Fail Big

I’m really bad at losing and failure. Really, truly awful. When I was a kid I would cry angry tears when I lost stupid games. Nowadays, I lie on the floor angrily when my sportsball team loses. When I lose at something, it’s never like, “Wow, nice effort. Good game! I’ll get you next time!” It’s more like, “This friendship is over. You’re dead to me. Get out of my house.”

This behavior is occasionally funny to people, but mostly it’s a pain in the ass. It’s also tiring to care that much about succeeding and winning in nearly every arena. This mindset is paralyzing. Why would I take a big risk at something new when I could fail spectacularly? What if people find out that I’m human and am not very good at some things? What if the truth is that I’m actually bad at everything?! WHAT IF I AM A PERSONIFIED FACE-PLANT?!?!

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What Is Your Green Personality?

Being ecologically friendly has become a more common virtue instead of the purview of socialist hippies. However, it is important to know your Green Personality to better facilitate the ways you will naturally be more green. Because we’re talking about human personality, I think they can best be summed up by four types and no more.

The Consumer

Copyright: <a href='http://www.123rf.com/profile_samotrebizan'>samotrebizan / 123RF Stock Photo</a> — I’m a walking cliché!

Any chance you have to buy something is a chance to prove your commitment to the environment. Packaging on any product should have no fewer than three of the following: a cheerful green leaf, the recycling symbol, the declaration that the product is free of something, a symbol stating that the product is organic, the words “pure,” “local,” “natural,” “vegan,” or “raw,” the homey names of the company owners, or undyed brown paper that is not necessarily post-consumer. When friends enter your home, they will see that you only choose the best gluten-free, natural, glycerin hand soap and that you have eschewed the cotton towels you already have for new eco-friendly, sustainably-sourced bamboo towels. You will invest thousands of dollars to save a few bucks on heating and cooling each year. In the warm glow of your retail therapy, you know you’re doing your bit to save the earth.

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The Peace-Weavers

In Beowulf, the term “peace-weaver” is used to describe noblewomen who are married to an enemy clan in an attempt bring peace. The role isn’t an easy one, and a bard sings the story of Hildeburh: a peace-weaver whose husband breaks the truce and she loses her husband, brother, and son in the hostilities that inevitably break out again. Hildeburh is a tragic character pulled between strong, opposing loyalties, but she is also an exemplary one; she does her best to keep the peace and pretty much does everything as right as you can considering the situation. The use of Hildeburh’s story is more of a foreshadowing device, but I still remember being struck by what a raw deal she had.

For most of Western history, marriage was about two men formalizing a political or economic bond through use of a woman. Whether the woman was kind or pretty or intelligent didn’t really matter as long as she was related by blood to one of them and able to make blood-related babies with the other. Women were used as a way to strengthen individual families and as societal soothing device. How a woman was as a flesh-and-blood human being seemed inconsequential unless she was rebellious (in which case, tame that shrew) or very rich and influential (in which case, it’s important to get invited to her parties.) That’s not to say that there weren’t amazing women in the past, we’ve just lost most of their stories because their marriages didn’t stop or start wars.

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Drew & Tom Find a Cat

“Hey, Drew,” Mina says, “is everything okay? Did my package arrive?”

“Uh, yeah. Not yet. I was just, you know, checking up with you. I wanted to make sure everything was okay with you.”

Her sigh crackles over the phone connection. “Well, you know how these things are. Hurry up and wait! The surgery went pretty well, so we’re just waiting to see how Dad recovers.” Her pause stretches out over several seconds. “Thanks for checking in, I guess.”

“Hehe, well, I was just, you know, being neighborly! Lookin’ out for you!” Drew tries to swallow, but his mouth is dry.

“Right. Okay. Well, thanks again. I gotta go.”

“Sure, yeah. Bye now!” Drew hangs up and looks at the blank screen of his phone. “I lost your fucking cat.”

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What Women Want

There’s been so much crap going on in the world, and, honestly, I just don’t have the wherewithal to talk about it. I thought about bloggin’ about it, but no dice. So today, I will ramble about the ancient film “What Women Want” and what it got wrong. Pretty much all the women are terrible caricatures with no interiority despite literal access to their innermost thoughts, but there are some pretty grievous errors.
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Stupid Haikus 2

The haiku is a subtle, elegant art form. The spareness of words makes each one fecund with meaning. They are shorter than a tweet, yet evoke scenery, emotion, and the passing of time. The following are not haikus, in that fashion. They are silly “poems” that follow the 5-7-5 syllable scheme and are prompted by free stock photos (and one hilarious photo of the family dog.)

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Apparently I’m Really Fat?

Mr. Squish has been looking for a gym since Winter is Coming. A snazzy, newer one in town let us have a trial period, which included a free fitness assessment. I suspected that this free thing was like the “free” breakfast my parents went to and got suckered into buying a time share. But whatever! Woo! Free stuff! So far so good.

The assessment was given by a nice, slightly shy younger woman who followed what was outlined in the gym-branded handbook. We chatted a little bit about goals, and I pretty much just stopped short of saying, “I don’t care how fat I am. I just want a pleasant, attractive person to congratulate me each time I complete a weightlifting set and give me high fives.”* Maybe I should’ve been more forthcoming.

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The First Romance Novel I Read by Which All Others I Have Secretly Read Are Judged and Found Wanting

Some time in middle school, a family friend dropped off a huge box of books and I proceeded to read nearly all of them in a summer. The only age appropriate ones I remember are By the Great Horn Spoon!, which is a sheer delight full of cleverness, boxing butlers, and the California gold rush, and The Once and Future King, which had some parts that were still outside my grasp. Though the Arthurian legend in general is emotionally fraught, containing incest, patricide, and the weird situation of loving one’s wife while also loving the guy she’s cheating on you with – I don’t blame myself.

This box also provided The Age of Innocence, which taught me about love and conforming, and that a gentleman can be thrilled when a lady’s eagle feather fan brushes his knee. It also taught me that after a lifetime of mooning about someone, said same gentleman could decline to see her because, “She’s more real to me this way.” WTF, dude?

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What Are Diets Actually Promising?

Most people who have known me for a while, know that for a very long time I struggled with body image. I hope, at the very least, that I kept it to a dull roar because that kind of thing is tiring and toxic to be around.

It’s hard to remember when everything started because it started so early. Kids aren’t dumb; they spend a lot of time figuring out their environments, the social pecking order, and how to behave to get what they want. So even though my parents never put me on a diet, never put me down about my appearance, and never said that looking a certain way would bring positive or negative outcomes for me, I still put two and two together. From fairy tales to cartoons to toys to advertisements, I was taught that feminine beauty is linked to goodness and good outcomes. There’s also a pretty narrow definition of feminine beauty that I remember being shown: slender, white, blonde, unmarked skin, mostly hairless – a princess who is “fair.” I’m pretty sure I picked up on all of this before I could reliably count to 100.

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