...because if you don't laugh, you'll cry

The above isn't really that kind to humans, but somehow it still makes me laugh, even though I probably shouldn't. It's horrible when someone (you think, at least) used to like you enough as a human being suddenly can't bear your company anymore. This week has been especially kind of hard because I'm starting to worry the damage is permanent and we will not only never be good friends, but struggle even in the most basic of acquaintance.

They are too polite to say so, but I can see it in their eyes and the way they avoid direct contact...I feel like I'm back in high school again, only this time (at least I hope not) I didn't make any overtures of unwelcome friendship, because this time around I knew almost immediately they wouldn't be wanted. My feelings must have just come through by osmosis or my inability to put on a good poker face. 

Now, I don't know what to do. It's always been a bit of a challenge trying to balance being nice without being a pain, but I know it's not my imagination these past few weeks. This article below has some helpful advice, though I suspect it's meant for younger people. After all, as a grown woman, I should probably have this all down pat by now.

Here's the article, with emphasis on this (for me):


...but reacting badly to the situation will only make you look desperate.

http://friendship.about.com/od/New-Friendships/fl/When-Someone-Just-Doesnrsquot-Like-You.htm

The thing is, though, right or wrong, I still care about this person and hope things are going okay for her. Since I can't really ask, I'll have to settle for wishing her well within my own thoughts and heart. I don't see the harm in that.

If... If I could, though, I would say, I am so sorry you are going through so much right now. I wish I could make things better for you and your family." But no matter how I wish I could and how sincere I would be, I can never say that to her. She doesn't want my concern nor my friendship and I have to accept that...

I'm reading today's New York Times and I saw these letters to the editor, all of which are good and make valid points. Having grown up in a household where "fat" was a four letter word, I understand (as so many women do) how our self-esteem can be unbearably linked to our body image.

You can read the letters here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/opinion/fat-talk-damages-people-and-society.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

The original article is here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/opinion/sunday/the-perils-of-fat-talk.html

This...

I am getting ready to try and fall asleep and full of worry about people I care about and the way things have been lately and I see this on Pinterest and it helps a little...the part about her personality "always getting lost somewhere between her heart and her mouth"...because it reminds me that others have felt this way too.

and also this (boy, can I relate to this!):

She’s in here, I wanted to respond. But she only comes out when I’m writing. You thought you were hiring Writing Me. But instead what you got was Actual Me. Big mistake.

 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/21/writing-my-way-to-a-new-self/?ref=opinion&_r=0

If Billie Holiday soothes my sadness, David Bowie helps me channel my outrage. He's just who I need to hear when I'm frustrated or angry with things I can't control...or even with myself. I'm not only upset with the news, I'm upset with myself and the mistakes I seem to keep making in my personal life. Somehow, David Bowie helps.

 

I'm wishing I had gotten my hands on the UK 3-cd set of Nothing Has Changed, but until I can track that down I'm listening to the standard one found more commonly in stores, online and even the library, where I checked out mine.

 

Most of the time, there is music for every mood...most of the time. Right now, this fits perfectly. I've only been following David Bowie since his Let's Dance days, but over the years I've visited his early days and, in his very long and illustrious career, there are very few albums of his I don't like.

 

This review appears, un-credited, on the allmusic website. It doesn't mention "Thursday's Child," which is completely "new" to me and something I really like. Apparently, Bowie named the song after Eartha Kitt's autobiography, a book he loved when was 14.

 

Nothing Has Changed is a bit of a cheeky title for a career retrospective from an artist who is known as a chameleon, and this triple-disc compilation has other tricks up its sleeve. Chief among these is sequencing the SuperDeluxe 59-track set in reverse chronological order, so it opens with the brand-new, jazz-inflected "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)" and concludes with David Bowie's debut single, "Liza Jane." On paper, this seems a bit like a stunt, but in actuality it's a sly way to revisit and recontextualize a career that has been compiled many, many times before. Previously, there have been single discs, double discs, and triple-disc boxes, but the largest of these was Sound + Vision, a box released in 1989, and the most recent was 2002's The Best of Bowie, which featured slightly different track listings in different territories but generally stopped in the late '90s. The two-CD version of Nothing Has Changed resembles this 2002 set -- there are absences, notably "John, I'm Only Dancing," "Diamond Dogs," and "TVC15," but they're not noticed among the parade of standards -- but it's easily overshadowed by the triple-disc SuperDeluxe set. This version of Nothing Has Changed touches upon nearly every phrase of Bowie's career, bypassing Tin Machine but finding space for early pre-"Space Oddity" singles that often don't make Bowie's comps, and naturally it samples from his fine Y2K records, plus his 2013 comeback The Next Day. This expansiveness alone would be noteworthy, but when it's combined with the reverse sequencing the compilation forces listeners to reconsider an artist whose legacy seemed so set in stone it appropriately was enshrined in museums. Obvious high-water marks are undersold -- there's not as much Ziggy as usual, nor as much Berlin -- so other eras can also enter the canon, whether it's the assured maturity of the new millennium or the appealing juvenilia of the '60s. The end result is something unexpected: a compilation that makes us hear an artist we know well in a whole new way.

 

 

 

Almost every day there is an article on Yahoo about radical Christians or the far (far) right wanting to push their views on other people by punishing them legally. Some of these views include very extreme measures such as killing gay people and making sure women "know their place" or don't have easily available and safe access to reproductive health care, even if their lives are at stake.

I don't know if people like Ted Cruz or (to an even larger extreme) men like the lawyer in California who wants to make it legal to kill gay people have a chance in pushing their power further. I don't even want to think about a world like that, I would sooner die first than live there.

Yet there are lots of people who would gladly follow people like Cruz and even Matthew Gregory McLaughlin (the lawyer who is proposing a bill that would advocate the murder of gays and lesbians) and this scares me so much I can barely type this.

As I often wonder sometimes, both as a lesbian and a woman, how do people like this dare to think they speak for God or humanity? I would think even the most hardened homophobic would agree killing people is wrong.

I am constantly amazed that there is mentality we live in a gay friendly country when you can still be fired in 29 states for being gay and many of us struggle for any kind of relationship with our families simply because they cannot accept who we are...

This McLaughlin guy apparently can go ahead with this initiative so that if it gets enough signatures (365,000 according to news reports) it can be on the ballot in November. The scary thing is I think there are actually those who would willingly sign it (and not just through some kind of deception on the part of the people asking for signatures.) This upsets me so much that I can't begin to describe my feelings.