Lydia Schoch

Photo by Bob Peterson.

I was originally planning to write my response to this blog post as a comment or email, but I thought my amazing readers might be able to help Johnadamus as well.

He is suffering from a severe case of suicidal depression. On November 10 he is going to start a treatment for it that requires him to remove his glasses. This means that he can’t read or watch a movie during the treatment. It is possible for him to listen to music, though, so he’s asking anyone who can respond to him before November 10 to suggest songs they find motivational.

He’s open to any genre of music. Don’t worry about the possibility of suggesting something that someone else has already mentioned. He’s happy to weed through duplicate answers, he just needs as many ideas as possible.

I’ve already shared my list with him in the comment section on his blog, but I thought I’d also reprint them here.

Be sure to let Johnadamus know what you’d recommend. If you’re interested, I’d also love to know what you find motivating. It’s always fun to find new music. As you can see, I like a little of just about everything.

My list:

• Louie Armstrong “What a Wonderful World”
• Beyonce “Run the World”
• Bobbie Boris Pickett “Monster Mash”
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer soundtrack “Something to Sing About”
• Tupac “Keep Ya Head Up”
• Jewel “Hands”
• Judy Garland “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”
• Jay Z “Glory”
• Lana del Ray “Young and Beautiful”
• Avenue Q “If You Were Gay”
• Shawn Stockman “Stand”
• Jubilate Deo (The traditional, Latin song that choirs normally sing)
• Katy Perry “Firework”
• Bob Marley “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”
• Joan Osborne “What if God Was One of Us”
• Alanis Morissette “Thank You”
• Lauryn Hill “Zion”

This is one of the most amusing videos I’ve seen in a long time.

I haven’t actually written an official will yet. When I do, though, I promise not to require my heirs to do (or not to do) anything odd before they receive my worldly goods.

Well, other than agreeing to cremate me instead of having the undertaker pump me full of formaldehyde. It’s  creepy to make bodies last for decades for no good reason. I’d much rather allow the carbon in my body to be released right way.

If they go against my wishes, I reserve the right to be a terribly mischievous ghost. They’d never find their keys in the same spot again. 😉

Happy (Almost) Halloween! Here is this week’s list of blog posts, comic strips, photo essays,  and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

New England Vampire Panic. There was a time when some people believed vampires really existed, and they were absolutely terrified of them. This article describes what families and communities did to protect themselves from corpses they suspected of feeding on the living late at night.

Why You Should Never Argue with a Fool via Thelittlebod. It’s fun to see how much can be packed into a one-minute story.

The 7 Scariest Ghost Towns in America. The pictures in this post are beautiful. The ones from Seattle were my favourite.

The Gateway to Narnia. Something tells me Aslan would not be pleased with this.

Why Didn’t You Tell Him You AREN’T Blind? via GinaValley. Some stories work better if you have as few preconceptions about them as possible beforehand. (Don’t worry – there’s nothing scary or disturbing here).

Reflections on Respectability. I like this.

The Privileged Immigrant via saritaagerman. My experiences as a white U.S. citizen who moved to Canada almost a decade ago are surprisingly similar.

I’ve been mesmerized by The Girl Who Couldn’t Read this week.

It’s hard to discuss the plot without giving away major spoilers. All I can say is that it’s about a man who goes by the name of Doctor John Shepherd. He arrives at a brand new job at a women’s asylum only to notice some very strange things going on in the hallways late at night.

The atmosphere of this book was an absolutely perfect combination of anticipation, dread, and mystery. Dragging my attention away from it wasn’t easy. It’s definitely something I’d recommend to anyone with even the slightest interest in the premise.

What have you been reading?

This film is very short. It only requires about a minute of your time.

I don’t normally share more than one video per week on this blog, but I really loved how this one was put together. It reminded me of all of the stories my parents told us about their childhoods:

How mom’s pet goat used to climb on top of her father’s car;

The time dad set his bedspread on fire while pretending to be Superman. He thought he could easily blow it out;

Mom’s odd relationship with a little girl in her school who was obsessed with squishing the skin and muscles on other people’s arms down flat;

How dad accidentally broke a window once.

My mind also wandered to the newer family stories my nephew, Aiden, knows by heart:

Dad (That is, Jesse) making parachutes for stuffed animals and then throwing them out a second-story window.

Uncle Aaron’s insistence that all of his buddies (read: stuffed animals) be tucked into bed next to him every night. He’d panic if any of them got misplaced or wedged between the bed and wall while he slept.

Aunt Lydia herding balloons around the house. She pretended they were sheep and moved them upstairs and downstairs over and over again.

I wonder which of these stories Aiden might pass onto his own children one day.

This film feels like a classic to me. It’s a little too early to tell, of course, but I have a hunch that I’ll be returning to it over and over again.

What stories do you like to revisit?

Created by Maéva Gruaz, Amaury Rospars Maxime Couturat, Jean-Baptiste Bellande, Sebastian Durouchoux and Jordane Koessler at Bellecour Entertainment.

No, I didn’t misspell the title of this short film.

What I find most interesting about it is that the whole story is told without almost no use of dialogue. It takes a lot of creativity to pull that off.

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

‘White Canada’ and the Evolution of Racism. This is really interesting stuff. I very briefly lived in Vancouver once and heard a lot of these arguments from the people I met there.

How to Make Love to a Trans Person via NaomiClareNL. I loved this poem.

Okay, I’m Weird, but Everybody Is Weird. I was thinking about writing a reply to this post, but I couldn’t quite stretch it out enough to justify such a thing. Maybe I’ll return to it someday.

Let’s Talk About the Weather via dorsalstream. How’s the weather in your neck of the woods?

Fictional Characters Whose Lives Would Be Improved By Abortion. It’s hard to argue with any of these.

From Thinking It Over via gemma_corden:

I talk to myself. As far as habits go it’s not exactly the worst. But it’s started to get embarrassing because I find I’m now doing it outside, in public – rather than in inside, alone. Technically, it’s not myself I am talking to now – it’s the world.

From The Struggle in Black and White:

Photographs of the civil rights struggle helped galvanize those outside the South against legalized discrimination, exposing them to the indignities African American citizens suffered under a system of state-backed racism.

The most interesting about I Stand Corrected: How Teaching Western Manners in China Became Its Own Unforgettable Lesson for me was see exactly how much the definition of a polite person can shift from one culture to the next.

According to this book, it’s perfectly acceptable to do the following things in China:

• Spit on the sidewalk.
• Pause an important business meeting in order to answer a phone call from a government employee.
• Ask other people how much money they make, why they’re not married yet, and why they’re so fat.

I’ll leave it up to my readers to discover which North Americans habits are considered to be horribly rude in China. Many of them surprised me, and I think you’ll enjoy learning about them more if I don’t give you any spoilers.

What have you been reading?

The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. This blue is the light that got lost. Light at the blue end of the spectrum does not travel the whole distance from the sun to us. It disperses among the molecules of the air, it scatters in water. Water is colorless, shallow water appears to be the color of whatever lies underneath it, but deep water is full of this scattered light, the purer the water the deeper the blue. The sky is blue for the same reason, but the blue at the horizon, the blue of land that seems to be dissolving into the sky, is a deeper, dreamier, melancholy blue, the blue at the farthest reaches of the places where you see for miles, the blue of distance. This light that does not touch us, does not travel the whole distance, the light that gets lost, gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is in the color blue.

– Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost.

This reminded me of the endlessly blue skies I grew up under in Wyoming for several years.

I loved being closer to my grandparents when we eventually moved back to Ohio, but I really missed those skies. They were so beautiful. Ohio has a lot going for it, but clear, blue skies aren’t on that list.