Yeah. I used to listen to music and sing along as a way to de-stress and calm myself down, and then I noticed that I always started by having to think a lot about the phrasing and messing up a lot of things, but by the time I got to the end of an album, it was much less difficult, and the effect would carry over into regular speaking for at least a little while. It doesn't last long, though, and in order to keep it going for a little while, I usually have to kind of run the songs through my head while breathing as if I were singing them, until it's my turn to talk.

Remember that article about people re-wiring their brains using mirrors and the body part that was working correctly? I wonder if this exercise could start to do that if a person did it consistently. Once a day, twice a day... something like that.

My BFF has Vampire Weekend on her Amazon wish list. Is it bad that I want to buy it JUST because it has a song called "Oxford Comma" (of course, the chorus is "who the fuck cares about the Oxford Comma", which is not the message that I want to send, but still)

It just shows that you're one of us.

perhaps the act of praying itself gives me what I need.

This most accurately sums up my thoughts on prayer.

Me too.

My Mom does this thing she calls a prayer diet. When she's feeling overwhelmed with her life she'll pray only prayers of thanksgiving for two weeks.

There's also the notion that a prayer is an act of love. When you pray for someone (not in the antagonistic pray-for-god-to-fix-the-evil-sinner way) you are loving them in their time of trouble.

Thanks for the discussion y'all! I'm about to hit a bar for an after work drink so I'm out-you know what they say about religion and bars.

Yeah, I'm headed home to a glass of wine in a few minutes myself!

Vortex, I've repeated that joke many times, for the same reasons you like it.

Took me a while to find it again, but I thought this was an interesting article on different types of prayer: [link]

Haven't found the reference yet, but I remember another article about how prayers are basically either "Gimme!" "Thanks!" "Wow!" or "Why?"

Vortex, I love that helicopter joke. (I tell that one, and an old joke about evangelicals thinking they're the only people in heaven, so much that The Girl groans on cue as soon as I start saying the words "There was a man who died and went to heaven...")

Like, a woman who stays with a verbally abusive boyfriend gets breast cancer, because she's not taking care of her feminine needs.

How interesting. I wonder, are my joint and connective tissue problems the result of... not having connection in my life? (Of course, they could be the result of, y'know, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. But that would clearly be the view of a crazy radical.)

I tell that one, and an old joke about evangelicals thinking they're the only people in heaven

I love that one. I think there's a version of it for every single sect in existence, except the Unitarians and Episcopalians.

WRT attitude and illness, there's a great (and distressing) scene addressing that in Todd Haynes's Safe, where a warm and fuzzy group support/mutual affirmation group at a New Agey convalescent facility is interrupted by a woman in an utter rage that her husband's positive attitude hasn't helped him one goddamn bit, she's sick of hearing that his illness is his fault, and isn't this all deflecting talk away from industrial and environmental toxins and all the big scary monsters that involve more serious battles than merely turning that frown upside down?

I've heard variants of her tearful rant a few times since from critics of the Pink Ribbon industry.

And, in other news, I am now groaning with proof that God exists and wants me (and possibly my entire division) to be happy -- division holiday lunch with sushi, egg rolls the size of burritos, honey walnut prawns, and Princess cake from Schubert's. If there had been a pitcher of martinis, we might all have been bodily assumed into heaven.