READING MATERIAL
- Oregon Trail: How three Minnesotans forged its path, because this is one of the coolest geek/business stories I've ever read.
- The Foreskin Renaissance, because I just spent like 15 minutes reading about an organ I don't have and am totally starting to feel the penis envy.
- In Praise of Mediocrity, written by Keith Drury, a minister or pastor or maybe just a writer associated with a church, I don't know, but the point is, his article made me feel funny, so maybe you should read it too if you're part of Gen Y.
But I just want to put in a word of praise for mediocrity too—for those of us in the big fat middle who pastor ordinary churches, work on the staff of famous people, teach at ordinary colleges, and show up and do what is necessary every day—and keep doing it for 50 years in a row.
(E/N: See, what happened was that after I had this strangely intense day of talking about startups and mediocrity and dropping out of school and how this school is taking us absolutely fucking nowhere, this was not part of the plan, I am supposed to be brilliant and beautiful and talented and a wealth of untapped potential, I went home and tried to comfort myself with the idea that mediocrity can be a good thing.
Actually, rereading this article now, as I compose this post, the sound of that makes me feel crawly and pre-nauseous. I don't want to be mediocre. None of us wants to be mediocre, not if we grew up being told we were going to be the Leaders of Tomorrow. I don't want to do the same thing for 50 years in a row. I'm pretty sure that if I am going to accomplish nothing (and I'm pretty sure I am going to accomplish nothing), I would rather die at 34 than live to 100.) - I guess I'll just be honest and state that this is exactly half the reason I deleted my Facebook account. The other half is because I couldn't decide whether to link my personal life to this blog, and because I didn't like having two online identities (which means three identities total to manage), I just got rid of the less fruitful one and kept the blog.
- I'm in a tough, tough, really tough spot. I'm sick, got no job, dad just died, living with Mom, her mind is gone, I owe people money, what's the point? Because this just hits the nail right on the head.
Somehow when our bodies are messed up we remember that we're part of the whole universe, that this little show is a tiny part of the whole, and we forget about shining our shoes and paying the rent for a while. And why not? What good are our shoes going to do us when we're gone? They'll be shined but it won't be our feet in them.
- The article I'm sure you've all read by now, Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior. For clarification, I am not a child of a "Chinese mother," although I was coerced into taking piano lessons for nine or ten years. What can I say? My mom's never pushed me to be a straight-A student. I have. I AM MY OWN CHINESE MOTHER.
- And of course, the NY Times Op-Ed response. Because I agree.
- FUCK YOU, 2010, which, for those of you who want to throw out last year as much as I do, is probably most effective read aloud.
- I've been aware of (and slightly intimidated by) McSweeney's for a really, really long time, but it wasn't until I read this post about motherfucking decorative gourds that I clicked my way through, uh, hundreds (?) of their mini-articles. FUCKING GOLD:
- Rejected Silly Bandz Shapes
- Rap Lyrics of the (17)90s
- Secure Website Authentication Questions
- Rarely Used Parenthetical Statements
- Things That Are Way More Fun When You Add A "G" To Them
- Manageable Tongue Twisters (by Jesse Eisenberg). (Yeah, that Jesse Eisenberg. PLEASE LET ME PICK YOUR BRAIN! OR LICK YOUR FACE. LET'S BE FRIENDS (DO FRIENDS DO THAT?)!)
- The Agonizing Last Words of Programmer Bill Zeller, which I am glad I cannot relate to all that well. But which I can relate to.
- Here's a little batch of articles from San Francisco-based The Bold Italic, which I am now sure is Solid Gold: Slippery When Wet, a romp through San Francisco's public pools; Secondhand Emotion, on San Francisco estate sales (so near and dear to my heart!); Against the Grain, on eating gluten-free in San Francisco; and SuperBowl, in pursuit of the Holy Grail of ramen. From Secondhand Emotion and Against the Grain, respectively.
If fixing is chastity, coupons are on par with prayer, saving is religion, and garage sales are your church.
In short, I was pretty much made from gluten. (And was a very fat baby, natch.)
- The Ten Minute Suicide Guide, from Cracked.com, because some days you might find that you really need to read something like this.
- Speaking of tens, The 10 Greatest Things About This Farm Animals Bucket, which made me literally laugh out loud. [via shrimp salad circus]
- If you feel like weeping, How To Change Your Life Forever, via How To Get A Grip.
- On an entirely different note, but also from How To Get A Grip (oh, puns), Masturbation is not a crime. "Beating yourself off? QUIT BEATING YOURSELF UP!"
- History of the Vibrator at Null Hypothesis. BECAUSE I CAN.
- Mama's Song and There Is A Symphony In Oakland, from Ceci Translations, because I think both of them would make fantastic videos, if they were recorded as spoken word pieces and laid over an animation.
- Repairing the Damage, Before Roe:
The familiar symbol of illegal abortion is the infamous “coat hanger” — which may be the symbol, but is in no way a myth. In my years in New York, several women arrived with a hanger still in place.
- 18 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I Was 18, especially for numbers 2 and 17.
- From 1000 Awesome Things, #335: Catching someone you love admiring you from across the room.
- Woman takes top tailor job at Savile Row's Gieves & Hawkes. Because this is effing cool.
- You Should Date An Illiterate Girl, from Thought Catalog.
Find shared interests and common ground like sushi, and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale, or the evenings get long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold.
- Why the Body Bind is My Nightmare, written by Evanna Lynch, aka that girl who plays Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter movies, aka that girl who is an unsettlingly close approximation of what I imagined Luna Lovegood would be like if she were real
- Forever21's Fast (and Loose) Fashion Empire, because I continue to be really impressed by Forever21 as a business, regardless of any allegations of copyright infringement or poor labor practices.
- Showing off my scar, because this hits close to home and I need to get over myself.
- Do you know what a shibboleth word is? This is, like, Biblical-era linguistics.
- THE EPIC NOTEBOOK KISS.
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, condensed. (THIS IS WHY LIVEJOURNAL IS STILL ALIVE.)
READERS settle into their seats and gather up their Character Death Bingo cards.
LUPIN: Blast it, Harry, you limp-wanded puff, why didn't you kill anyone?
HARRY: Uh...sorry..? By the way, my wand moved and shot something all by itself.
HERMIONE: You're an adolescent. That's normal.
HARRY: Shut up. He's looking for the wandmaker Gregorovitch. He's having wand performance issues.
YAXLEY: Good morning, comrades! Don't you just love coming to work, and caressing the new wallpaper made of Mudblood skins?
HARRY sits around and broods about Hallows, especially the one he doesn't have, the Elder Wand. The Deathstick. The Wand of Destiny.
HUSBANDS AROUND THE WORLD: Hey, honey? I want my new bedroom nickname to be "The Wand of Destiny."
RON: Dudes! Potterwatch is on the radio!
HARRY: I'm so delighted I'll say "Voldemort" out loud!
Everyone's shooting to injure and kill--except of course HARRY, who flings spells like Remembering You Had A Dentist Appointment Just Now, Developing An Itch On Your Left Butt Cheek, and Feeling Like You Just Walked Through A Spiderweb At Face Level. - Here's an interactive Scale of the Universe for you (we?) astronomy/physics geeks/admirers.
- THIS:
- From Books of Adam (which you should all be subscribed to), Begun, This Clone War Has. Because Adam has successfully incorporated animated GIFs and "what is this i can't even" into his post. AND IT IS HILARIOUS.
- I don't know why I found this funny enough to laugh out loud, but from CAPTCHart, woraccon unfriendly.
- This:
Here is a playlist of songs I have had stuck in my head recently. Judge me as you will.
- "Baby" - Justin Bieber ft. Ludacris
- "Just Like A Pill" - P!nk
- "That Should Be Me" - Justin Bieber
- "Harry Freakin' Potter" - A Very Potter Sequel
- "Hand Covers Bruise" - Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, for The Social Network
- "Most Girls" - P!nk
- "Bye Bye Bye" - N*SYNC
- "Bump n' Grind" - R. Kelly
- "The Next Episode" - Dr. Dre
- "Never Let Me Go" - Judy Bridgewater (who, okay, isn't a real person, and the song isn't an actual song, but you can have a fictional song stuck in your head, right?)
- "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" - Cyndi Lauper
- "With Every Heartbeat" - Robyn with Kleerup
- "Just A Dream" - Nelly
Don't You" by Darren Criss, because don't you want to marry him?
Another Darren Criss video, because honestly, I don't think this video can be watched too many times, especially because this is Darren GQMF Criss for The Trevor Project singing a song from A Very Potter Musical about being ALONE BE STILL MY HEART.
A-1's "All That! (feat. TLC)" because I give you my full permission to eat my first-born son if this doesn't take you back to your childhood.
Kyle Riabko's "What Did I Get Myself Into," because it's been stuck in my head on and off for the past month.
THE BROCIAL NETWORK, because this is brilliant and proves that any choir singing in the background of any trailer makes for an epic trailer.
INTENSE AFFIRMATIONS OF AFFECTION FOR THE INDIVIDUAL WHO UPLOADED THIS VIDEO SEGMENT TO THE FREE VIDEO HOSTING SITE ENTITLED YOUTUBE! I giggled through the entire video. [via]
Word Lens: this has to be the coolest app I have ever seen. Ever. (Says the linguistics major who at one point was pursuing a computer science degree.)
On a much less glamorous (but still very, very cool) note, here's a clip demonstrating Ivan Sutherland's Sketch Pad. We watched this as part of a larger movie in my intro computer science class and it made my little heart soar with that crazy buoying joy one gets from watching something Great that sets off shooting stars of inspiration and possibility and potential. I guess it's kind of ironic for me to be suggesting you watch an inspirational video about computer science, considering how I jumped off that ship quite a while ago because I felt like it was sucking the life out of me, but it doesn't make this video any less remarkable.
Because I feel like Brian Rosenthal's cuteness always gets overshadowed by Joe Walker's hotness in A Very Potter Musical. Show him some Quirrel love! This man is adorable! Which is probably emasculating, but the Potion Master's Corner videos are funny enough to make up for it.
Jakub Hübner's cover of "Touch Me" from Spring Awakening. Will I ever get tired of this musical? I don't know, it's been two years since I first heard of it. Maybe it's a phase, or maybe IT'S MAYBELLINE JUST AN EXCELLENT MUSICAL.
Like I did with Avatar, I watched Gloria Shuri Nava's beauty video spoof for Black Swan before watching the movie, which is unfortunate because if/when I finally do watch Black Swan, I'll probably have ridiculous commentary running in the back of my mind, like "OMG Pandoran acne," but relevant to Black Swan and being really white and perfect. Obviously.
In which Heath Ledger talks about jousting on sheep. (Seriously.)
John Lloyd and Lea Michele cover "A Little Fall of Rain" from Les Misérables. Easily my favorite song from the musical, and GOD do I love her voice.
Like I did with Avatar, I watched Gloria Shuri Nava's beauty video spoof for Black Swan before watching the movie, which is unfortunate because if/when I finally do watch Black Swan, I'll probably have ridiculous commentary running in the back of my mind, like "OMG Pandoran acne," but relevant to Black Swan and being really white and perfect. Obviously.
In which Heath Ledger talks about jousting on sheep. (Seriously.)
John Lloyd and Lea Michele cover "A Little Fall of Rain" from Les Misérables. Easily my favorite song from the musical, and GOD do I love her voice.
And finally, (of course), "Bills Bills Bills" for Glee. BECAUSE DARREN CRISS IS MY TEENAGE DREAM.
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