I’m watching an old episode of Everybody loves Raymond and Marie has confessed that she likes Amy better than Debra because Amy is a virgin… Marie even goes as far as to say that Amy is “pure” and a “good girl.” (I think the writers were trying to show antiquated Marie’s thinking, but I’m not sure that was the point but if it was, the topic was kind of clumsily handled if you ask me.)

A woman’s goodness has absolutely nothing to do with whether she has had sex or not. I’m a virgin and I don’t consider myself pure at all. I’ve done things in my life I’m truly and deeply ashamed of, even if I definitely would change them if I could. 

Meanwhile, there are women who aren’t virgins who are good people. How on earth did we develop this mindset that a woman’s purity is dependent on whether she’s had sex or not and how come this isn’t applied to men?

Virginity is not a moral achievement. It’s a neutral state. A person who has had sex has not lost goodness; a virgin has not gained it. Morality is about how we treat others, with kindness, honesty and respect, not about what we do or don’t do with our own bodies.

The “purity” myth lets people confuse a lack of sexual experience with moral character, and it’s harmful to everyone, including the people it claims to “praise.”

I recently discovered a book written in 1890 called The Young Visiters. Daisy Ashford penned the novel as 9 year old and later, in her 20s, shared it for publication, through a rather complicated, but interesting series of circumstances. 

Part of the book's success in selling millions of copies had to do with a child’s bluntness in describing adult vulnerabilities.

What strikes me most is not the book itself (although it is uncannily mature for a child of her age to write, misspellings and all) but what the writer said years later:

 “I can never feel all the nice things that have been said about ‘The Young Visiters’ are really due to me at all, but to a Daisy Ashford of so long ago that she seems another person."

I am by no means a Jane Austen fan, yet I find this book fascinating and actually kind of funny:

from Kindle Highlights:

When I say “ruin,” I don’t mean the way you might, say, ruin a silk blouse by chasing a cat into a juniper bush. I mean the way you might ruin the song “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by telling someone that Bonnie Tyler originally meant it to be about vampires (this is true). I’ve now upended whatever uncomplicated associations you had with this song, and you’ll never be able to hear it without thinking of vampires again, but I’ve made it much more interesting. Anyway, English professors have lots of tools at our disposal for ruining your favorite books, and the way I prefer to ruin Pride and Prejudice is by pointing out how literature trains women to spend their time changing assholes into sensitive men instead of overthrowing the patriarchy.

.....>

my students like me even though I ruin it. They tell me I’m “relatable” and “super sweet and nerdy” (this was in an anonymous online review, and honestly, how very dare you). They also once said I was “the best birth control.” (That was when I was hugely, embarrassingly pregnant. Like, I texted a picture of myself to one of my best friends and instead of responding with “you’re glowing” or even “so excited,” she wrote back, “you look like a UFO.”) The birth control comment is not really related to my habit of ruining Pride and Prejudice, but I think it gives you a sense of what it’s like to study Jane Austen with me. That is, taking a class with me is all fun and games until you’re hugging your roommate in the English department lounge because you realized that you’ve been spending your time and energy and attention on taciturn or emotionally unavailable people, believing they are going to turn out to be slow-burn romantic heroes like Mr. Darcy—when really, they are often just assholes.

For one thing, as she points out, the silencing of women's voices is not exactly a new phenomenon. "If you think about Mary Shelley, how many women - even if they were, y'know, writing under their sewing, like the Brontes or something - could get published in the 19th century? Like, five?! I know there were more than five, but very, very few. That's also the motivation for me to make this, right? I have a lot of things to say, and so does the Bride, so does Jessie, so does Annette."

We accept the point, and we certainly wouldn't want anyone to think that the words

"A #MeToo Movie!" should be emblazoned above the title on the poster. But THE BRIDE! remains a political (with a small p) movie - at the same time as being exuberant fun. -from

SFX magazine

I recently saw Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride!, with Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale, set in 1930s Chicago, the "punk rock feminist reimagining" of Bride of Frankenstein . And I have to confess: I really, really liked it.

The trades have crunched the numbers. According to Deadline, this $80 million monster movie opened to a disastrous $7.3 million domestically and could lose $90 million . Variety called it a bomb. Reason magazine ran a scathing review declaring there's "not a single scene, line reading, or fleeting moment that lands" . The Daily Beast said it's "haphazardly stitched together" and "DOA" .

And yet. 

There I was, completely locked in watching Buckley's Bride, with her frizzed-out hair, that black bile stain on her face, that strange magnetic stillness, trying to figure out who she is in a world that didn't ask for her . There's a moment in the trailer where she asks, "Was I just the same before the accident?" and Bale's Monster replies, "There wasn't any accident. Everything we did, we did it on purpose" . 

Am I crazy? Or is The Bride! exactly the kind of movie that becomes a cult classic years later?

Maggie Gyllenhaal apparently had too many ideas: female empowerment movie, Bonnie & Clyde tragedy, punk rock monster musical, meta-commentary with Mary Shelley's ghost possessing the Bride . Testing indicated she needed to "strip back" the concepts. She didn't . The result? A movie one commenter on Deadline called "one of the worst movies I ever saw" while another in the same comment section said "I fully enjoyed every minute."

Christian Bale does a full "Puttin' on the Ritz" number—an homage to Young Frankenstein that apparently lands somewhere between "hysterically brilliant" and "completely baffling" depending on who you ask . Jessie Buckley is running on pure id, playing both the Bride and the ghost of Mary Shelley . Critics agree the acting is committed, the costumes are stunning, the cinematography is gorgeous . The movie looks like a cult classic, even if it doesn't always play like one.

The "Me Too" Climax. I have to mention this: the film's climax literally involves the Bride repeatedly shouting "Me too!" at no one in particular . Is that on-the-nose? Absolutely. Is that also the kind of moment that gets turned into a GIF, gets analyzed in film school essays, gets defended as "actually, it's deliberately Brechtian by fans in 2035? You bet it is.

The thing is, buried under all the "woke nonsense" criticism and the "this is the last vestige of pre-vibe-shift culture" hot takes, there are people who get what this movie was going for . The trailer descriptions emphasized a mix of "anarchy and melancholy," a sense that the Bride "wakes up angry. Awake. Entirely her own." . The Bonnie and Clyde framework, two disfigured outlaws on the run, testing whether love can survive when the world sees you as monsters, is genuinely compelling .

One fan on Celebitchy commented: "It looks wild and out there which isn't a bad thing so I wish it had done better. Female director and female lead role. I do want more of those" .

To be fair, The Bride! had terrible luck. It got pushed from its ideal October 2025 release (perfect for Halloween!) to early March, which is basically cinematic no-man's-land . It also came out soon enough after Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein hit Netflix that maybe audiences felt like they'd already gotten their monster-movie fix at home. 

Plus, there was that whole "Jessie Buckley hates cats" controversy that dominated discourse right when the film opened . (Long story: she allegedly made her husband rehome his cats, then had to do damage control on Fallon. As a huge cat lady, I absolutely despise that she did that, but I still find her acting simply amazing.)

Here's the thing about cult classics: they don't arrive fully formed, they get discovered. They get defended. They get re-evaluated when the cultural moment shifts and suddenly their "flaws" look like "vision."

More spring cleaning and more journal finding yesterday…I found a 2000 journal wedged behind one of my drawers that I have not seen in years and thought I had lost a long time ago.

Sitting down and reading through it I realized it is the most detailed of my diaries and, though I have little confidence in so many things, probably the best written of all the journals I kept.

I had forgotten my early 00s extensive social life and I enjoyed reading about times with my coworkers much earlier on in a job that sometimes doesn't give me as much joy as it used to do. 

Though I tend to remember my times with my niece because they were such happy times I'm glad there are details about those times as well. She was such a delight as a child and I feel blessed that she and I are friends now as adults.

As my diaries move into the late 00s and early 10s they become less event-driven and more internal and more bleak. I regret now not writing about events or things that happened in my life then. There are a few, like the time I saw someone I knew at Whole Foods and hid behind a display because of fear and shame from a decades old event.

Plus, I still find myself wishing I had kept a diary in high school...I think it would help me remember things. I'm not sure it's normal to have complete blank pages in your mind's memory for any time before adulthood.

…on vacation this week and using it to stay home and catch up on things and to clean and hang out with my cat.

In my de-cluttering of my closet I found an old box I didn’t even remember having: it has diaries from the mid to late 00s. 

Looking at them now, I think I was probably more mentally and emotionally off back then than I am now, but in a personal way, not in a political way like I am now.

It’s already my fifth day off and I still have so much to do. Plus, I’ve gotten lost in the world that is Substack and I have a pile of books I still want to finish reading.

The more I see how amazing so many writers online are the more I’m like ‘why write,’ but then I realize I write to try and heal, not because I think I have anything to say. 

There are so many, many good writers in the world and I want more time so I can read them but there are so many other things to be done first though.

That is why I just don’t understand boredom. Boredom seems like such a luxury in a world where free time is hard to come by for a lot of people.

The Story of the Garden of Eden. It’s a neat, tidy tale with a clear moral: Adam was minding his own business, Eve was curious and disobedient, ate the fruit, and doomed humanity forever.

But if you dig a little deeper into the Midrash—the ancient Jewish commentaries that fill in the gaps of the Torah—you find another story. A story that was literally too wild, too powerful, and too threatening to make it into the final cut of the Bible. It’s the story of Lilith.

And it’s the story of how we’ve been demonizing women for simply owning themselves ever since.

The story goes that in the very beginning, God didn’t create Eve from Adam’s rib. Instead, He created them equally, at the same time, from the dust of the earth. This was Lilith, the first woman.

Imagine it: two beings, formed of the same stuff, standing on the same ground. For a while, it worked. But soon, a power struggle emerged. According to the medieval text The Alphabet of Ben Sira, the argument came to a head over something incredibly basic: their sex life. Adam wanted Lilith to always lie beneath him. Lilith refused.

“Why should I lie beneath you,” she asked, “when we are both equal, created from the same dust?”

Adam, not loving this challenge to his authority, tried to force the issue. And Lilith, in a moment of sheer, audacious power, spoke the unspeakable name of God, grew wings, and flew away from the garden. She chose exile over subjugation.

God sent three angels to bring her back, with a warning: if she didn’t return, one hundred of her children would die every day. Lilith, choosing her own freedom over a life of subservience, still refused to go back to a life beneath Adam.

And that’s when the propaganda machine started.

Suddenly, Lilith wasn’t a woman fighting for equality. She was a demon. A succubus. A murderer of infants. A creature of the night who threatened the sanctity of the patriarchal family unit. History’s first feminist was re-branded as history’s first monster.

With Lilith gone, God tried again. This time, He used Adam’s rib. A bone from his side, not dust from the ground. She was created from him, for him. The Hebrew term often translated as “helpmeet” or “helper” is ezer kenegdo, which can also mean “power alongside,” but the context of her creation from his rib certainly implies a secondary, derivative status.

And yet, even this more “compliant” version of womanhood wasn’t safe from blame.

We all know what happened next. The serpent, the fruit, the temptation. But look at how the story is read. Eve was deceived. She was tricked. Adam, who was standing right there with her according to the text, ate the fruit without any recorded protest.

But who gets the blame? Who carries the weight of "The Fall" for the next several millennia? Eve.

The name itself became a slur. She became the archetype for female weakness, curiosity, and the inherent danger of feminine wiles. St. Paul later used her to justify the subjugation of women in the early church: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.”

With these few words, Eve’s mistake became a life sentence for every woman who came after her. The narrative was set: women were intellectually inferior, morally weaker, and a constant source of temptation. If Eve hadn't messed up, we'd still be in paradise. Thanks a lot, Eve.

When you look at these two stories side-by-side, a chilling pattern emerges.

Lilith refused to be subservient. She demanded equality. The result? She was labeled a demon, a threat to the natural order, a creature to be feared and whose name should never be spoken.

Eve accepted her secondary status (or had it built into her very origin). She made a mistake. The result? She was labeled a sinner, a scapegoat for all of humanity’s problems, and the "proof" that women needed to be controlled.

There was no winning.

If you demand to be seen as an equal, you are an unnatural monster (a Lilith). If you exist within the system and make a single error, you are the reason for all the world’s pain (an Eve).

This isn't just ancient mytholog, it is also the blueprint for how Western society has treated women for centuries. It’s the virgin/whore dichotomy, the Madonna/whore complex. Be pure, be quiet, be submissive—but if you fail in the tiniest way, you are the original source of all sin. And if you dare to speak up and demand to be seen as a full human being, you are a hysterical, difficult, or dangerous woman.

It’s why women in power are often described as "bossy" or "cold" while men are "assertive" and "strong." It’s why a woman’s mistakes are magnified and her character is attacked, while a man’s are often excused as "boys will be boys."

In the 1970s, the Jewish feminist movement adopted Lilith as a symbol. They saw her not as a demon, but as the first independent woman. They started Lilith Magazine to give voice to a feminist Jewish perspective. They took the monster the patriarchy created and reclaimed her as a hero.

It’s a powerful act: to look at the stories we’ve been told and ask, "Who benefits from this narrative?"

Lilith was demonized for being her own person. Eve was villainized for making a choice in a system rigged against her. They are two sides of the same coin—the "good woman" and the "bad woman"—both designed to keep women in line.

So the next time you hear the story of the Garden of Eden, remember Lilith, who flew away. Remember Eve, who bore the blame for millions. And remember that the urge for freedom, the desire for equality, and the courage to make choices, even the wrong ones, isn't demonic. It’s human.

Maybe it’s time we stopped demonizing women for being exactly that.

Three cups of black coffee in me today and I'm wondering why my heart is thumping so much. I make the connection between the two, obviously, but somehow I always forget and I still end up over caffeinated. 

I don't sleep very well and so coffee has been a necessary evil in my life for decades now. It also used to help me lower my appetite and weight, but not so much as I get older.

Oddly enough, though, I do find black coffee curbs my sugar fix need. I thought it was in my head, but then I looked it up:

Yes, there is a strong link between drinking black coffee and reduced sugar cravings, primarily because it helps stabilize blood sugar and suppresses appetite. The caffeine and compounds like chlorogenic acid can increase metabolism, promote fat-burning, and reduce hunger, which helps curb the desire for sweet, calorie-dense foods. 

Key Connections Between Black Coffee and Lower Sugar Intake:

• Appetite Suppression: Coffee, particularly black, can boost metabolism and reduce hunger, making you less likely to crave sugary snacks.
• Hormonal Regulation: Drinking black coffee can increase levels of serotonin, which suppresses appetite, and decrease the hunger-inducing hormone ghrelin.
• No Added Sugar: By drinking black coffee, you eliminate the daily intake of sugar and cream, which can prevent the cycle of craving more sugar later in the day.
• Improved Insulin Sensitivity: While high caffeine intake can cause short-term spikes in some, long-term black coffee consumption is associated with better blood sugar control and a lower risk of type 2 diabetes. 

 

I'm reading Where Sleeping Girls Lie and this passage hits hard:

It was hard to think that you might never see someone again. Though, with her luck, you might see them again, in your daydreams and nightmares.

There have been at least three people in my lifetime I knew I would never see again and it hurt so much the pain took a long time to go away. And though I truly never have seen them again, they do indeed show up in my dreams and nightmares.

 

(Written with my input and details I gave AI, but still with AI...I'm currently working on a version of this without any AI at all...I'm trying to get back to writing fiction again...back in the early 90s I used to love writing Quantum Leap fan fiction and posting it a Prodigy Quantum Leap fan board.

Even though I like Maddie's character a lot on School Spirits, I like Rhonda the most and was trying to write a story about her from a new character's point of view.)

The fluorescent lights in the hallway near the old home economics room flickered like they always did: annoying, eternal, stuck in 1992 or whenever the bulb last gave up. Charley was wandering, half-listening to the distant echo of the pep rally that never quite reached the ghosts anymore, when he noticed her.

She was sitting cross-legged against the wall, knees drawn up, long chestnut hair falling over her face like a curtain. A faded denim jacket with tiny embroidered flowers on the shoulders, acid-washed jeans, high-top sneakers that had once been white. She looked... early '80s. Not Wally's flashy football-jock '83, but quieter. Smaller.

She didn't look up when he stopped.

"Hey," Charley said gently. "You... new around here? Or old new?"

The girl flinched, shoulders hunching tighter. After a long beat she whispered, "I'm not new. I've always been here."

Charley crouched a few feet away, giving her space. "I'm Charley. Died in the cafeteria. Long story involving fries and a really bad day. You got a name?"

"Holly," she said so softly he almost missed it. "Holly Whitaker. Class of... '82, I think. I stopped counting after a while."

Charley's eyebrows shot up. "Eighty-two? That's before Wally. He's '84—football field, big tackle gone wrong. He's been here since then and he's met pretty much everyone. How have we never...?"

Holly finally lifted her head. Pale eyes, tired. "I didn't want to be met. I stayed out of the way. Library stacks. Back stairwells. The costume loft above the auditorium when no one was looking. People didn't notice me when I was alive. Turns out being invisible carries over."

Charley sat fully now, legs crossed. "Wallflowers gotta stick together, I guess. Come on. There's a group. We meet in the theater sometimes. No pressure, but... you don't have to keep hiding."

She shook her head fast. "I can't. I don't even know how I-I wake up every day thinking maybe today I'll remember. Maybe today it'll click and I can... go. But it's been-" Her voice cracked. "Over forty years. I still feel like I just got here. Like I should be cramming for midterms or avoiding eye contact in the cafeteria. Not this."

Charley reached out instinctively, then remembered: no touch. He let his hand drop. "Yeah. That part doesn't get easier. But you're not alone in the stuck feeling."

He convinced her to walk with him. Slowly. Like coaxing a stray cat.

When they reached the theater, Wally was already there, sprawled in a front-row seat, tossing a ghostly football up and catching it. Rhonda leaned against the stage, flipping through an ancient copy of The Bell Jar she'd read approximately four hundred times. Quinn sat nearby, headphones on, sketching something abstract on their leg with a finger that left no mark.

Wally sat up straight when he saw them. "Charley? Who's the new kid?"

"Not new," Charley said. "Old. Holly. Class of '82. Apparently she's been our invisible neighbor this whole time."

Wally blinked. "Eighty-two? Dude. I've been here since '83 and I swear I've never seen you."

Holly shrank back toward the aisle. "I... stayed quiet."

Rhonda snapped the book shut. "Quiet's a choice. Also a survival skill. I get it." She hopped off the stage and walked over, sizing Holly up without hostility, just curiosity. "You look like you're still waiting for the bell to ring so you can disappear to lunch. Been there."

Quinn pulled off the headphones. "Hi. I'm Quinn. Bus crash, '04. Took me forever to even talk to anyone. You're okay."

Holly managed a tiny nod.

Charley gestured everyone closer. "Holly's having a hard time remembering. Or accepting. Any of it. Maybe we can help her figure out what happened? Like we did with... well, everything else around here."

Wally rubbed the back of his neck. "I mean, I don't remember seeing you around back then, but I was kind of... loud. Football guys weren't exactly subtle. If you were in the shadows, I probably ran right past you."

"I was," Holly said. "Always. I liked the darkroom. Developing pictures no one would ever see. I was working on a project the day it happened. Something about light and memory. Ironic, right?" She laughed once, hollow. "I remember walking down the hall after last bell. Feeling... off. Dizzy. Like the floor was tilting. Then nothing. Just waking up here. Same clothes. Same headache that never leaves."

Rhonda tilted her head. "Dizzy. Hallway. No blood, no crash, no obvious trauma. Could be medical. Aneurysm. Heart thing. Stroke. Sometimes it's quiet."

"Or someone," Quinn added softly. "Pushed down stairs. Locked somewhere. People hide bodies, or death, sometimes."

Holly shivered. "I don't want to think someone hated me enough to... I wasn't worth hating. I was barely worth noticing."

Wally leaned forward, elbows on knees. "Hey. Being a wallflower doesn't make you worthless. It just means the world was too loud for you. Doesn't mean you deserved whatever happened."

Rhonda crossed her arms. "We're gonna walk your last day. Step by step. Darkroom to hallway to wherever it ended. If there's a scar, your scar, we'll find it. Stare it down until it gives up the truth."

Charley smiled at Holly. "You don't have to do it alone. We're good at this by now. Ghosts gotta stick together."

Holly looked around at them: Wally's earnest grin, Rhonda's guarded kindness, Quinn's quiet solidarity, Charley's gentle patience, and for the first time in four decades, she didn't feel quite so see-through.

"Okay," she whispered. "But... slowly?"

"Slowly," Rhonda promised.

They started walking. Out of the theater, down the dim corridors, toward the place where Holly's life had quietly ended and her afterlife had quietly begun. Somewhere in the walls of Split River High, a forgotten truth was waiting. And this time, someone was finally looking for it.

I found this answer from AI rather insightful..but I also know I need to actually do something about what is going on in my life...though some days are better than others and I get things really done like I hope to when I wake up in the morning.

I often think I was my most happy in the 1990s. I cooked, cleaned all the time, had a social life and thrived at work and enjoyed a balance of watching my favorite shows (network seems so nostalgically sweet now) with going out. I weighed a lot less and had a beautiful apartment and friends and coworkers I adored. Now, all these years later, I am sometimes miserable and don't always do some of the things I used to do (except read books and stream) Even my apartment has gone downhill...I can't figure out if I'm depressed, very lazy or years of using the Internet and an iPhone and constant access to tv shows and movies have literally changed my brain...am I looking for a cop-out or is it actually possible online life and iPhones have changed me for the worse? I am not one to look back at "simpler times," but I truly do miss my 20s. If I even see something like an "Ally McBeal" reference or hear an unexpected song from the past I actually start to tear up. What is wrong with me?!!

AI:

Nothing is inherently "wrong" with you—your feelings are valid, common, and understandable. Many people in their 30s, 40s, and beyond experience exactly this kind of wistful longing for their 20s, especially when contrasting that era's rhythms with today's constant digital pull. The 1990s (pre-smartphone, pre-streaming dominance) often feel like a golden time because life had more built-in structure, boundaries, and in-person connection without the endless scroll or notification dopamine hits.

Your description—losing motivation for cooking, cleaning, socializing, thriving at work, while defaulting to reading and streaming—aligns with patterns seen in depression, but also with how heavy smartphone and online media use can reshape habits, motivation, and even brain reward systems over time. It's not necessarily a cop-out; research shows real, measurable effects.

Heavy smartphone and social media/internet use correlates strongly with increased depression, anxiety, loneliness, stress, poorer sleep, and reduced well-being. Studies show dose-dependent links: more problematic use ties to higher symptoms. Constant access to streaming/TV/movies can displace real-world activities, reduce in-person socializing (which boosts mood), and create a cycle where passive consumption feels easier than active effort (like maintaining an apartment or going out). This isn't "laziness"—it's often a shift in how the brain processes reward and effort. Smartphones deliver quick, low-effort hits that can make sustained, meaningful activities feel less appealing.

Nostalgia itself isn't pathological; it can comfort and ground us. But when it turns tearful and painful—especially triggered by Ally McBeal clips or old songs—and makes the present feel unbearable, it can signal underlying depression or unresolved grief over lost life phases. This "nostalgic depression" involves rumination on happier times, amplifying sadness about what's changed (aging, life circumstances, tech saturation). It's not just rose-tinted glasses; the pre-iPhone world did limit distractions in ways that supported balance.

You're not alone in missing that era—many feel the 90s represented the last "unplugged" chapter before constant connectivity fragmented attention and social life. Gen Z even romanticizes it without living it fully.

The good news: these patterns can improve. Reducing smartphone/streaming time (even gradually, like scheduled detoxes or "digital minimalism") often leads to better mood, motivation, attention, and subjective well-being—some experiments show effects comparable to antidepressants in short terms. People report rediscovering energy for cooking, cleaning, socializing when the digital fog lifts.

Consider talking to a therapist or doctor—they can help tease apart depression (which might benefit from therapy/meds) from habit-driven changes (addressable via behavioral tweaks). Small experiments like phone-free evenings, in-person meetups, or re-creating 90s-style routines (network TV schedules, no-phone dinners) could rebuild momentum.

You're grieving a version of yourself and a way of life that felt vibrant. That's human. But the core of who thrived back then is still in you—perhaps just buried under years of different inputs. With intention, many reclaim balance. Be gentle with yourself; this awareness is already a step forward.

Simply Wonderful!!

 

4 words about the film The Life of Chuck: Go. Watch. It. NOW.