If I have the ability to do something, that is, I technically possess the skills and physical/mental capacity for it, but I lack the will or the drive or the time... do I really have the ability to do it?

I normally walk to and from work (it's just under a mile from my house) and on the way I pass a national pizza chain's shop, which delivers. Yesterday while going home at about 6:25 one of their delivery cars was pulling out, and I saw that it was a young woman driving.

( Thoughts on women in US society behind the cut )

The past week - heck, for years, really - I've been angry at what's going on in the world around me. Most recently it's been the fact that one of Chick-Fil-A's owners has given large sums of money to anti-gay organizations, including actual hate groups, but there has also been the anti-gay-marriage legislation passed in my state and others, the ( Read more... )

To what extent is mental discomfort good for us? To what degree should we seek it out?

( Of course I have personal examples, which is why I'm thinking about this )

"Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done."

--Alfred, Lord Tennyson
So - what (if any) "work of noble note" would you wish to do, before your own death? Have you done it yet ( Read more... )

I was deleting spam today (as every day) and it struck me that perhaps the offers for cheap degrees are quintessentially American. Why actually LEARN when you can buy the credential? There seems to be this assumption in such ads (and the "institutions" that offer them) that actual knowledge is useless or at best optional ( Read more... )

jillbertini said that in her family, instead of making resolutions, they think about the bests and worsts of the year. So I'll give it a go, although probably in a different way from what she does which I think is to choose one. I can't do that, to me it's comparing apples and oranges. So I went with bests and worsts in different aspects of my life.

( In a half-dozen different areas... )

( Thoughts on friendship )

Went and saw this, finally, with SO today. I enjoyed it a great deal - in part because of the scenery, which is perhaps odd, but I spent enough of my childhood summers in the Rockies that I love these vistas. Not going to write a proper review of it. But have a few related thoughts to put down, mostly on the aspect of sexuality at this time.

( Miscellaneous ideas... some spoilers )

I've been using the pseudonym "Celandine Brandybuck" for nearly 4 years now in various online communities. Several RL friends who also have pseudonymous blogs quite naturally use "Cel" in addressing me either here or in their own blogs, just as I use their pseudonyms in such contexts. And of course those who have met me online know me by that ( Read more... )