Links and Things

After a short hiatus that coincided with finals period and stress and projects, I am back in the US of A and home in Boston where there are cats and vegan food and gardens that need working it.

And a smallish backlog of links.

• All about the three-person committee that approves (and rejects) baby names in Iceland.
• “When you’re feeling frisky, try slow dancing in your kitchen with a healthy twenty centimeters of clearance in between your torsos.” and other sex advice from a woman in a Cialis commercial.
• The Problem with “Not Caring” about Pop Culture: relevant, revolutionary stories can come from anywhere — even a makeover show.
• Insert Millennial joke about Etat Libre d’Orange making a fragrance specifically for me [here].
• Yale University advancing the science of smell.
• This short story made me tear up… nice to be given back some faith in humanity.
• Very extra background extras– even better than Part 1.
• Just over here learning about The Dutch Angle.
• The story tellers who read aloud to Cuban cigar rollers. Wow.
• The story of the pilot who landed the Southwest Airlines flight.
• Cardi B is changing how black women are pregnant in public.
• Eight decades of royal British corgis are at an end.
• An analysis of The Simpsons and the Problem with Apu. Just jump right in here at Part 2.
• And a whole lot of exciting trailers: Solo, The Meg, The Incredibles 2, Mary Shelley, Hot Summer Nights (Heyyy, Timothee Chalamet!), Hereditary, Three Identical Strangers.

Friday Links 8/18

Hi all.
Boy has it been an eventful week. I hope you’re well and taking care of yourself in the best ways you can.

There are a bunch of links this week, some just for fun and some about current events.

In Defense of Trends

This is both an update and a counterpoint to one of my recent posts, in which I gave a hard pass to a multitude of recent summer trends. It may interest you to know that since that post I have somehow become the proud owner of a china red ruffled wrap skirt (J. Crew via eBay) and a blue slip dress (Equipment via watching one dress waiting to be able to afford it for five months).
To answer your question- Because I hinted that I was going to do as much in the post, no, this does not make me a hypocrite. Besides, I look very good in china red. And silk.

But my weakness well-reasoned much-considered purchases do not mean you should go out and buy a pair of jeans that only has a zipper and no buttons. Because what is that nonsense? Or, heaven forfend, one of these.

Friday Links 8/11

Firstly, thank you for helping me reach 60 followers! I’m very touched that people enjoy reading this blog enough to submit to a never-ending influx of post notifications.
Also I’m picking up my Visa today. And maybe finishing up my tour of the Greater Boston area vegan pizza scene (i.e., three restaurants).

Also also, I may have broken my toe this morning. This has been a summer full of walking into things and burning myself on heating elements. And cooking, but I guess that goes with the heating element part.

So what else is new?

Some Thoughts About Female Friendship, Courtesy of Balzac

I guess I didn’t need to stress so hard yesterday about paying my dues with a ‘book-related’ post. But I did enjoy revisiting all of the historical fiction I used to read.

Today’s post is kind of random, very vaguely book-adjacent (or more specifically, book-inspired).  There was a line in Balzac’s Cousin Bette that really made me think and reflect on some of my friendships. I’m not going to bother to find it because I know Iw on’t be able to unless I reread the 300-something pages I’ve gotten through so far.

In the novel, there is a friendship between two women, the titular Cousin Bette and a courtesan named Valerie.  The line I was struck by described Cousin Bette as attending an intimate dinner being given by Valerie so as to say all the kind and admiring things about Valerie that Valerie couldn’t say about herself.  So it’s the 19th century and Cousin Bette is essentially acting as a wingman.  The situation echoed so many in my own experience, when I’ve done similar things for my own friends (without really consciously deciding to) and when I’ve noticed them doing the same for (often in spite of not approving of the guy I’ve been interested in).  Some things never change.

A Shower of April Links

This is my new desktop for the month of April! Isn’t it lovely? (And not at all in line with the cold wind we have in New Haven or the sloppy snow I’m hearing about from Boston, but hopefully it will be more appropriate by the end of this month).
The photograph is from this delightful-looking book, Encyclopedia of Rainbows.

I always feel like March is the month that pasts the fastest, although logically you’d think it would be February.  Maybe March feels like such a flash because you’re bolted into it from February and before you know it it’s already rolling.  It might just be a matter of personal history for me; March was the month that it first occurred to me how quickly time passes.  I have a distinct memory of some time in Elementary school- I think second grade- sitting on the big communal rug, watching the teacher flip the calendar and contemplating the lightning-quick passage of the month of March.
Anyway, I’m thinking of doing two list posts a month because I seem to accumulate way too many interesting links in a span of thirty days to compose a normal length post. Any thoughts? Do you enjoy these random excursions into the internet, or should I cut down my number of links?
But that’s a question for a different month (May? Is it really so close as all that?), for now, buckle your seat belts.

My Personal Philosophy in Books

Well, yesterday it all went downhill, but I’m so frustrated and tired with talking about my health that I’m absolutely not going to get into it today.

Instead I’m going to go into books (it’s been a while!), in particular, into the books that inspire or resonate with my personal view of life.  Maybe that sounds very woo woo to you, or maybe you know what it’s like to read something and have the feeling that the author is looking at things in the same way you do?  Or even in a way you would like to be able to?

I love that feeling of reading a book that feels like an extension of your heart.

Regretted Classes and Fate

I’ve been thinking a lot about going with the flow recently.  One of my downfalls is that I have a tendency to become too obsessed with what I envision, which can make me inflexible and anxious when things don’t go as planned.  This applies to major life changes, like college admissions, and very trivial things, like planning a sandwich day and then discovering the dining hall has absolutely no bread.

A lot of different things have been said about accepting fate.  Go with the flow. Leave it to God.  And also admitting that sometimes it’s just not a sandwich day, and that that’s fine.

I’ve also seen one of those pseudo-inspirational quotes (if you love it I apologize in advance) saying “Only dead fish go with the flow.”  I have a few problems with this- the fist being that it’s patently false.  Fish frequently go with the flow.  That’s what makes it so remarkable when salmon swim upriver to spawn.  The second is that I think the quote’s moral is very ill-advised.  “Fight fate or you might as well be dead.”  “Make your life one of never-ending struggle and pain just because.”
There’s nothing inherently wrong with ‘the easy way’, and what’s more, life is rarely divided so simplistically into an easy way and hard way.  The ways are all just… different.

Advice for Wee-lis

It’s a clumsy portmanteau for wee Elis, also known as young Yalies/baby bulldogs.
In honor of Yale’s dreamboat new mascot, a real baby bulldog, the tiny tiny
Handsome Dan XVIII.

His little rumpled face breaks my heart. :’)

Some points of advice for other young Yalies, the result of four years of Yale experience, both good and bad:

Eleven Links//Eleventh Month

For my first November link drop, it would seem that I have eleven to share.  This wasn’t practiced or deliberate or anything- I just needed a snazzy title for the post so I figured it I counted the links maybe I could come up with something. Lo and behold, eleven.

Just goes to show, sometimes things are as easy as 1, 2, 3.
But yeah, rarely.