Status Update

This is a follow up post to the one I did back in February called A Guy on Facebook. A recap: he is a guy that I went to high school with; we weren't great friends or anything, but our school was small and we had classes together, and he struck me as an interesting and decent person. We could have been friends, but I was too preoccupied with fitting in a certain crowd and with school and with playing basketball and soccer. So it goes. It's fine.

Anyhow, this guy - I'll call him A - has been continuing to post on Facebook and hasn't fallen in to basic self-promotion like I thought he would. I've continued to be impressed with his voice and his honesty. Facebook gets a lot of flack, and I think its users have, on average, some level of disdain for it. I do. But I think while we're eager to "figure out" the internet - call it bad or good or whatever - it's as bad or good as what we put into it.

Recently, on A's wall, a post went up, to which people's responses made me feel really good:

Those people who responded are people from my high school, and for the most part, we weren't friends with one another. In addition to A being surprised at the relatability of his post, I was surprised that I wasn't the only one who found them relatable. 

It makes me feel great that other people are trying to figure out humanity and are also having an anxious time of it. I like it when people are good to each other and how they don't always punish vulnerability. Like. Like. Like.

Mind the Gap!

Last night on the train, there were four guys standing by the doors. Kind of tough-looking guys, they didn't appear to know each other. One of them was an older black guy, there was a white guy, and two Latino-looking guys. They were just standing, not talking. It was around ten thirty at night.

We stopped at Belmont, and the black guy, facing the door, pulled an iPhone out of his bag. In pulling it out, the phone got away from him, and it bounced its way out the open door of the train. Between the train and the platform there's a gap that's plenty large to fit an iPhone. It didn't fall down that, though, and the man was able to step out of the train, retrieve his phone, and step back in before the doors closed.

The other three guys empathized with him immediately. They were visibly relieved when the man got his phone back. The white guy gave a recap of his emotions throughout the ordeal ("Then I was like, oh no! And then there was the crack and the door! And, like, wow.") The black guy told the others that it was a new phone on top of everything.

It was nice to see people on the train empathizing with one another so spontaneously, even if it was over an iPhone. Sometimes people are alright.

Thought on Last Week's Game of Thrones

Season 3 Episode 6, "The Climb"

Toast with jelly. Baileys nightcap. Sparkling Ice Mountain natural spring water, lemon essence. Delicious. (Getting my keyboard sticky.)

Okay, can we all agree that this last episode was the best one so far in season three? The Brienne and Jamie story line is really rolling. Last week we had the somewhat-strange bath scene between the two of them, roiling in platonic intimacy. And this week we get them at a dinner table, Jamie trying to cut his steak with one hand and Brienne wearing a dress (pink). They're facing across from the head (I think) of their captors, while they're fate is doled out. Brienne, ever stern, slams her fork into Jamie's steak, pinning it down for him to cut. Afterwards, the head captor says something at which she takes offense. Her hand on the table, she instinctively grips her steak knife. Jamie is busy smooth-talking and, without missing a beat, briefly places his hand on Brienne's. She calms down.

Bravo! Wonderful! Amen! It was a major pay-off, for me. I feel like I could watch those two actors together all day.

My complaint of the week is those darn reoccurring torture scenes. Nobody knows what's going on, and it's almost the same scene week to week. I just can't see, at this point, what they add. I don't think when we find out why this person is being tortured we'll be like - oh, you know it was a good thing I saw that fifth one. Finding out what was going on would have been so much less rewarding if I only saw torture scenes one through four.

Alright, til next time. And, remember, dismemberment is bad for the economy.

Edit 5/10/13:

I also meant to point out that this episode passed the Bechdel Test. The two women with Bran (who have names I can't remember. Ask Mitch; he knows them.) have a conversation with one another about skinning rabbits. All the more reason to like this episode.