Cassie's Miscellany

fakescience:

“Fat” Being called fat can be devastating for people. It represents more complex issues than we realize, and in a single, ugly word, we can trivialize a lifetime of pain. Fat represents vulnerability, because unlike the other labels on this list, you wear it on the outside. Fat represents heartbreak, for all the failed diets and disappointing workouts. Fat represents fear, for all the health risks you hear and read about constantly. Fat represents powerlessness, because you can’t just wake up and stop being fat, no matter how much you want to. And fat represents pressure, for all the images of societal perfection we’re presented with and long to conform to. In a body-obsessed culture this three letter word can fracture our fragile identity and self worth. Our body matters to us and is the primary representation of how we want others to see us. That’s why this word can be so hurtful. On the flipside, finding after finding confirms that obesity has, indeed, been rising for decades. It’s not an imaginary problem, but it’s also not something that can be simply labeled and shunned. If we’re going to arrive collectively at a healthier and happier place, we have to find a way to help each other along without labeling, isolating and trivializing. Fat lies.

Yes, I feel narcissistic right now.  1. I love music. I have incredibly eclectic taste. I probably listen to a lot of bands that you’ve never heard of, but I would love to tell you about.  2. I like to play music, too. I took piano lessons for ten years and played the clarinet in band for eight. I wish I had more time to play.  3. I aspire to travel the world in my free-time… someday.  4. I have never been 100% sure that I’ve wanted to be a teacher. 5. I tend not to stress out, and high-strung people get on my nerves. Being carefree is the way to be. 6. One of my newest hobbies is learning how to cook well.  7. I like beards (most of the time).  8. I love playing games… especially board games. This is one area of life where I’m competitive.  9. I’m really good at accents.  10. I like making people happy.  11. My car is a 1989 and has 73,000 miles on it.  12. I really, really like grammar.  13. I have book-lust. I like reading good literature and discussing good literature.  14. I think in the next five years I would like to go to grad school for clinical psychology.  15. Sometimes, I am painfully shy. Other times, I am really outgoing. It just kind of depends.  16. I like gnomes.  17. I am in love with quirks and quirky people.  18. I am an awkward magnet—most of the time by choice.  19. I love me a good film.  20. I love to laugh. And I think that I have a really good sense of humor. :) 21. I almost went to college in Southern California because I thought that’s what I wanted. Obviously, God had very different plans for me.  22. Somedays, I feel like I really am Calvin College because I have been ridiculously involved. 23. I am always up for a glass of wine and a good conversation.  24. 50% of the time I don’t want to grow up. 50% of the time I cannot wait.  25. I have had over ten different jobs: nanny, Burger King (sad, but true), waitress at Rainbow Grill, hostess at Village Seafood and Grille, metal assembly at General Motors, house cleaner, warehouse at Notions Marketing, counselor at Camp Geneva, RA, Orientation Intern, Student Development Office intern, and other little jobs. What to infer from this information: I value a variety of different experiences. I have never been fired. :)  Wow. That was intense.

A Few Ways To Say “I Love You” MAR. 7, 2012 By STEPHANIE GEORGOPULOS Say it aloud to no one in particular for practice, just to see how it feels. Let its syllables play on your tongue until you think you have it just right; memorize the inflection and the tone and the pitch of your three-word speech. Compare it to the noise you eventually hear when you announce it to something other than an empty room. Someday you will know how strange, how frightening the words sound when you have an audience of one, how unprepared you’ll be to hear them escape from your mouth, how those words are all at once familiar and foreign. No amount of practice will prepare you for that. Show it by taking action, by picking up the phone and calling someone when texting or e-mailing or ignoring them altogether is easiest. Call your friend when you hear of a promotion, a breakup, a cross-country move and forgive them when months replace weeks and your phone remains silent. The reason we don’t call each other more often is not a selfish one, it’s a human one. We feel alienated, overwhelmed, embarrassed for having not done so sooner. Show your friends that it’s okay to be busy and forgetful and flawed. Show them you care about what they’re doing anyway. Scream it in your head for three hours straight while you’re out to dinner with someone you can’t believe exists, someone who erases the past and the future and your peripheral vision just by opening his mouth and using letters to form words that create the kind of sentences that replace all of your skepticism and pain with pure, unmitigated joy; the kind of monologues that incite violence only because you have more adrenaline coursing through your veins than you know what to do with. Repeat it in your head at the highest volume, over and over because if you don’t you might punch him or squeeze him or say it out loud. Declare it by sitting at the foot of your grandfather’s bed when he begins to tell you about your grandmother again, recalling how pretty she was, telling you how he misses her but that he’ll be seeing her again real soon. Don’t think about your cell phone charging in the other room; forget about the microwave alerting you that it’s completed its task. Sit there as he shows you the portrait he painted of her when they were young, describing the nuances of each stroke knowingly, like he’s aware that you’ve only really looked at it in passing. Say it by listening. Listen to him remember as his internal clock ticks in the background, quietly and off beat, his batteries fading before you both. Recite it involuntarily when hanging up after an arduous call with your mother, a respite after remembering how taxing it can be to share DNA. Write it in a birthday card, in a text message, on a Post-It note whose message will long outlast adhesive. Spell it with the tip of your finger on someone else’s back when you’re sure that you mean it but are unsure of how to say it; and say it because when you mean it, it should never be left unsaid. From