LaHermes

"Hit me with your Rhythm Stick" (hit me slowly hit me quick) Ian Drury & the Blockheads. Even on the Road to Mandalay lol

I thought this rather good: "Love is not a meritocracy. Well-intended friends often say to single people, “It’s a shame that someone as smart and attractive as you is alone.” This implies that people need a special trait or qualification in order to attract a love interest—and that if we’re alone, we must be doing something wrong. But that message is unhealthy and unproductive. The search for a partner isn’t the same as a search for the "perfect" car or a job, although dating apps may make it feel that way. We’re searching for a whole person, not a bundle of desirable traits." From an article by Deborah Carr, Ph.D., is a professor and chair of the sociology department at Boston University. She studies stress and health, and the ways our relationships can help (or hurt) us.

Always makes me smile.

Yes. This lot are a different variety.

Re-reading "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin Published 50 years ago. Yet very much of today. "The book’s protagonist, Genly Ai, faces many challenges in his mission to the frigid world of Gethen, but the biggest is his struggle to understand a society of people who are gender-neutral most of the time, except for once a month when they go into kemmer and become either male or female."

An antidote to current corona driven dystopia Utopia is a lost art, a practice of the mind lost for lack of exertion.

LOL Wiseman Meantime, the righteous and the holy. All aboard.

Yes!

Assignments maybe, Wiseman. Not so sure about the "creative" aspect. lol. There can be a horrible sameness to soapy stuff.

Inner peace begins the moment you choose not to allow another person or event to control your emotions. — Pema Chodron Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained. — Arthur Somers Roche

Yes, Wise. Also, the soaps (heaven help us!) can provide the full script from episode 1 right through. Then just get it down on paper. I just wonder.

I have to agree with you Spawn. That same thought has occurred to me many times. Many OPs read rather "scripted" and may well be gathering contents for the purposes you mention.

Great rendering of this song. Uncanny.

Raul Malo. To lift the spirits in the midst of all this gloom https://youtu.be/sFATvfn_V3o

Video quality not great but.

A few bits and pieces from a PT articles by Jen Kim. Here are a few more truths that might be flying under the radar: Marriage is not in decline, it is in delay. At least, that’s what historian and researcher Stephanie Coontz tells The Guardian. By middle age, 80 percent of Americans will be married, roughly the same number it was a half-century ago. Highly educated women are most likely to get married—on their terms. A Brookings Institute study finds that women with advanced degrees are not only getting married more often than their bachelor earning counterparts, but they are also leveraging their newfound economic independence to “renegotiate the terms of marriage in a more egalitarian direction.” Millennials are better at marriage—even though they are getting married less often. Between 2008 and 2016, the divorce rate declined by 18 percent, according to research conducted by Phillip Cohen, a University of Maryland sociology professor. He credits millennials’ lack of divorce to their “increasingly selective nature of marriage… greater stability of couples who persist through cohabitation and enter marital unions at high levels of economic interdependence.”

LOL Jib. This made me laugh. " "He handed me a banana, and called me "nervous." He did this with a smile on his face." The job does sound demanding.

"When we are very anxious about something it can help to ask and answer a few structured questions. What do I fear will happen? What do I hope will happen? What do I expect will actually happen? The answer to the third question can bring you back to a sense of proportion and balance." (Padraig O'Morain)

Brief and to the point. The best summary I have seen yet on the issue of Healthy Love versus Toxic "Love" (aka Obsession). The author is Sandra L. Brown. The opposite of healthy love is what we often call 'toxic' love. Sometimes understanding what toxic 'looks like' helps us to see what real 'love' should look like too. Here is a short list of the characteristics of Love vs. Toxic Love (compiled with the help of the work of Melody Beattie & Terence Gorski). 1. Love—Development of self first priority. Toxic love—Obsession with relationship. 2. Love—Room to grow, expand; desire for other to grow. Toxic love—Security, comfort in sameness; intensity of need seen as proof of love (may really be fear, insecurity, loneliness). 3. Love—Separate interests; other friends; maintain other meaningful relationships. Toxic love—Total involvement; limited social life; neglect old friends, interests. 4. Love—Encouragement of each other's expanding; secure in own worth. Toxic love—Preoccupation with other's behavior; fear of other changing. 5. Love—Appropriate Trust (i.e. trusting partner to behave according to fundamental nature.) Toxic love—Jealousy; possessiveness; fear of competition; protects "supply." 6. Love—Compromise, negotiation or taking turns at leading. Problem solving together. Toxic love—Power plays for control; blaming; passive or aggressive manipulation. 7. Love—Embracing of each other's individuality. Toxic love—Trying to change other to own image. 8. Love—Relationship deals with all aspects of reality. Toxic love—Relationship is based on delusion and avoidance of the unpleasant. 9. Love—Self-care by both partners; emotional state not dependent on other's mood. Toxic love—Expectation that one partner will fix and rescue the other. 10. Love—Loving detachment (healthy concern about partner, while letting go.) Toxic love—Fusion (being obsessed with each other's problems and feelings). 11. Love—Sex is free choice growing out of caring & friendship. Toxic love—Pressure around sex due to insecurity, fear & need for immediate gratification.

Grace Jones. La Vie en Rose.

Now for an antidote to that, WiseM!

ENIGMA "The Rivers of Belief

The Quick and the Dead.

"The losers in life think they have all the answers. They can’t learn because they’re too busy telling everyone what they know." Robert Kiyosaki