Observations from my week

Some of the things I've observed this week:

"All the things"
Has the trend of saying "all the things" been growing slowly over months? Did it just hit at full force? Or has it been around for a while now and I am somehow only just this week becoming aware of it? People say they want "all the things."  A person they like has "all the things."  A talented person is good at "all the things." After a hard day, someone says they accomplished "all the things." Oftentimes you don't even need a sentence to go around it.  If you're feeling overwhelmed, you can just sigh and say, "All the things."  In fact, you can also say, "Hashtag all the things."  Yes, SAY "hashtag," verbally, but that's a different gripe I have.  If you don't know precisely what you want "all the things" to mean, that's okay, too.  As far as I can tell, you can say a restaurant or a book or a movie are "all the things," without meaning anything particular by it.  And if "all the things" doesn't quite fit your needs (maybe you like the expression, but you, like me, were prohibited from using the word "things" in school and it mostly stuck), that's okay -- just substitute another word for "things":  "I'm thinking all the thoughts;"  "He came back with all the arguments;" "My response to you is all the words."

So... is this a derivative of "It gives me all the feels," which I admit to also finding annoying because it cuts out all the specific actual words that exist to describe the actual feelings you are feeling, which are probably not all of them?  Is it a Millennial thing?  Is it related to the hyperbole involved in people saying, "Oh my God I just died.  That actually just killed me.  I'm dead," because they saw a TV show they liked or heard a great song or experienced something else that provoked a strong emotional reaction?  Is there some greater cultural force at work of young people wanting everything and wanting extremes and not being patient and having difficulty being satisfied with, well, NOT all the things?  Does it come from a lack of vocabulary?  Am I just being a crabby older Millennial by being annoyed by it? 

Personal grooming on the train has no limits
There was a girl on my train plucking her eyebrows and shaving.  That's all I have to say about that.

Personal space invasion on the train has no limits
While riding on another train, I felt uncomfortable and instinctively glanced at the phone screen of the man sitting next to me.  He was filming my thighs and crotch.

Sometimes nerds have their day on TV

I had to include this one because the brainy, nerdy, book lover Liza at the center of my favorite TV show, Younger, has spent four seasons with a video-game playing, pot-smoking, emotionally needy and whiny and at times emotionally abusive anti-intellect who never reads and didn't go to college, and while I don't judge him (aside from the emotionally abusive part), I do judge the idea that a woman as intellectually curious and mature as Liza would be with such a man-child who doesn't seem to have any interests other than smoking pot, playing video games, playing dodge ball, going to music festivals, giving and getting tattoos, and having sex.  So when, on last week's episode of Younger, she finally got her happily-ever-now with the equally intelligent, mature (yet fun), curious, complex, and well-read Charles and he romantically recalled that the first time he saw Liza she was reading Look Homeward, Angel at her desk at lunch (his face making it clear that that was the moment he was hooked), it was the happiest a TV show has made me since Gilmore Girls's Jess flirted with Rory by annotating her copy of Howl.  The brain is sexy.  And it makes me happy for a TV show to acknowledge that.

Fun with your heart beat and props

If you slouch down on the couch and put a bookmark on your abdomen, you can see it shake with each heartbeat.  If you think this is a really nifty and delightful discovery and try to do it with a mug of coffee to see if it makes the coffee vibrate like the glass of water in Jurassic Park, you will find that yes it does, but you might also get your significant other looking at you like they've lost all the words and you've lost all the marbles.  But I still recommend it (maybe not with hot coffee though).  I'll be honest -- it's probably a lot more fun than reading Look Homeward, Angel.