More and more things to be happy about!

This blog is turning into one of those really sappy stupid ones that talk about how you are my angel and angels give you wings (or is that redbull?) But anyway, I'm not really a person for whom happiness comes totally naturally, but despite that I am a person who is very, very happy a lot.

Things to be happy about these days:
-the loonie ($1 coin) I found that has TERRY FOX on it!
-Terry Fox
-springtime, of course
-longboards
-monogamy in the face of the college lifestyle
-Quebecois and their laughable, adorable, probably well-meaning insecurity.
-girl talk about vibrators and boys and scarves
-winning an election, even if one was running unopposed
-purple and grey fleeces
-the underlying patterns
-skiwaxing
-birkenstocks
-clean hair
-hugs
-true friends

A friend I know is going through a very cathartic period right now - for the first time in his life, he was dumped by his lover and he's fairly miserable. From the depths of his misery, however, he still speaks really fast and excitedly about the world and the Won Buddhist state of being. Less than 24 hours after being rejected, he said:

"You know, objectively, this is the worst I've ever felt in my life. And you know what? I'm learning. This catharsis is SO WORTH IT."

Impressive.

I took a four hour warm-cat curlyhaired nap today

Instead of going for a six mile run and it was beautiful.

There are people out there who have won TWO Nobel prizes. Winning just one seems pretty crazy to me, but the world's a crazy place.

Dear Google,

These were the sponsored links on the sidebar of my emails:

What Will Make You Happy?
27 Facts You Don't Know About Your Personality and Future. But Should!
www.Numerologist.com/happiness

Happiness Philosophy
Self-help secret formula to objective happiness
ObjectiveHappiness.com

How To Keep A Man In Love
Learn The "Secret Psychology" To Getting A Man Hooked For Good
CatchHimAndKeepHim.com

You've Seen "The Secret"
Now Turn It Into A Huge Income Using Our Simple, Proven System
www.Best-Kind-of-Life.com

How to Be Happy
"How to Be Happy and Have Fun Changing the World" Free e-Book
HowToBeHappy.org

My life, my love, and my small, insignificantly glorious existence is none of your business. But please, nevertheless, ravage my inbox. Read my journals. Track me on Facebook and read this blog. Rape my chat history, my search history, every photo I've ever taken, every iTunes track I've ever listened to and every debit card payment I've ever made. Find them all, study them, and then market to me. Go ahead! Try as you might, your automaton machines can scan everything there is to see or hear or feel about me, and still you won't get it. You can't have me. You can't sell me happiness and you can't take it away. Because I'm happy because the snow is melting and the sun is shining and I'm eighteen years old and in love with life. I win, and I will always win. And with that, I respectfully request that you go fuck yourself.

"An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs.

You would never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience.”
-Mitch Hedberg

I had a wonderful day today, and the best part was that it wasn't extraordinarily wonderful. It was a perfectly ordinary day, yet here I am very happy. Just little things - getting my work done, going for a ski, having pleasant conversations with a cousin who I haven't talked to in some time, enjoying a free vegan meal, watching twenty minutes of star wars, getting the best kind of yogurt in my caf yogurt pack, thinking of the above quote when I saw the building escalator out of order.

I remember a day a year or so ago when I woke up under my quilt to light streaming into my room and an odd song from the college radio station playing on my alarm. It was funny, because I realized that at that moment, despite no victories being won, not being in love, not having done exceptionally well on anything, in fact no great reason to be incandescently happy presenting itself, it was not possible for a human being to be happier than I was at that moment. It went away in about five minutes, and i continued feeling regularly happy for the rest of the morning.

I have chunks of big happiness - paddling waterfalls and finding real friends, falling in love and skiing and seeing the big world and eudaimonia and sitting around fires and listening to old songs and feeling like the whole universe is careening madly toward an e.e. cummings poem. But it's nice to know that there are little happinesses too, and that a simple, routine day can make me happy.

I never found that song. I tried googling the lyric fragments. It didn't work. Maybe that's for the best.

More Things To Be Happy About

-Sunshine
-The reason why the Science Library Building is covered in fancy-looking brick (it has to do with radioactivity and the experiments of Rutherford!)
-A girl's button - Je te dig
-Clean hair
-Dirty hair that sticks up in a mohawk all on its own
-sleeping naked
-situps
-the alphabet
-the general grunginess of the School of Environment and Geography department kids
-Nalgene bottles
-Mountain goats
-Legwarmers
-puppies!
-the view from the geography library
-chocolate chip cookies
-Aztec Two-Step: "The Persecution and Restoration of Dean Moriarity (On the Road)"
-really good apples
-restoration of maritorelational bliss of those in one's immediate vicinity
-really good conversations
-an overuse of your mom jokes
-this website from the US Department of Transportation: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/roadsong.cfm#l10s005
-Beth Rodden
-girls from Alaska who share a Chris Sharma obsession

Coping Mechanisms, LOL

What do you do when you have intimidating liasons with several national governments, an impending glacial hydrology paper that is way out of your league, a startlingly bad grasp of basic physics and residual class-consciousness bullshit frustration?

YOU LOOK AT PICTURES OF HEDGEHOGS TAKING BATHS!


Well, I look at pictures of hedgehogs taking baths.
I should be very stressed right now, but I'm actually surprisingly happy. My problems are trivial! And somewhere, in the world, a hedgehog is taking a bath! Lolerskates! Roflcopter! Whee!

No worries, man.

(image courtesy of cuteoverload.com, a great place to look for solace on the web)

If somebody yells out "hey, stop, drop, and roll!", say that might save my skin but it won't save my soul

-tattooed on a girl's wrist.

February was adventurous. March will get my act remotely together.

"Imagine winning an artistic revolution on the moon, taking over from Nazis and bringing peace and love and fish to everyone. And then having great sex. That is Mardi Gras."
-my friend, who hitchhiked there against the will of American border security.