Yearly Archives: 2007
The Awful Truth (1937)
They argue, and they divorce, but there’s a 90-day grace period. And of course, there’s Mr. Smith, the dog — Jerry uses him as a pretext to visit Lucy. During that time, each does his and her best to split their rebound romances through all sorts of wacky shenanigans. It’s a pleasure to watch them dog it out, each motivated by the love they still bear for the other. There’s a wonderful conclusion to the film, driven home eloquently by the director’s use of a grandfather clock and his/her figurines, animated by Cary and Irene. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!
Beauty redefined?
I received an email from JPG Magazine yesterday, where I’m a registered user. Apparently they’re putting photos together for a new theme, called Beauty Redefined. Quoting from their email:
“Every generation redefines what is beautiful, but ours has taken it to a whole new level. This theme invites you to throw out traditional notions of beauty and start over from scratch, redefining beauty for yourself. This theme is sponsored by SuicideGirls. SuicideGirls mixes the smarts, enthusiasm and DIY attitude of the best music and alternative culture sites with an unapologetic, grassroots approach to sexuality.”
Call me conservative, call me traditional, call me what you will, but I didn’t know immoral women posting naked photos of themselves on the internet is the new beauty standard. I thought that was called porn. But hey, what do I know, I’m only 30 years old and I’m happily married, right? I’m not “with the times”, whatever that means. This message from JPG Magazine really rubbed me the wrong way. Whether these girls realize it or not, when they post their provocative photos on the internet, they open themselves to all sorts of unwelcome treatment. Not only do they lose any sort of expectation of privacy, (since everyone’s seen just about everything they’ve got, and will automatically picture them naked when they see them,) but they attract ridicule and name-calling as well. Be honest, what would your parents or elders call a girl like that? I’ve heard words like slut and hussy before, and I doubt I’m alone in this. If you weren’t drooling over the photos and were in a healthy, committed relationship, what would you call them? I think the term misguided applies very well. Instead of baring their bodies to their lovers, in privacy, they bare them for every moron that’s out there.
Generally speaking, it’s bothersome to me that all kinds of subversive ideas like this are getting pushed around these days. Whatever happened to healthy, loving relationships? Whatever happened to common decency? How about NOT posting naked pictures of ourselves on the internet? What exactly is wrong with covering up our private parts, and only letting our spouses see our naked bodies? And what about NOT piercing various parts of our bodies, including the nether regions, or tattooing every spare inch of skin? Or what about NOT sleeping around? How about waiting for the right person?
But no, in our stupid quest for the extreme, for the fringe, for the alternative, we have to torture our bodies by piercing and tattooing them in all sorts of stupid places, we have to somehow keep an open mind to all the trash that’s out there, we should accept abusive, disrespectful or non-standard relationships as the norm — for example, “open marriage” is probably the biggest oxymoron I’ve ever heard.
Well, if the immoral, the fringe and the bizarre is the new beauty, I want none of it. I’ll stick with the tried and true classics, thank you very much.
Why are challenges a challenge?
I suppose they wouldn’t be called challenges otherwise, right? So how do we tackle them? What makes them so… challenging? Methinks it has to do with the things I’m about to write. They’re not groundbreaking, and I don’t think they’re new, but they’re worth stating.
First, we should remember that our attitude determines our altitude. Don’t know who said this, but it holds true here. How we perceive a challenge, whatever it might be, determines how we deal with it. Is it insurmountable? Do we think it is? Then we’ll cower before it and procrastinate till we absolutely can’t procrastinate anymore. And then, we’ll put out a mediocre, last-minute, so-called solution to the challenge that faced us. We’ll hope it’s good enough, and keep our heads low so we don’t meet with such challenges again. Or worse, we’ll give up. We’ll avoid it. We’ll call it quits.
Or do we find it an easy task? Great, then we’ll get right to work on it, till we get stuck, and all of a sudden, that small challenge starts growing before our eyes. The more stuck we get at whatever phase we are in our progress, the more scary the challenge becomes. If there’s a deadline looming, things get worse. All of a sudden, it’s insurmountable. It’s there that we face a choice. Do we move forward and get over that obstacle, or do we do what I outlined in the paragraph above? Most people opt for the “so-called solution”. Of course, others move right past that obstacle. They find a way, and they complete what they set out to do. We call them winners. I suppose we could call the others wieners, at the expense of offending them…
So what is it that separates the winner from the wiener? (I love saying that…) I don’t think it’s just innate ability, although that plays a part. The thing is, all of us have different gifts, and while we may be great at some things, we’re not so good at others. So what stumps us may be a piece of cake for the next fellow. What’s more, that means that we’ve all been winners AND wieners, so there’s no reason for anyone to feel offended. I think we can all think of times when we met with success, and times when we failed… or we put out the “so-called solution” and got by, but felt we could have done much better. I think what separates us is the ability (and this is not innate, but learned) to step back and look at things in a different light when we’re faced with an obstacle. It doesn’t mean we’ll necessarily come up with the solution, but it means we’ll give it another go, with a different mindset. It may mean we call for help, or we try a different method, or we go back to the drawing board — the specifics of what we do are different for each challenge. The point is, we don’t quit, we persevere.
What also helps is breaking down each challenge into bite-sized morsels. I actually can’t stress this enough, because it goes back to what I wrote in the second paragraph above. This directly affects our attitude, which then all but determines our success. I’ve found time and time again that if we take the time to plan something carefully and break it down into small steps, while that challenge may be huge, it becomes achievable and much less intimidating. I wrote “morsels” before because each step should feel like a small achievement, a victory, a reward that we can give ourselves. Feel free to do a little dance if you wish when you achieve a step in the process. Marking progress encourages us to push forward. I think it’s called a positive feedback loop.
It’s funny that no matter how intellectually advanced humans are (okay, that point may be a little debatable when we consider humanity as a whole…) we are motivated in the same way as animals. We give a hamster a morsel of food repeatedly after performing a certain action, and he’ll keep doing that action in the hope of getting more food. Pavlov’s dog is another example of this. Sure, we don’t usually strive to achieve goals for food — we do it for a sense of accomplishment, success, pride, vanity, lust, money, power, sex, things, and sometimes, food… but it still works the same, and that’s funny to me.
The next time you are faced with a challenge, remember, don’t be a wiener, be a winner. Break it down into small, achievable steps. Find out what motivates you (hopefully it isn’t something bad) and feed that motivation with little morsels of success. Get help when you’re stuck, or look at it in a different light. Above all, don’t give up, keep at it, and before long, you’ll find you’ve overcome it.
Raoul Pop 