"You can't plant wheat and expect to harvest oat" said L from Milwaukee!!!

I can't believe I have done this. Today is the second day I'm on this low carb diet. If you think two days are nothing, I invite you to try it and see how terrible you will feel in the middle of the very first day. I had a very bad headache yesterday. Today my headache was way milder. I read a lot and realized the headache is due to the decrease in blood sugar and its consequences. I am not taking the insane diet version of under 30 gm daily intake of carbs. I've had 100 gm a day so far (I mean in the 1.75 last days!). I will write more about the diet once I get to the rewarding stage which is when I already lost a few pounds. I have had this obsession with desserts forever and I always thought I got to do something about it before I will need to deal with its terrible consequences especially as I get older. Also it has been a while again that I am not happy with my weight and I am tired of too many failed trials to lose weight. I need to get rid of the 10-15 pounds I gained since last summer. The weird thing to me yesterday was that I didn't have the daydreamings I usually have when I try to cut down on desserts. I usually find myself in the middle of fantasizing that for example I am walking to Panera Bread to get a croissant, or I am at Mia Za's buying a tiramisu,... I guess yesterday I had so much headache and nausea to deal with that I didn't get luxurious problems like fantasizing!

Meeting L and hanging out with her in Milwaukee was really inspiring. She's super cool, positive and funny. It was interesting to hear it from her, whom I always thought is more or less an easygoing person, that "One shouldn't flirt with one's goals!", she laughed before finishing the sentence herself. Apparently she has bet with a few colleagues on growing six pack abs and she has started a serious bodybuilding program since February. Her body is just perfect. It was amazing to me how she wasn't even tempted to take a bite of any sort of desserts. Her determination was really admirable and made me think "C'mon girl! If you really want something, you gotta pay the price! If not then drop it!". I'm thinking of starting power yoga maybe; weightlifting is a bit too boring for me to be honest.

The spectacular thing is that I automatically have been eating fish and drinking green tea since yesterday. I used to avoid them as much as I could. Again L had this priceless statement that "It's only 50% about work out, the other 50% is about what you eat and how you live"; then she continued that "Bodybuilding is an art. The major difference with other forms of art is that the masterpiece you are working on is alive! You literally build your body". We again laughed at her deep philosophical statement and analogy together. I guess she has really changed something in my conscious as well as my subconscious. I mean it! We'll see where this whole thing goes.

Gimme back my nights!

I have totally forgotten about nights; about the peace, the calmness, the desirable loneliness they bring along. I used to be a night owl throughout almost all my childhood and teenage years. The reality of a grown up life imposes itself on one's lifestyle sooner or later. The later one starts to acknowledge it, the harder it becomes. I have been trying to practice a disciplined daily lifestyle for the last 3-4 years. The result?! I haven't enjoyed staying awake all night just getting lost in my thoughts, writing, reading,... for such a long long time. I even haven't realized how much I have missed staying up all night witnessing the dawn. 

Recently I have been seeking to be alone more and more. I have always liked spending time with myself but for the last few weeks I literally have had an intense craving for being alone. I feel I am going through a transition phase, a major one I guess. Looking back I see how all of a sudden I started to change and become a totally different person at about the age of 21 and how going through changes once in a while has become a part of my living since then. Man! I am going to be 28 in a few months and I still change with a high frequency. Changing has always been desirable to me, it still is. Last night C told me that I seem to be pretty comfortable outside my comfort zone. I started thinking about it. I told her it's not just about being happy or comfortable, it's about the fact that I kinda need it once in a while. That moving out of my comfort zone by itself is such an exciting challenge for me that if I live without it for a while I start realizing the lack of it. I thought about it more since last night. I have become way calmer recently. Less extrovert maybe as well. I am more in peace with myself. I feel more fulfilled maybe. Is it a sign of growing up?! It scares me if it is a sign of settling down, getting old,... I hope not!

Tonight C and I watched Zeitgeist. It was great for me to watch it again. With all the critiques the movie and the movement has attracted I still like it very much. Planning to watch the second and third movie sometime soon. Here is the ending part of the movie:

The second quote, the one which says:

"I think I spent 30 years of my life, trying to become something, I wanted to become good at things, I wanted to become good at tennis, I wanted to become good at school and grades and everything I kind of viewed in that perspective. I'm not okay the way I am, but if I got good at things. I realized I had the game wrong, because the game was to find out what I already was..."

has been attributed to Richard Alpert a.k.a Ram Dass. I am not sure really. The voice is really different from the voice that says the third quote which is certainly by Ram Dass. The third quote is taken from an interview he had discussing the side effects of LSD. Maybe his voice has changed a lot when he has become older, I don't know. I couldn't find anything on the web that refers the quote to anyone else. Anyways the aforementioned quote and similar sayings kinda scare me. People usually say after the age of 30 you start to accept yourself the way you are, with all your limitations. Well, it sounds great and fantastic to admit your limitations and brace yourself the way you are but on the other hand it can also be very scary and disappointing in the sense that you might be already so satisfied that you would cease any effort to change or improve anything about yourself and your life; a change which might in long-term bring you more happiness and satisfaction. I don't know. Growing old is always a bit frightening...

La grande bellezza

"To this question, when we were young, my friends used to answer always the same way: "Pussy". I instead used to answer: "Old people's houses' smell". The question was: "What do you really like in life?". I was destined to sensibility. I was destined to become a writer. I was destined to become Jep Gambardella."

  

This is how the movie "The Great Beauty" starts.  It is followed by a quote from "Journey to the End of Night" by Céline: “To travel is very useful, it makes the imagination work, the rest is just delusion and pain. Our journey is entirely imaginary, which is its strength.”

Don't miss the movie. I feel I need to watch it at least one more time. IMDB counts it in comedy/drama genre. Although there are so many funny scenes in the movie by no means I'd count it as a comedy. 

"Are we designed to be sexual omnivores?"

I loved this talk. Take a few minutes and watch it. This guy, Christopher Ryan, is quite an interesting person. 

There are a few sentences in his talk which I really like to quote:

"To argue that our ancestors were sexual omnivores is no more a criticism of monogamy than to argue that our ancestors were dietary omnivores is a criticism of vegetarianism. You can chose to be a vegetarian but don't think just because you made that decision bacon suddenly stops smelling good."

"It's time we move beyond Mars and Venus because the truth is that men are from Africa and women are from Africa."

I also liked the quote mentioned in the video by E. O. Wilson:

"All that we can surmise of human kind's genetic history argues for a more liberal sexual morality, in which sexual practices are to be regarded first as binding devices and only second as means of procreation."

I didn't know much about Female Copulatory Vocalization in other primates. Ryan doesn't explain much about it in this talk. I read about it after watching the video and realized wow! It is really interesting how correlated FCV seems to be with promiscuity in different ape species. You might find this article by Ryan in Psychology Today informative. 

Well, I will end with this quote by Arthur Schopenhauer that Ryan mentions answering the question at the end of the talk: 

"Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills."

I liked this quote a lot. I finally found a saying to convey what I generally think about free will through it!

I have started to read about this whole concept of Victorian morality more. I might write about it in future... 

her

Such a great few months it was for movie lovers. I really liked American Hustle as I did like the previous movie by this guy David O. Russel; Silver Linings Playbook I mean. I just lovvve both Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. I've only seen these two movies by Russel so far but thinking to watch some other ones. Anyone in!??! In this post though I'm going to write about her. 

Well, I guess almost everyone knows the premise. A guy falls in love with his OS. After all it is sci-fi and you can find some scenes that seem really too unrealistic or superficial. Some people might find some scenes a bit creepy too. I agree the scene the guy and his OS named Samantha, "had sex together" to me was a bit stupid maybe. He could have worked more on that scene or even could have totally escaped from putting his foot in that puddle. For example he could let them talk about some last night that they had sex without showing anything, just dialogues and then leave the rest to the audience imagination*. 

Something else is also interesting to me. So before having sex with the OS, one night the guy can't fall asleep and all he has to do is take his phone and find someone random online and they would talk a bit to turn each other on and then masturbate. Something very similar to what some people do in online chatrooms these days. I doubt if anyone finds what happens in that scene very weird. It's not allien since we have been exposed to something very similar for quite a while. Interactive porn websites and channels are there to turn people on... Later in the movie, almost the same thing happens with the OS. They talk and have sex. The OS is way more normal and believable than the girl he talked with on the phone a few nights before. Samantha won't ask him to "choke her with the dead cat by the bed"!!! 

It's interesting and weird at the same time that we find it important whether the female voice talking to the guy belongs to a human or an OS. It's all about our mindsets, right!? It's ironic how calling someone totally random and talking to them is not alien to us just because we have been practicing something very similar for a few years now. It's amazing to me how our moral and social paradigms can change over the course of a few years but it's hard for us to foresee and connect to a small perturbation to the imperatives we have at the moment.  

Overall I really liked the movie. It was a bit long for me. Though I have this problem with most of the movies! Joaquin Phoenix did a great great job. He almost carries the whole load of the acting for the most part of the two-hour movie.  

I talked with a friend afterwards and he mentioned an interesting point. The fact that you never know how technology is changing human relationships, intimate and sexual relationships included. Then he gave a good example. That there are people these days who argue having a pet** is what many people need not having a baby. That if you don't want to continue living through passing on copies of your genes for whatever reason you've got, you still can meet some of your needs with less work and effort. You can still love a creature which would love you back and would depend on you. Some emotions are going on there between you two and after all you don't have to send them to school or college. Maybe one day human emotional relationships change in a way that they would be more fulfilling to us while less time and energy consuming comparing to what we are used to these days. You never know what future brings mankind or maybe the other way around, you never know what kinda future mankind creates or both! 

Watch this video. I really really liked it. They talk to public figures and ask them about their thoughts on the movie and emotional intimate relationships in general. It's interesting to hear what they think. You can find a comedian, an author, a psychotherapist, a producer, ... Don't miss it!

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*/ Maybe a little bit out of context and maybe not, Abbas Kiarostami, the international well known Iranian director has a great quote which I really love: 

"I want to create the type of cinema that shows by not showing. This is very different from most movies nowadays, which are not literally pornographic but are in essence pornographic, because they show so much that they take away any possibility of imagining things for ourselves. My aim is to give the chance to create as much as possible in our minds, through creativity and imagination. I want to tap the hidden information that's within yourself and that you probably didn't even know existed inside you."


**/ On a different note I remember how I was impressed by a part in Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", where he describes the emotional relationship between a human and a dog. There is a very nice movie based on the book, which I strongly recommend. As always at least to me the book is way more interesting but one cannot deny the good quality of the movie.  

I Have a Dream

I have a dream today, well actually tonight! 

I have a dream that one day all grown up people around me will be communicable. That all of them, at least the ones that I have the most interactions with, will already be in the "adult ego state". 

I have a dream that one day the very presumption of every human interaction will be "I'm OK, You're Ok". 

I have a dream that one day we all will be trying our bests in "staying Ok" and we will be helping each other in getting more than OK!  

I have a dream today!



P.S. This is insane! I realized Google's Doodle just now, like half an hour after writing this post, and boy! It's Martin Luther King Jr. day tomorrow (probably will already be today once I update the post with the postscript). I was kinda imitating his format of "I Have a Dream" just cuz I thought it was cool. Such a coincidence! 

The Trimates

Today's* google doodle celebrated the 82nd birthday of Dian Fossey, one of the three ladies famously known as Leakey's angels or the trimates, the name coined by Leakey himself. These three ladies were encouraged and supported by Louis Leakey to study primates in their habitats. Jane Goodall is the first one of the trimates who studied chimpanzees for over 45 years. The second one, Dian Fossey studied the mountain gorillas for about 18 years and she is not alive anymore. The third trimate, Birute Galdikas studied orangutans. Previously I just had read about Jane Goodall's work. I've learned about her probably in one of Robert Sapolsky's lectures. I used to follow his course "Human Behavioral Biology" online. I guess I had already given links to some of his lectures and interviews in one of the previous posts. 

From left to right: Birute Galdikas, Jane Gooodall and Dian Fossey

*/ Yesterday's since till I'll publish this post it'll be already past midnight. Dian Fossey's birthday is on Jan 16th.

I really can't resist sharing some of these fantastic photos here:

Jane Goodall and her chimpanzees

Dian Fossey and her gorillas

Birute Galdikas and her orangutans 

and once again "The Trimates"

From left to right: Jane Gooodall, Dian Fossey and Birute Galdikas