The State of the Faults

From time to time, I like to update myself on the state of my faults. When I'm writing, they seem dramatically deep but they're always extraordinarily milquetoast they're out on paper. But I've found over the years that my faults are a well that I keep coming back to, knowing there's water here, just a little muddier than is helpful. That isn't really a problem. I always run it through a filter before I click publish.

One of my favorite faults is hating people. Or maybe reveling in how much I'd like to hate people while hiding how much I deeply care about the human race and all of its idiots. To this end, I'd like to introduce you all to The Daily Show's Third Month Mania. You make a bracket picking the winners between all the things that make you angry. It starts off with people. Please, please do this with me, everyone.

Brilliant, horrible, and sports-related,  just the way I like my satire.

Here's my full bracket, for your reference. So many difficult choices. So many.

Secondly, I also procrastinate like a pro. Like it's my job. Like someone could be paying me to do it, rather than me paying, just, so much money to be here ostensibly learning things.¹  My instant gratification monkey has an absurd amount of power in my life and to clarify what I'm talking about, I'd like to share this TED talk with you, from Tim Urban of Wait But Why.



A solid follow-up to this TED talk is his post on prepping for the TED talk, where he goes into all the different types of public speaking there is and the amount of prep that goes into each one. I find charts to be handy and I agree with his analysis of public speaking a whole heap.

Last but not least, I bask in the glory of the fault that is ambivalence. There are many things in life that I want to like but am unsure if I'm allowed to like or if it's okay that I like or if I'm maybe going to hell for liking but at the same time, if such a small thing as this earns me hell, then maybe we're all going there together, to that giant Trump rally in the underworld, and if there's enough of us, we can form clans and make hell an okay place to hang out for the rest of all eternity. I mean, we've got forever to figure it out, right? We can do this.²  

With all of that ambivalence in mind, I'd love to share this new short story by Laurie Penny with you in which an angel in the prayer call center tells us about their life. It's got a beautiful illustration at the top of the page and it makes you ask questions and answer the questions and also think very uncomfortably about angels and humanity and also there's more nudity than one would expect in a story narrated by an angel. But it's fantastic and I will indulge in such questionable fictions probably until the day I die, without ever really knowing whether I want to side with them or not.

Click on the very plain angel below to go to Your Orisons May Be Recorded, if you didn't get there already from the hyperlink in the last paragraph.

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¹ I am learning things, I swear, I promise. And I will write about that and you'll all be so confirmed in your decision to come back week after week, seriously, I love you guys.
²  Pride is maybe the fault/deadly sin I'm actually looking for here.