A dozen reasons to love Chris

A dozen things I love about bugsybanana:

1. Her big, brown eyes.
2. Her full, moist, kissable lips.
3. Her sharp sense of humor.
4. Her curvy figure.
5. She sticks with me even though I don’t deserve her.
6. We both think of the same thing when we hear “Maggie’s Farm”.
7. That funny little noise she makes when she can’t quite decide whether to be amused or outraged.
8. That smooth, strokeable curve under her chin.
9. She’s not afraid of taking the subway at night.
10. She’s a better Jew than I am.
11. She’s got New York in her blood.
12. She gets almost all of my jokes, even the obscure ones that combine They Might Be Giants lyrics with 1970s-era NYC politics.

The bit about chocolate isn't really surprising either

New developments in the neurology of love:

When you first fall in love, you are not experiencing an emotion, but a motivation or drive, new brain scanning studies have shown.

I wasn’t aware that motivations and drives weren’t considered emotions. I guess they’re lower on Manslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Early on in a relationship, the images showed that the brain seems to be very focused on planning and pursuit of pleasurable reward, says Fisher, mediated by regions called the right caudate nucleus and right ventral tegmentum. The same regions become active when a person enjoys the pleasure of eating chocolate, she adds.

There are also patterns that resemble aspects of obsessive compulsive disorder. [...]

Color me surprised. Then erase that color, ’cause I’m not surprised at all!

The team has since moved on to examining the final phase of romance. "We are now looking at people who have just been rejected," says Fisher.

Contact Helen Fisher, Anthropology Department, Rutgers University, all fifty or so of you.

Sensational Frankie!

Really, how many of you could keep yourselves out of a restaurant that had a sign in the window saying “SENSATIONAL FRANKIE!”? I figured maybe they had a Sinatra impersonator. No, a frankie is an Indian foodstuff, a thin potato pancake wrapped around filling. I had a medium-spicy cheese frankie, and it was pretty tasty.

Feedling unappreciated

Man, you’d think someone would have something to say about a combination of Great Big Sea’s version of “General Taylor” and David Bowie’s “All the Young Dudes”.

Richard Thompson

I picked up Action Packed: The Best of the Capitol Years, by Richard Thompson, at Virgin today.

Says James, to Red Molly, “Here’s a ring for your right hand.
But I’ll tell you in earnest I'm a dangerous man;
For I’ve fought with the law since I was seventeen.
I’ve robbed many a man to get my Vincent machine.
And now I’m twenty-one years, I might make twenty-two.
And I don’t mind dyin’ but for the love of you.
But if fate should break my stride, then I’ll give you my Vincent, To Ride.”