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I’m normally not a big fan of surreal films, but this one was great. My favourite part was when the man was attempting to pump air into his soccer ball. That section was incredibly well done.

Photo credit: Biso.

Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian readers!

I’ll be celebrating it in a non-traditional manner today.

There won’t be any turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, or cranberry sauce.

Nothing I eat today will have a complicated recipe or take hours to cook. They won’t produce an obscene number of dishes to wash either.

I won’t be travelling long distances, or making small talk, or sitting at a crowded dining room table.

There will be delicious food in my near future. There is always room for delicious food in life. Some of it might even be pie, although it probably won’t be of the pumpkin variety.

There will be peace and quiet.

There will be freedom to do whatever it is I want to do on this holiday. Nothing will be forbidden or expected of me today.

There may be moments of reflection that aren’t at all pre-planned. I have a lot of things to be thankful in my life.

This isn’t to say that I dislike all traditional Thanksgiving festivities. They can be nice sometimes, but I really like trying other things on holidays. It’s fun to mix things up. A holiday can be like any other day if you want it to, just like an ordinary day can include some or all of the foods that you’d typically expect to find at a Thanksgiving dinner.

Non-traditional Thanksgiving celebrations are best because of how much freedom they give to you. This kind of flexibility is incredibly valuable. If you can learn how to enjoy more than one kind of Thanksgiving, you won’t feel bad when you’re living hundreds or thousands of miles away from family during the holidays, or when you need to work, or when you have another reason to celebrate them in a different way than you did last year.

So enjoy it if you’re celebrating Thanksgiving non-traditionally this year. I know I sure will!

Happy Thanksgiving! Here is this week’s list of blog posts, poems, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Son of a via MelaniesWords. Here’s hoping the author writes a sequel soon. I want to know what happens next!

Map of Thanksgiving Dinner. I’m not actually a big fan of most of the traditional Thanksgiving foods, but the Sweet Potato Peak does look good here.

Harvest and Thanksgiving via KateSpencer17. I absolutely love the sentiment of this post.

On Peeple Being Mean via CMAstfalk. Oh, I am not a fan of this app at all. No, there isn’t a typo in the title. Go click on the link to find out what Peeple is and why it’s such a bad idea.

From Faces in the Street:

They lie, the men who tell us, for reasons of their own,
That want is here a stranger, and that misery’s unknown;

From The Girls on Shit Duty:

I’m always amazed at the mess. Why does getting away from home become synonymous with guests losing their sense of propriety? It’s as if the bad, angry part of the wilderness—the part that reminds people of their feral origins—leaches into every male psyche, turns every guest into some basic and primeval version of himself.

What have you been reading?

Who else has ever dreamed about having a coughing fit when they’re sick in real life?

That happened to me yesterday. I still don’t know if my brain was waking me up to have a real coughing fit or if it was simply one of those everyday things that sometimes works its way into the dream world.

Dream coughs are much less productive than real ones, though. It felt like I was an actor who was pretending to cough instead of a real person who was actually coughing. For one thing, I couldn’t feel my lungs in the dream. My mouth and throat were coughing, but my dream-lungs were not.

I’ve spent the last day wondering why dream-me had a mouth, a throat, and the urge to cough, but my mind couldn’t also come up with a suitable pair of lungs as well. If this was a story, I’d be very curious to know why it was written this way!

These are the odd things I think about when I’m sick.

What odd things have been bouncing around in your minds recently?

Do magic shows really involve magic, or are they all a bunch of silly tricky? The boy in this short film sure doesn’t think that magic is real. Watch it to find out if he’s correct.

I just arrived home from a family reunion. A whole bunch of us packed ourselves into one house for several days. We had a wonderful time, although I’m glad to be back home now.

I have a cold.

My well of blogging ideas has temporarily run dry. I’ll be back to my old self soon, but in the meantime I have a few questions for my readers.

What are your favourite home remedies when you’re sick?

Do you prefer to be left alone or coddled when you’re not feeling well?

What is your idea of a good family reunion? Do you like squishing everyone into the same house, or do you prefer getting a hotel room?

Ready, set, discuss!

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, poems, artworks, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Theories of Autumn. I love this.

In the Bathtub. Every so often I include a link in Suggestion Saturday without telling you anything about it. I’m doing it again this week. As always, there’s nothing disturbing or scary here. It will simply be more amusing if you have no idea what to expect when you click on it.

Chrysalide. I’d like to hear my readers’ interpretations of this picture. Who has one?

The Dissection. This is the kind of science fiction story that worms its way into my dreams.

15 Simple Ways to Spread Kindness in Your World Starting Today. One of the things I really appreciate about my childhood is how much effort my parents put into teaching their kids how to be kind and empathetic even when it was difficult. They did such a good job at this. If everyone had such warm role models, our world would be a much friendlier place.

Modern Art Simplified. Is it possible to be silly and useful at the same time? I’d argue yes.

From How Utah Became a Bizarre, Blissful Epicenter for Get-Rich-Quick Schemes:

Trying to wrap your head around the concept of selling a business opportunity to sell a business opportunity to sell a business opportunity can feel like being lost in a hall of mirrors (after ingesting grainy, off-white powder).

What have you been reading?

Every once in a while I like to share some of the strange, funny, and just plain weird search engine questions that lead bots and new readers to this blog. My comments are below each phrase or sentence. A have been lightly edited to make them more legible, although all of them are 100% real.

Bonsai story.

I have never told any stories about bonsai trees to anyone at any point in my life. Now I have the sudden urge to do so.

How to leave a spouse who is doing you wrong and pretends everything is fine.

I’d do this without any explanation at all. Just go.

How to talk more when you’re quiet.

Longterm readers know that I read everything when I was a kid. Reading was my drug of choice, so to speak, and I loved almost every genre at least occasionally. One of the books I read while growing up actually addressed this question. I don’t remember anything about the characters, but I do remember one of them being told to go through the alphabet, pick something that started with one of its letters, and then ask people what they thought of it.

To be more specific, the character started asking people what they thought of apples at a party. I found it hilarious as a kid, although I do admit to giving it a try now and again when I’m truly stumped and my conversation partner is as quiet as I am.

Is it normal to read compliments over and over again?

I vote yes. Or at least I’ve done it!

Imagine a world where money wasn’t an issue.

It sounds good to me, although I’d guess we’d come up with some sort of barter system fairly quickly.

Nephew doesn’t talk to me. Should I go to his wedding?

No. There will be much better times to fix your relationship after he’s married.

Right wing asshole.

There are assholes in every wing, corridor, and magical wardrobe you can imagine (and probably a few you can’t).

Is it moral to brag?

It’s not a question of morality. It’s a question of whether or not you want to be the kind of person that other people enjoy spending time with. Bragging isn’t a good way to make or keep friends.

How talk more when you’re quiet?

I’m still figuring this one out. It’s not an easy thing to do.  Can anyone else help?

An autumn’s tale from Leonardo Dalessandri on Vimeo.

This is a video for people watchers. It’s a little over two minutes of people (and a few animals) doing all kinds of things in a park: playing, talking, exercising, hanging out.

I really like seeing how people behave in a natural setting like this. Humans are fascinating.

This has been the friendly debate in my household lately. Are surprises a good thing or a bad thing?

My opinion changes depending on what kind of surprise we’re talking about.

Presents of any shape or size are a good thing in my book. You definitely don’t need to tell me in advance that I’m getting one, what might be in it, or what it might involve if it isn’t a physical item. (I like giving them, too, although I’ll save that topic for another day!)

A surprise party? Not so much. I really want to know ahead of time if I’m going to be spending an evening or longer in a large, noisy group, There are people who would be thrilled to walk into what they thought was a dark, empty room only to be suddenly surrounded by a hundred of their loved ones, though.

A smaller surprise party can be okay if I know everyone involved in it really well.

What about negative surprises? No, thank you. If you have something bad or off-putting to tell me, don’t beat around the bush. I want to know as soon as you can possibly get ahold of me. There is absolutely no reason to delay these conversations. They only get harder and more hurtful if you do.

Everyone has different preferences, of course, so I also like to find out how others feel about surprises before I even think about giving one to them.

My husband, doesn’t like them. When I do something nice for him, he wants to know about it as soon as the idea first tickles the back of my mind. I’ve always respect that wish of his.

I wouldn’t have a problem throwing a surprise party for someone who would absolutely love that kind of thing while also sending a picture of a gift I was planning to get for someone else who really wants to know everything ahead of time. This isn’t the sort of thing that has any kind of ethical dilemma attached to it. It’s simply one of those things that two equally reasonable people can have completely different reactions to.

How do you feel about surprises? Do you like planning them? Which ones – if any – do you enjoy being on the receiving end for?