Note: This article is long and has several fun video clips. I recommend you get a cocktail, take your time, and prepare to laugh. The Question: I was never very keen on Mrs. Kindt (our high school history teacher), but I also have to admit I wasn’t a particularly good history student. However, she said something one time that really stuck with me. She was discussing two political principles that are commonly presented as polar opposites. (I’ve forgotten the exact topic, unfortunately.) She argued that while the two were, indeed, opposing viewpoints, one could actually become the other if taken to a far enough extreme. Rather than thinking of the two things as a bar magnet, she suggested a clock instead. I thought that was a fascinating idea. Let’s say, for example, we wanted to use the clock model to describe whether something is good or bad. Assume that 12:00 PM represents the absolute best. 3:00 PM would be good, but not great. Things that are perfectly mediocre would be plotted at 6:00 PM. 9:00 PM would be crappy, while things that are horrifically terrible would be found at 11:59 PM. Bad, of course, is diametrically opposed to good, but viewed through the clock model, something could be so bad that it becomes good (The clock would roll over to 12:01 AM and suddenly fall into good territory). That bizarre area would be a counter-intuitive subversion of good and bad: gad-bood. I’ve thought quite a lot about this, and I’m sure people can come up with many examples of gad-boodness. This clip, in my opinion, is a wonderful example of gad-boodness: It’s a promotional video for a neti pot. I’m disappointed to report that it has been edited; the original ended with the creepy non-blinking robot doing stretching exercises to ensure that all of the snot gets out of her head. True story. The video is so bad it is actually good. Importantly, gad-boodness has to be created by accident. Satire, for...
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Question: How are you feeling about your trip? Anonymous Answer: I am feeling unsettled about our trip. I am feeling excited, wound up, a little bit edged. I am feeling a strange longing for the warm, bursting-with-flavor summer in Ontario. I saw a farm crawl advertised yesterday for this weekend and I wanted to go on it. In some alternate universe I could be on the farm crawl and be in Iceland. I could be both swimming in my backyard pool and wine tasting in France. I am excited about going and yet feel a small sense of loss about missing the beauty of the Ontario summer. We will be in Iceland on Friday and I can’t wait. I think it will be raining Five weeks feels like a long time and I know it will fly by. I will want to live in Paris and Copenhagen. I am curious about Sweden. I will want to buy a vacation property in the south of France–I know I will want to. I always do. I always dream of returning to the places I go. I am looking forward to driving around the countryside in the places we visit. Road trip! Packing for such a long trip is a challenge. I have to let go of things that make my life comfortable at home in order to go on this trip. Part of the vacation is releasing the things I love and being on an adventure, like allowing our house-sitter to care for our home and property without worrying about it. That said, I am pretty committed to taking my bread knife and cutting board with us. We have had many conversations with friends in the last few weeks about my bread knife and cutting board. I gather insights about how our friends travel from their opinions about my bread knife and cutting board. Some think bringing a cutting board and knife is a great idea, others can’t imagine why I would want it at all....
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Question: What was it like moving to Canada? Jennifer, Lethbridge Alberta We had been together about a year when Mel started interviewing for tenure-track jobs. He really was excited about McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario because it is well-known for its research in evolutionary psychology. He knew several of the professors and thought it might be a great job for him. There are 3 universities in North America that excel at evolutionary psychology: UC Santa Barbara, McMaster University, and the University of New Mexico. He did his PhD at UC Santa Barbara and NM wasn’t hiring that year, so McMaster really was a very exciting opportunity. He was very excited about the job offer and it seemed right for him. I didn’t think it would be wise to put him in the position of choosing between me and the job. I agreed to check it out since I had never been to Canada before. “We’ll need to live in Toronto,” I said. We visited in April and I fell in love with all the amazing old houses in Hamilton–a city of about 500,000 people. We were pretty sure we were coming–in fact we met with a realtor while we visited and put in an offer on a house. It was a go. We bought a house in a little town which eventually amalgamated into Hamilton. Moving to Canada has been amazing, challenging, occasionally annoying, and it is becoming home. We seem to have gone through stages. In the first couple of years we were fairly anti-American and pro all things Canadian. We were adventurers. In the next few years we flip-flopped and were annoyed by some things Canadian and became more patriotic about the US than I ever expected to be. We were homesick. Now I feel like I have found a comfort level with my two countries and I love them both with all their up-sides and down-sides. The Five Weirdest Differences to Get Used to Between Canada and the US There are...
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Question: When you write, you always use “he” when you write about Mel. Shouldn’t you use “she” before Mel transitioned and “he” after? Anonymous Answer: First of all, thanks for asking. There was a moment in time when we actually changed pronouns. I designed this with Mel’s mother and it was for us, not for Mel. It felt so hokey to wake up one day and change pronouns but it was starting to be weird. We went on one very memorable camping trip where half of the people were calling Mel “she” and half were calling Mel “he.” I tried not to use any pronouns at all. It was weird. So, on Labor Day, Mel’s mom came for a visit and we took the plunge. We started the process to change pronouns. I have to say it was a messy business. For several years I worried I would slip up and say the wrong pronoun. Mel has always been incredibly gracious about this but I have felt like I would fail him with a wrong pronoun. But now, I don’t slip. He is firmly placed in the “male” category in my mind. Somehow, I can’t go back and call Mel “she.” For me now, Mel was never a “she.” He has always been the exact same person he is now. And I feel like we righted a wrong and I have no desire to go back to a “wrong” construct. So, when I talk about Mel, I might talk about before he transitioned but he never wanted to be “she” and now I never want to go back either. So in my stories, Mel will always be “he.” Melanie The Crucible Bookii is my story as it continues to unfold and how I see the world from my perch on the edge of the Crucible…because falling in love changed everything. To read more about our story, may I suggest Unlikely Renewal of...
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A friend was over today and asked him just this question. I was also curious about his answer.
He said he felt vulnerable and exposed and a little nervous. He talked about the difference between Jerry Springer and Oprah Winfrey. We asked him what he meant.
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You can ask me anything, don’t be shy. I may choose not to answer it, but as my teachers used to say, “There are no dumb questions.” Now if you have ever been in an adult course, you know this is just not true because I have heard some really dumb questions in my day. But they’re usually asked by the guy who has been checking his email all day on his smart phone instead of paying attention. So I am absolutely sure you won’t be asking dumb questions. I’ll answer the questions I think are most helpful to Crucible Members. By being willing to ask questions, you help create the story on the Crucible. Thanks for participating. Submit a...
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