I was like your daughter. Between like 5 and 15, I’ve tried so many different things. And while I sometimes had troubles admitting that I lost interest in something - especially when I knew the thing was expensive, like keyboard lessons - I am hella glad I got to try out so many things with no strings attached. It’s not even about committing to something or getting burned out. It’s just, man, life is short and now I am 33 and I just wouldn’t have the time or energy or motivation or money to try out everything I did as a kid. Karate and ballroom dancing and hiphop dancing and tennis and drawing and violin and ice skating and crafting - some things stayed for just a tryout, some for half a year or a year, some interests stayed for years. I’m so happy that I don’t have any hobby FOMO nowadays. I’m super grateful that my parents let me try out all of these things. (Also all the sports despite me sucking at sports like crazy. Except for all the dancing, that I rocked.)

And then the people all clapped and patted themselves on the back for saving the guy and went about their day. But the guy went back to the same life full of problems that led him to despair. Crippling debt or depression. Estrangement from loved ones that are no longer willing to reconnect. Loneliness or defamation or disease. It’s easy to save someone from jumping, but this is not help. That is not the help they need. They need constant and long term help, assistance, and support.

Saving a stranger from a suicide attempt has a vibe to it like preventing an abortion from happening without providing any further support for the mother or the child. Congrats, you saved a life, technically. But you did nothing to save the life.

That’s a good point, but in my opinion the other common deaths are way worse. Cancer? Living with the anxiety of impending death and constantly getting sicker, more in pain and being nauseous from medication? Or COPD, feeling like you are suffocating slowly? Alzheimers, Parkinsons? Or my personal fear - dying from a stupid simple cold? Man, I take a heart attack any day of the week.

No, the people you mentioned are fine. I think it is something with the nose-chin-cheek combo that I find appalling.

For Jennifer Lawrence it’s a separate thing, we have many similar features (like fat cheeks and hooded eyes) and it creeps me out too much and I get insecure watching her. I keep thinking how weird I must look and reevaluate my makeup the whole time, it’s too stressful.

I also have a thing where I can’t stop thinking of rooster anuses whenever I see Kevin Bacon (his mouth).

I want to emphasize that none of this is meant in a mean spirited way and those people are beautiful the way they are. It’s my brain that makes these associations and I very much disapprove of them.

I have that face thing with Patrick Swayze and Meryl Streep. And the girl from Dirty Dancing. I am working on getting over Jennifer Lawrence’s face. All these people are surely somewhat good actors but there is something about their faces that I cannot stand and it makes it impossible for me to focus on the plot. I just made it through Silver Linings Playbook today, finally, it was hard but I am glad I managed, Lawrence did a good job and I forgot about her face for almost 30% of the time. One day I will manage to watch more than 15 minutes of Dirty Dancing.

I thought about sending this to some people, or using the analogy the next time we talk about it. But I think they will spin the metaphor further with comparing it to certain foods and just fewer different foods at smaller portions and differently presented. Like, don’t give a baby apple pieces or hazelnuts during BLW type of thing.

Just to be clear, I am probably in the top 1 percentile of vaccine enthusiasts, having jumped through insane hoops for Covid vaccination and getting everything just in case. I’ve met 5 anti vaxxers in my life, three of them on the softer side. These softies are the ones I could imagine would argue about this food comparison in their favor.

WHAT DOES THE BLACK MOONFACE MEAN

I ask my spouse all the time and he just replies with another black moonface

I still can’t believe that we went from 16 years of stillstand under CDU to finally some progress under SPD-Grüne-FDP, just for it to be sabotaged by Merz with his stupid lawsuit, which then got FDP into their anal power play and somehow Lindner managed to make his solely Lindner focussed politics even more solely Lindner focussed, and then collectively decided yeah, that government didn’t solve world hunger, injustice, climate change and international wars within 3 years, fuck them, let’s go back to CDU.

And now Spahn, that fuckface, is Fraktionsvorsitzender. This means de facto he will be chancellor down the road. That AfD ballsucking fucktard. Watching the world burn for personal political gain. (Also looking at you, Amthor.)

I never played princess. I always wanted to play queen. Married, mature and with power, sounded like a much better deal.

I adored superstore. I love how I think back of the show and nothing comes to mind because everything was painfully ordinary.

My alcohol addiction

Gravity affects the booty too. Well thought through graphic

I’m so sorry, I felt too noobish for not figuring out the formatting of the spoilers :( I also took out my book to double check the scene. It’s one of the last pages!

Now what’s the deal about the game?

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I will proceed to check out the national anthem of Djibouti and the state anthem of Mississippi. I might be back with some questions.

When I was in elementary school I tried to start a protest during the break by getting on the desk and proclaiming that we need to stop the discrimination of the middle finger, it is a finger like the others and should be allowed to stand on its own just like the other fingers. Needless to say I held up my middle fingers during that passionate speech. I was also very sincere about it, not emotional, but I did find it unjust. I’m not sure where I am going with this but it was weighing on my chest for too long and needed to get out finally. Thanks for reading.

People have already pointed out the legal and financial aspects. But I also want to address the philosophical aspect of your question, which I think you had in mind. And I think the answer I would give you is this one:

Marriage has the meaning that you assign to it.

I strongly believe that if we got rid of any legal and financial benefits of marriage, even if we made it explicitly illegal, there would still be a bunch (or even a lot) of people who would get married.

I would compare it to a house fire. If my house was burning (and there were no living beings in it) and I could save 5 things, what would I save? What would you save? I would take, for example, my favorite soft toy from when I was a kid, and my old box filled with diaries. Is this worth any money? No. Does it have any value? To me, it does. To you, it doesn’t. Maybe you are a very rational person that isn’t attached to anything (or to nothing material) and you would indeed make the smartest choices, saving your passport and documents and money. Maybe you would save a small gift that someone important has given you. Maybe you would save the first guitar you ever bought. You save whatever has value and meaning to you. And these things have solely the meaning and value that you have attached to it.

Likewise, people have different value and meaning attached to marriage. If you look at it from a rational, logical side - it has its legal and financial perks and benefits and if they weren’t there, getting married would make no sense. But things don’t have to make sense. The meaning we assign to rituals, things, concepts, aren’t necessarily rational. They are, however, deeply personal.

So, as a side note, please beware of ridiculing people for their views on marriage or weddings, just like you wouldn’t want to ridicule or belittle someone for other things that mean a lot to them. Always sharing the last piece of bread. Always giving a coin to a homeless person. Having a breakfast for 30 minutes every morning. A good night kiss on the nose from their partner. Drawing a dick in the first snow of the winter. Some things mean a lot to people even if they do not rationally make sense.

In the case of marriage, of course, some of the meaning comes from culture, history, and tradition. Marriage might have had different purposes than it has now, and surely the origins weren’t that romantic. (Not saying, however, that marriage has to be romantic.) But it is there. It is important to some people simply because they have, at some point in their life, decided it is important for some reasons, rational or irrational, social, cultural, and hopefully personal too. To them, it makes sense, it has meaning, it has value. And whatever marriage or a wedding ceremony mean - you decide.

So the question you should be asking is not whether or not you should get married, it is what marriage means to you. Does it have any benefit or value in your eyes? Are the legal benefits enough for you to get married? What is your stance on divorce? Do you feel like you would get “closer together” with your partner? Would you feel it would make things harder to separate? There are a ton on questions like these that you can ask yourself, I hope you get the jist. There are not right or wrong answers. The only thing that is important is that the meaning you assign to marriage is (about) the same as the meaning your partner assigns to marriage. You can both not care about a spiritual meaning, but just get married for the benefits. You can both be a type of “whatever happens, we don’t get divorced, til death do us part”. You can be “we’ll keep reevaluating whether we still belong together”. You can also be “we get married because we have children and this is practical”. Or “we get married because I am hot and you are rich and when one of us loses their asset we split”. Or “we just want a fancy huge ass party to show our love in this very moment and celebrate it with our friends and whatever comes afterwards is secondary”. It doesn’t matter what your view is, it matters that you guys agree.

I think it has something to do with having to get into an upright position and moving. It feels like it raises your pulse and blood pressure and adrenaline. At least to me it’s this, because I often fall asleep with my daughter in her bed. And I literally only have to move to the bed next to hers, and still this wakes me up so much that, like clockwork, I need 1 hour 30 minutes to feel sleepy again.

Ee-meighl

Yeah you just made me double down on my statement. An atheist who actually finds value in the moral code in the bible while acknowledging its faults and negative influences without just yelling Bible Bad Religion Bad Fuck God. I’ve always wanted to read the bible with better context and explanations like in a literature class, but I never found this balance.