Martine Pagé

Survival of the smartest

BlindEye made an interesting social observation on his blog:

« When in a restaurant, I now take a quick look around to see who has their back to the wall. Invariably, it’s the women who have their back to the wall. I have no idea why this is. According to one theory, most humans prefer to eat with their back to the wall because they are vulnerable to attack when they are eating. With your back to the wall, no one can sneak up on you. »

I have another theory. Women have figured out that if their back is to the wall, then their date is facing the wall. That means the boy doesn’t get to check out the waitresses and all the other hot chicks in the place. There’s nothing worse and more insulting than talking to a man who has a bad case of the wandering eye.

Evolution, dear. It’s all about evolution. And survival of the smartest.

Ex-cruciating

My dislike of talking about ex-lovers with Chloe was perhaps part of the same phenomenon of wanting things to last for ever. These ex-lovers were reminders that situations I had at one point thought to be permanent had proved not to be so, and that my relationship with Chloe might undergo a similar fate. […]

The tragedy of love is that it does not escape the temporal dimensions. When one is with a current lover, there is a particular cruelty in the thought of one’s indifference towards past loves. There is something appalling in the idea that the person for whom you would sacrifice anything for today might in a few months cause you to cross the road to avoid them. I realized that if my love for Chloe constituted the essence of my self at that moment, then the definitive end of my love for her would mean nothing less than the death of a part of me.

From Essays in love, by Alain de Botton.

You are not alone in my shoes

I realized after I posted the previous story (see below) that a lot of other bloggers have linked to this article in the last few days. I hate when that happens. I feel like a person who points at her new shoes saying « Look at my cool shoes! » and then turns around and sees 10 other people on the street wearing the same pair, only better worn in.

Could it be that a lot of bloggers are actually freelance writers, or hoping-to-be freelance writers? I’ve always thought so. Who else would want to spend that much time writing for free?