“‘I’ve always heard this phrase, ‘Oh, marriage is great, or relationships are great — you get to go on this journey of change together,’ ” she said. “That sounds terrible. I don’t want to go through those changes with you. I want you to have changed and become enough of your own person so that when you meet me, we can have a stable life and be very happy.”

Oh, if that is what you want, you are in luck. The world is filled with rigid, immature freaks who stop developing emotionally, intellectually and psychologically at about the age of 12. It’s great to see they are in such high demand.

This will be one of those marriages where people have veritable wars over the methods of squeezing toothpaste out of tubes and raised versus lowered toilet seats.

I always thought that “middle-aged” meant of the age I am now. But here I read a post titled “Female, Fifty, and Furious” (great post, by the way, do read it) and it suggests that “middle-aged” is fifty years old. Not that I have anything against postponing middle age by a decade or a decade and a half.

What do you mean when you say “middle-aged”?

And if I’m not middle-aged, then what am I?

Technology as Nature is a very interesting blog that always offers food for thought.

To be a great writer you nearly have to have lead an interesting life,

says the blog’s author in a recent post. I always make an effort not to find out about the lives of writers I like, so I’m not sure how true that is. Let’s join forces and share what we know about the lives of authors whose work we enjoy.

Jane Austen definitely had the most boring life ever.

Anthony Trollope held a demanding full-time job while churning out one lengthy novel after another.

Maybe somebody could see Dostoyevsky’s life as exciting due to his gambling addiction but I see it mostly as miserable and drab. Endless poverty, endless efforts to pay the bills. Sounds very unenviable.

Juan Goytisolo narrates his life in a way that makes it sound fun but, as for actual events,  I don’t know. He traveled a lot, so maybe that counts.

Hemingway’s life was fun but I don’t consider him a good writer.

Of course, Cervantes had a life and a half, so in his case the quoted statement bears out.

My most favorite writer in the world, Volodimir Vinnychenko, had a fascinating existence. He went from a family of illiterate starving workers to become the Prime Minister of the Ukrainian Republic and the most famous Ukrainian writer of his time – and all that without any formal schooling.

Do you know about anybody else’s life?

The reason why I’m getting so hung up on the linked post is that I just discovered that the Russian poet Lermontov owned two slaves. To me it means that I will not be reading this particular poet aloud to Eric. And I really liked his poetry. But now it’s all spoiled for me.

Some people know how to narrate the most trivial, insignificant little events in a manner that makes them sound fascinating. And then there are those who experience fascinating things but don’t know how to put them in words in a way that would make anybody interested in reading about them.

The NYTimes is convulsing in the throes of a fit of intense prissiness:

Until recently, those who studied the rise of hookup culture had generally assumed that it was driven by men, and that women were reluctant participants, more interested in romance than in casual sexual encounters. But there is an increasing realization that young women are propelling it, too.

Yes, this is Earth-shattering news for the backwards and frumpy authors of the stupid rag: women enjoy sex, too.

But wait, even scarier realizations were to follow:

Almost universally, the women said they did not plan to marry until their late 20s or early 30s.

Yes, women are actually intelligent. Who could have known? They are finally clocking on to the idea that getting married at 19 is about the dumbest thing you can do. (Please do not argue with me about this unless you are a woman who got married at 19 like I did.)

And here comes the most terrifying news of all:

In this context, some women, like A., seized the opportunity to have sex without relationships, preferring “hookup buddies” (regular sexual partners with little emotional commitment) to boyfriends. Others longed for boyfriends and deeper attachment.

Yes, different women have different preferences. One cannot make pronouncements about what all women in the world want and avoid looking like a total idiot. This is truly tragic. The universe has turned out to be more complex than NYTimes is ready to digest.