Happiness

“If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, and that is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are”

-- Charles de Montesquieu quotes (French Politician and Philosopher, 1689-1755)

(Source: Thinkexist)

Since there is a quote saying this, I guess I can safely assume that I'm not the only one who feels that way sometimes. I guess a more important question to ask is: why is it important for us to be happier than other people? After all, wanting others to be less happy than us means wanting others to be less fortunate than us. If we really sit down and think about this concept, you will soon realize that others happiness really does not affect our happiness. We don't need others to be unhappy for us to be happy. That is just unnecessary evilness on our part. Only when one truly understands that others' happiness bears no relevance to one's happiness will one be able to attain the true state of happiness.

Collect Them All

Everybody is familiar with the Collect Them All concept. It is a concept that has been exploited to death by immoral merchants. You may only want 8 of the 12 items in a set, all of a sudden the collect-them-all moment kicked in and you found yourself the proud owner of the 4 remaining items that you don't even find remotely appealing. The most evil of all? The ones where you don't know which one of the set you are buying, and usually most of the items in a set are the common ones, then 1 or 2 of them being the rare ones so you can potentially possess at least 50 if not more of the common ones before you can, hopefully, if at all, complete the set.

What I don't understand is: how did this collect-them-all mentality came about? What kind of evolutionary advantage are there in collecting them all? Perhaps it's vital to survival to collect enough food for the winter, or collect the proper tools for future usage, but to collect "one of each kind"?? Anyone care to venture any explanation to this inexplicable phenomenon?

Chores

One day, while griping about dishes, Hubby decided to Google "How to make my wife do chores?" At least that's what he claimed he looked up. The result to that? Google kindly informed my husband that his query had no matches and offered one of the four alternatives:

(1) How to make my boyfriend do chores?

(2) How to make my husband do chores?

(3) How to make my kids do chores?

(4) How to make my wife happy. :)

Unfortunately, I was unable to reproduce Hubby's search result for a screen shot. :( When I searched the same alleged keywords, I do see some "How to make my wife do chores?" postings. One thing of note is, since I have only civilized and evolved men in my life, when I see a statement like that I naturally, matter-of-factly assumed they meant "How do I make my wife to do [her half] of the chores?" Upon reading the 50+  comments mostly from women bashing the poster being an asshole and some of the other men's postings, evidently there are still men out there who strongly believe that chores are women's job??? Okay, maybe in the scenario that the man is the sole (and highly adequate) bread winner and they are kids-free; otherwise, I can't even wrap my mind around the concept! And these men can still find themselves mating partners? :-O

Roy Raymond (1947 – 1993)

I must admit, I have only recently heard of this Roy Raymond dude from the movie The Social Network. To sum up what so special about this Roy Raymond dude: for starters, he's the founder of Victoria's Secret, a name familiar to everyone living in this country. Raymond found said company because he found shopping for lingerie for his wife in a department store awkward and embarrassing. After starting up the company with $80,000, the company made half a million the first year. Five years later, the company was grossing $6 million and Raymond sold it for $4 million (not sure why). He tried another business venture selling children clothes and went bankrupt. Raymond committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, at age 46. Raymond is referenced in the movie The Social Network as a warning to Mark Zuckerberg of the risks of selling your company too early. (Source: Wikipedia).

It was interesting to note that when Raymond was mentioned in The Social Network, his second business venue, which left him near destitute, was omitted. Understandably, that part really bore no relevance to the movie. It did, however, mentioned that the company was worth $500 million two years later and Raymond jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. Now the story implied that Raymond jumped off the bridge simply from the regret of selling his company too early, despite the fact that he was still a multimillionaire! I spent a couple days after the movie pondering about that (yes, should have done a Google/wikipedia search sooner, so sue me for believing that blurb in the movie was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.) Surely $500 million is better than $4 million, but how much does one really need? Studies (who knows how did them and how) showed that yes, money do buy happiness, but only up to a certain degree. Which makes a lot of sense. Nobody is happy when they have to constantly stress over rent money, grocery money, etc. Once the basics are satisfied, we have some desires, let that be nice clothes, nice cars, big screen TVs, fine dining etc. Then it comes a point where infinity + 1 > infinity.... Is having a $15 million mansion, 10 cars, and a private jet going to add that much to your happiness? Venturing a guess with not too much authority, I am going to go with no.

Introducing the second venture, which left him near destitute, into Roy Raymond's story. All of a sudden it made a lot of sense! He didn't jump off the Golden Gate Bridge because he had $4 million instead of $500 million. He jumped off Golden Gate Bridge because he went from your everyday MBA to a millionaire then to poverty! That left me with a speechless "Wow!" Many of us will never even make $4 million in our entire life, let alone having the lump sum. But if you are going to go from normal to millionaire to poverty, is it better to have never seen the $4 million?

Movie Review: Devil (Spoiler Alert)

So I watched Devil over the weekend. Definitely get a 5 star. One of the best of these type of movies. Not too long, not too short; not too scary, not not scary enough. It's the Goldilocks of the horror genre.

My only thought is, "Wow, if all whores, liars, cheaters, and deserters deserve to die, will there be any humans left?"  Does the devil at least distinguish between the different level of whores/liars/cheaters/deserters? I mean, maybe other than the guy who killed the other guy's wife and kids (unintentionally), the others don't seem like your everyday hardcore criminal. Not even a malicious murderer. And, holy crap, if the devil has to spend half a day to kill four sinners, not to mention the amount of time he/she spent in arranging for them to all be in close vicinity, there's hella lots of work to do their job. One would hope that Devil is an entire team/group/corporation instead of just an individual!
 

Movie Review: The Social Network

So we watched The Social Network the other day and it was an amazing movie and it's not because it's loosely based on a true story. I mean, it is what got me to watch it but since all parties involved signed a non-disclosure agreement, one can only imagine how much truth there are in the story. Better yet, does it have more or less truth than a movie say Open Water? Regardless, the movie has its own merits, as evidenced by all the Golden Globe awards that it has received. The story telling was incredible, even the seemingly not-so-relevant with the girlfriend at the very beginning just reels its audience in instantaneously. The pace -- revealing of the inception/growth/success of Facebook along with the lawsuits -- was spectacular. And the actors were awesome too. It's arguably one of the best movies I've seen.