It takes me back

Back to when I asked for a Nintendo, and my dad said "No". And so then I just had to watch my friend Kirk Snyder play. It looked like so much fun.

I could do this all day

http://soytuaire.labuat.com/

Saw this on NPR: All Songs Considered.

$.25 life

AHHHHHHHH! SEVERAL SECTIONS OF THIS ARTICLE ACCURATELY SUMMARIZE ME!

But more elements directly pigeonhole Oliver, so that makes me feel better.

www.eyeweekly.com/features/article/55882

Some key passages:
Boomer and post-boom parents with more money and autonomy than their predecessors has resulted in benignly self-indulgent children who were sold on their own uniqueness, place in the world and right to fulfillment in a way no previous generation has felt entitled to, and an increasingly entrepreneurial, self-driven creation myth based on personal branding, social networking and untethered lifestyle spending is now responsible for our identities.

The Quarterlife Crisis remains largely a middle-class, Stuff White People Like kind of problem, and usually manifests itself where certain problematic social norms used to exist, like who had access to education and interesting work, and who was allowed adventure and self-determination.

Having so much — youth, ability, independence — can feel like the worst possible scenario.

I wasn't spoiled as a child, and I'm not headed back to graduate school, and I'm not in debt, but I do identify with parts of this. And more than the specifics, I identify with the general theme of the article. I need boundaries -- feel free to suggest some.

Could be worse though.

The Grant Study

Most happiness/social psychology research is bollocks, because everyone is different and people are happy or unhappy for so many different rhymes and reasons. Sells a lot of books though.

My friend Sulove gave me a copy of this study and because of the approach I think it's worth passing around.

It's a study that's been running for 72 years on a group of 268 men, with the intention of identifying the common threads running through happy lives. It was originally slated as a research in what makes people successful, but the researchers quickly realized that since successful people are often unhappy that didn't make for a very interesting payoff.

www.theatlantic.com/doc/200906/happiness -- it's well interesting.


My biggest takeaways:

1. Our happiness depends on how we adapt to change, disappointment and tragedy.

At the bottom of the pile are the unhealthiest, or “psychotic,” adaptations—like paranoia, hallucination, or megalomania—which, while they can serve to make reality tolerable for the person employing them, seem crazy to anyone else.

One level up are the “immature” adaptations, which include acting out, passive aggression, hypochondria, projection, and fantasy. These aren’t as isolating as psychotic adaptations, but they impede intimacy. “Neurotic” defenses are common in “normal” people. These include intellectualization (mutating the primal stuff of life into objects of formal thought); dissociation (intense, often brief, removal from one’s feelings); and repression, which, Vaillant says, can involve “seemingly inexplicable naïveté, memory lapse, or failure to acknowledge input from a selected sense organ.”

The healthiest, or “mature,” adaptations include altruism, humor, anticipation (looking ahead and planning for future discomfort), suppression (a conscious decision to postpone attention to an impulse or conflict, to be addressed in good time), and sublimation (finding outlets for feelings, like putting aggression into sport, or lust into courtship).


2. I like this for a somewhat mathematical conclusion.

[Valliant] identified seven major factors that predict healthy aging, both physically and psychologically.

Employing mature adaptations was one. The others were education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise, and healthy weight.

It goes on to say that if five or six of these factors are in your favor, your chances of being happy are quite high. If three or fewer are in you favor, there's almost no possibility that you're happy.

In my view, education, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, exercising and staying a healthy weight are all check boxes. You do them or you do not.

Having a stable marriage is more complicated and obviously many external factors contribute to this which makes it more difficult to control or predict.

In my opinion, adaptation is the wildcard. Bad things happen, we are frustrated by our failures and inadequacies and we are shaken by things that happen to us and to those around us. To some degree I'm sure the way we adapt is innate, but there's also some choice involved. And knowing the different ways we adapt seems like an important step in reacting to things in a healthy way.


3. Other interesting bits and bobs.

The line about how someone will cross the street to avoid talking to someone who gave them a complement the previous day. Some of us find stress in being praised.

Forgiveness is an absolutely necessary part of being happy (and is a vital element of adaptation), but telling someone they should forgive someone causes stress. It needs to happen naturally.

Through all the adaptation and reinvention, it's really about relationships -- keeping in touch, being good to friends and family. It's a virtuous cycle.


4. It's funny how we can sometimes fool ourselves into thinking we're happy.

The entire study seems paradoxical in that each reader will have a different opinion of whether the main researcher is happy himself.

You're o vision

I have friends and family who watch and even enjoy American Idol, though I try my best to forget.

Talk about American Idol in Europe and you'll be reminded that it's a spin-off of the UK show Pop Idol. Not sure why building a machine that spits out F-list celebrities and awful music is a source of pride, but whatevs.

Well long before Pop Idol there was Eurovision, and after American Idol and Pop Idol are gone, Eurovision may still remain. To put the magnitude of this contest into context, American Idol tops out at about 40 million viewers -- Eurovision maxes out 600 million.

The quick intro to Eurovision is that each country in Europe has its own national contest to pick a song and performer to represent their country. Then everyone votes and it's totally based on political relationships and there's all this dodgy Eastern Bloc controversy every year, and in the end a terrible song wins.

The only past winners you've heard of are Celine Dion and ABBA.

More background here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurovision

AND THIS YEAR'S WINNER!

Movies on a plane!

Took a couple of long haul flights recently and was prolific in my movie watching.

Flight 1: London to Singapore

Babel - starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett - 2 hours, 22 minutes
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett - 2 hours, 46 minutes
Bolt - starring John Travolta and Miley Cyrus - 1 hour, 44 minutes

My thoughts:
So that was over 5 hours straight of Brad and Cate, which was a bit much. Babel was definitely the most entertaining of the three; I'm sorry it took me so long to get around to watching it. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (director) is a visionary. For a short story adaptation they sure made Benjamin Button into a long movie. It struck me as a studio movie -- almost too well polished, especially when they superimposed Cate's adult voice onto a 7 year-old girl. Bolt was John Travolta at his finest, so it was pretty lame.

Flight 2: Hong Kong to London

Pineapple Express - starring Seth Rogen and James Franco - 1 hour, 51 minutes
The Wrestler - starring Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei - 1 hour, 55 minutes
Tropic Thunder - starring Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr. - 1 hour, 47 minutes
Che: Part One - starring Benecio del Toro - 2 hours, 6 minutes

My thoughts:
Four movies back to back to back to back is pretty intense, and I followed that up with 3 TV episodes. Since I don't have a TV at the flat, this is how I roll. Pineapple Express was hilarious. The Wrestler was as good as I've heard. Marisa Tomei is still hot, maybe even too hot for an airplane. I thought Tropic Thunder was pretty dumb, and Che was a little too heavy for a flight. Peep Show, which was one of the shows I watched after the movies, is hilarious. One of the best shows around.

I had an awkward moment when I realized my seatmate -- this big fat guy -- was watching WALL-E. I realized he was watching it (and he realized I realized he was watching it) just as it is unveiled that in the future we will all be obese and lazy and rolled around in motorized chairs.

On other flights this year I've watched Australia, Rachel Getting Married, and Madagascar: Escape to Africa.

When I watched Australia, I felt like I was losing money. Rachel Getting Married was GREAT, and I'm pretty sure that wasn't the airplane effect where everything seems better with altitude (see Forgetting Sarah Marshall). And Madagascar is brilliant. There is no funnier cartoon character in history than King Julien.

The End.

FAMILY

Today's is (American) Mother's Day. I love my mom so much, although after seeing this perfect family in Hong Kong, I do wonder why we didn't take similar pictures. We all have regrets I suppose.

I LOVE YOU MOM!