Syllabus #103

We're starting to emerge from our sour PanDemi Moore cocoons, molting our layers of sweatpants and paranoia.  We're not exactly becoming social butterflies, but this weekend we went out two days in a row and had long conversations with people we just met.  We even left East Nashville for a couple hours, which is always a gamble.  It was WYLD. 

Charlie looked so happy laying in the grass.  I hope he remembers this feeling when he is chewing holes in his flesh later because he has mysterious seasonal allergies that are due to present themselves any day now.

What else came to light this week?

Think back to all the movies you rented in the late 90s and early 00s.  What would be the most humiliating one to be arrested for effectively stealing?  I, for one, am proud of the number of times my mom let me rent Captain Ron from Funhouse Video.  However, I am glad I didn't follow through with renting The Oz-porns from the adult section of that video store in Mantua on my 18th birthday because I was too lazy to fill out the membership application.  Boy that would be an awkward one to have to explain to a future employer.    

“I’m thinking he went and got it and didn’t take it back or something,” she said. “I have never watched that show in my entire life — just not my cup of tea.”

That's what they all say, Caron.

It's probably never not going to be weird to think about the reality of living in a major tourist destination.  I think the whole waiting in line to take your picture with a mural thing is dumb, but I've also waited in line for a lot of things in other countries that the locals there probably think are stupid, too.  

Maybe this is Charlie's problem.  He doesn't look like a haunted victorian child but I think he might do better living with a single lesbian who can lavish all her time and attention on him and never raise his hackles by attempting to hug another human.  Sidenote, can it be a full-time job to write endearing yet brutally honest profiles for shelter animals?  Can I be that when I grow up?

THIS EXPLAINS SO MUCH.  My people:  "This is not a state of national mourning in Finland, these are Finns in their natural state; brooding and private; grimly in touch with no one but themselves; the shyest people on earth. Depressed and proud of it."

"Consistent with their Lutheran heritage, the Nordic countries are united in their embrace of curbed aspirations for the best possible life. This mentality is famously captured in the Law of Jante—a set of commandments believed to capture something essential about the Nordic disposition to personal success: “You’re not to think you are anything special; you’re not to imagine yourself better than we are; you’re not to think you are good at anything,” and so on. "  

EMPHASIS MINE, but not because I am anything special.  I just want you, dear reader, to get on my level.  Which is comfortably, achievably low.

Analog Reading:

Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler.  The narrator is very unlikeable and seems like she would be a very low-affect individual to whom things in life just sort of happen.  It's kind of frustrating to read because she just rambles through these overly-detailed descriptions and explanations, yet I find it compelling?

I don't even want to talk about A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.  I carry a lot of shame about this overdue library book I can't bring myself to return.  I need to just buy my own copy and finish it on my own time.  That's what I'll do.  Sorry, NPL.