What's Going On

Quotes

  • Jennifer Finney Boylan:
    "The world is full of false hopes, most of them dumber than the hope of being transformed by love."
  • Hugh Macleod:
    “Good ideas come with a heavy burden; which is why so few people execute them. Few people can handle it.“


  • Fiona Glennane on meditation:
    “I want you to close your eyes and breathe deep. Picture a peaceful mountain stream. Can you do that? Picture yourself drowning the kidnapper in the stream.”
  • Sarah Haskins:
    "We used to just grow old and be spinsters. Now we have a lot of options: We can be spinsters or cougars."
  • The Doctor:
    "All that attitude, all that lip, 'cos all this time... you think you're not worth it. Shouting at the world 'cos no-one's listening. Well... why should they?"
  • Winter, the guy trying to visit all the Starbucks before they close:
    "Pointless though it might it be, a goal is a goal."
  • Carolyn Hax:
    Carlsbad, N.M.: How do I figure out what to be when I grow up? Carolyn Hax: I dunno, but it's easier if you grow up first, then figure it out. Otherwise you'll just change your mind when you get there.
  • Bobby Singer:
    "Are you under the impression that family is supposed to make you feel GOOD? Bake you an apple pie, maybe? They're SUPPOSED to make you miserable, that's why they're family!"
  • Dan Savage:
    "You want crazy frosting on sane cake."
  • fillyjonk on Susan Boyle:
    "What makes people stop laughing — or at least, what makes you stop caring if they do? The discovery that something about you is utterly remarkable."
  • Gregg Levoy:
    "Chaos is just going to throw on a tie-dye shirt and come to work with no pants on."
  • Carrie Fisher:
    "My mother always said to me, “Don’t be so hard on yourself, dear!” and I wanted to say, “Oh, okay! Then I won’t! I thought that it was a good thing to rough yourself up, but you say it’s not, so I’ll just stop! Thanks for the tip!”
  • deering:
    "Someone who wants to be a doctor or an engineer isn't told right off that bat that they are untalented, or impractical, or can't make it, ever. :P"
  • Jonathan Coulton:
    "This is the thing about the new landscape that drives everyone crazy: you can’t see inside the cow; you can only build one, feed it music, and wait for it to poop."
  • Andrew Ramer:
    "All life wobbles on this planet. Wobbles, or dances. As sometimes, when someone bumps into you on the dance floor, you turn to them with anger in your eyes. And sometimes, you turn to them and love stares back, and the bruise on your thigh was all worth it. So with Earth. It smiles, and rubs its hip. "When you understand fire, you no longer stick your hand in it, you contain it and cook with it. When you understand the wobble, you no longer fear it or hate it, you move with it, use it. And sometimes, when your life is a mess, when you've been in therapy for 57 years and you're still falling in love with the wrong person--stop blaming your parents or yourself. Stop and take a deep breath and say to yourself--I'm living on a world that wobbles on its axis. It has seasons and changes. And sometimes, what seems to be going wrong in my life isn't really a flaw in my nature. It's just that I haven't learned to wobble with the world yet. The Earth laughs at itself. Can you?"
  • Carolyn Hax:
    "Short description of a long process: Figure out the things that make you feel confident/fulfilled/energized; that give you a sense of purpose or accomplishment; that tap into your natural abilities and strengths; and that -don't- put you at the mercy of any one person, and orient your life around those. Often, this requires another step--concurrently or as a precursor--of reducing the role in your life of things that make you feel worthless/empty/exhausted; that require skills that don't come naturally; that feel like a waste of time; or that put you routinely at the mercy of others."
  • Kitty Norville:
    "People are always saying that to me--how can I possibly be a skeptic given what I am? Given how much I know about what's really out there, how can I turn my nose up at any half-baked belief that crosses my desk? Really, it's easy, because so many of them are half-baked. They're formulated by people trying to con other people and make a few bucks. The fact that some of this is real makes it even more important to be on our guard, to be that much more skeptical, so we can separate truth and fiction. Blind faith is still blind, and I try not to be."
  • Kitty Norville:
    "The supernatural world was like an onion. You peel back the layers, only to find more layers, on and on, hopelessly trying to reach the mysterious core. Then you start crying."
  • regicide is good for you:
    "Are ads even trying to sell anything anymore, or just keep us vaguely, constantly aware that there are generally things on sale somewhere nearby? I like this new model. People get paid to delight me, and I walk away still blissfully unaware of products."
  • Hanna Rosin:
    "One fleeting thing—an unearned pile of money, a one-night stand, a tattoo, a suddenly paralyzed teammate—can change your entire life. Accident and coincidence are more powerful than any God-driven holistic narrative."
  • B.J. Love (what a name, eh?):
    “People may think art is a waste of time because it’s not ‘goods’ that can be bought, sold and taxed, but down the road art is all we got. The only historical documents I've read from the 1860s are the Gettysburg address, a poetic speech, and Leaves of Grass and THAT is how I understand those times, and I think years from now, poetry will still be how we understand times, these time included.”
  • Seymour, "Burn Notice":
    "Don't argue with destiny. It will kick your ass."
  • NoStyleHere:
    "So I'm 48, good god man, and my experience is that every time you think life is finally starting to be less weird, it busts loose with a whole new *kind* of weird. Life ebbs and flows and changes and much of the joy of it is in its utter unpredictability."
  • Patricia Briggs:
    "As an author, I sometimes feel like the wicked witch. My job is to find someone happily minding their own business, and mess up their happy little lives until they're upset enough to get off their rump and go change something."
  • Elliot Bangs:
    "What the hell was I doing? I asked myself, more than once. But haven't you ever needed to follow a mystery past all the limits of common sense? Have you ever found yourself in a whole awful prison of a world in which every last familiar and sensible thing has finally come up hollow and pointless? Have you ever been left with nothing on which to stake all your hopes of transcendence, save one good leap into the abyss? It also suffices to say that the story would have ended here if it hadn't been for alcohol."
  • Elsa:
    For me it’s like being a horse… a thoroughbred. That "horse is born to run… pretty much that is why it is here. It can rest but the basic life is getting ready to run, running and then recovering from running. If you take a horse like that or a person like me and you tie them down, you are killing that horse. You are perverting nature. That horse is not going to thrive and God or the universe is going to be very pissed at you. He or it will also be pissed at the horse because what’s it doing standing there when it knows damned well it’s supposed to run?"
  • Carrie Fisher:
    "Now, keeping yourself impervious to mockery is a full time occupation. I’ve been working at it ever since I can remember."
  • Murdoc Niccals, The Gorillaz
    "Always be wary of people who use quotes." I don't know who said that."
  • flipside:
    "Following your heart through life is like following your feet across a piano."
  • The Doctor:
    "You want weapons? We're in a library. Books! Best weapons in the world. This room's the greatest arsenal we could have. Arm yourself."
  • Jessica Lovejoy:
    "You know what would be great? This totally impossible thing!"
  • D. Brian Burghart:
    "I’d like to be in love—if not with a person, then with a consuming new idea or project that will move me from the waiting for the next phase of my life to the real deal."
  • Anonymous:
    "If a cannibal can find someone to volunteer to be killed and eaten, surely our problems of finding the appropriate relationships to suit us are considerably more minimal."
  • Joss Whedon:
    "Honestly, it really is that little chaos factor. It's when the thing starts talking back to you. When you come up with something that is a little bit more than just a good reproduction of what was in the book, and somehow reflects you in a way that you didn't understand yourself: that's art."
  • Rasputin:
    "This is what has always bothered me about relationships. It’s never just you and your partner who get into one: It’s always you, your partner, and society. And that’s not a three-way I’m comfortable with."
  • Anonymous:
    It's funny how quickly your plans change from "changing the world and chasing your dreams" to "getting really fucking drunk."
  • Keith Olbermann:
    "You are asked now, by your country, and perhaps by your creator, to stand on one side or another. You are asked now to stand, not on a question of politics, not on a question of religion, not on a question of gay or straight. You are asked now to stand, on a question of...love. All you need do is stand, and let the tiny ember of love meet its own fate. You don’t have to help it, you don’t have it applaud it, you don’t have to fight for it. Just don’t put it out. Just don’t extinguish it. Because while it may at first look like that love is between two people you don’t know and you don’t understand and maybe you don’t even want to know...It is, in fact, the ember of your love, for your fellow **person… Just because this is the only world we have. And the other guy counts, too."
  • Lafayette from True Blood:
    "Ain't no freak gonna tell no other freak how to live."
  • Mitch Hedberg:
    "I'm tired of following my dreams. I'm just going to figure out where they're going, and hook up with them later."
  • Cathal Morrow:
    "Two truths I didn’t realise until just now: 1. I’ve always had the sense that my life is moving towards some sort higher truth 2. It’s not going particularly well"

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September 05, 2008

Crazy-ass wedding shit

A relative of mine got engaged 3 weeks ago- WHILE SHE WAS OUT OF THE COUNTRY- and there STILL has been nothing but drama. Guess what I get to listen to this weekend? Kill me nowwwwwwwwwwwww. I am so never getting married, people.

Just in time for that, Washington Post has decided to bypass June and have a bridal week. Some stories are up already.

WHERE'S MY PROPOSAL WANT IT NOWWWWWWWWWW.

"After months of chatter and numerous proposal false alarms, I dubbed them the Engagement Watch Team. Eli had no idea that I'd enlisted a support group to help me scrutinize his every move."

Oy. I feel sorry for Eli through this whole thing.

"We hate weddings. Let us plan yours (free)."

"What if . . . we become Anti-Wedding Planners? What if we find a couple who shares our opinion and lets us plan their unorthodox, fabulously cheap anti-wedding, located -- we dream -- in a bus depot or a Laundromat? We envision the glorious reversal of typical wedding cliches: the symbolic release of dirty city pigeons in lieu of doves, bouquets of dead leaves, a buffet of peanut butter or grilled-cheese sandwiches. The wedding itself would be a statement, a metaphorical loogie aimed right at the wispy veil of wedding-obsessed America. It must be anti-industry, but pro-romance, because real love means knowing, This is my soul mate, even if (s)he's wearing a garbage bag."

These two, both 34, are open to just about anything, such as getting married in a morgue, Jaqi suggests, or on their living room couch. There will be no lace anywhere near this wedding. Also, she hates flowers.
We are convinced that this is our couple. And then we are rewarded with a glorious bonus: It turns out that Chris is a pathologist, and Jaqi works for the IRS. This will be the union of life's only two certainties . . . death and taxes. A themed anti-wedding.

The planners, meantime, fondly daydream about a Wegmans wedding. Vows exchanged in the cereal aisle! Shoppers mingling with guests! Oh, how wonderfully possible it all seems. It takes three whole days for the plan to implode.

Just one week, and our anti-bride is bailing on us. The flower-hater suddenly wants botanical gardens. The anti-wedding planners are sputtering, frustrated with her for going all wussy-princess on them, and with Wegmans for being unreasonable, and with each other for not having better ideas. Time is wasting! And that's when we realize something -- something bad.
The anxiety. The frustration. The frayed nerves. This feels dangerously like . . . a wedding.
The anti-wedding planners pause to wipe the wedding Kool-Aid from their lips and soldier on.

Lucky for us, the beautiful and traditional spots will be booked already for mid-June. We ponder anti-alternatives. Would Jaqi get married at work? Yes, but the IRS -- like Wegmans -- fears that it would be bombarded with wedding requests if it approves ours. It seems more likely that the IRS would be bombarded with rotten vegetables hurled by disgruntled taxpayers, but we keep this thought to ourselves.

Clearly, the only difference between 40 people visiting a site for 15 minutes and 40 people visiting a site for a 15-minute wedding is the weight of the word "wedding"; it carries assumptions of crystal chandeliers and heart-shaped carriages drawn by swans. All weddings are tarred by Modern Bride's brush, inseparable from all the stuff presumed to go along with them, and therefore confined to places where they can be controlled.

Suddenly, it seems possible that we can't do this, that there is no way to pull off the sane, stuff-free wedding of our couple's dreams. We are stymied by the twin conformist monsters of The Knot and The Man.
All we want to do is gather 40 people on public property, say some words and have a ceremony. This is an issue of freedom of speech, religion and assembly. And this is America.

That's when it hits us. It might be the anger; it might be despair; it might be the head injury, but we start hearing the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" in our minds.
It's a protest, right? Then let's protest this wanton abridgement of basic human rights, the industry and the government that make it near impossible to be sensible and get married. The wedding itself will be a demonstration. Signs. Chanting. Burning effigies.
Best of all: Where permits are concerned, the "demonstration" label liberates us. We are free to station ourselves at protest headquarters U.S.A., proudly beside the other indignant visionaries with lost causes but inextinguishable hopes. The protest and wedding will be in Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House."

A non-Post link: The Bridal Wave.

Posted on September 05, 2008 at 09:54 AM in Quarterlife Crisis |

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