A friend of mine recently taught me about the film genre, "Fem-Jep". A woman in jeopardy. The film, _Gravity_ was the example she used: our main interest in watching this movie, is seeing our heroine, Sandra Bullock, be placed in jeapardy, again and again, until by luck and persistence, she reaches the conclusion of the film. It doesn't make for ( Read more... )

My oldest, bestest, most loyal friend in the world is in the hospital right now. Its pretty serious. But much of this story isnt mine to tell, it's hers. All I can talk about is my own experience. Im noticing some things ( Read more... )

Imagine a room full of people, socializing. Half of them extroverts, half are introverts. Seems like the extroverts are not going to be aware of how many introverts there are, since theyre the normal ones. But the introverts are going to know exactly who the extroverts are ( Read more... )

Just now I had another brief, vivid memory of Oly, but it came slowly enough for me to see it coming, and it was smaller than it's been, and I smelled an opportunity to do something... less foolish, maybe even wise- with the experience (of the memory ( Read more... )

Treat others as you'd like to be treated- that seems so abstract, so theoretical, so.... Christian ( Read more... )

There's a fairly large subset of the alternative/kink/nerd demographic, who seem deeply concerned about having too much drama in their lives. "This is a drama free zone", they'll say, or, "hi drama people, stay away". I always shrugged it off, until someone pointed out to me that they're actually saying, "I'm high drama, so don't engage with me ( Read more... )

Not long after I'd moved into this Portland house last year, my girlfriend drove down from Seattle to visit me. She wanted to make it into a driving vactation with her two kids, so they came along as well. And there was a couple of sofas in the living room for them to crash on ( Read more... )

Three vaguely related stories have collided to create a perfect storm in my mind.

boingboing.net/2014/10/08/20-meaningful-things-you-can-d.html

This is a thoughtful response to all those glib, shallow checklists that we routinely see in women's lifestyle magazines, designed to let people believe they're actually paying attention to important problems ( Read more... )

 Yeah, I know, in 1969, I was all of 5 years old, so I don't get to feel any nostalgia. But I grew up in the 70s and 80's and I got a good heady whiff of what the kids back then had been smoking... and I miss it ( Read more... )

Night before last, I went to go see _(Robin Wright at) The Congress_, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_%282013_film%29which turned out to be a film adaptation of Stanislaw Lem's _The Fututolgical Congress_. I didn't catch that angle until the end credits, and somehow that helped everything pop into place.

Originally I was content to enjoy a ( Read more... )