I’ve had it the other way round (i.e. disliked a movie I expected to like,) but I can’t really say I’ve ever watched a movie that I expected to hate. Do people do that? In the very short life one has, are there people who sit around entertaining themselves with movies they expect to not be entertaining? Despite all that I have learned in this life, people perplex me more and more each day.
I don’t know that there is a meaning of life, and — if there is — I truly doubt that it’s one size fits all. I’ve got to give it to the Existentialists on this particular question.
“Popularity contest,” as in “This isn’t going to win me any popularity contests, but…” You know what’s not popular? Popularity contests. I’ve never heard of one. What you are really saying is, “I’m about to be a jackass, and I just want you to know that I’m aware I’m being a jackass.” Just own your jackassery all ready. You can’t soften the blow of being a jackass.
As loosely and flexibly as your stress tolerance will bear.
Many times. In many ways. Not always good. One time in a packed conference room for a mandatory graduate seminar, I realized I’d forgot to wear deodorant on an Indian summer day in Georgia, and — thus — smelled stronger than I’d thought. (Maybe, I’d put on the deodorant, but it — being as exhausted as I — hadn’t the will to stay in the fight.) Of course, when I first caught a whiff, my internal monologue was like, “Oh man, who skipped the shower!” But after a couple pit sniffs made as surreptitiously as I could manage, there was no lying to myself further. (No lying about the smell, and no lying to myself that pretending to wipe my lip on my collar was really any less gross than just owning the sniffing my own pit.) I — on that occasion — was the stinky kid.
A breath of air.
If Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind taught us anything, it’s that one shouldn’t go around erasing memories. So, I decline to answer. [FYI: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is not my answer because I don’t need the lesson all over again.]
That’s not so much my problem. I’m a learning addict and get hooked easily. My problem comes down the line at the point where the once blurred edges between what is of value and what is bullshit in a given discipline comes into focus. It is that point that my enthusiasm wavers.
I suspect this meant to imply “in a good way,” but I would like to express the view that this is often not good. It’s often because the book is inaptly titled and its blurbs and tag lines deceptively written. When I first started doing reviews I used to get (and am sure I still do but these days ignore them,) “I see you liked X, this is X meets Y!” [Where “Y” is something that is incredibly popular, and “X” was a book I had reviewed positively.] The first time I was intrigued enough to check one of these out, I found a book that bore no resemblance to X, Y, or to good writing of any kind.
The moral of the story is, if someone is selling a marketing plan about how to build blurbs, elevator pitches, titles, and other marketing information that are completely detached from the real product, ignore them. It is in no way a winning strategy for selling books. Nothing good comes of trying to trick someone.
More fitness, less routine. Develop a habit for movement, a love of it, and nature will take its course. Don’t leap into punishing routines, start easy, listen your body, and you’ll get to that point incrementally — but it won’t feel like punishment.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 