Ten pounds of personality in a five-pound bag
Inspired by this Reddit post, I want to state a Short Opinion: Romantic Love is, and should be, conditional.
The only love that should be unconditional is that of a parent for their minor child.
In any other relationship – be it romantic, platonic, or otherwise – it is not only appropriate, but necessary, to place conditions on your love/your presence in that relationship.
You don’t become cooler with age, but you do care progressively less about being cool, which is the only true way of being cool. This is called the Geezer’s Paradox.
Found via this Mastodon link: https://mastodon.sdf.org/@obster/111142670514548111
Not me. I don’t want to remarry! But the title of this post is from a famous essay from back in the 70s about how much domestic and emotional labor the role of “wife” provides, and how even after women* entered the workforce en masse in the 70s, all of that labor still had to be performed by…the wife half of any heterosexual couple.
TikTokker Laura Danger reads the text
Labour, by Paris Paloma:
That’s it, that’s the post. Negative amortization should be illegal.
If an account is in a position (like with student loan deferments or forbearance or what have you) where someone needs to make a lowered payment, and is approved for that lowered payment, then the interest accrual should be paused for that period.
I wonder if any bills are being proposed that do this?
This post contains spoilers for Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir.
Continue reading “A brief thought on names and Harrow the Ninth”One of my vices is that I love to read advice columns on the internet. I looooove the train wreck of watching other people implode.
But to expand on the Advice Column Paradox a little bit: I think that part of why I’m usually in the “maybe you should just break up” camp is because I view dating as a way to determine if you are compatible with the other person for the long term.
If you are not compatible: that’s completely okay! It’s okay to date someone for one, two, five, whatever years and then realize that you want completely different things out of life and relationships. Now, is it better to realize that earlier than later? Of course. But if you’ve realized a fundamental incompatibility in the relationship… You don’t “owe it to” the relationship to try to force it to work.
AND THEN you get things like this TikTok, where we have the algorithm trying to convince us that we are Better Off Alone (at home, engaging with a platform). For my part, no, I don’t think “he wants to meet in a public place” is a problem. I think it’s the greenest of green flags.
But overall? It’s okay to have dealbreakers. It’s okay to walk away from a relationship that’s not working. “The relationship” isn’t an entity that deserves consideration; fuck off with that Citizens United nonsense. The relationship isn’t a person. You, and your partner, are the people here. Your respective best interests are what need to be considered.
And even if I think your dealbreakers are dumb? Frankly, my opinion doesn’t matter. I’m not the one in the relationship here. You are. And only you can determine if you’re happy, if you’re secure, if you’re satisfied.
So get out there. Own your preferences. See what makes you tick. And as Gazelle says, try everything. 😉
One of the first “huh, this is a significant cultural difference” things I ever noticed was the idea of “Do you wear shoes in the house?” (With the connotations of “outdoor shoes” there. Some folks need to wear orthotics or other things for physical support while walking, but that’s separate from this question.)
I don’t exactly recall if I took my shoes off as a child. I’m pretty sure I did, if only because my bedroom had carpet, but I know my parents leave their shoes on (if they’re clean), so I don’t think I was raised to. It just made sense. (Also, my shoes were more likely to be muddy than theirs; they had specific work shoes for the yard and stuff in the basement, while I didn’t have a bunch of Old Shoes lying around because I grew out of them so fast.)
But as an adult who is now a No Shoes In House person, it’s been interesting navigating this with other people. I haven’t had any problems with “Would you be okay with taking off your shoes?”, I think because it’s polite and allows the wiggle room of the other person to say “oh, actually I need them for support.”
I think if I had a stronger disgust response to Shoes In House, I’d probably buy some disposable booties for folks to wear when they were over. But as it stands I’m okay with people in the living room with shoes on, and I just vacuum up the dirt when they leave.
But all this idea has now got me wondering if there are other cultural differences that I’m just not aware of. Like, I saw a TikTok once that was like “I don’t wear outside pants on the bed.” And my first reaction was, oh, that’s ridiculous. But if I’ve been someplace with a lot of strangers, like traveling or something, yeah I’ll take my pants off (and sometimes put on others) before I sit down on the bed. (Or I’ll pull up the quilt so the cooties don’t go where I’m sleeping.)
So yeah. What other imperceptible cleanliness rituals do I have that I’m just not conscious of?
I was chatting with a friend about the air haze, and he mentioned wanting to build one of those homemade air filters out of box fans and filters.
But he couldn’t remember the name (Corsi-Rosenthal box), so he hazarded “Rimsky-Korsakov box?”
This reminded me so much of the Benedict Cumberbatch Problem that I had to share it.
It’s been a running gag, in almost every friend group I’ve had, that I have trouble with pop culture references. I didn’t have cable television growing up, and I was also pretty relentlessly counter-cultural as a child. As a result, I’m missing big gaps of pop culture references.
A common refrain at social gatherings (in person or online) is “oh, I haven’t seen that movie.” (We actually have a whole spreadsheet of “Movies Emily needs to watch.”) The same usually goes for pop music, many works of classic literature, etc.
Tonight, at board games, one person started humming a tune, and I recognized it and sang the whole chorus and one verse of the song (We Like To Party by the Vengaboys). My friend was a little bit taken aback by it, and I was like “Oh, yeah! The Vengaboys!” and he was like “Do you mean the theme from the Six Flags commercial?” and I said “What Six Flags commercial?”
So. Like I said. Weirdly gappy knowledge. 😁
Emilybook 