Retweeting @TweetJeebus: BTW, nothing ruins my birthday more than folks trampling each other in a lust to buy things. If you must, skip Christmas entirely. Thanks.
| It's Not Right But It's Okay, Living In America, This I Believe | Comments (0) | |
This girl, in the Paris Las Vegas hotel during our stay there, was so embarassed, so thoroughly destroyed, when her mother asked her if she wanted a bottle of water – "GAW!" was her exact phrase as she rolled her eyes – that she couldn’t even stand in line at the news stand with her. Immediately I put my camera at my side, lens backward, and snapped this photo, and I really like it.
Check Sarah Brown’s blog for the meaning of "Bershon:"
"…the spirit of bershon is pretty much how you feel when you’re 13 and your parents make you wear a Christmas sweatshirt and then pose for a family picture, and you could not possibly summon one more ounce of disgust, but you’re also way too cool to really even DEAL with it, so you just make this face like you smelled something bad and sort of roll your eyes and seethe in a put-out manner. Kelly Taylor from Beverly Hills, 90210 is the patron saint of bershon, as her face, like most other teenagers’, was permanently frozen in this expression."
| Everyday | Comments (3) | |
Sometime last week I went on a Facebook purge; it felt fantastic. I kicked old boyfriends off my "friends" list, along with people I would see at parties but had never seen sober. There were people I knew in passing but couldn’t actually stand to be around for any length of time, people with whom I’d had classes but not conversations, nice family people with children who posted scary links to violent abortion videos in the run-up to the election.
Let us not get into what constitutes the definition of "friend" in the online age; after all, I feel closer to many of the people who read this blog than I do most of the people in my office whom I see in person every day. I enjoy the online activity of getting to keep up with people’s day-ins and day-outs, even if we don’t speak on the phone. (Personally, I rather hate talking on the phone for long periods of time with almost anyone; it makes me nervous and uncomfortable, and I always hang up feeling I’ve made an ass of myself and monopolized the conversation).
Suffice it to say, this has been the year when I’ve re-evaluated what friendship actually does mean to me. I’ve long since come to terms with the fact that while I’m great at parties, I’m good in conversation, at a different level I’m actually very shy. I’m slow to open up, and easy to hurt. It’s easy for me to make acquaintances, hard for me to make friends.
Back in the day I figured this meant I was screwed up; of late I’ve come to accept it as part of my personality, no more inextricable than my sense of humor or the feeling of awe I get when I’m on the prairies. It has no value in and of itself; it just is. I say this because I feel like in my life I’ve had a lot of people get frustrated with me because I don’t open all the way up at once. I used to try to change. I ended up constantly over-sharing and feeling more awkward and uncomfortable.
Of late I’ve become very, very safe and comfortable in my own skin. I should’ve known that would present a whole new set of challenges. This year, those challenges have come in the form of friendships that have, for whatever reason, ended.
It’s hit me like a bolt this year, the realization going through me me like it was shot out of a gun: friendships fail, and sometimes that’s okay. Sometimes it has to do with the fact that two people have hurt one another, or learned to distrust one another, have endured so much disappointment and letdown from one another, that to attempt repair would only cause more harm. More often, people grow in two different directions and find themselves suddenly on two different continents, the need they had, the bond, stretched thin or dissolved. Sometimes, things blow up.
I’d say I’ve been witness and subject to all of the above this year. Some of it has been more painful than others; at times I’ve found myself atop Oklahoma’s highest point in tearful and peaceful prayer, holding on to some shred of understanding. Other times I’ve resisted the urge to pick up the phone and unleash a torrent of foul name-calling that would make Eminem blush. And everything in between.
I remember being in high school and going off to camp, and writing letters back and forth for 3 weeks with my new best friends, and then feeling like a failure when, for whatever reason, we all stopped keeping in contact. This isn’t like that; for the better part of this year I’ve been in the process of mourning. I think it’s natural for us to feel a sense of failure when we realize that, for whatever reason, the association we had with someone is over, or at least, on indefinite hiatus.
What I didn’t expect to feel was relief, as well. In most of these cases, some kind of confrontation would’ve been, at best, inappropriate, me bringing up old issues I hadn’t forgiven and challenging them to do the same. What it’s been instead is me, letting go of something that was dragging me down or holding me – and them – back. It’s been me, walking around the house, having very good conversations with people who weren’t actually in the room with me, and then, suddenly, not doing that anymore, because I felt better. I felt like I was beginning to let go, a little bit of the rope at a time. Forgiving them, and forgiving myself for the times I was a rotten friend.
Through these conversations I’ve realized what I need to do to be a better friend to the people I cherish, and while I’m assured of failure to some degree, I am looking forward to being better. This is me, being positive. This is me, renewed, and maybe a little worse for wear, for living through hurtful things that maybe I shouldn’t have, and for being hard on my own little self. This is me, still mourning but a little more free as well. It’s me, more optimistic, more clear-eyed about how to love people, and, for once, eager to break through the bonds of his own fear and try to make new and better friendships even though it scares him.
| This I Believe | Comments (3) | |
I have no idea what’s so dang funny here, but I DO know that this was immediately after this weekend’s decisive victory over Texas Tech, and we were in, um, high spirits, shall we say. Oh, and it got better:
It also should be noted that no one remembers who took this picture.
| Daily Photo, Proof, Sports | Comments (0) | |
Good Magazine: The First 100 Days
Good Magazine has put together a beautiful graphic that charts the accomplishments – or lack thereof – of the last several presidents through their first 100 days in office. Will be good to have on hand come Jan. 20.
A Song For the Ladies by Jon Lajoie
Ummmmm….
I don’t know about you, but when I heard all the recent reports of piracy off the coast of Somalia, I wondered, "Is it the 18th century?" But this map makes it clear – pirates are out there. In a big way.
Happy Thanksgiving, From Sarah Palin
I know, I know – we all want her to go away for awhile. Forever would be fine. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t show you the single thing on the internet that made me laugh the hardest this week: Sarah Palin giving an interview, after she pardoned the ceremonial Thanksgiving turkey, directly in front of a dude who is slaughtering turkeys, in full view of the camera.
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Nothing special here, just from last week’s rainy day, these were drying in my office and I liked how they came out when I performed a couple Photoshop tricks on them.
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Brian is gone this week, and to allieve my loneliness at his absence, he’s left gifts all over the house, and has been e-mailing and texting me clues throughout the week as to where each is hidden. This was the first, a bottle of aromatherapy bath stuff that’s chamomile scented. He knows that when it gets really cold like it has this week, sometimes I get so chilly that nothing can stop me shivering except a very hot bath – like, so hot that I run no cold water in the tub hot. He also knows that when he’s gone I have trouble sleeping. So he got me this. Isn’t he the greatest? Seriously, though, this stuff is amazing. I laid in the bath last night, reading and sipping a beer and I felt like, for the first time all week, that I had absolutely nothing to worry about.
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I was away from the office last week helping with a video project and I caught this awesome image of one of our interviewees through the video lens and thought it was pretty cool. Can I say, even in a week like this, which has, to say the least, been less than stellar, how much I love my job?
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I love the holidays. I’m ready. I’m READY!
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MTV has launched a website featuring basically every music video ever. Well, okay, not really, but it’s a whole lot of them. Now if they’d scrap all this "Hills" nonsense and just go back to playing these puppies 24-7, then I might consider watching their network again.
Ten Fascinating Final Pictures
I try not to make too big a deal on this website about my fascination with death, but this list of ten last photographs taken – both BY and OF people who faced mortality imminently thereafter (sometimes by mere seconds) – was too good not to share.
Where the Thunder Comes Dribbling Down the Plains – New York Times
A great, in-depth story about how the Seattle SuperSonics became the Oklahoma City Thunder. Despite the author’s suggestion that perhaps Tulsa (yeah right) would’ve made a more "natural" fit for the NBA, he does a great job of showing how our city rose to this challenge.
Proposition 8 Made Me Quit The Mormon Church
A fascinating and somewhat heartbreaking story about a women who lost her faith watching her co-congregants rally around Proposition 8.
Ever want to attend a class at England’s Oxford University? Well, this is probably as close as you – or I – will ever get.
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