summarize adulthood in one gif
The power of rewrites. Above: Gene Roddenberry’s original opening narration for Star Trek and beneath it, the edited and rewritten version that was eventually recorded by William Shatner for the show. With all affection, it’s hard to imagine a worse version of the narration than that first draft.
#449: NOBODY LIKES IT WHEN YOU’RE SWEATY
So one time I was dancing with this guy I had never met before, and the first thing he says is “I can see you’ve been dancing.” At first I was flattered because I thought he meant I had improved. Then I was creeped out and flattered because I remembered I had never danced with him before. Then I was just embarrassed because I realized that he meant I was really sweaty.
This is my life.
Dinner saves the day
You know how sometimes, you’ve got this idea that the handful of ingredients you’ve got lying around is something you can turn into this idealistic, thrown-together plate of absolute joy? Because you have SKILLS and WINE and RADIOHEAD playing on your stereo and you are going to BEAT your angsty mood by cooking.
And then you get about halfway through the process and you look at what’s in the pan and think, er, dunno, that may not end as well as I’d hoped. But you keep cooking because what else are you gonna do, and you just hope it turns out fairly ok even if it’s not something you’d serve someone else. So you’re now resigned to a meh dinner that would be a disappointment aside from the fact that it’s food and you’re hungry.
And then in the last five seconds, when you add the final ingredient you were sure was going to REALLY ruin it, some crazy kitchen alchemy brings it all together to be way higher than your self-lowered expectations, and you sort of can’t believe it, but you have renewed faith in your SKILLS and you’ve ended up with the thing that is the reason you started cooking in the first place.
Maybe not exactly what you planned but and as-good or better different.
And then because you are and always will be an English-Major jerkface who can’t let a thought pass without overanalysing the crap out of it, you think, there’s probably a life metaphor in that.
And then, surveying your situation, you hope it holds true.
And then you have seconds even though you probably shouldn’t. Because MAN IT REALLY TURNED OUT GOOD.
If you haven’t watched this already, you really need to. It’s an hour long, but don’t be put off. The fact that our President was willing to sit down with Tumblr and answer these questions blindly is, I think, incredibly impressive.
This came at a coincidentally perfect time for me because I’ve been trying to figure out what to do about the nightmare of paying my loans from abroad once and for all. It needs to get easier, and in considering my options, I have to start paying better attention to the details of what is and isn’t possible via Sallie Mae. That isn’t the easiest task (understatement of the century), but the fact that this public conversation even happened gives me a tiny bit of hope.
I don’t run my mouth on the interwebs about politics all that often, and I have the healthiest of skepticism for any politician, but I really think that Obama has shown a lot of honesty here. There are things I don’t fully agree with, and his answers weren’t always perfect, but I don’t feel like he was ever trying to actively dodge a question or pull the wool over our eyes. I really appreciate that. There were some difficult questions here.
We have a GOOD president, you guys. We really do.
While I don’t intend to live in the US again any time soon, I am still American, and I’m happy to say that. The US has problems but I hold it in equal regard to my current home. My family is in America, as well as many of my friends, and I think it’s a great place to grow up and to live. I’ve been away for a long time, and the beginning of that time was a difficult time to tell people I was American because I always felt ashamed that George W Bush was in charge. I felt like I had to apologise. I know I’m not the only one. Some people may take issue with that, but most of those people haven’t seen the US from outside the US, particularly during that time. America is great, but it’s part of the world, and I feel an awful lot better about being an American out in the world when a guy like this is the one calling the shots.
This video highlights frustration and work to be done. But I think, quite importantly, it highlights a will for taking that work forward. I don’t know who will be the next president, and hopefully it won’t be someone to double back on any progress Obama manages to make, but the scary thing this video also reminds us of is the fact that the US is very big and the population is very split on some pretty fundamental things. It’s hard to see how we’ll get past that. But at least we know someone at the top is listening for now.
Let me explain. If you’ve ever thought that you cannot invite an avid cook to your house for dinner because they will silently judge your efforts, let me dispel this notion: when I’m not the one doing the cooking, everything tastes like the most amazing thing on earth. Maybe it’s tinged with relief that I’m not the one behind the stove for once, maybe it’s because I wholly understand what a big effort cooking can be, or maybe it’s just because you’re an awesome cook whether you believe it or not, but if you bake me a chocolate cake, I want to hug you. I want to run off with the cake.
Deb Perelman so perfectly states what I always try to tell people. And they never believe me. But it’s true! Cook or bake for me and not only will my estimation of you rise higher than it is, but I will love every last bit of what you make, and its existence will make my day.
"The transformation of the cake-cookie by the application of fondant rather than frosting simply makes it more modern and streamlined, and capable of being broadly distributed without smearing the frosting. Yet the image of the half moon remains — a medieval symbol representing the midpoint of the lunar cycle — as a modern reminder of New York City’s remote northern-European past. "
Black and white cookies! I’d say I should learn how to make them, but if you don’t buy it in New York, it’s just not really the same.
It’s extremely difficult for people to remake themselves, particularly if they’ve got husbands and wives, jobs, children. It’s very, very difficult to throw everything up and embark on a completely new reappraisal of yourself. But, I think, sooner or later, all of us have to do that. Mostly I think we do it vicariously, by reading novels, by going to films and so on. We allow others to be our deputies in making some kind of radical shift, stealing a million dollars from a bank or whatever it may be. But I think we all feel a powerful need to make this change, to rediscover who we really are and what our real assignment is.
J. G. Ballard, interviewed by John Gray, 2000 (via gregings)
Yes and yes.
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