Internet Lovelies

I find it impossible to read one book at a time. I'm always juggling several, unable to keep my mind focused in one direction for too long. This is why I will start a book in, say, August, and not finish it until about October...2015.

Oh, and that's not just with books. That's with everything. I wish I could find a hobby and stick with it. One thing I could pour my heart and soul into and never stray away from. Instead I have too many interests, with no way of becoming fluent in any of them. A Jill of all trades (except math). Oh, I like books. And film. And music, and comics, and photography, and astronomy, and cooking, and what the hell, maybe I should just quit my job and start an alpaca farm tomorrow!

No. No. I'll just quote stuff from the internet until I'm able to finish something with ACTUAL margins.

If you go to Niagara Falls to jump off and are caught, you will be forced to admit yourself to a psychiatric ward, for which you will be made to pay $1600 for a single night.
If you smoke two packs a day, on the other hand, you will not be locked up. Smoking more won’t change that. Drinking won’t change that. C & A don’t have the glamour of heroin or crack cocaine, they’re boring, grubby, legal, lethal little habits, the things that get you through whatever you have to get through. And if you look back over a year, you see that there was always something to get through, you spent the year getting through what you had to get through. Maybe that’s the boring, grubby little life that makes jumping off a cliff look a good idea in the first place. But that’s your problem. The reason suicide attempts look exciting, the reason they justify locking people up, is that the worthlessness of a life is inadmissible as a reason to stop trying to get through it. Your friends and fans won’t see you dying by inches, and they won’t see themselves killing you by inches either.

Helen Dewitt, Link

Dear Barack,

For a long time, you were my pretend boyfriend. You filled the hole in my heart left by John Kerry and Al Gore (even the tiny hole left by Wes Clark).
But now, I need to break up with you. This is the final straw.
I gave you a pass on the lack-of-actual-jobs thing (George’s fault!)
I was willing to give you another month or so on Afghanistan (You didn’t start the fire!)
But this is it. Gay Marriage is a civil rights issue. This is not hard. There’s a right decision and a wrong decision and you are on the wrong side of the line on this one.

So goodbye.

Your former best girlfriend,
Hockeymom

ps. You are being replaced with the original pretend boyfriend, George Clooney. He’s for gay marriage. Probably for reasons I don’t care to know about.

comment by hockeymom at Wonkette, Link

Aristotle, who saw friendship as essential to human flourishing, shrewdly observed that it comes in three distinct flavors: those based on usefulness (contacts), on pleasure (drinking buddies), and on a shared pursuit of virtue—the highest form of all. True friends, he contended, are simply drawn to the goodness in one another, goodness that today we might define in terms of common passions and sensibilities.

Daniel Akst, Link

I also know that deciding there is one thing or one way of life that is going to make you happy, despite all the evidence to the contrary, is utter bullshit. Nothing will kill you faster than disappointment, than "But why not?" It will also, and this is the bizarre part, make you cling tighter to those exact things that are not working. You will offer a billion reasons to yourself, to those around you, why you need this, why change is not possible. There is no time, look at all those things I would need to do, it wouldn't work anyway.

Jessa Crispin, Link

I just remember being profoundly disappointed with the Internet. Here is this land of infinite space, yes? No restrictions, absolutely limitless. And yet no one was doing anything...But anyway, boredom is the mother, no, wait, maybe the creepy uncle of invention. If I had a day job where all I had to do was tap away on a keyboard, make them think this spreadsheet was totally complicated and took a really long time, then what else could I do? Catching up on the news only took like an hour. That left seven. This is why people comment (and thereby becoming insane) or become Facebook addicts. There is nothing to fucking do at your day job on the Internet.

Jessa Crispin on the origins of Bookslut, Link

If I didn't have an MLS I would never have been able to get the job as head of Adult Services / Reference. That of course means I never would have had the opportunity to yell "Put your penis away, that is inappropriate." across a crowded computer room.

Comment by mdoneil at LISNews, Link