Ahoy! Tis Friday. For us nine to fivers, it’s time to really let loose, strike out and seize the means of production go on a jolly weekend bender.
If you are anything like me, you have been getting through this working week with a heady mix of coffee, sugar and confused shouting. I’d like to bring some things to your attention that will soothe you. We may be living in Late Capitalism (sucks to be us, right?) but there are many good reasons to be alive right now. I mean, definitely more than I could include in this frivolous list. Almost definitely more than the eight items listed below.
Choose Life with the best headline I’ve ever chanced upon: Man, ‘high on LSD’, rescues dog from imaginary fire
Schadenfreude. This is my Word of the Week, in honour of the remarkable Fyre Festival. I love schadenfreude, as a feeling, and as a mysterious word I can’t pronounce. For once, it is not me who fell for glossy advertising and spent money on something stupid – it is other people, and they went as far as to get themselves stranded on an island. Big silly dafties. Toasty warm schadenfreude.
The Pope did a Ted talk, and I think you might like it. He talks about hope, connection, and a revolution of tenderness. I am a heathen, prone to schadenfreude (lacking in moral fibre) but even I may have got a speck of dust in my eye while I was watching it.
‘How wonderful would it be, while we discover faraway planets, to rediscover the needs of the brothers and sisters orbiting around us’
Mindfulness. I’m always finding new ways to derail the party and stop any spontaneous fun from developing. My new way of doing this is mindfulness, which I have taken to like a fat little duck to a glassy-calm pond on a sunny day somewhere far away from any trouble. This is my new thing, and so far, it’s my best thing. In the past, any time I tried mindfulness exercises I invariable fell asleep. This book (above) has helped me to do it right.
‘There are deep wellsprings of peace and contentment living inside us all, no matter how trapped and distraught we might feel’.
I am not quite knee-deep in a wellspring of contentment, but since I started these exercises I am markedly less forgetful (nothing short of a miracle) and less irate. Or at least, selectively irate. If you’d like to just step off the carousel for a while, I recommend trying this.
The sun has come back. (A Scotland-specific update). It may still be chilly, but that never stopped anyone from getting their TAPS AFF in this country. Taps aff, connected mittens, a thermal base-layer, coffee, you’ll be fine.
Someone on the internet has gathered together Science Fiction Interfaces. Beautiful, mysterious sparkles.
And someone else has gathered together the unique, dream-palace cinemas of Morocco. Gosh, the internet.
and finally…
There is a deer with fangs. It exists! Cute, deadly.
Happy Friday everyone x
Amy Jardine 