Thirty. A little theory of animal temperament.

[menaasuvari]

Lunch conversation

Comments

[marla_sokoloff]

I have no idea what the badger does either when it's cornered, but your companion is right. Sometimes you have to stay angry. Don't feel guilty for handling things your way.

[Sob. I will miss you, but I hope moving goes well.]

[menaasuvari]

I think I need to find out. I may need to have a 'don't poke the badger' icon. The whole discussion was funny, but I feel a little more secure about hanging onto my anger like a security blankie.

[melissa_george]

I agree completely with Marla. Never feel guilty about expressing yourself in your own terms. It's what makes you, you.

[Aww, good luck with everything. I'll definitely miss you while you're away.]

[menaasuvari]

I think I get hung up on the fact that grudge-holding angry people are usually portrayed in such a negative light; I hate to admit that I can really be one of those. But, you know...I'm not good at letting go, I might as well embrace that fact, you're all right about that.

[marla_sokoloff]

Thank you for picking me up at the airport. I told you I don't normally get recognized, but I can't stop giggling that those two guys at the luggage pick up were pointing and saying, "That's those girls from the cheerleader bank-robbing movie."

Mena, we are legends. Lmao.

[menaasuvari]

We are! I was expecting the tall one to nudge the shorter guy to ask us where the pom-poms were. I do not know how I kept from laughing while they were talking all subtle and smooth and trailing us.

[marc_blucas]

I have been meaning to d/l more of The Postal Service's music since I've only heard one song of theirs and have it on repeat right now.

I'm being repetitive here but it's true, you just have to handle things the way that it works for you.

[menaasuvari]

The Postal Service delights me, makes me so happy, even though a lot of people have heard it already. I keep trying to share their music with anybody who hasn't heard it. I'm a Postal pusher, in fact.

And, see, it's easy to think 'handle it how it works for me', but I don't think handling anger is one of the things made that easy for us. Being nonconfrontational is a way of life because often the person who loses their cool, they really literally lose their cool and have a certain stigma. I'm trying to do that anyway, but I think the problem came from that -- from being told all my life 'don't hold a grudge, it's just not attractive in a person'.

[marc_blucas]

Anger really isn't something that's made easy. I'm nonconfrontational by nature and yet, I get very angry in private. I've been known to break more than one thing in a fit but I won't express that to the people around me, even usually the ones closest to me. It's happened a few times, but not often. I hold too many of the grudges that maybe shouldn't be held and letting things go by that really should be kept in the for front for later use.

[menaasuvari]

I typically just don't get angry. I'm that laid back that I shrug off small annoyances before they blossom into full-blown anger. But once I'm there, I burn hot and long. I think I've too long seen getting angry at all as too destructive to handle, but now I'm just not so sure anymore. Sometimes things burn that way for a reason, after all.

[demimoore]

but the olives are easily the best part.

[menaasuvari]

Really? I've never had a great fondness for them. Just never acquired the taste.

[demimoore]

pitless, though. because the others are too small to deserve the work it takes to eat.

[naomiwatts]

A badger, huh. It's slightly ingenius and better than the typical fox personality, pig apetite, or horse face comparisons.

Now I wonder what your dinner talk's like.

[menaasuvari]

I tend to be very intimate about talk over meals, trying to focus a lot, only with a greater chance that I'll take an all-too-infrequent drink and loosen up when I'm at dinner. Badger fits, I think; I am tenacious in several senses. I hold onto the good and the bad. I go through streaks of society-hating like Badger in the Wind in the Willows. I'm not sure if that's flattering, but it fits.

[naomiwatts]

Have you ever attended a dinner where your partner is silent and it absolutely frustrates the living hell out of you? It's happened to me a couple of times. A person can't talk to themselves over dinner, s/he will appear slightly crazy or insane, and besides. Two are necessary for dinner talk, it's almost like tangoing.

I wouldn't call it entirely unflattering. Better a badger than a lion or a lizard.

[menaasuvari]

I have attended far too many functions where I'm opposite someone who communicates in Neanderthal. Lots of grunting. What is that? If I can overcome my mild misanthropy to come be social, I want actual words. That's actually often the point when I aim for a good dinner argument. Better a good verbal scrap than silence.