Tag Archives: philosophy

10 Things You Might Not Know, part 19

Posted on April 1, 2010 | 15 Comments

It’s Friday. That, and these ten things are all you need to know today…

  1. First – yay! – a kissing fact ! Kissing burns as many calories as doing the laundry! (Leave. The. Clothes. ‘Nuff said.)
  2. Because steel expands when it gets hot, the Eiffel Tower is six inches taller in the summer than in the winter. (My friend, Jay, texted me that. He said it’s perfect for my 10 Things post. That’s good enough for me.)
  3. There’s something called fundamental basketball. It’s played by the All-American Basketball League, and here are the rules of eligibility. “Only players that are natural-born United States citizens with both parents of Caucasian race are eligible to play in the league.” I learned about this on The Daily Show, so I checked to make sure it was real. It is, but watch The Daily Show clip. It’ll cheer you up.
  4. Last Fall, the film Motherhood, staring Uma Thurman, was released. Have you heard of it? I hadn’t. Maybe because it grossed only $50k at the box office. At it’s opening in Great Britain, only a dozen people showed up to see the film. On the Sunday of its debut weekend in the UK, the box office brought in $12. And that’s only the 2nd worst flop in British cinematic history!
  5. Toads can predict earthquakes. I love this story. Plus, they’re so cute!  …What?
  6. Please, I want THIS for Christmas; it’s only $86k.
  7. Women feel guiltier than men. (Apparently this finding is controversial. That surprises me more than the finding itself.)
  8. Flying foxes (which I had never heard of before last week) and fruit bats are the same thing. You might know that. Did you know they are the largest bats in the world, with a wing span of up to six feet? (I love bats. That is a whole lot of bat to love.)
  9. A new study suggests that high-fat, high-calorie foods affect the brain in much the same way as cocaine and heroin. When rats consume these foods in great enough quantities, it leads to compulsive eating habits that resemble drug addiction. (The study doesn’t mention cheesecake specifically, which I’m certain means it’s okay. In case you were worried.)
  10. Go ahead. Wax philosophical. People who spend more of their day having deep discussions and less time engaging in small talk seem to be happier. (And also people who know more than everybody else are happier. You’re welcome.)

And a bonus. I absolutely LOVE this video: The Three Girls, an animated story by a six year old. Watch it. It’s perfect for Friday.

Big love, everyone. We made it through another week.

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And now for something more personal…

Posted on January 22, 2009 | 7 Comments

The past year has been one of the hardest in my life.  I’ve felt tested in almost every way – financially, professionally, emotionally, spiritually.  I’ve done more soul searching in the past few months than I’ve done in my whole life, asking hard questions, writing my way through personal storms – words that raged and searched and are utterly unsuitable for publication.  (So you can relax.  This isn’t that kind of blog.)

But at some point, not all that long ago, I decided I had to stop thinking so much and just start doing.  It started with Obama’s campaign – volunteering at the campaign office, answering phones, walking precincts – and it spread.  I took up yoga, started this blog, joined two hiking groups, said yes to a professional project I had no idea if I could do.  I changed my workout, my diet, started filtering my water (instead of buying bottled).  I painted three walls, completed the revision of my first novel and started the second.

Not everything I’ve done has worked out the way I planned.  I committed to being an editor, for instance, creating a website and encouraging referrals, only to realize I really, really don’t want to be a full-time editor.  For a while I struggled with that realization and then I decided to DO something.  I took down the site (which immediately made me feel better).  I’m finishing the redesign now, and I’m totally excited about the new improved Scribe Girl, a site for writers and readers, with a blog about writing, and book recommendations, and news about the publishing industry, and… who knows what all it might have when it’s live (hopefully at the end of the month).

To be honest, I don’t know where all this DOING will lead me, but I’m moving – getting healthy, busy, motivated, hopeful.  On Tuesday, President Obama told the nation that it was time to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and begin again the work of remaking America. I’m thinking maybe this is where it starts. Each of us, in our own way, figuring ourselves out, getting up and DOING.

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Posted in j'epiphanies, on my mind...

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The Problem with Productivity

Posted on January 9, 2009 | 2 Comments

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”  ~ E.B. White

That’s how I started out today.  I awoke wrapped in a dream.  It fell away from me before I could recall it, as dreams so often do, but in its wake I felt a meandering sort of optimism.  The sort of optimism made all the more certain by its vagueness.  (The sort that leads to silliness, dancing, chocolate and all manner of tiny celebration.)

Now, six hours later, despite the fact that I’ve crossed several items off my list of things to do, I can see clearly that if I continue on this path, I will neither improve the world nor enjoy it today.

Time to make a new list.

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Posted in writing, writers, and stuff we like

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I Think I’m Nice (therefore I am)

Posted on January 5, 2009 | 1 Comment

I was just on the phone with Renita, a representative from our insurance carrier who I’d called about a billing.  It took me a while to get to her.  I was on hold first, transferred twice.  I had other stuff to do.  There was a certain tension in the air – the kind of aggressive unease  inherrent to dealing with insurance companies… the kind of tension exacerbated by every minute that piles up between you and resolution.

But then a funny thing happened.  At the instant I heard Renita’s voice, I smiled.  Consciously.  Act how you want to feel, I thought, and I smiled. I relaxed.  I was amenable.  I wanted to feel friendly and cooperative and so that’s how I acted.  The cool part?  So did Renita.  We were done in five minutes, my questions answered, my problem taken care of.

I admit, it could be that she’s exceptional, that out of all the potential drones I might have been connected to, I got Renita, Queen of the Efficient and Friendly.  It could be that it was still early, or that my problem wasn’t hard to fix.

Then again, maybe it was the smile.

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Posted in j'epiphanies

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To Boldly Go

Posted on January 2, 2009 | 6 Comments

A friend once told me that he goes through life always knowing where the exits are, always with a plan of escape.  Even he says it’s not the best way to live – with your eye on the door and your body poised for retreat – but it’s how he’s made.  Today a different friend sent me an email with the line, “Burn the bridge behind you,” which struck me as being the exact opposite philosophy on life.  The idea behind burning bridges, of course, is to keep moving forward, toward your goals, cutting yourself off from retreat.

Burning bridges is scarier.  But some of the best things I’ve ever done (maybe all my best accomplishments) have happened when I was at least a little scared.

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Sex For a Troubled World

Posted on November 26, 2008 | 1 Comment

It’s official. I have bailout burnout. Econmic fatigue. I scan the headlines and have trouble finding anything I can bear to read these days. (No wonder, I’m posting about egg shell removal and cranberry relish!)

And today? Sex!

Yesterday, I stumbled across two articles that eased my troubled mind. Not because they solved any problems, but because they distracted me from all the seemingly unsolvable problems in the news right now. The first piece was an Associated Press article that said John Updike had won a lifetime achievement award from judges of Britain’s Bad Sex in Fiction Prize, “which celebrates crude, tasteless or ridiculous sexual passages in modern literature.”

The article said that Updike has been shortlisted for the prize four times in the contest’s 16-year history. He lost out this year to a British writer, Rachel Johnson, who wrote in her satirical book, Shire Hell, of a woman in the midst of a “mounting, Wagnerian cresendo.”

As a writer, I’d like to think my best sex scenes have yet to be written, but when I finally do get them down, I could do worse than vie for a prize that has been awarded to the likes of Sebastian Faulks, Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer.

The second mind-settling article I read yesterday was Tucker Carlson’s piece in the Daily Beast, “Why Are Christians Having Better Sex Than The Rest Of Us.” In it, he points out that according to a multitude of studies…

A daily romp is healthier than yoga, a five-mile run, and a handful of multivitamins combined. Sex has been shown to ameliorate memory, posture, depression, anxiety, insomnia, menstrual cramps, digestion, bladder control, dental health, and the sense of smell.

It’s a natural analgesic that also reduces the risk of prostate cancer and heart disease. It lessens the incidence of colds and flu. It burns calories. Overall, according to a 1997 study in the British Medical Journal, men with the most active sex lives have a death rate half that of those with the least active. Sex prolongs life.

Yay! Some good news! Finally!

So yesterday, when I’d hit my limit, when I’d read, watched and listened to all the crisis news I could stand and it seemed like maybe there really is no end in sight to the layoffs, and bailouts, and closures, and Sarah Palin coverage, I discovered a new, sanity-saving philosophy that will no doubt carry me through whatever lies ahead: In my darkest hours, there are worse things I could do than grab a little lovin’. But probably not many better things.

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