Friday Links 2/2

Let’s just roll right in…

• A super powerful spoken word/poem by singer Halsey about sexual abuse.
• University of Washington says if you swat mosquitoes they may learn to avoid your scent. Can we put that in a perfume, please?
• Casey Affleck pulls out of presenting the best actress Oscar. Probably a good idea.
• But if Gary Oldman wins best actor, will he be the presenter backing out next year?
• There’s going to be a sequel to The Shining.
• “This is not normal.” Nutella riots hit France.
• Ten to watch from Sundance, courtesy of Alicia Malone! I’m super excited for a bunch of the new films. Possible list coming?
• Ignore the clickbait title. Instead: “There are a million ways to say no, and we need to stop ignoring them. We need to make “enthusiastic consent” our mantra and keep it in mind whenever we might have sex.” Read it.
• How Netflix personalizes its services for every person. Pretty intense.
• A great read: The female price of male pleasure.
• Is this going to be the big under the radar horror film of the year?
• There’s going to be a new royal baby (I missed this somehow)! British bookies are taking bets on baby names.
• I’ve been having a bit of imposter syndrome recently, and this piece on the ‘friendship complex’ was a reassuring read.
• Why people are eating tide pods? 1) I’m officially old, now that I’m having to google this kind of internet fad thing. 2) Gen Z is screwed.
• Two fashion industry tops under fire after a racial slur leads to the rediscovery of past homophobic and transphobic comments. Superficial apologies ensue.
• And to wrap up on a lighter note: Four teddy coats to look like a faceable Paddington Bear. As if Paddington wasn’t already incredibly sexy. Mmm, marmalade.

Books I Read Over Break

As this is my last full day in Boston and also a blizzard day (16-18″!), and as I have no books left from the library (I had to go back and cancel my extra holds yesterday 😥 ) this list isn’t going to go through any alterations before the actual end of the break tomorrow around 7 pm (at which point I will be at the airport) (unless I finish The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur SUPER QUICKLY), I can get away with posting this a bit prematurely.

I have packed my bags and read my last book.

• The Secret Lives of Color, Kassia St. Clair: An excellent and really interesting book about the histories of various culturally significant colors (like Mountbatten Pink, Lead White, Cerulean, et al.) featuring odd and various anecdotes from the past.  Each color discussed gets a few pages.  Very far from dry, perfect for increasing your store of random information for use at parties and family gatherings, and a very aesthetically pleasing book.
• Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult, Bruce Handy: I’m a huge children’s lit reader. Possibly more so than I was as a child (and that’s saying something).  Watching the author discuss and examine childhood favorites (Goodnight Moon, Peter Rabbit, Green Eggs and Ham) through an adult lens, with an attention to various social/cultural movements, is so fascinating. It doesn’t hurt that the author is really witty. I think I audibly chuckled a few times.
• The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down, Hyemin Sunim: Part of what inspired my very crunchy and zen resolution list (the other part being that I’m just a crunchy and zen person) (well, I try to be zen).  Beautiful illustrations and lots of crunchy and chewy food for thought. So glad I stumbled on this in Shakespeare and Co. (And so glad BPL carries it!)

Contrary to my usual preferences, if was a very nonfiction-heavy vacation.  But I feel edified, improved, and most importantly full of odd anecdotes to share.

Friday Links 10/20

It may not be Friday where you are- hell, it’s hardly Friday here- but I’m starting a new (and long) day and will try to get this out of the gate before it becomes impossible. And if this is posted on Saturday, then you will know it was, actually, impossible.

• “It’s time for their to be roles in the ballet where two men can fall in love”. YES!
• Still trying to scrounge up and SNL skits I can find. Here’s Kellyanne Conway as Pennywise the Clown.
• A friend of mine who is also a Yale professor but who was not my professor and who is an amazing, lovely, inspiring woman wrote about her experience at a ten-day silent Vispassana meditation retreat.
• You already know my (very long and involved) feelings on the #MeToo campaign. From Reductress: Woman posts another Facebook status in hopes that men will learn to be human beings.
• A bunch of exhibitions coming up in Paris! What should I go to?
• Are box stalls really the best option for your horse’s health and happiness, or are they designed to reflect what human beings would want, were they horses?
• Is this feminist poem really by a third grader? “I am a church bell, gonging out wrongs and rights and normal nights.”
• A whole new way for me to be antisocial: Are you an introvert, an extrovert, or a Victorian ghost with unfinished business?
• This is so well-written and so funny: Will pumpkin spice destroy us all?
• Instead of saying, “Do not go around lighting people on fire,” we are telling women, “Don’t be flammable.” Men of the world, you are not the weather.

Reading, Listening, Watching

What’s happening with me right now?

• Reading (book): I’m two days and two chapters into Shirley by Charlotte Bronte. I’ve missed reading over the last month. We’ll see how long it lasts.
• Reading (poetry): Weirdly obsessed with Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality right now.
• Watching: I have to admit that I’ve been watching Game of Thrones to tranquilize my brain. I just finished season one.
• Listening: I’ve been playing Aicha by Cheb Khaled pretty much every day on the way to school.
• Eating: For breakfast, the pudding-like French soy yogurt in either pistachio or hazelnut-almond flavors, bread with doing jam, and fruit. For lunch, pesto, vegetables, and couscous. For dinner, vegetables and some protein type thing. Or my squash tofu curry.

My Kindergarten Bookshelf

Alternative title: Picture Books to Raise a Child Like Me

When I was a young girl my bookshelf was an open night table with one shelf. It was painted a very Goodnight Moon-lurid red brown and it’s now used to house some of Mom’s textiles in the nursery-turned-‘sewing room’.
You know, I never really realized until now that I had a nursery. I moved out of a smaller bedroom into the room I’m currently in now because I was getting to big for the first one. I think that makes it a nursery? How weird.

I remember the books I liked best very well. Partly because I only recently managed to let go of them and partly because I’ve rebought some of my old favorites. Because you never know when you’re going to up and have a baby, and you never know when said baby will demand reading material.

Friday Links 7/14

It’s been a nice week- I hope on your end as well!

Friday Fun Links 4/21

Converting these to a weekly (rather than monthly) installment was the right idea.

Because there’s a lot of cool things that I want to talk about, but I also don’t want to inundate anyone.
Firstly, the big cool thing that’s happening in my life: my last ballroom dance show is today, probably my last one ever since I don’t really anticipate continuing with it after college.  I’m really excited (especially because I have a lot of very sweet family members and friends who have decided to come!), not so nervous (although maybe I should be!), and I’ll post with links to videos once they’re up (and if I don’t mess up in a very embarrassing way- but maybe even if I do).

I kind of swing wildly back and forth between treating myself and being absolutely austere and weirdly self-denying. I’m trying to find a nice middle road while simultaneously training myself out of excessive stress- by buying myself a nice little treat every time I get through something that made me anxious or was a ‘big deal’ (like a job interview, a big test, a deadline, or, you know, a ballroom show).  Should I write a list at some point of my mini self-gifts? I’m planning on it.

I also have succeeded in dragging a close friend down the fragrance rabbi hole (well, he’s made his first order from Surrender to Chance, so celebration might be a bit premature- but I think not 😉 ). But more on that later.

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.