August 2005 Archives

Are we really seeing a Doubling in the blogoshpere or have we all began writing secret blogs?

Its TRUE. It is proven... Key Website Research Highlights Gender Bias:

A first-of-its-kind study conducted by experts at the University of Glamorgan has proved that men and women really are poles apart when it comes to what catches their eye on the internet.

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With the internet doubling its size every two to three months, it is now more important than ever for websites to catch the eye of their target market.

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"The statistics are complicated, but there is no doubt about the strength of men and women's preference for sites produced by people of their own sex," said statistician and co-researcher Dr Rod Gunn.

and:

Despite the parity of target audience, the results found that 94% of the sites displayed a masculine orientation with just 2% displaying a typically female bias.

Perhaps the solution is more pink webpages? :-)

.... Inc. Your Dreams by Rebecca Maddox - it's a fantastic book - published way back in 1995, but still reads fresh 10 years later. She is definitely helping me focus myself. You might think this is a book for women only, but that's nonsense - if you want a change in your life, if you want to understand your motivations, if you want to help yourself succeed at being a parent, being a couple, being a business person, being something you don't know what is just yet - this is your chance to find out.

After seeing a fortune teller, who read both her palms explaining that the left hand shows what you were born with and your right hand what you've done with what you have been given Maddox writes:

We are not fixed in time and space. What we are born with is only the beginning - the pencil rendering of a vision; we add the color, the texture, the paint. We sign the masterpiece. In the end, it belongs to us. We have created it.

Two hands, one life. Your two hands together hold all the cards you will pay in the ultimate game. The game is short. Each play counts. Each play is recorded on your right hand, and you are the only one who can choose what will be written there.

Successful people don't just fall into being successful. They create their success  - one choice at a time.

Life is about choices. You are what you choose.

Inc. Your Dreams is full of excercises to help you tune into your needs and desires. Of course, being my usual impatient self, I read the book in a snap, starting only a few of them. Now that I know that the book is worth it to the very end, I'm going back and will be religiously doing every single one of the exercises. Have a look!

- I think! I got some white linen pants from my aunt a few months ago - she keeps sending me my old size. You know, the size from your previous life when everything was perfect and so were you! Sigh. Usually, it's not such a big deal because we don't exactly have the same taste in clothes anyways. But this time.... my aunt sent me JUST WHAT I NEEDED & I was too fat.

I got up early this morning... and grabbed the pants on an impulse. Wriggle. Wriggle... wriggle?

THEY FIT!!

I'm wearing white linen & I feel so sleek:-)

This story from the Boston Globe is quite fantastic:

-LaChania Govan said she got bounced around by her cable company when she called to complain. She made dozens of calls and was even transferred to a person who spoke Spanish -- a language she doesn't understand.

But when she got her August bill from Comcast she had no trouble understanding she'd made somebody mad. It was addressed to "Bitch Dog."

Of course, Comcast has a very interesting explanation:

"We only use the actual customers names on the bill," said Patricia Andrews-Keenan, a Comcast spokeswoman.

The Scarlet Kite is another blog fiction. I think we'll see more and more of this kind of writing, in spite the scorn around character blogs. I'm hoping for a fiction catering to us who have past the terrible mid thirties...how about a real midlife crisis blog soap! I can't believe we're getting so old. Thirthy something used to mean my aunt. Now it means me!

"It's a lovely sunny day today in Perplex City - the sky is so blue, with little fluffy white clouds, just like a child's drawing. Had a free morning, so went for a stroll in the Park, where they're already putting up the seating for the PCAG matches and the concerts later in the month - so exciting! There are tiny wild strawberries growing in the bushes to the north of the Hausam theatre - they looked so pretty I didn't pick any, just looked at them. And... couldn't help thinking how nice it'd be to have someone to share the walk with. Actually, I have kind of a crush on someone, but I don't think he's noticed. Not sure he knows I even exist..."

Kathleen and Eric got married in a blog ceremony...

I promise to love, honor, and obey cherish you, in sickness and in health, in poverty and wealth, in times of sorrow and times of joy. I will be your friend, your lover, your confidant. I promise to never stop trying to become the patient, understanding man you deserve.

Love,

Your husband

Eric

The happy couple explains:

The state of Texas has a little known law governing "informal marriage". For a marriage to be legal, we must publicly declare that we consider each other as spouses and this fact be known to other residents of the state of Texas. We got our certificate this afternoon and have now fulfilled the requirements as there's bound to be a Texas resident or two amongst our joint readership. Feel free to witness our marriage here.

Reading Caroline Knapp always give me a window into feelings that strangely enough are so familiar, even though I've never been through either alcoholism or anorexia.

Anorexia, was to me this strange concept my mother used to worry about when I was around 16, 5.8 and probably weighing just 110. She probably wouldn't have worried so much if she knew about all the chocolate bars and other snacks I ate when away from home. I've never been less worried about weight or what I ate as back then - I just didn't like her dinners!

Caroline Knapp, on the other side, describes how she deliberately tortured her body away by strictly controlling her eating - for breakfast, she would have something insanely small, like half a slice of bread with one thin slice of cheese, or an apple. She used to bring this to her office, arrange tiny pieces of food neatly on her desk; then watch these for quite a while before finally devouring her "breakfast" in what seemed like a painful and controlled ritual, designed to provide a sense of power.

Substance abuse, which she fought at the same time as dealing with her anorexia, was  also giving her a sense of mastery of her own body. No matter how hung over she was, she was never late for work>  she never delivered work late, she always went rowing at the Charles River as a work out during the day. If she dulled her feelings while drinking the evening before, then she turned around and beat her body senseless by working out and getting to work even when she felt absolutely horribly miserable the next day.

I could never be drunk several nights in a row even if my life depended on it. When I was younger, this might have more to do with a "purist" approach to life - I couldn't for my bare life imagine cluttering my brain with anything that would cause me to miss just an ounce of reality. Being drunk was the same as loosing control to me, loosing a second of real time seemed like a bizarre need.

So - if I'm no anorexic and if I'm not a drinker, then why is it that her feelings are so familiar to me?

Drinking and eating are physical ways of torturing your body. But there definitely are mental ways to do so - and I think many men and women do so when they're under pressure to live up to expectations. Until now, I've been completely unaware of how brilliantly I've been working on making myself acceptable, displaying a public image of someone more desirable. Meaning - always trying to please others, be the nice girl, do whatever it takes to fit in for the sake of anybody but myself...

Caroline writes:

Mastery over the body - its impulses, its needs, its size - is paramount; to lose control is to risk beauty, and to risk beauty is to risk desirability, and to risk desirability is to risk entitlement to sexuality and love and self-esteem.

I starve myself when I adopt to other people's needs. Wishing to be desirable, I feed myself less pay, less love, less respect, anything, the feeling that I don't deserve something sometimes makes me so anxious that I can't act. When Caroline writes about drinking and anorexia, I can relate because alcohol to me, is other people's approval while self respect, on the other hand, has too many calories.

If you read Appetites: Why Women Want and Drinking, A Love Story, you'll see how Caroline Knapp overcame her problems. She fought so hard, but just as she found balance, she died, of cancer, 42 years old, just three years ago.

From Po Bronson's website :

(1) That money is the shortest route to freedom.
(2) That we can think (or analyze) our way to an answer of where we belong.
(3) That we are autonomous from the environment that surrounds us.
(4) That our biggest obstacles are external, rather than internal.


I guess it all depends on the context...