“After the rings, the priest should just say, “Enjoy it, bing-bongs. Due to our brain’s tendency toward hedonic adaptation, you won’t feel quite this giddy in a few years. All right, where’s the pigs in a blanket? I’m outta here.”
― Modern Romance: An Investigation
― Modern Romance: An Investigation
“One girl raved about a nice voicemail a guy had recently left her. I kindly requested she play it and heard this gem: 'Hey, Lydia. It's Sam. Just calling to say what's up. Gimme a ring when you get a chance.'
THAT WAS IT.
I pleaded to know what was so great about this. She sweetly recalled that 'he remembered my name, he said hi, and he told me to call him back.'
Never mind the fact that what she described was the content of LITERALLY EVERY VOICE MAIL IN HISTORY. Name, hello, please call back. Not really a boatload of charm on display. To fail this test, a guy would have to leave a message that said: 'No greeting. This is man. I don't remember you. End communication.”
―
THAT WAS IT.
I pleaded to know what was so great about this. She sweetly recalled that 'he remembered my name, he said hi, and he told me to call him back.'
Never mind the fact that what she described was the content of LITERALLY EVERY VOICE MAIL IN HISTORY. Name, hello, please call back. Not really a boatload of charm on display. To fail this test, a guy would have to leave a message that said: 'No greeting. This is man. I don't remember you. End communication.”
―
“Marriage was an economic institution in which you were given a partnership for life in terms of children and social status and succession and companionship. But now we want our partner to still give us all these things, but in addition I want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot, and we live twice as long. So we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide: Give me belonging, give me identity, give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one. Give me comfort, give me edge. Give me novelty, give me familiarity. Give me predictability, give me surprise. And we think it’s a given, and toys and lingerie are going to save us with that. Ideally, though, we’re lucky, and we find our soul mate and enjoy that life-changing mother lode of happiness. But a soul mate is a very hard thing to find.”
― Modern Romance
― Modern Romance
“Unlike phone calls, which bind two people in real-time conversations that require at least some shared interpretation of the situation, communication by text has no predetermined temporal sequencing and lots of room for ambiguity. Did I just use the phrase “predetermined temporal sequencing”? Fuck yeah, I did.”
― Modern Romance: An Investigation
― Modern Romance: An Investigation
Mary’s 2025 Year in Books
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