Friday, October 7, 2011
King of the Ghosts
by Adam Plunkett
Wednesday evening, early May, Claremont, California. Sunset, the last day of classes. My friend, Sara, drove the two of us on College Ave. toward campus with the six-pack we’d bought for our last class, an end-of-semester party that would have beer and wine and cookies and a sweet dark sangria with citrus in the pitcher, but no drugs, for obvious reasons, and no hard alcohol because some former student had thrown up the whiskey he’d drunk in his last class. I thought about making and bringing a beer bong, but when a friend told me that it would be in poor taste because our teacher was a recovered alcoholic, I reluctantly gave in. 
Our teacher made small talk before class. Say, how did we do acid these days? Did we put it on scraps of paper and put the scraps under our eyelids, as he used to? The few of us who heard him laughed, nervous, narcotically conservative, and in the presence of a cool kid roundly out-embarrassed despite the beer and sangria we brandished. If only I’d had the beer bong.He was an embarrassing man when he wanted to be, our teacher, deeply, deliberately, playfully so. He feigned lewd interest a week later in the lurid details of the pre-graduation party-trip the seniors had taken. They had set rules against sex in the shower, or so he let me know. (He had no ribald stories from his own pre-graduation week, since he “and some other terminally nerdy guys just drove up to Maine and discussed Reaganomics and ate lobster.”) It took a student a few seconds to answer when called on “Michael Watson, light of my life, fire of my loins.”
My own soft underbelly was spoken (if not written) politeness, a Midwestern habit of deference and sorrys and if-you-don’t-minds my Midwestern teacher invariably mentioned or mocked or prodded in a mild recursive torment, recursive because politeness tends to be polite about itself. After my tenth sorry he’d bar me from any more apologies or self-qualification or self-deprecation, which I’d apologize for making him do. He told me once that he worried that I dissembled with my politeness, so I promised him that I really would let him know if something he said bothered me, and he told me that he’d made nearly the same promise to his mother a few years before.
His polite moments, which were frequent if often implausible (he denied reading quickly, being widely read, being “an especially fluid writer”), were all the more absurd given how caustic he could be. Once, I offended some of the class with a not-too-polite satire of the misogyny of the then-emerging male-sex-help genre, and our teacher advocated for the Devil by asking whether anyone besides him thought that I’d shown some “balls.” After that he paused and solemnly told us, “I deeply regret saying that,” but I have my suspicions.
He lambasted an essay’s “methane,” at one point, and praised another for its “sheer sphincter-shattering beauty.” Writing a short essay to render something you loved endlessly was “trying to blow a watermelon through a straw.” Most writing was “written half-asleep and read half-asleep,” whereas his every sentence spoken or written confirmed his alertness and his comprehensive comprehension and his care. He was immaculately alive, which made you terribly eager to show that you were all there as well.
He was of course David Foster Wallace, whom I knew as Dave during the spring of my junior year at Pomona College, where he worked until his death that September. The class he taught that semester was The Literary Essay. The class was exciting and productively creative, and fostered abject terror. Wallace knew that he could drive us as hard as he could, and he did, even as he endured a mental hell we learned about only after his death. I knew nothing, suspected nothing. Perhaps we could’ve noticed his pain if the class had been less painful for us.
Half of the class brought up our anxiety to him, separately, myself included. Wallace himself hadn’t noticed the “ambient anxiety”; he praised our “esprit de corps.” He wondered whether there was something terrible on his face and invisible to him (this was a real, deep fear of his, he assured us: his acute social-anxiety disorder had been clinically diagnosed). “Dave,” I asked in his office, “how do you deal with anxiety?” He laughed, a little bemused. He told me not to keep all my problems in my head as he had in his youth. Yoga, he suggested. Meditation. He said he really wasn’t the person to ask.
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Friday Book Club - Middlesex
by Michiko Kakutani
As his deft first novel, ''The Virgin Suicides'' (1993), attested, Jeffrey Eugenides has an operatic imagination, inclined toward the melodramatic and the bizarre. That novel opened with the shocking image of a 13-year-old girl hurling herself out a window and impaling herself on a fence. His impressive new novel, ''Middlesex,'' gets off to an equally startling start with the announcement by its narrator, Cal, that he is a hermaphrodite, born in 1960 as a darling baby girl and reborn in 1974 as an awkward teenage boy.
Like the Greek drama cuff links that Cal's father wears, ''Middlesex'' has two faces -- one comedic, the other tragic -- and the novel turns the story of Cal's coming of age into an uproarious epic, at once funny and sad, about misplaced identities and family secrets. The book displays the same sort of knowing portraits of adolescence that ''Virgin Suicides'' did, but this novel is at its most incisive not as a bildungsroman about teenage angst and gender confusion, but as a ''Buddenbrooks''-like saga that traces three generations' efforts to grapple with America and with their own versions of the American Dream.
It is a novel that employs all its author's rich storytelling talents to give us one Greek-American family's idiosyncratic journey from the not-so-pearly gates of Ellis Island to the suburban vistas of Grosse Pointe, Mich., while at the same time tracing the rise and fall in fortunes of Detroit, from its apotheosis as the Motor City in the 40's and 50's through the race riots of 1967 and its subsequent decline. It is also a novel that invokes ancient myths and contemporary pop songs to show how family traits and inclinations are passed down generation to generation, a novel that uses musical leitmotifs to show the unexpected ways in which chance and fate weave their improvisations into the loom of family life.
Part Tristram Shandy, part Ishmael, part Holden Caulfield, Cal (or Calliope, as he was known when he was a girl) is a wonderfully engaging narrator: long-winded, perhaps, but capable of discoursing with equal verve and wit on everything from Greek politics to girls' makeup to the typology of presidential names. Claiming he possessed fetal omniscience of the world before he was born, he discourses with complete authority about his relatives' past, limning their secrets and their dreams while pointing out coincidences and parallels in their lives, like an old-fashioned storyteller privvy to the playful machinations of the gods.
Cutting back and forth in time to build suspense, Cal juxtaposes his own story with that of his paternal grandparents' courtship and marriage, which, he explains, contains the seeds of his own fate. Lefty and Desdemona Stephanides, we learn, are not only husband and wife, but also brother and sister, who in 1922 fled their small village, as fighting between Greek and Turkish troops reached their mountainside home. They witnessed the terrible burning of Smyrna that autumn and managed to escape on a boat to America by lying about their pasts. The trauma of witnessing so much death and destruction helped ease their guilt over their incestuous romance, and on shipboard they prepared for their new lives in America by inventing new identities for themselves.
Mr. Eugenides has a keen sociological eye for 20th-century American life; he even reads an assimilationist lesson in the elder Stephanides's decision to furnish their bedroom with a ''Monticello'' dresser and a ''Mount Vernon'' mirror. But it's his emotional wisdom, his nuanced insight into his characters' inner lives, that lends this book its cumulative power. He has not only followed up on a precocious debut with a broader and more ambitious book, but in doing so, he has also delivered a deeply affecting portrait of one family's tumultuous engagement with the American 20th century.
Read more:
As his deft first novel, ''The Virgin Suicides'' (1993), attested, Jeffrey Eugenides has an operatic imagination, inclined toward the melodramatic and the bizarre. That novel opened with the shocking image of a 13-year-old girl hurling herself out a window and impaling herself on a fence. His impressive new novel, ''Middlesex,'' gets off to an equally startling start with the announcement by its narrator, Cal, that he is a hermaphrodite, born in 1960 as a darling baby girl and reborn in 1974 as an awkward teenage boy.
Like the Greek drama cuff links that Cal's father wears, ''Middlesex'' has two faces -- one comedic, the other tragic -- and the novel turns the story of Cal's coming of age into an uproarious epic, at once funny and sad, about misplaced identities and family secrets. The book displays the same sort of knowing portraits of adolescence that ''Virgin Suicides'' did, but this novel is at its most incisive not as a bildungsroman about teenage angst and gender confusion, but as a ''Buddenbrooks''-like saga that traces three generations' efforts to grapple with America and with their own versions of the American Dream. It is a novel that employs all its author's rich storytelling talents to give us one Greek-American family's idiosyncratic journey from the not-so-pearly gates of Ellis Island to the suburban vistas of Grosse Pointe, Mich., while at the same time tracing the rise and fall in fortunes of Detroit, from its apotheosis as the Motor City in the 40's and 50's through the race riots of 1967 and its subsequent decline. It is also a novel that invokes ancient myths and contemporary pop songs to show how family traits and inclinations are passed down generation to generation, a novel that uses musical leitmotifs to show the unexpected ways in which chance and fate weave their improvisations into the loom of family life.
Part Tristram Shandy, part Ishmael, part Holden Caulfield, Cal (or Calliope, as he was known when he was a girl) is a wonderfully engaging narrator: long-winded, perhaps, but capable of discoursing with equal verve and wit on everything from Greek politics to girls' makeup to the typology of presidential names. Claiming he possessed fetal omniscience of the world before he was born, he discourses with complete authority about his relatives' past, limning their secrets and their dreams while pointing out coincidences and parallels in their lives, like an old-fashioned storyteller privvy to the playful machinations of the gods.
Cutting back and forth in time to build suspense, Cal juxtaposes his own story with that of his paternal grandparents' courtship and marriage, which, he explains, contains the seeds of his own fate. Lefty and Desdemona Stephanides, we learn, are not only husband and wife, but also brother and sister, who in 1922 fled their small village, as fighting between Greek and Turkish troops reached their mountainside home. They witnessed the terrible burning of Smyrna that autumn and managed to escape on a boat to America by lying about their pasts. The trauma of witnessing so much death and destruction helped ease their guilt over their incestuous romance, and on shipboard they prepared for their new lives in America by inventing new identities for themselves.
***
Mr. Eugenides has a keen sociological eye for 20th-century American life; he even reads an assimilationist lesson in the elder Stephanides's decision to furnish their bedroom with a ''Monticello'' dresser and a ''Mount Vernon'' mirror. But it's his emotional wisdom, his nuanced insight into his characters' inner lives, that lends this book its cumulative power. He has not only followed up on a precocious debut with a broader and more ambitious book, but in doing so, he has also delivered a deeply affecting portrait of one family's tumultuous engagement with the American 20th century.
Read more:
A Game Plan for Effective Communication
The Ground Rules below are meant to give you tools to help your communication with one another.
Speaker Rule #1: Pick the right time
While there is no perfect time to raise a difficult issue, some times are more appropriate than others. Use care in determining what those times may be. Try to pick a time when you and your partner are free of other distractions. This time should be when both you and your partner can approach it positively and give your full attention. For example, this time is likely not during a favorite TV show, immediately upon coming home from work, or during another scheduled activity. As the speaker, you can initiate the discussion by gauging what the most appropriate time may be or simply asking your partner when a good time to discuss an important issue is.
Speaker Rule #2: How You Start is How You’ll Finish
The way in which the speaker raises an issue is often a big predictor of how the discussion will go. If you begin the conversation in a harsh way by attacking or blaming your partner, you are likely to have an angry discussion. It is important to avoid creating an environment where the listener feels they need to defend themselves rather than simply discuss. In these cases, your message is not being heard because the listener is too busy defending themselves. Softening the way you begin the conversation with a calm, positive approach will increase the likelihood that your communication will be viewed as non-threatening. A non-threatening or safe communication environment will make the discussion seem worth participating in to the listener. Think of it as a “soft-beginning” where your words and tone are free of criticism or attack. Here are examples of harsh and soft beginnings.
Harsh Beginning—“You didn’t put gas in the car and I was late for work this morning.”
Soft Beginning—“I appreciate it when you put gas in my car, but when you can’t do that for me, let me know so I can make time to stop before work.”
Speaker Rule #3: Speak for Yourself
Stick to talking about how you, the speaker, feels. Also, describe the issue at hand for you, rather than stating what you may assume, think or observe to be the problem with your partner. Use the words “I” and “me” to describe things from your point of view. Beginning a conversation with “you” statements, can feel like an attack or attempt to blame the listener. Let’s use the issue of housework as an example:
“I” statement—I get frustrated when I come home from work and the kitchen is messy. This statement conveys a feeling of frustration about a messy house.
“You” statement—You don’t ever clean up after yourself. What have you been doing all day? This statement assigns blame on the listener for the messy house and attacks the listener by implying that they are lazy.
Nervous American Voters Worried About Botching Another Election
"When I think about how bad things are already, I can't help but worry that it's going to get infinitely worse once we step into the voting booth next November," said Gavin Daniels, 34, of Columbus, OH, one of 1,200 registered voters who participated in the survey. "This country has repeatedly screwed itself over at the ballot box, and I have this really sickening, unshakable feeling we're going to do it again next year. That's just sort of what we do."
"I keep asking myself, 'Am I going to completely fuck things up by dropping the ball on my vote for president and sending someone patently corrupt or incompetent to Congress?" he continued. "And the answer for me and millions of other American voters is yeah, probably. God knows we do almost every time."
According to the poll, 9 out of 10 likely voters said they did not trust themselves to make choices that were in the nation's best interests, three-quarters said Election Day panic would likely cause them to base their votes entirely on hearsay, and 93 percent admitted that when it came to state and local races they would probably only recognize the names of candidates who had been featured prominently in attack ads.
In addition, almost all respondents said they feared being unable to summon the self-discipline required to read any proposition or ballot initiative running longer than 150 words.
The poll also suggested that despite a presidential campaign season that now lasts a full year and a half, American voters feel they still fail to acquire useful information about the relative merits of a candidate, acknowledging that on the whole, they cannot make the sound decisions required of a functioning electorate in a representative democracy.
"In the end, I just know I'm going to hear one catchy sound bite and make a terrible, emotionally driven decision that's going to screw us over for another two, four, or six years," said Kyla Simpson of Denver, a working mother of three who confirmed she routinely elects officials whose actions damage the health, safety, and economic security of her family. "I always wind up going with my gut instinct and making an impulsive choice that sends everything straight to hell."
"Goddammit, why do I keep doing that?" she added.
Read more:
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Beyond Brownies
by Matthew Kronsberg
In her forward to the Alice B. Toklas Cook Book, M.F.K Fisher claims to have never eaten one of the pot brownies that made the book a countercultural touchstone. She writes that she is told that the brownies (or “Haschich Fudge,” as the recipe calls it) can taste, “slightly bitter, depending on how much pot is put into them, and that (1) they are absolutely without effect and (2) they are potentially lethal.” Her description pretty neatly sums up the common expectation of eating marijuana: a bit of psychoactive Russian roulette with a strange aftertaste.
Marijuana’s use in food and drink, of course, didn’t start with the Toklas cookbook’s publication in 1954, nor did it stop there. In the United States, medicinal use of marijuana is now permitted in 16 states, and that permission has spawned the rise of “medibles,” or medical marijuana in edible or drinkable form. Variants on the Toklas brownie abound, but visitors to cannabis dispensaries can also expect to find a near limitless variety of cutely named goods ranging from “High Mountain Trail Mix” to “RedEye Pies” to “LaGanga” (lasagna), all designed to swiftly deliver a dose of THC with none of the smoke or taste typically associated with pot.
Should marijuana ever become completely legalized, however, this strong dose/weak taste approach to ingestion may prove to be the exception, rather than the rule. Examples from the traditional cuisines of Southeast Asia and the vanguard of New American cooking point intriguingly to possibilities of a culinary style that embraces the plant’s grassy, herbal flavor profile while moderating its psychoactive effects. And even more than at the table, the future of marijuana ingestion may be found at the bar; liquid extracts allow nearly any drink to be infused with cannabis, and beer and winemakers have already begun to embrace the possibilities of fusion.
Beer probably has the most natural affinity with marijuana; after all, hops and marijuana are botanically speaking, kissing cousins. Boutique brewers in Europe and home brewers in the U.S. have been known to use cannabis tincture and plant matter to create THC-infused beer. Within the bounds of American law, Nectar Ales in Paso Robles, California, makes Humboldt Brown Ale with denatured hemp seeds (containing no measurable THC). The toastier, nuttier quality of the seed is highlighted rather than the herbal, funky character one would get from the plant itself. It is an interesting, unexpected expression of hemp, enjoyable even without its famous effects.
Jeremiah Tower, seminal in the creation of New American cuisine, first during his time as a chef/owner at Chez Panisse (1972–78) and later at Stars, knows a thing or two about letting ingredients speak for themselves, and letting them kick, if that’s what they want. He gives cannabis a clear, though not overpowering, voice in his Consommé Marijuana, recalled (with recipe!) in his 2004 memoir California Dish. The consommé was created in the spring of 1969 as the third course of a “self-consciously decadent” 11-course meal he prepared in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Made with 1 cup of marijuana stems steeped in 6 cups of rich chicken stock, it was strained and served over a chiffonade of nasturtium flowers and basil. As Tower recalls, the dish: “provided another level of stimulation. But not stoned. The brew takes forty-five minutes to reach the brain, by which time (as the menu planned) we were on to dessert, tasting strawberries and cream as we’d never tasted them before.”
Read more:
In her forward to the Alice B. Toklas Cook Book, M.F.K Fisher claims to have never eaten one of the pot brownies that made the book a countercultural touchstone. She writes that she is told that the brownies (or “Haschich Fudge,” as the recipe calls it) can taste, “slightly bitter, depending on how much pot is put into them, and that (1) they are absolutely without effect and (2) they are potentially lethal.” Her description pretty neatly sums up the common expectation of eating marijuana: a bit of psychoactive Russian roulette with a strange aftertaste. Marijuana’s use in food and drink, of course, didn’t start with the Toklas cookbook’s publication in 1954, nor did it stop there. In the United States, medicinal use of marijuana is now permitted in 16 states, and that permission has spawned the rise of “medibles,” or medical marijuana in edible or drinkable form. Variants on the Toklas brownie abound, but visitors to cannabis dispensaries can also expect to find a near limitless variety of cutely named goods ranging from “High Mountain Trail Mix” to “RedEye Pies” to “LaGanga” (lasagna), all designed to swiftly deliver a dose of THC with none of the smoke or taste typically associated with pot.
Should marijuana ever become completely legalized, however, this strong dose/weak taste approach to ingestion may prove to be the exception, rather than the rule. Examples from the traditional cuisines of Southeast Asia and the vanguard of New American cooking point intriguingly to possibilities of a culinary style that embraces the plant’s grassy, herbal flavor profile while moderating its psychoactive effects. And even more than at the table, the future of marijuana ingestion may be found at the bar; liquid extracts allow nearly any drink to be infused with cannabis, and beer and winemakers have already begun to embrace the possibilities of fusion.
Beer probably has the most natural affinity with marijuana; after all, hops and marijuana are botanically speaking, kissing cousins. Boutique brewers in Europe and home brewers in the U.S. have been known to use cannabis tincture and plant matter to create THC-infused beer. Within the bounds of American law, Nectar Ales in Paso Robles, California, makes Humboldt Brown Ale with denatured hemp seeds (containing no measurable THC). The toastier, nuttier quality of the seed is highlighted rather than the herbal, funky character one would get from the plant itself. It is an interesting, unexpected expression of hemp, enjoyable even without its famous effects.
Jeremiah Tower, seminal in the creation of New American cuisine, first during his time as a chef/owner at Chez Panisse (1972–78) and later at Stars, knows a thing or two about letting ingredients speak for themselves, and letting them kick, if that’s what they want. He gives cannabis a clear, though not overpowering, voice in his Consommé Marijuana, recalled (with recipe!) in his 2004 memoir California Dish. The consommé was created in the spring of 1969 as the third course of a “self-consciously decadent” 11-course meal he prepared in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Made with 1 cup of marijuana stems steeped in 6 cups of rich chicken stock, it was strained and served over a chiffonade of nasturtium flowers and basil. As Tower recalls, the dish: “provided another level of stimulation. But not stoned. The brew takes forty-five minutes to reach the brain, by which time (as the menu planned) we were on to dessert, tasting strawberries and cream as we’d never tasted them before.”
Read more:
Current Events: Hit List
by Glenn Greenwald
Here is what the Democratic President has created and implemented, and what many party loyalists explicitly endorse (when there’s a Democrat in the White House) — from Reuters:
Read more:
Here is what the Democratic President has created and implemented, and what many party loyalists explicitly endorse (when there’s a Democrat in the White House) — from Reuters:
American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions . . . . There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council . . . . Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate. . . . The role of the president in ordering or ratifying a decision to target a citizen is fuzzy. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to discuss anything about the process. . . .
Representative Dutch Ruppersberger, was asked by reporters about the killing. The process involves “going through the National Security Council, then it eventually goes to the president” . . . .Other officials said the role of the president in the process was murkier than what Ruppersberger described. They said targeting recommendations are drawn up by a committee of mid-level National Security Council and agency officials. Their recommendations are then sent to the panel of NSC “principals,” meaning Cabinet secretaries and intelligence unit chiefs, for approval . . . But one official said Obama would be notified of the principals’ decision. If he objected, the decision would be nullified, the official said.So a panel operating out of the White House — that meets in total secrecy, with no known law or rules governing what it can do or how it operates — is empowered to place American citizens on a list to be killed by the CIA, which (by some process nobody knows) eventually makes its way to the President, who is the final Decider. It is difficult to describe the level of warped authoritarianism necessary to cause someone to lend their support to a twisted Star Chamber like that; I genuinely wonder whether the Good Democrats doing so actually first convince themselves that if this were the Bush White House’s hit list, or if it becomes Rick Perry’s, they would be supportive just the same. Seriously: if you’re willing to endorse having White House functionaries meet in secret — with no known guidelines, no oversight, no transparency — and compile lists of American citizens to be killed by the CIA without due process, what aren’t you willing to support?
Read more:
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
88 Important Truths
[ed. Good list. Also worth checking out another post about the miraculous things we take for granted.]
by David Cain
Everyone gets drilled with certain lessons in life. Sometimes it takes repeated demonstrations of a given law of life to really get it into your skull, and other times one powerful experience drives the point home once forever. Here are 88 things I’ve discovered about life, the world, and its inhabitants by this point in my short time on earth.
1. You can’t change other people, and it’s rude to try.
2. It is a hundred times more difficult to burn calories than to refrain from consuming them in the first place.
3. If you’re talking to someone you don’t know well, you may be talking to someone who knows way more about whatever you’re talking about than you do.
4. The cheapest and most expensive models are usually both bad deals.
5. Everyone likes somebody who gets to the point quickly.
6. Bad moods will come and go your whole life, and trying to force them away makes them run deeper and last longer.
7. Children are remarkably honest creatures until we teach them not to be.
8. If everyone in the TV show you’re watching is good-looking, it’s not worth watching.
9. Yelling always makes things worse.
10. Whenever you’re worried about what others will think of you, you’re really just worried about what you’ll think of you.
11. Every problem you have is your responsibility, regardless of who caused it.
12. You never have to deal with more than one moment at a time.
13. If you never doubt your beliefs, then you’re wrong a lot.
14. Managing one’s wants is the most powerful skill a person can learn.
15. Nobody has it all figured out.
16. Cynicism is far too easy to be useful.
17. Every passing face on the street represents a story every bit as compelling and complicated as yours.
18. Whenever you hate something, it hates you back: people, situations and inanimate objects alike.
19. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s works alone can teach you everything you need to know about living with grace and happiness.
20. People embellish everything, as a rule.
21. Anger reveals weakness of character, violence even moreso.
22. Humans cannot destroy the planet, but we can destroy its capacity to keep us alive. And we are.
23. When people are uncomfortable with the present moment, they fidget with their hands or their minds. Watch and see.
24. Those who complain the most, accomplish the least.
25. Putting something off makes it instantly harder and scarier.
26. Credit card debt devours souls.
27. Nobody knows more than a minuscule fraction of what’s going on in the world. It’s just way too big for any one person to know it well.
28. Most of what we see is only what we think about what we see.
29. A person who is unafraid to present a candid version of herself to the world is as rare as diamonds.
30. The most common addiction in the world is the draw of comfort. It wrecks dreams and breaks people.
31. If what you’re doing feels perfectly safe, there is probably a better course of action.
32. The greatest innovation in the history of humankind is language.
by David Cain
Everyone gets drilled with certain lessons in life. Sometimes it takes repeated demonstrations of a given law of life to really get it into your skull, and other times one powerful experience drives the point home once forever. Here are 88 things I’ve discovered about life, the world, and its inhabitants by this point in my short time on earth.
1. You can’t change other people, and it’s rude to try.2. It is a hundred times more difficult to burn calories than to refrain from consuming them in the first place.
3. If you’re talking to someone you don’t know well, you may be talking to someone who knows way more about whatever you’re talking about than you do.
4. The cheapest and most expensive models are usually both bad deals.
5. Everyone likes somebody who gets to the point quickly.
6. Bad moods will come and go your whole life, and trying to force them away makes them run deeper and last longer.
7. Children are remarkably honest creatures until we teach them not to be.
8. If everyone in the TV show you’re watching is good-looking, it’s not worth watching.
9. Yelling always makes things worse.
10. Whenever you’re worried about what others will think of you, you’re really just worried about what you’ll think of you.
11. Every problem you have is your responsibility, regardless of who caused it.
12. You never have to deal with more than one moment at a time.
13. If you never doubt your beliefs, then you’re wrong a lot.
14. Managing one’s wants is the most powerful skill a person can learn.
15. Nobody has it all figured out.
16. Cynicism is far too easy to be useful.
17. Every passing face on the street represents a story every bit as compelling and complicated as yours.
18. Whenever you hate something, it hates you back: people, situations and inanimate objects alike.
19. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s works alone can teach you everything you need to know about living with grace and happiness.
20. People embellish everything, as a rule.
21. Anger reveals weakness of character, violence even moreso.
22. Humans cannot destroy the planet, but we can destroy its capacity to keep us alive. And we are.
23. When people are uncomfortable with the present moment, they fidget with their hands or their minds. Watch and see.
24. Those who complain the most, accomplish the least.
25. Putting something off makes it instantly harder and scarier.
26. Credit card debt devours souls.
27. Nobody knows more than a minuscule fraction of what’s going on in the world. It’s just way too big for any one person to know it well.
28. Most of what we see is only what we think about what we see.
29. A person who is unafraid to present a candid version of herself to the world is as rare as diamonds.
30. The most common addiction in the world is the draw of comfort. It wrecks dreams and breaks people.
31. If what you’re doing feels perfectly safe, there is probably a better course of action.
32. The greatest innovation in the history of humankind is language.
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