gayathri: (Default)
gayathri ([personal profile] gayathri) wrote2009-03-06 10:22 am

ouch:

I like reading Jonathan Carroll's blog: http://syndicated.livejournal.com/jonathancarroll

a recent one made me go 'ouch': 

He admitted they broke up. That surprised me because they seemed very happy together. He said she ended up being like certain colognes: they smell so beautiful when you first put them on, but then the aroma disappears entirely in half an hour. So you end up feeling cheated or stupid for having bought it.


I wonder how she might have felt, being described like that...

blood sugars running a little high today - fighting something off? I had sushi for dinner last night, so not sure why it would be high...
grrr. maybe sake? will have to experiment again.

ooo, great, lunch is Italian. I ran out to get a salad.




[identity profile] lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com 2009-03-06 09:07 pm (UTC)(link)
I wonder how she might have felt, being described like that...

I tried to devils-advocate this and utterly failed.

[identity profile] catness.livejournal.com 2009-03-06 09:51 pm (UTC)(link)
The only thing I can think of is... she was totally not what she seemed. But is that because she really was not what she seemed, or because the originator of that sentiment was expecting something completely unrealistic?

On the one hand, I know lots of folks with unrealistic expectations. On the other, I've also encountered many people who seemed to be X and then ultimately were totally disappointingly Not X. (It doesn't take me long to figure it out, though.) One woman I know, a peer of my father's, was The Girl Everybody Wanted - wealthy, beautiful, poignant, the subject matter of all the hip songwriters in his crew, The Muse. When I met her, she struck me as being someone who read the headline of every newspaper but didn't bother to read the articles themselves. Her vocabulary came from the company she kept, and not from any innate intelligence. She seemed above everyone because her family was rich, not because she was particularly interesting. My dad was highly amused that I, at age 18, saw through something everyone in his social circle missed.

[identity profile] lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com 2009-03-06 09:57 pm (UTC)(link)
When I met her, she struck me as being someone who read the headline of every newspaper but didn't bother to read the articles themselves. Her vocabulary came from the company she kept, and not from any innate intelligence. She seemed above everyone because her family was rich, not because she was particularly interesting.

Yeah, that. Or even people who seem very accomplished, sometimes:

You think she knows the Bible and can swim the English Channel,
Writes novels in her spare time in a cabin in the woods


But here's where my utter-fail came from: if I buy the cologne (or the gurlfriend, whatever), and that alluring scent is gone in 15 minutes, (assuming I didn't just get tired of it, in which case it's on me), I'm not going to feel "cheated". Stupid for having bought it, maybe, but cheated, no.

[identity profile] catness.livejournal.com 2009-03-06 10:42 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, um... cheated? You mean, like... it shouldn't have happened to you because you played fair with the universe or something? I dunno. It really does suggest more about the originator of that statement than the girl in question, in that way. But I'm still not convinced the girl in question was All That. They probably *both* weren't All That.

[identity profile] vairavi.livejournal.com 2009-03-07 12:22 am (UTC)(link)
I tend to think of cheated as something one feels when you have bought something that was misrepresented. If a scent claims to last hours and hours, and is gone in .25 hours, yeah, I'm going to feel like I was cheated out of my money.

But anyone who looks at relationships like a monetary transaction needs more help than I've got boots for head-kicking.

[identity profile] lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com 2009-03-07 03:47 am (UTC)(link)
I see your point, and yet I feel that people aren't marketing material -- sure, they can be plenty deceptive and misrepresent themselves, but...I don't know, for some reason I think there's a difference. It's like the line inthe old story, "You knew I was a snake when you picked me up."