So I don’t know how many of you realize that these things have a theme, and even if you know that I’m guessing it’s not always easy to identify, so today I’m going to make it easy: Things That Are Really Confusing.

Let’s start with this:

That is the shooting of a shampoo commercial, in which they hired a dude to wear a green gimpsuit and fan her hair around. I hope “greenscreen fluffer” is the actual title of that job. I guess that’s a thing that exists—you can see these dudes if you spend some time going through @MakingOfs, for example. Terrifying.

Next: I’ve read the first four (?) of Song of Ice and Fire books (which I always write the first time as “Snog of Fire and Ice” and then I’m like no, that’s much too friendly, what is the acronym (ASOIAF) and that’s how I remember, like how I remember how to spell “aggressive” because I do that BE! AGGRESSIVE! B-E AGGRESSIVE! B-E! A-G-G! R-E-S-S-I-V-E!! chant in my head every time and this entire paragraph has gone completely off the rails, sorry.)

Let’s try that again. A frequent criticism of ASOIF is that it is super rapey. A frequent counter is “but it’s historically accurate!” and I find this confusing because fiction, but also because this myth about “old enough to bleed, old enough to breed” being the norm is total bullshit. Here is a person who actually knows things about history, collecting some evidence:

John Hajnal, in his famous study “European Marriage Patterns in Perspective” identifies a high marriage age for Europeans since the 18th century, but even in the Middle Ages he comes up with the number 17 as the mean age for women getting married around the 14th century. From 1480 to 1679, the period when Shakespeare is alive, the age is 19.5.

Big Data. Okay, that’s not confusing, it’s just great.

The pull-quote on this article includes the following:

…the eroticization of plant life has become yet another ritualistic art victimized by a technology.

Then there is something about Cormac McCarthy and suggestive art involving plants. “Priapic squash” is a combination of words I didn’t need to see.

That said, the conclusion of this article is entirely hilarious.

Even Harrogate knew that the best fruit wasn’t low hanging. It was already on the ground. And, after many centuries culminating in the rise of real people filming themselves having real sex with real melons on YouTube, it turns out to be a rotten mess.

The Pathé Foundation has been building new headquarters in Paris for like a million years, and finally that building will open in September. It looks like this:

The inside is so gorgeous. The outside is so… armadillian. I like it! It confuses me.

Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six-volume memoir started appearing in English a few years back; the third volume, “Boyhood,” just came out. This series has been a huge bestseller for reasons which are entirely mysterious to everyone (including the author), but why is it called “My Struggle”? I mean, come on. In German, “my struggle” is “Mein Kampf,” and that title is taken, and there is not really any good reason to name your autobiography after Hitler’s. There just isn’t. And when anyone asks Knausgaard about it, he’s like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Snacks Quarterly is a thing that exists. I have looked at almost all of it and I still do not understand. It purports to be “for the distinguished snack enthusiast” and has Q&As with a bunch of people I have never heard of asking them questions like “what snack would you bring to the house of a mortal enemy?” Also there is snack-related fiction. I don’t know, guys. Snacks.