this jam is way out.

2007-01-25 / 4:41 p.m.

Today's bootleg snack is leftover refried beans, still in the can, into which I have dumped the dregs of a bag of tortilla chips. I am eating this with a spoon. This is an attempt to refrain from eating the 2 pound cupcake in the refrigerator, but I will probably eat that too. The Brit's boss is always bringing baked goods to the office, you see, and the Brit is always bringing them home. He doesn't even like sweets.

It's state of nature time again, folks. Late-night art projects and late-night practicing and irregular meals and suburban thrift and fabric store odysseys and total hijacking of the netflix queue--all of which you may read as thesis procrastination. I had the boy home for a little less than two days, and then I sent him off to Germany last night without any toothpaste (we only had the one tube).

I finished reading Blink last night--have you read it? It's basically about the power of our snap judgments, about all the things we "read" in a split second in order to arrive at a conclusion about something. It's totally worth reading--informative, snappy, and entertaining, and I'm not going to review it any more than that. But I've been thinking today about one section of the book that discusses facial expressions of emotion, and the researchers who documented all of the separate muscular activities that go into each possible facial expression. There were thousands (and some of them were nonsensical). These dudes sat around painstakingly making faces at each other, which is sort of funny and amazing all by itself. But the actual striking thing, to me, is that as they were working on the facial expressions associated with negative emotions like anger and distress, they started to feel really horrible. They found that just making these faces created "marked changes in the autonomic nervous system," which was a total surprise. Then they used volunteer subjects in a study that showed, essentially, that recalling and reliving a painful experience provoked the same physiological responses as just making the angry/sad/scared faces that go with painful experiences. Suck it, method actors! You're wasting your energy!

The author, Malcolm Gladwell, doesn't do anything so facile as to suggest that sad and angry people spend some time just smiling benevolently each day, but I have no problem being facile. In fact, I am smiling benevolently right now, and I feel pretty good. Simultaneously, though, I am hating the fact that those obnoxious strangers who helpfully suggest that you smile are sort of on to something.

Smile, when you're down and out,
Maven.

Spinning: Dance Band!
Feeling: Benevolent.
Plotting: Work.

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