mind game

I spent most of an evening distracting myself with this simple puzzle before I started wondering why it was so unsatisfying to me. It should be satisfying. It’s just the kind of quick-hit game I like: wordless, no frills, complex enough to be gratifying and easy enough to fun. But it wasn’t either.

And then I saw it. The instant I finish a puzzle, the screen moves on to the next one. There’s no ding!, no triumphant flourish, no moment of reflection. Every solved puzzle gives way to the next puzzle without pause; it’s an unending cycle of needing to accomplish without ever feeling accomplishment.

And then I thought what a perfect metaphor that is for my mindset at the moment, and how simple it would be to change that.

it won’t stop

Y’know, I don’t think you are sorry.

True Detective S2: a ghost story without a ghost

“A full moon is the right time to ratify alliances.” (HBO)

This week, I sat in on The A.V. Club’s True Detective review. My analysis: True Detective is a ghost story without a ghost, and with a heart of lurid pulp.

wiki-hole

My latest trips down the wiki-hole:

It’s a straight line from Dazed and Confused to the Austin moon towers to the Servant Girl Annihilator.

And, though I don’t remember precisely the path, it’s no surprise that I refreshed my memory of the dancing plague that afflicted 16th century Strasbourg.

But I still don’t remember what process led me to the Dugong hypothesis for the origin of the word tabernacle.

gorilla

Just a regular Sunday, drinking a cup of tea and researching the world’s foremost gorilla actor, because it turns out there is such a person.

overlapping

Elsa: I’m about to learn a new word!
The Fella: What is it?
Elsa: It’s from this review I’m reading: imbricate.
The Fella: Embercate?
Elsa: Im-bric-ate. It means… to arrange scales, sepals — ooop, I’m about to learn two new words!
The Fella: I love you.
Elsa: To arrange in an overlapping fashion, like petals, scales, or roof tiles. I love you too!

emotional math

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about partnership and marriage, and especially about being married to The Fella, which is, y’know, awesome.

This Ask Metafilter comment gets to the heart of that awesomeness:

You know when you were a kid, and you’d get excited about sleepovers because you could stay up all night watching movies and talking to someone who just cracked you up and really understood you? Remember how special those nights felt?

Every day is like that now. Except we get to have really good sex, too.

Yup, that sums it up: I get to spend every day and every night with my very favorite person from now on, and we get to express that favorite-ness in every way we wish.

But I still haven’t really internalized that this is a two-way street of Awesome — that my very favorite person’s very favorite person is me.

Let me digress.

I had a rotten morning. You don’t need to know the details, but I made a small error that caused the not-sane part of my brain to castigate me and call me names (which A. is not productive and B. is NOT ALLOWED) while I flailed around trying to get dressed and out of the house in a hurry.

During this ridiculous few minutes of blistering self-loathing, The Fella kept interjecting helpful comments like, “You’re not stupid, you just made a mistake” and “How can I help?” and “Are these your pants?” When he should have been sleeping peacefully (and could very rightfully have been giving me grief over my meltdown), he was cheerfully pitching in to soothe me, to help me, to solve my problem.

And later in the day, I added some of those things together. I did the emotional math: I am married to my very favorite person, the person whose opinion I value more than anyone else’s, the person who I think is the downright AWESOMEST person in the whole wide world.

And he thinks I’m THE AWESOMEST, too.

I think he must be right. You don’t argue with the transitive property.

bananas

In a crowd of friends at our neighborhood bar tonight, The Fella and I met a friend’s beau.

Friend: These are two of the smartest people in town.
Elsa and The Fella in unison: Nooooooo. No no no. No.
Friend: This is Elsa. She knows a lot about bananas.
Elsa: [wincing] … that’s fair.

we are a way for the cosmos to know itself

From the Symphony of Science website: “The Symphony of Science is a musical project by John Boswell designed to deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form.”
“We Are All Connected” compiles clips of Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Bill Nye to create a lovely and lyrical music video.

sintering

I just learned a new word from a piece of spam: sintering, to heat a powdery material (like ceramics or metal) below its melting point until the particles adhere into a whole.

Why did I open the spam? Because my Gmail’s gone wonky and won’t let me “mark as spam” from my inbox, only from the email itself.

Why did I continue reading it?
A) They didn’t actually indicate any way for me to throw large fistsful of money at them, and I wondered where the hook was buried;
B) sintering, dude. Strange words catch my eye.