Sometimes I have big thoughts. Other times I don’t.
Image via this site.
Having a blog is one of those things which really forces you to face your limitations. There are people in my life who would say that I am definitely ‘creative’, but I can’t escape the fact that if I was, in fact, really a ‘creative thinker’, I would manage to post something interesting more than once a week.
Ah well.
While I try to dream up something interesting for you to read, here are the things I’ve been thinking about this week:
1. Why are people using these goofy smiley faces in their Twitter names?
I don’t know if I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole or what, but suddenly a whole bunch of people I’m following on Twitter are using
ツ
in their Twitter names. Why? What does it mean? Is it a special club? The fruit of some guru’s workshop on Effective Personal Branding in Social Media? I don’t like it. I don’t know how to replicate it, either.
2. How do boring people get so popular on Twitter?
The person referenced above often tweets gems like “When you feel down, go be a blessing to somebody else…it always makes you feel better!”. And yet she has 75k followers. And is supposedly a Forbes Top 50 Social Media Power Influencer. I do not understand this.
3. The weird story of Lama Christie and her husband’s death
A few years ago, Slate ran a story about Michael Roach and Christie McNally, two ‘Buddhist Monks’ who’d gone on a retreat during which they’d vowed to stay within 15 feet of each other – for 3 years. In April, ‘Lama Christie’ was found delirious beside her new husband’s dead body in a cave near their ‘monastery’, from which they’d been expelled. The whole story seems strange, and for some reason I’ve become a little obsessed with it.
4. Miranda Hart, comedienne
The other day I got engrossed in what Max calls “another of my British Period Dramas” and was taken with one of the supporting actresses, Miranda Hart. I’d never heard of her – though I probably should have – and discovered she has her own comedy show in the UK. She is very, very funny, and I offer this (long, but worth it) clip as evidence:
4(a) The above-referenced “British period drama” was Call the Midwife.
It’s about a young woman who goes to work as a midwife and district nurse in the East End of London in the 1950s, and what she finds there. It got great reviews and some BAFTA TV award nominations, but I’m almost positive its core demographic is women aged 49+, so I won’t go on too much about it.
5. Fiona Apple is a fantastic lyricist. Or maybe poet.
Look, I’ll admit that I couldn’t really get behind Extraordinary Machine, even though I’d loved Fiona Apple‘s previous two albums. But she’s got a new album out, and it’s hard not to love a title like “The Idler Wheel is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve you More than Ropes Will Ever Do.” No, I don’t know exactly what it means, but who cares? There’s a rhythm to those words that you just can’t beat. (See what I did there?)
There’s a very nice video, too:
It’s possible that Fiona Apple is a totally insufferable artiste in real life, of course, as some have claimed – but I feel almost certain that a girl who’s willing to wear an octopus on her head must have a sense of humour in there somewhere.