Lydia Schoch

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

In Defense of Snow via KillarneyTray. #8 on this list should include all of the hot drinks that feel so good this time of year. Tea. Coffee. Hot chocolate.

When Cops Break Bad: Albuquerque’s Police Force Gone Wild. There is something seriously wrong with this.

50 Shades of Blogs Everyone Should Follow via RobertHughes05. I’m still working my way through this list. Did anything on it catch your eye?

Northern Lights: Do the Scandinavians Really Have It All Figured Out? Scandinavia sounds like a great place to live.

The Real Personality Types Made Relevant via Thelittlebod. I’m either an Idealist or an Egghead. What are you?

From Antilamentation:

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook, not
the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,

What have you been reading?

Photo by Keven Law.

Many of my online friends have been dealing with serious problems lately. They’re the kind of issues that can’t be fixed easily. In some cases, they can’t be fixed at all.

I know what it’s like to receive unwanted, unhelpful advice during a very difficult time.

It’s so much nicer when other people stifle that urge and just sit with you through it, whether it’s in person or through private messages online.

That doesn’t mean it’s an easy thing to do. The empathetic urge to do something to help is strong.

This is where the happy part of the Internet becomes important. There’s something soothing about looking at pictures of cute animals or trying to figure out the meaning of a photoshopped picture. (You wouldn’t believe how much time I spent trying to figure out if unicorn llamas were a symbol for something I hadn’t heard of yet. As far as I know, they aren’t).

Sometimes the Internet is a nice place.

Sometimes it’s hopeful.

Sometimes it gives you weird glimpses into other people’s minds.

Sometimes it’s retro.

Unicorn llama via Amberbunting.

Where do you go when you need to find the happy part of the Internet?

This is really interesting.

Family Day is Ontario’s newest statutory holiday. We’re still figuring out how to observe it as a province as it’s only been around since 2007.

Most of the businesses that advertise special discounts or events for it concentrates on families with young children.

I’m hoping that this will evolve over time. Family Day is for everyone.

• Single parents and their kid(s).
• People who have one child.
• People who have a dozen children.
• Families whose kids are older or completely grown up.
• Couples who never want to have children.
• Couples who definitely do.
• People who consider their pets part of the family.
• Chosen families

Today I’m imagining what it would be like if more types of families were included in the advertisements of this holiday. Maybe there could be wine tastings, dog park parties, special performances at nursing homes, or dance competitions.

Here’s hoping.

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

We Hate Our Bodies, and It’s Not Our Fault via DelilahSDawson. This post started going viral a couple of week ago. You might have already seen it. If you haven’t, give it a read. It’s a good one.

They’re Made Out of Meat. I’d never heard of this story story before. Have you?

Songs of the Earth via tapastic. We’re all made of atoms. This is what happens when you really think about what that means.

I Want to Hear the Snow via navaara. The pictures accompanying this poem are perfect.

When Children With Autism Grow Up. This really should be a book.

Measles Is Just The Beginning. I really hope this article never needs to become a book, but it looks like it might.

The interesting thing about Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending is that I’d already figured out some of it by trial and error already.

People get accustomed to treats if they happen regularly. They mean more (and have fewer health and financial consequences) if they really do only happen every once in a while.

Experiences are more worthwhile than buying stuff.

Helping other people is a great way to feel happier.

I’ll leave it up to my readers to discover what the other recommendations are. They were just as intuitive as the ones I listed above, and none of them require you to be wealthy. Even a few dollars can make a big difference in how happy you feel if they’re spent on the right things!

I’ve decided to take a break from recommending books for a while, so this will be the last one I promote on my blog for the time being.

What have you been reading?

Here are the answers to all of the questions I’ve received this week. Thank you to everyone who participated!

Which is the most essential ingredient: bacon, chocolate, or garlic?

Bacon. I’ve heard of it being used in everything from toffee to brownies to ingenious bacon wraps for turkey.

Do doctors usually use cologne?

Now that you mention it, I can’t remember the last time that I noticed a doctor wearing perfume or cologne. I’m sure some of them do, but I wonder if they’re more cognizant of how certain scents can trigger allergic or asthmatic reactions in other people than someone who doesn’t work with sick people all day.

I wonder how many studies have been done on this?

What are some things you recommend being skeptical about? 

Conspiracy Theories. I’m not saying that the government has never done anything shady. I just don’t think they’re quite as intelligent or crafty as they’d need to be to pull off everything that they’ve been accused of.

Strangers wearing nice clothing who stand on the street corners and politely ask you for a moment of your time. Not all of them are selling the same thing, but none of them have your best interests at heart.

Supplements. There’s currently no evidence that taking vitamins or minerals in pill form improves your health. At best, they’ll  make expensive urine for you. At worst, overdosing on certain supplements elevates your risk of certain diseases. Of course, that’s assuming that your supplements actually contain what’s printed on their labels to begin with. Hopefully no one with severe allergies has ever taken one of those “supplements.” That kind of situation could become deadly very quickly.

What would be a funny speech for a quiet person to give?

What if you stood up and silently smiled at the audience for five minutes before sitting down again?

What if you recited your speech in Pig Latin?

What if you wrote down every humorous thought you have over the next two days and then figured out a way to incorporate all of them into your talk?

What if you told a really embarrassing story about yourself as an icebreaker?

What if you told the audience that there was a hundred dollar bill taped underneath one of their chairs? What if it turned out the bill was monopoly money?

What if you made a powerpoint presentation and included a few gifs?

There can never be enough gifs in the world.

This is the poem I created using the love poem generator.

In summertime, our love is mischievous, like dandelions floating in the breeze.
In wintertime, our love is warm — it slips from heart to toes.

If skies are blue, our love is hopeful — two people prancing in the sun.
If thunder rolls our love is pleased, a refuge from the rolling rain.

When spring flowers bloom, our love is bold, like purple petals on the Queen Anne’s lace.
When autumn leaves fall, our love is iron, shining bright like a harvest pavement.

From Easter till Halloween our love will continue to sustain.
From season to season I love you always! My one, my only, my DLF.

Anyone who understand the DLF reference without googling it gets bonus points.

I hope you all enjoy making your own poems.

Image by P. Fraundorf.

The authors of some of my favourite blogs will occasionally ask their readers for questions. Many of them allow anonymous questions.

I love it when they do this for a few different reasons:

1) It’s a good icebreaker.

2) It’s a great way to get to know someone better. What they find interesting about themselves isn’t always the same stuff that fascinate the rest of us.

3) There are some topics I’d love to bring up with bloggers whose work I’ve been reading for a long time. If they don’t mention being ok with it, though, I feel weird randomly mentioning my questions.

I haven’t done anything like this here in a long time. My stats tell me that I have a healthy pool of new readers, so let’s try this again.

If you want everyone to know your identity, leave a comment on this post.

If you only want me to know your identity, send it through the comment form.

What should you ask? Anything.

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

A Winter’s Walk via LoraHughes7. This is one of those links that works best if you don’t know anything about it when you start reading.

If We Run and They Kill Us, So Be It. But We Have to Run Now. True stories from some of the girls who were captured by Boko Haram and escaped.

Romance Endings and Compulsory Monogamy – Is There Room for Something New? via lavinia_collins. One of the reasons why I refused to read romance novels for so many years is that I find the “which person should I pick?” trope incredibly irritating. It would be really cool to read more books that allow the protagonist to pick both (or neither!) of their love interests.

Why Kids Don’t Need a Mommy and a Daddy via Hans_Hirschi. To piggyback on the above link, I once read a science fiction novel about a society where every child had three parents. Babies were grown in artificial incubators and then two of their three parents were given injections to make them lactate. (The gender of the lactating parents didn’t matter. Anyone could do it). The parents weren’t romantically involved with one another. All they focused on was raising the child together. I still have no desire to be a mom, but this sort of arrangement makes a lot more sense to me than expecting just one or two people to take on such a huge job.

Why I Am Not a Maker. This is really good stuff.

From Foreknowledge:

I stare out over my pregnant belly, feeling awkward. Feeling irritable. “Why wouldn’t I want to know?”

“Some parents don’t want to know,” Dr. Anders says. “And we respect that.”

“It’s right there on your clipboard, right?” I point to the clipboard, and he holds it infinitesimally closer to his chest. As if he’s hiding the results from me.

“Yes,” Dr. Anders says. “Both the sex and cause of death of your unborn child are right here.”

Small: Life and Death on the Front Lines of Paediatric Surgery wasn’t exactly what I was expecting.

I assumed that the entire book would discuss the kinds of patients the author has seen over the years. While this was part of the plot, Ms. Musemeche also spent a great deal of time talking about how much medicine has changed over the years. There are many types of birth defects, injuries, and diseases that used to be certain death sentences.

This is slowly changing thanks to new treatments, better equipment, and more effective medicine. It makes me wonder what we’ll come up with next.

What have you been reading?