Lydia Schoch

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

Annabel Lee. There’s something about early November that reminds me of this poem.

Umbrella. Imagine that Rhianna and Jay Z were born 700 years ago. Maybe they would have performed something like this instead of the songs they’re currently known best for.

What Show Choir Taught Me About Life via KellyRWriting. My high school was so small that we only had one choir and it didn’t perform any musicals.

Who’s the Sexiest, and Why Do We Care? via LoriLSchafer.  What’s really weird about this phenomenon is that it’s seeping into the actual news. This is one of the many reasons why I avoid watching the news whenever possible.

The Diagnosis. This is what happens when you try to self-diagnose.

Lessons From My Choose Your Own Adventure Walks via empoweredlife1. I’ve talked about my love of walking a lot on this blog. This type of walking is something I used to do regularly, but I stopped several years ago. Now I think I should jump back into it next spring. There are still a lot of neighbourhoods in Toronto that I’ve never visited.

Thanks to my mom for sharing this video with me. It’s fantastic:

The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities stretched my mind. I took an astronomy class in college, but this was a nice refresher of just how unusual earth is in so many ways. It orbits around one, small sun instead of two (ore more) big ones. It has an elliptical orbit. It has continents. It’s rich in minerals.

Based on the projections in this novel, there are a lot of planets that have some (or none) of these qualities. Thinking about what those worlds must be like blew my mind. You sometimes hear about the search for “earth-like” planets, but what does this really mean? It’s entirely possible that life has evolved in places that are nothing at all like the planet that we call home.

If you had any interest at all in that Cosmos TV show that aired last year, I think you’ll love this book.

What have you been reading?

I wasn’t originally planning to blog anything today, but this TED talk is excellent.

“Everyone is the best at something.” I’m paraphrasing her here, but I really liked this sentiment. She goes on to say that we are all opportunity makers. It’s fascinating stuff.

Photo by Derek Jensen.

We all know people who don’t like hearing profanity.  If you’re one of them, stop reading now. 😉

There are a handful of things in this world that I find incredibly offensive. With one exception that I’ll talk about in a little bit,  swearing isn’t one of them for the following reasons:

1) Everything is inappropriate sometimes. Of course there are times when it’s inappropriate to use salty language, although the same thing can be said for a lot of different ways of speaking. No one who is serious about finding a new job would write “LOL” in their cover letter, but it’s completely ok to respond with that sort of thing when a family member tells you a funny story about their kid.

2) Sometimes they’re the best choice for how you’re feeling. There’s a difference between having a long, exhausting day and having a shitty one. A long day can still be filled with a lot of joy. For example, getting married or having a baby are life-changing events. You’ll probably end up feeling really tired at the end of them, but it’s a good kind of exhaustion. The memories you make on days like those are almost guaranteed to be warm and happy ones. The memories you make on a day when you nearly die in a car accident are probably going to be filled with pain and terror. Calling that experience shitty is completely justified.

3) It’s persuasive.  It takes a lot for me to become this angry (or surprised, or shocked). Anyone who knows me well can instantly tell that I have exceptionally strong feelings about whatever it was that riled me up based on that one little word alone. I don’t need to give a long, involved speech about what I’m feeling in those situations. It’s blatantly obvious.

4) They’re just words. The worst thing they can do is give you a temporary derpy expression if you weren’t expecting to hear them. I have an aversion to the word fester. It sounds so disgusting, but I also realize that it can’t actually hurt me.

Which brings me to the one exception I make in this argument: it’s not acceptable to use curse words against someone. There’s a big difference between talking about that fucked up thing so-and-so did and referring to them as a fucking *****.

Certain words have horrifically violent histories. They were – and are – used is absolutely reprehensible ways by people who intend to cause physical harm.

I’d never support any legislation that makes it illegal to use these terms, but I would quickly back away from a friendship with anyone who insisted on saying them around me. Having the legal right to say something doesn’t mean that other people have to listen.

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

I Was Young via i_am_MattNorton. What this poet learned while working in a bookstore.

I Know a Girl via FaithSimone2011. This is really good.

The Beginning of Fall via everettpoetry. There is definitely something melancholy about autumn, but I usually don’t feel it in the air until November when the trees begin to go bare and the temperatures take a nosedive. Daylight Savings Time ending doesn’t help matters either.

The Walking Dread. Confession: I’m one of those fast walkers who gets annoyed with people who meander in large groups. By all means take a leisurely stroll, but please don’t block the entire sidewalk or hallway while doing it.

Do You Know About Jian. Jian Ghomeshi is a Canadian celebrity who has been accused of sexually and physically abusing multiple women. This was written by someone who knew him.

We Regret To Announce That Your Request Of “Gotta Hear Both Sides” Has Been Denied. I love this kind of humour.

Candy is everywhere this time of year. Halloween has just ended, and many more festivities are around the corner.

With all of these sweets comes people who moralize the eating of them. Good people – and especially good parents – don’t eat it. Or they eat it rarely. Or, at the very least, they talk about all of the healthy things they eat regularly in order to feel less guilty about eating something sugary.

How adults talk about food matters quite a bit. One of the things I appreciate the most about my upbringing is that my parents did a pretty good job avoiding this attitude. We didn’t eat candy or other sweet stuff regularly, but there were no guilt trips about cavities or diabetes when we did.

I’d recommend this book to anyone who has ever given or listened to a lecture about how terrible food X is for you. This is a great look at how damaging those kinds of conversations are for everyone involved in them.

What have you been reading?

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?