cabinet above the oven, way up where she'll never see. Leave yourself a reminder to get it out before morning or your moms will kick your ass. Take down any embarrassing photos of your family in the campo, especially the one with the halfnaked kids dragging a goat on a rope leash. The kids are your cousins and by now they're old enough to understand why you're doing what you're doing. Hide the pictures of yourself with an Afro. Make sure the bathroom is presentable. Put the basket with all the crapped-on toilet paper under the sink. Spray the bucket with Lysol, then close the cabinet.
Shower, comb, dress. Sit on the couch and watch TV. If she's an outsider her father will be bringing her, maybe her mother. Neither of them want her seeing any boys from the Terrace-people get stabbed in the Terrace-but she's strong-headed and this time will get her way. If she's a whitegirl you know you'll at least get a hand job. 

If you've never read any Junot Diaz before or if the above made you chuckle you can and should read the whole thing (it's not long) here.

How not to make Nigella Lawson's nutella cheesecake

1. Don't start making it until you're really hungry.
2. Make slightly too much for the tart tray so you have a big blob of the filling left in the bowl.
3. Eat the blob.
4. Eat the leftover chocolate ripple biscuits.
5. Definitely eat the leftover nutella.
6. Lie quietly in bed and look out the window, clutching your too-full tummy.

"It's not that I love myself, I just don't want company."

(Joan Armatrading, "Me Myself & I")

Nachman!

I feel like I've been posting a lot of links to short stories on here lately. That's probably because I've been reading a lot of them or, to be more accurate, listening to a lot of them thanks to the New Yorker's terrific short fiction podcast. If you like short stories and podcasts: get onto this, it's terrific.

Since I started listening to this podcast a month or so ago it's not only introduced me to some great new stories, it's also helped me rediscover two short stories, totally unconnected from each other, that I read years ago and which I had failed repeatedly to find time and time again. First it was Joshua Ferris' "The Dinner Party". Now it's "Cryptology" by Leonard Michaels. Oh Lord if you knew how many times I had Google searched for this bad boy, of which I had such fond memories. I can't remember when or where I read it years ago and I couldn't remember much about it except for the super awkward interaction (soooo good/bad) at its heart. I couldn't remember the author or the main characters name, nor even what city it was set in.

The funny thing is that this story didn't appear on the podcast at all - another short story by the same author and about the same main character did. The moment I heard that name, Nachman, it came back to me: that was the guy from the other story that one time. One Google search later and here we are.

All of which is a long way of saying this is a fun story you should read:

Nachman had arrived in New York the previous evening, and was walking along Fifth Avenue when she came up behind him, calling, “Nachman, Nachman, is that you?” He looked back and saw a woman shining with a happiness for which he, apparently, was responsible. His mere existence had turned on her lights. Nachman kissed her on both cheeks, and then they stood chatting at the corner of Forty-second Street, the millions passing with the minutes. When Nachman parted from her, he was holding her business card and the key to her apartment in Chelsea, having promised to join her and her husband for dinner that evening.

Things I did this week

Sent this clip to my boss, who was having a bad day too. Cheered us both right up. Fuck you can really tell we're exactly the same age.

5 Stars

Maybe I'm getting super mellow in my dotage but this little bit of 2 Star trickery made me laugh and laugh and laugh. 5 stars, guys.

Hee. “Oculus Thrift”. I see what you did there.

In March 2014, Zuckerberg announced that he would buy Oculus VR for more than $2 billion, and suddenly the question of what is possible now was not so hard to predict. The top two manufacturers of video-game consoles—Sony and Microsoft—are both preparing to release their own headsets in the next year. And just months after the Oculus acquisition was announced, Facebook’s chief competitor, Google, unveiled a virtual-reality-on-the-cheap offering, Google Cardboard, which involves slipping a smartphone into a headset made of a few dollars’ worth of corrugated paper. The press called it “Oculus Thrift.”

Over at Vanity Fair there is a long but interesting read on how Facebook's deal on Oculus Rift was done for nerds who are interested in such things. As someone who knows sweet fuck all about these things I cannot see it NOT being, as they point out in the yarn, an intermediate technology but shit if I had a spare $1500* I would get one.

* Or a secret benefactor. Guys? Guys? Call me. We'll talk about it.

The paw

(These cats are why I sometimes want a pal for Mr Whiskerley so bad.)

Johnlock

S: John… John… John…

J: What

S: Look, John

(So good. Via Destination Toast)

Thanks, internet

For the timely reminder that I really used to love Murder, She Wrote and should probably do a massive rewatch some time soon.

(Also, if you secretly think J.Fletch is kinda stylin' you should get on this)

Ravenclaw*

One of my favourite authors writing today, Rainbow Rowell, has been sorting her fictional characters into Hogwarts houses over on her tumblr (BAZ IS A HUFFLEPUFF? MY MIND IS BLOWN) - it's worth a read for fellow fans.





* Not because I'm so smart but because sometimes I like books better than people.

Things I wanted to say but did not say to the girl at the Chemist who was forced by the pharmacist to discuss her thrush problem in brutal detail two feet away from me and other customers:

"You hold him down, I'll go for the eyes."

Things that make me think oh, ok, maybe I just have weird taste

Oscar Isaac really really does do it for me. Yes EVEN WITH THE MOUSTACHE.

I regret nothing.

Things that make me wonder if I am secretly super racist

Idris Elba... doesn't really do it for me. Come on reptile brain: look at him, you know you should want to get all up in that.

Hee

"What can you say about a girl like, Susie?"

I didn't want to laugh at this silly thing this attention-seeking guy tried

But I really did. I also would not ever have the balls to try it myself.

This very short story took me 3 minutes to read and 3 days later I'm still thinking about it

"He finds himself sitting in the neighborhood bar drinking a beer at about the same time that he began to think about going there for one. In fact, he has finished it. Perhaps he’ll have a second one, he thinks, as he downs it and asks for a third."

I'm also pretty embarrassed not to have heard of Robert Coover. You can and should read the whole thing (it is shoooooort) here. 

Somehow I stumbled onto this...

... while looking up something for work and now I would like to please burn the phrase "panty moistener" from my brain.

Hack the Planet

Yeah great fucking work, guys:

On social news site Reddit, one user claimed he was a gay man now living in Saudi Arabia who had used the service under his own name to meet men in the US. He titled his post: “I May Get Stoned to Death for Gay Sex (Gay Man from Saudi Arabia Who Used Ashley Madison for Hookups.)”
“I am from a country where homosexuality carries the death penalty,” he wrote. “I BEG you all to spread this message. Perhaps the hackers will take notice of it, and then, I can tell them to (at the very least) exercise discretion in their information dump (i.e. leave the single gay arab guy out of it). As of now, I plan on leaving the Kingdom and never returning once I have the $ for a plane ticket. Though I have no place to go, no real friends, and no job.”

Things I did today

Misread the news headline QLD SCHOOL GIRL MISSING as OLD SCHOOL GIRL MISSING and had some jokes ready in my head about that and then took a long hard look at myself and did not mention this to anyone.

Things my Body Pump Instructor says after Body Pump that make me want to drop my weights on her foot:

"Now go home and have a sensible breakfast."

On self respect

Until I read Joan Didion's terrific Vogue essay on the subject (which you really should read in its entirety here) it truly never occurred to me that a lack of self respect could be at the heart of my (mostly historic) bouts of insomnia. Now it... makes a lot of sense. Plus fuuuuck she is good. I mean:

"To do without self-respect, on the other hand, is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable home movie that documents one’s failings, both real and imagined, with fresh footage spliced in for each screening. There’s the glass you broke in anger, there’s the hurt on X’s face; watch now, this next scene, the night Y came back from Houston, see how you muff this one. To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commission and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice or carelessness. However long we post- pone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously un- comfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves."

and:

"Like Jordan Baker, people with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things. If they choose to commit adultery, they do not then go running, in an access of bad conscience, to receive absolution from the wronged parties; nor do they complain unduly of the unfairness, the undeserved embarrassment,of being named corespondent. If they choose to forego their work—say it is screenwriting—in favor of sitting around the Algonquin bar, they do not then wonder bitterly why the Hacketts, and not they, did Anne Frank."

and finally:

"It was once suggested to me that, as an antidote to crying, I put my head in a paper bag. As it happens, there is a sound physiological reason, something to do with oxygen, for doing exactly that, but the psychological effect alone is incalculable: it is difficult in the extreme to continue fancying oneself Cathy in Wuthering Heights with one’s head in a Food Fair bag. There is a similar case for all the small disciplines, unimportant in themselves; imagine maintaining any kind of swoon, commiserative or carnal, in a cold shower."

No seriously just read the whole thing right here.

If you don't understand why I'm excited about this movie you don't understand me at all.

My new at-work playlist...

... is somehow now restricted to songs played in the closing credits of Silicon Valley. That is... not a complaint.

I have a bad feeling about this.

I can't imagine why.

A Thing I Have Been Doing Lately

1. Getting home from work at a reasonable hour on a night when I have the house to myself.

2. Changing into my pajamas.

3. Making my dinner and putting it on a little tray.

4. Making a pot of tea and putting that on the tray too, plus a little jug for my milk.

5. Climbing into bed with my dinner-and-tea tray and either a book or Downton Abbey on Netflix, depending on my mood.

6. Wallowing in pure Dinner Bed happiness.


Note: Obviously that is a generic pic above and not me pictured because, ew, meat yuck.

Mark Hamill autographs

Classic Hamill...

Lessons from rewatching the Jet Li classic(?) Romeo Must Die:

1. All black people can dance and have great rhythm.

2. All Chinese people know martial arts.

3. You can openly murder a bunch of dudes with no consequences sometimes.


(And yeah sure I'm ragging on it but Jet Li in that backwards cap and doing his hip-hop strut is pretty much everything)

He leaves disgusting old apple cores everywhere. And yet...

The New York Times' "Modern Love" section can be hit or miss. Sometimes I want to jam something sharp and pointy into the eyes of the douches who write such shit. Today, however, I very much enjoyed this particular take on marriage, most of which I heartily agree with. In particular the idea of "and yet", is a lovely one I intend to remember.

"In Zen Buddhism, meditation helps practitioners detach from the cycle of desire and suffering. In my brief stint as a religious studies major, I preferred Pure Land Buddhism, an alternate path to enlightenment for people who (as one professor told us) may find it difficult to abandon worldly pain and passion because those things can also yield such beauty and comfort. He summed it up as: “Life is suffering — and yet.”
"I think about that all the time: “And yet.” Such hedging, to me, is good religion and also the key to a successful marriage. In the course of being together forever, you come across so many “and yets,” only some of them involving domestic air travel.
I love this person, and yet she’s such a mess. And yet when I’m sick, he’s not very nurturing. And yet we don’t want the same number of children. And yet I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be single again. The longer you are with someone, the more big and little “and yets” rack up."

You can read the whole thing here.

Star Wars (but not those kind)

Except for sentimental reasons and with one or two exceptions I've never really managed to get into Wilco. But news of a (surprise) new album still made me grin because this cat is everything.

The problem with Gambit

For a period in my teens I bought X-Men and Uncanny X-Men comics religiously. For some reason I have a very clear memory of walking half hour into town to buy the latest edition from the general store when my family holidayed down south. (Yeah that was a great general store - terrific magazine and comic selection). It also inspired me to write/draw my own terrible comic (thankfully unseen by anyone but myself I hope and pray) featuring thinly disguised versions of my favourite characters. To call it an homage would be... generous. Terrible fan-fic is closer to the mark.

The reason I was so into the series at that stage was the reason I think a lot of people, by which I mean women and girls in particular, were into the comics at that stage - the sweet-arse love story that was Gambit and Rogue. I won't bother going into the ups and downs of those two crazy kids but, yeah, it was a romantic story line that really worked. As a hormonal teenager I ate it up with a spoon and thought Gambit was the shit.

Which is why I'm so super bummed Channing Tatum will be playing Gambit in the planned film, even as I feel bad for being down on it. I like Tatum - he's funny, charismatic and seems like kind of a sweetheart. I think he's great onscreen and I am usually interested to see him in things. But dude is not hot. I'm sorry but he is not. There is too much muscle, too much... ears. Too much... chin? I don't know but dude is TOO MUCH. The Gambit I remember was drawn thin and kinda rangy, always slouching around in his too-big trenchcoat and looking undernourished and faintly in need of a bath. Tatum will wear that trenchcoat like a second skin.

I shouldn't complain. I mean, I'll always have the beautiful romantic pairing of a young Professor X and Magneto in the current crop of X-Men films - a charming development I did not see coming. If Fassbender makes a cameo in the Gambit film wearing that white-tshirt and pants combo he wore for historic Nazi hunting in the first flashback film you will not hear me complain about C-Tate's melon of a head. Not once.

Sleep well, sweet prince

I don't know why I laughed quite so much because dead racoon = sad but this little tale did make me laugh. Especially the last image, which I haven't posted here to avoid spoiling it for ya'll.

Things I learned from reading back issues of Gourmet Traveller in a waiting room today

There is an appliance called a tortilla press and I probably need one.

Ghosts

Why is it that everyone is suddenly talking about ghosting? And why does it bum me out so much? I guess there's not really anything new in it, except for the fact that technology makes it that much more obvious when one is being ghosted (ie: you can't tell yourself someone has probably died or at least been temporarily hospitalised and unable to reach a phone when you can see them posting photos of their Sunday brunch on Instagram). But it strikes me as incredibly cruel. I've lost a couple friends, one of whom meant a lot to me, when they eventually just... failed to respond to my texts/emails and that was brutal enough even though in each case the writing was very much on the wall.

I mean if the New York Times can be believed people are actually doing this - 

In a less dramatic but similarly confounding fashion, Aaron Leth, 29, a fashion editor, found his texts unanswered when a man he had been dating for a month disappeared after he and Mr. Leth had bought the ingredients for a dinner they planned to cook later that evening. “He went home to take a nap and said, ‘I’ll call you,’ ” Mr. Leth said. “I’m still waiting, two years later.”

Okay, sure, the way it was written made me laugh. But still, dude: that's coooold.

Songs I would play at my own private Hot Dub Time Machine

Not because they're fun to dance to, obviously, but because they remind me of very specific times in my life. The downside being that the songs and albums and bands I remember most are probably those that were instrumental in getting me through some tough ol' times, hence they lean towards the maudlin and sometimes downright depressing. It would be kind of a shit party, I guess.


Belle and Sebastian, "We Rule the School"
Back in the day I would spend hours on Napster (I know) seeking out B&S' back catalogue. But this was the first song off the first album I ever heard of theirs and I only sought it out because (of course) some dude I had a crush on recommended them. The first band I ever remember being entirely obsessed with and a band I can't imagine ever not listening to.


Phoenix, "If I Ever Feel Better"
I couldn't tell you how many times I've listened to this song and yet still - STILL - after so many years it's my go-to song to get me in the mood when I can't be arsed leaving the house.


From The Piano, "The Heart Asks Pleasure First"
I was obsessed with this movie and in particular its music for oooh a period in the late 1990s. Not sure what that was about really but I would hang out in my bedroom listening to the soundtrack over and over again. My lucky parents.


The Smiths, Half a Person
Most of my favourite bands have come via cute boys and The Smiths are no exception. I still recall feigning a familiarity with them I did not have in order to bond with my ex-boyfriend Michael when he was still just my friendly co-worker, then racing home for some essential research.


Noah and the Whale, "I Have Nothing"
Downer Country, population: me.


Real Estate, "It's Real"
The flipside of Noah and the Whale in that this one just reminds me of a very dreamy, mostly happy albeit messy period of my life.

One for Harry Potter nerds only

sorting hat quizzes be like

essentiallyjesus:

How do you brush your teeth?

a) bravely

b) while making a sandwich

c) while reading a book

d) I’m a snake

(Via show me dem kitties) 

Life lesson #13

Do not fall asleep listening to an audiobook involving sweet adolescent romance because you will have sweet adolescenty romantic dreams and when you wake up to realise you're -

a) 32
b) married
c) sleeping in a tent

- you may feel a little sad for awhile.

Read it

I'm officially on holidays for a week from today, which means I have time to actually read a lot more journalism, particularly long-form, than I usually do when I'm paging through papers or scrolling through websites for just long enough to be sure I have a vague idea of what's going on everywhere without letting anything sink too far into my brain.

My break is getting off to a great start because so far I've read two terrific reads on two subjects I didn't think I cared about: Roger Federer and, um, I guess... America?

Brian Phillips doesn't mention the debt he owes to David Foster Wallace in his own version for Grantland but to me it's hard to avoid comparisons between Phillips' very good read and DFW'a wonderfully titled and by-now classic essay "Roger Federer as Religious Experience". I don't know though, maybe it's just because I don't read a lot about Federer and there's no comparison to be made.

Either way Phillips has some gorgeous prose and it's well worth reading the whole thing. If this opening doesn't hook you in it's probably not for you:

"Early on in Adam Roberts’s 2014 meta-sci-fi submarine-disaster novel, Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea, a French nuclear sub called the Plongeur begins to sink in the North Atlantic. The startled crew tries to regain command of the vessel, but nothing works. The controls don’t respond. The diver who’s sent out to reconnoiter the exterior of the ship with a flashlight doesn’t come back. The Plongeur is built to withstand pressure to a depth of a thousand meters or so. Beyond that, it will be crushed. And even if it isn’t, even if it somehow holds together against what Roberts calls “the unspeakable pressures of the profound deep,” it will build up so much speed as it falls that it will shatter when it hits the ocean floor."

Then there's Gary Younge's "Farewell to America" for The Guardian. This one shocked me because I wasn't sure there was anything new to read on this topic. Whether Younge's saying something new or saying something old, just beautifully, I'm not sure. It's a tremendous piece of writing though - get into it:

For the past couple of years the summers, like hurricanes, have had names. Not single names like Katrina or Floyd – but full names like Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown. Like hurricanes, their arrival was both predictable and predicted, and yet somehow, when they landed, the effect was still shocking.
We do not yet know the name that will be attached to this particular season. He is still out there, playing Call of Duty, finding a way to feed his family or working to pay off his student loans. He (and it probably will be a he) has no idea that his days are numbered; and we have no idea what the number of those days will be.

Hail Robots

I for one welcome our new robot overlords.

Signs the rebooted Total Recall is not a great movie

1. Jessica Biel.
2. Kate Beckinsale.
3. Mark Bomback.
4. I love Philip K Dick short stories, have loved Colin Farrell in some things and have a certain nostalgic fondness for the original, yet I haaaaaaated it.

N.B: I couldn't quite bear to post a screenshot from this shitty movie so enjoy a slice of Farrell being cute in the lovely movie, In Bruges. I maybe need to see that movie again.

Things I wanted to say to the women having breakfast on the table next to me this morning:

1. You're so right: Mariah Carey and James Packer makes sense, somehow.

2. Jamie Dornan was underrated in 50 Shades of Grey. No, I also will (probably) not be reading Grey.

3. Can we be friends?

Word

"Apparently every Disney woman is a clone/direct descendant of some primordial creature with huge round cheeks and a disturbingly small nose, because there is no other explanation (yes there is(it’s lazy sexism)) for the incredible lack of diversity among these female faces."

(Read the whole thing here)

Because otherwise I would need to have a long lie down

I choose to believe the "Manscriminate" campaign is a parody.

As ever

The Guardian's Hadley Freedman is a delight.

A few weeks ago I read about a fashion advert that has been banned by the ASA. But what confuses me is why the advert existed in the first place. It seems to show a very ill girl lying on the floor – why would that sell clothes?Patrick, by emailAh, Patrick, Patrick, Patrick. I do not know what you do in life, Patrick, as your email was tantalisingly succinct, but I do know that you have – unwittingly, I suspect – taken on the role of truth-teller in this instance. Not for nothing does the tale of The Emperor’s New Clothes use fashion as a metaphor and you, Patrick, are the young boy pointing your finger at the king’s nudity.

(You can and should read the whole thing here)

The Three Switches: a puzzle

Downstairs in a house are three identical on-off switches. One of them controls the lamp in the attic. The puzzle is to work out which switch controls the lamp.The rules are as follows. You are allowed to manipulate the switches all you like, and then you are allowed only one trip to the attic. How do you do it?

I don't know what's more tragic: that I didn't solve it or that I didn't solve it, despite having heard it once before.

(Via The Guardian)

"...white spiders..." (Hee!)

A semi-broke homebody's guide to turning that frown upside down after a rough day:

1. Make a big pot of dhaal makhani.

2. Taste-test elderly open bottle of wine.

3. Decide wine is okay.

4. Drink wine.

5. Eat a sensibly-portioned bowl of dhaal.

6. Eat a little more dhaal.

7. Soooo much more dhaal.

8. Lie on couch to watch Silicon Valley.

Overheard in the office

"Honestly any kind of rare disease is really okay with me."

Now I think about it "Pratt Train" sounds like a euphemism for... something.

I'm not sure when I got onboard the Chris Pratt train but apparently that happened. It's not even like I really want to do to him the things I want to do to, say, Tom Hardy. It's more like I'd like to be friends and hang out, maybe see a movie some time. Or go full Misery and tie him to the bed: EITHER WAY.

Questions and answers via Extreme Fan Club.

The tales of Jessica the sociopath and Elizabeth the doormat with a martyr complex

If I hadn't read most of these Sweet Valley books as a child teenager I would not believe they existed. Also, if you ever read those books and somehow haven't read Shannon's awesome Sweet Valley High blog, in which she recaps the series as a young-fan-turned-adult you... need to get on that right now. It's a freaking delight.

This will be our year

I'm already married and really did not want to get married in the first place. So why does this Zombies song make me not only want to get married (uh, again?) but dance to this song at said wedding like a big sloppy dummy?

Aiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!

I'm sceptical, as I think we all should be, that one's personality can be reduced to a "type". I may have certain characteristics but I don't think I'm set in amber and I'd like to believe that the Kate of 2015 is different to the Kate of 2010, the Kate of 2005 and the Kate of 2025 and that my personality has changed over the years.

That much said I have done the Myer-Briggs personality test and this kinda silly article that tries to come up with a perfect definition of hell for each Myer-Briggs personality type has... well, okay, I think they kind of nailed me:

"You are expected to complete a highly esteemed project with absolutely no guidance as to what’s expected of you."

I realise that's kind of sad.

“Deep down, all the while, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a sailor in distress, she kept casting desperate glances over the solitary waster of her life, seeking some white sail in the distant mists of the horizon. She had no idea by what wind it would reach her, toward what shore it would bear her, or what kind of craft it would be – tiny boat or towering vessel, laden with heartbreaks or filled to the gunwhales with rapture. But every morning when she awoke she hoped that today would be the day; she listened for every sound, gave sudden starts, was surprised when nothing happened; and then, sadder with each succeeding sunset, she longed for tomorrow.” 

(Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary)

Basic bitch

I really hope. That this is true. Because: heh. If Kate Moss ever called me a basic bitch I would die.

If Chicago...

... is the "City of the Big Shoulders" (I love that line), what is Perth?

Small worlds?

Sweaty pavements?

No merging?

The City of 'where did you go to school?'

If you have an enemy, picture him asleep.
Notice his shoes at the foot of the bed,
how helplessly they gape there.
Some mornings he needs three cups of coffee

to wake up for work,
and there are evenings when he drinks alone,
reading the paper down to the want ads,
the arrival times of ships at the docks.

Think of him choosing a tie,
dialling wrong numbers,
finding holes in his socks. Chances are
his emptiness equals yours

When you thoughtlessly hurry a cashier
for change, or frown to yourself
in rush hour traffic and the drivers behind you

begin to remind you
the light has turned green.

(John Skoyles)

Trainwreck

Well this looks delightful. Between this (hopefully), Mad Max: Fury Road (fucking SWOON) and Spy, it's almost enough to give you hope some people making movies these days actually, you know, like women. Crazy, I know.

New month resolutions

1. I will try to blog more. Had a real regular thing going there for a time.

2. I will keep running.

3. I will stop using social media to creep on people.

4. I will consider eating fewer Caramello Koalas.

5. I will NOT forget the word to Modern Major General, given the bitch it was to learn them.

6. I will be nicer to other people and resist my hermit impulses... at least some of the time.

7. I will not drink Diet Coke more than twice a month even when I'm super hungover and only a "black aspirin" will do.

8. I will be more frugal and really work at clearing some more debt.

9. I will remind myself, at every opportunity, that stressing about something happening does not actually increase or decrease the likelihood that thing will happen.

10. I will convince Andy to join me in a Felicity retrospective.

Preach!

“I don't consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin.” (Leonard Cohen)

This...

.
.. is kinda fun. I really loved this movie.

"...almost got shagged, cup of tea?"

Via Rainbow Rowell.

Oh.

Oh my.

Via Rainbow Rowell.