Happy, smile. Sad, frown.

Match the corresponding face to the corresponding emotion.

Sometimes it’s hard, as in the photo above, titled ‘to cry or to laugh?’ (I found it on flickr, you can click through to see whence it comes and its little story.)

I believe I said I was going to be writing a post about happiness. What do I really know about happiness anyway? Any more than the next person? I’m not sure about that. I like to be happy, so if that makes one an authority, then I’m eminently qualified. I can also say that while I’m probably not as happy as I ought to be, given my circumstances (running water & other ‘basic’ infrastructure-type amenities, for starters; plenty of food; safety; a closet full of clothes to choose from; loving family & friends; etc), as I get older I find that I am increasingly more happy all the time.  This, I believe, can be traced to some very complex factors, and – if research were to be done – would manifest itself in a graph something like this:

And no, I’m not trying to rip off the girl from Indexed, although I like her stuff very much. I am being highly, highly precise & scientific.

If you read posts from my actual site rather than via the RSS feed, you may have noticed a number of links showing up in the ‘of interest’ sidebar from The Positivity Blog – I’ve really been digging on it, and it seems to be giving lots of very solid advice (often of the kind that I’ve heard from my mom, that I’ve then given others, and that I frequently find that I need to re-issue to myself). But you probably don’t read this blog for advice, do you? And if I talk to you already – a group which probably includes all 9 of my faithful readers, poor souls, that’s a lot of cg – then you definitely don’t need to be at risk of getting any more.

Instead, how about some stuff that makes me happy. Maybe it’ll make you happy. And then we’ll go around, being happy and presumably nicer, and it’ll be like a big budget movie where person by person something is spread around, you know, like a terrible virus or a zombie invasion, except more like a happy infection or hordes of the ungrouchy.

freshly baked bread ¦ giggly kids ¦ Chicago dogs (the kind you eat) ¦ dogs (the kind you walk) ¦ warm slippers with furry insides ¦ perfectly blue no-humidity skies ¦ grey blustery days ¦ Mr Rochester ¦ witty repartee ¦ fixing broken code ¦ little birdies ¦ moo cards ¦ Domokun ¦ freshly mown fields ¦ waking up to nice emails ¦ paper products ¦ letterpress ¦ handwritten notes ¦ petite sirah, esp that one bottle we had in 2002 and then never found again but dang it was good ¦ Neko Case’s voice ¦ playing guitar and sucking less all the time ¦ four part harmonies ¦ my local bar and my favorite bartender whose name I still haven’t asked because he looks like a bizarro world doppelganger of someone else i know ¦ the word doppelganger ¦ umlauts whenever possible ¦ making soup ¦ tweeting funny, funny things on anonymous accounts ¦ the sound of the surf ¦ fireflies ¦ flowers ¦ cherry preserves ¦ knee socks ¦ naps ¦ getting or giving $0.41 as part of a transaction [you figure out why] ¦ bookshelves all around a room ¦ twinkly lights ¦ vintage rehabs ¦ grinding coffee beans ¦ train whistles¦ not paying full price ¦ britt daniel just jumping off the stage and disappearing like the bolt from above ¦ thunderstorms in summer at night ¦ magazines with glossy, glossy photos ¦ vintage-y fonts ¦ desk set ¦ cupcakes ¦ checking out my own gun show [heck yeah] ¦ fake stupid-sounding voices we use in my family when we tell stories ¦ people-watching ¦ butter chicken ¦ laughing at my own ridiculousness ¦ friday nights at home ¦ fresh herbs ¦ making long, long lists