I forgot about this thread or I would have mentioned this article about the quirky habits of single people, such as staying up late and singing in the shower, which may make them completely unlovable by another person. If only we could have the perfect behavior of married people.
I always thought it would be interesting to read or write about an alternative 1920s-1930s with a lot more dirgibles and automatons, like in that game Crimson Skies, but more downbeat like in cyberpunk. What should it be called?
If that's your bag, Reed, Kenneth Oppel's Airborn is a lovely book. Caveat is, it's for 'young readers'. I vetted it for Mrs WOM's class last year and it's a great yarn.
Plus, he's got his marketing shit covered with sites like this, with all sorts of steampunky maps and graphics and whatnot.
Click on the picture in the centre of the newspaper (it loads) to tour the Aurora.
[edit: can't recall how old ursus minor is, but this could be up his alley.]
I forgot about this thread or I would have mentioned this article about the quirky habits of single people, such as staying up late and singing in the shower, which may make them completely unlovable by another person. If only we could have the perfect behavior of married people.
That's excellent. The aptly named Ms Bolick fancies herself an eccentric loner because she "talks to herself in French"; turns out she's learning French from a CD.
If that's your bag, Reed, Kenneth Oppel's Airborn is a lovely book. Caveat is, it's for 'young readers'. I vetted it for Mrs WOM's class last year and it's a great yarn.
It is. But then I'm a airship nerd, collected Zepp covers, know the flight numbers and all that stuff. I still design them in my head when I can't sleep. I think they're one of those fascinating technological routes not taken, so to speak, or at least never fully developed. They're so big and quiet, startlingly impressive. One snuck up behind me when I was walking to Tate Britain one quiet Sunday afternoon in the mid-70s. A sound like a motorbike engine growing slowly closer, but invisible. Eventually we turned around and there it was, right behind us just above the houses. Astounding.
No, I've never heard of the book. If it's about airships I should read it.
[Edit] Ah right, Amazon has the first page. The comparison is flattering but quite undeserved. The Round the World flight of LZ 127, it must have been quite the sight for sure. It was the ship the Hindenburg (LZ 129) replaced, and everything airships were supposed to be: reliable, comfortable and in constant service for almost ten years.
I forgot about this thread or I would have mentioned this article about the quirky habits of single people, such as staying up late and singing in the shower, which may make them completely unlovable by another person. If only we could have the perfect behavior of married people.
That's excellent. The aptly named Ms Bolick fancies herself an eccentric loner because she "talks to herself in French"; turns out she's learning French from a CD.
It's funny, but God, so annoying, as it's trying to make people feel like freaks for doing normal and innocent things, like being naked in your own home. There's an unpleasant subtext that says, see, single people are weirdos who can't get anybody, and they'll go so crazy from celibacy and loneliness so won't be able to integrate; burn the witch, talking to her cat!
I think that people who go around the house fully dressed when they're alone, especially after work, are closer to "crazy" on the spectrum than those who walk around their place naked or in their underwear.
And the only thing that I can remember from a film or TV show that captures this is a scene from The Conversation, when Gene Hackman goes to his apartment after work, takes his pants off and sits down on the couch and lets out a long sigh. It's a completely true scene.
I'm not going to take the time to read it, but is Helio's linked NYT article just a rehash of the whole 'quirkyalones' thing from a couple of years ago? I mean, the NYT started that whole schtick if I recall.
No, the quirkyalone concept came from Sasha Cagen, a writer. Maybe the NYT picked up on it later. Anyhow, the idea was positive about people who didn't feel compelled to be in a relationship, unlike this article, which has the subtext (and not all that hidden) that MsD mentions.
The Times' advertisers seem to have decided that it is harder to sell crap to singles, especially those who don't feel compelled to ape Sex in the City.
The Atlantic had an article recently about single women, and there's a new book out now about people living alone (written by the guy who did the Chicago heat wave book, which was supposed to be great).
There used to be an old geezer in my 'hood who I chatted with. You know, retired and walking around most of the day.
He told me that he lived in the basement apartment and his wife lived upstairs. She'd make his meals but otherwise wanted nothing to do with him after something like 40-odd years of marriage.
A couple of years ago she finally got her own apartment and he moved in with his daughter's family.
I will check that out WOM. I find YA fiction is often a good read. Like, some of the kids I volunteer with raved about The Hunger Games and now I'm hooked (it's really grim, actually).
As for the quiryalone shit, I thought about doing a thread on that because I've decided (more or less) that I want to stay alone forever and yet none of the articles I've read on this subject (there was on in some Boston magazine too) or any of the stuff on the quirkyalone websites really speaks to my feelings about it or my experience.
A lot of it is very much in the "protest too much" vein where you feel like the people are spending way too much energy defending their decisions, to the point of unfairly insulting married people, especially married people with kids.
And almost all of it, I find, seems to focus on women and/or is by women.
The stuff about single men seems to assume that we're alone because we don't want to buy the cow when the milk is free. Well, I'm not getting any cows or milk and I've come to grips with that. At least, I get that there's an important trade-off. It's not about a "fear of commitment" or one of those lazy generalizations that rom-com writers love to indulge.
I also fear- and maybe this is just paranoia - that people will suspect that I'm some kind of child molester. I don't know what percentage of convicted pedophiles are unmarried but I bet it's a lot lower than the stereotype suggests. Others may assume I'm a closeted gay person, but they wouldn't think that if they knew me at all.
Maybe it's not a representative sample, but the comments on those articles seem to assume that anyone single is inherently selfish and too immature to make compromises or accept their God-given adult responsibilities. That paints a very grim picture of those people's marriages, I think, but it's also not remotely fair.
Like I said, single people are making all kinds of compromises by forgoing companionship and children and we have to take responsibility for our own actions and behavior just like everyone else.
Here's that aforementioned shitty article in Boston.
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/single_by_choice_why_more_of_us_than_ever_before_a re_happy_to_never_get_married/
Looking at that NYT article again, I do recognize a lot of the behaviors especially since I also work at home alone.
I don't usually make "meals" like one would if you were going to sit down to eat with another person, but I don't see that as a "quirk." It's simply an adaption to the situation. I eat one thing first thing and then one other thing about an hour later and then another thing a few hours after that and so on. It's healthier anyway and I don't get that "food coma" feeling. I'm perfectly capable of adapting to the standard family three-meal system when I visit my family.
I tend to buy frozen vegetables because fresh ones either go bad, or I end up eating a lot of just one thing over a day or two, and that's boring. So that's not ideal.
And being alone all of the time might be slowly making me insane.
But everyone's life has issues and challenges to overcome. I don't see why the stuff family people have to cope with is necessarily more "normal" or, worse, noble, than the crap solo people have to wrestle with.
It shouldn't be. Truth is everyone likes to both be alone and with others to some extent. The amount of time we are comfortable in one state or the other just varies from person to person. Right now La Signora is away for a month and a half and, right now, I'm enjoying being by myself. It's a kind of like a holiday. In another couple of weeks or so I'll be missing her dreadfully, that's how it works for me. Someone else would be diametrically opposite.
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