And The Winner Is

James Wolcott:  " ... whatever one thinks of Bill Clinton, ranked No. 2 on the hall-of-shame list of America’s 'Five Most Broken Men'  ... ”

There's a list? Damn, I missed this.

Sexual Harrassment By Blog

The Bastardly [cute. real cute]: Remember Allison Stokke? I bet you do! Now she's a freshman at Cal Berkeley and doing well for their women's track team ... Here's her official Cal profile. Well, all we have is this one recent picture but no one will ever forget the first Allison picture that lit up inboxes ...

I don't know how to break it to you, guys ... but that thing in your pants? The one that leads you around like a pig with a ring in its nose?

Try and grasp this: it is of no interest. That's right! Zip! Nada!

In addition, there is nothing clever or funny about being assholes. Hard to believe, I know.

Mostly, besides being disgusted, we feel sorry for you. Horny guys, guys without women (clue) are thick on the ground. Plus of course what you are doing is harassment of another human being. Yes! Another person, like you! Only better.

Now, if you were to become men ...

Not This Girl

Women Settle for Mediocre Sex: "Not knowing why they feel so deflated after sex, women assume it's their fault or they just don't bring up the topic to their partner."

Yeah, right. Or how about the actual truth. How about some tips on telling your man he can't fuck worth shit. Tactfully. No such thing. Easier to suck it up the way women do with whatever's wrong, and no idea the price they're going to pay later on. Lies take it out of your hide. Lying out of fear, out of misguided compassion, or that terrible admixture of both.

How about let's back up a step. 1, How many men do you know (this one's for the gals out there) with a clue. Who like women's real bodies. To whom sex is one big juicy mutual act. To wit, if he won't go down, honey, he's curb material, and you're a fool if you don't start kickin.'

2? Don't think so. Not today. Don't want to start missing the man who did adore me—not the one I'd married. (Give me credit, the ex already languished curbside.)

Some other time. You learn, over the years, Truth, she is a sad but beautiful creature.

Eat My Shorts

From the Columbia Journalism Review today:

The press’s simultaneous amplification and shorthanding of Clinton’s display of emotion support Steinem’s point: Clinton’s gender, in a still-sometimes-sexist society like ours, may be more problematic than we allow ourselves to acknowledge or believe. After her emotional event yesterday, Clinton held a rally in Salem, NH. About eleven minutes into it, two men interrupted her speech, shouting at Clinton and hoisting handmade signs. The signs, and the hecklers, screamed, “Iron–My–Shirt.”

Which is pretty damn funny—too funny, now that I think of it, these guys were some kind of ironists (yes) on the loose. Students, smarty asses. Bloggers.

No, I take that back. Most male bloggers are too tensed up—from being on the A list, or on no list at all—hey, it's a dog-eat-link out there—to take time off just to be funny.

Seriously? A male friend with talents and jobs across the bio-spectrum reflected on what had happened to his own adolescent savagery in the years since. “I still compare myself at every moment, just not to the other guy anymore, but ... with my own goals.”

They gauge performance, they never stop gauging performance; keep this in mind, ladies.

And CJR? I got a journalistic bone (yes) to pick with you.

“Still sometimes”?

“May be”?

Stop pussy-footing (yes) around and write the simple truth.

The Man of My Dreams

I just picked this off a network, hey, like fruit from a tree, and hustled back here to publish my treasure, thereby both giving it away and making it more deeply mine.

Someone had posted the question, Who can I reach at Amazon to fix a customer service situation gone wrong? (I don't think you're supposed to take items from a closed site like this and—whoa, there's a blog police in my head?)

Answer: I just got a similarly weird "error msg" from L----In! First they say, hey, here's a new member who used to work at MMmedia just like you (the poor bastard). Perhaps you know him. As it turns out, I do, So I invite him to like, you know, L--- In. But then I get this ERROR MSG in response to my invite: "Please note: You cannot send invitations from this page because several recipients of your invitations indicated that they don't know you."

Have we achieved Fascist Networking yet?

sheesh!

Clarification added 6 hours ago:
Gosh, I didn't realize that this would be visible to everyone. Just to be clear, when I said "poor bastard," what I should have said was "poor FUCKING bastard."

And when I said "Fascist Networking" what I meant was "National Socialist Networking."

I hope this serves to clarify my position.

His only faults are that I have never met him, and, well, do you see him posting about me? (Answer: hell, no.)

Besides, the older men get, the more they like—no, let me put this another way: he is my age, give or take, and the whole of my life, since I was eleven or twelve, the male of the species has treated me as if I were as interested in naked women as they.

But it's really more than that. These things are pointers, in the way links point to something else, something huge, bigger than Google ever dreamt: Women are actually other people!

Different! Separate! Similar, in that we are as full of ourselves as any guy, with the same self-interest ... but with the addition, okay, of an inborn capacity to deeply care for and about others.

But enough about that. For now.

Moltz's Pickup Lines For Geeks

Q: (All made up by Moltz, of course.The poor fuck.) Maybe you can help me out. I’m wondering if there are any good pickup lines for Mac geeks. A friend of mine works in construction and he’s always got these awesome pickup lines for women.

A: Like what?

Q: Like “Do you work in a lumber yard? Because you’re giving me wood!”

A: Uh, yeah, that is ... awesome.

Q: Oh, yeah.

A: Well, OK. How about this one: “Are you a disk intensive activity? Because you’re spinning up my hard drive!”

Q: Ooh, not bad!

A: Or, “Are you a gaussian blur on a 50 MB file on a Performa? Because you’re really extending my progress bar!”

Q: Yeah! ... Or “Are you online porn? Because “I’m masturbating to you!”

A: Um…

Q: Too much?

A: A bit.

Just shrink that progress bar right back in your pants. For starters. Thanks.

You Have To Ask?

Virginia Heffernan writes in the Times:

I know from pushing a baby around Brooklyn’s mean streets that there are a lot of guys who, it turns out, wish they were babies. (”Man, that looks good!” “Ooh, I wish that was me with that bottle!” “Hey, little man, can we change places?”)

So, my question: Is this an exclusively male fantasy? To be a fat, pampered baby in a diaper again? "

And I am like two things ...

Either I cannot pick up whatever is her style of put-on—and boy I scrubbed that post for inflection, for any hint of irony ... (And by god, if there's one thing these squeaky-clean gender-neutral web professionals are, it ain't ironic. Kiss irony the long goodbye. Which is another post. About why Print—real Print. You know, the kind on paper—is not dead, I don't care if I personally have to give it mouth-to-mouth, I do not care if it pukes up the ocean inhaled in drowning, I tell you, that mo'facker is not dead.)

Or I am like, can it be that this woman has never heard of the classic-unto-cliched scenario some men—perhaps successful, perhaps older—pay some women to act out? On them? Like what a treat?

Which brings up another interesting question ... You know many women who have these kinds of urges? Urges dripping, reeking of the most infantile—oops, did I say that?— Freudian origins? Hell, no. But what am I saying, the guy is already perfectly unabashed about wanting a nice diaper. A bonnet. A pacifier. (I'm getting nauseous.) This is not the suck on tits fantasy one might suppose. Oh no. Tis a far, far ickier thing ...

But you know what, men also, have you noticed, don't give a damn about embarrassing themselves in their own view. I'm not sure that kind of view even exists in these our strange co-inhabitants. Ooh, it's so relaxing, change me again, nursie ... I don't think so. Have men, at long last, no dignity, sir?

Yeah, right. Like that question is actually in play. This must be what it feels like to own the place. It's not that your own shit doesn't stink, it's that far from minding it, you find the smell interesting, even pleasant. And because entitlement is yours ... and, well, I guess entitlement kinda drives out self-examination in any form, doesn't it. Or do I mean self-consciousness. Or do I mean, It's a man's world is the single most depressing truth a woman can face.

Yeah, that's what I mean. And I understand when she mostly chooses not, for to dwell upon such a thing, 'twould drive any sane person crazy.

And then who'd be left to "man" the barricades. Knit knit knit.

I Knew There Was A Reason

Top Ten Thousand Ways Women Drive Men Crazy:

The contents of the collective unconscious are represented in consciousness in the form of pronounced preferences and definite ways of looking at things. These subjective tendencies and views are generally regarded by the individual as being determined by the object—incorrectly, since they have their source in the unconscious structure of the psyche and are merely released by the effect of the object. [emph. mine]

Isn't that lovely ... released.

But they are stronger than the object’s influence, their psychic value is higher, so that they superimpose themselves on all impressions.

Just as it seems incomprehensible to the Introvert that the object should always be the decisive factor

OMG.

... it remains an enigma to the Extraverts how a subjective standpoint can be ...

Is.

... superior to the objective situation. He inevitably comes to the conclusion that the Introvert is either a conceited egoist or crack-brained bigot.

Or worse. It gets much worse. This piece was obviously written by a male—not that I remember the link. Links—feh.

The Introvert certainly lays herself open to these suspicions, for her positive, highly generalizing manner of expression ...

Which may be #1 on the list. Higher than one.  Maybe the list goes to eleven.

... which appears to rule out every other opinion from the start, lends countenance to all the extravert’s prejudices. Moreover, the inflexibility of her subjective judgment in setting itself above all objective data ...

I don't know that you'd call it inflexibility so much as, Why waste my time and yours?

... is sufficient in itself to create the impression of marked egocentricity. Faced with this prejudice, the introvert is usually at a loss for the right argument, for she is quite unaware of the unconscious ...

Who you callin' unconscious.

... but generally quite valid assumptions on which her subjective judgment and her subjective perceptions are based.

I don't know why he has to say unaware—projective identification, no doubt, for are we not the receptacle for all things inferior? Were we not thought to have the mental capacity of Idiots, and therefore unable to fucking vote? FCS?

Does that tick you off when you think about it? It does me. Think about it.

The Churn

(Fiction) ... It wasn't for many years that I got even a hint of a grip on Alec's issue with work. First, we start with the assumption that I am a sponge, a freeloader, then we move on from there. That was the current that ran below everything, a resentment, a form of hatred that I certainly sensed, and from the start ... yet what desperate young woman can afford the truth. I wanted to get married because that is what I knew to do, I needed help with my dear little children, I had no money ... and I suppose the truth is that in Alec, in his hatred, I was given yet another crummy gift. Why me, oh Lord, which is exactly the sort of plea that goes unanswered.

Because the real question is, why Alec.

Why men.

Why the hatred and no end of punishment to women in need.

Now that we know of some of the nastier attitudes of the really entrenched, okay, there's a tiny hue and cry. Perhaps it is not quite the thing, this stoning to death of the woman fucked out of wedlock. Bury her upright in a pit and batter her about the head. On the other hand, as Alec used to so cheerfully say, Better you than me.

Had I but known it, every hateful thing Alec said was a direct pipeline from ancient tribal feuds. The kind of hatred baked, after eons under the sun, into a shrivelled, bitter lump that once eaten, sits there in the gut, neither regurgitated nor shat. Churning. Churning like his old man, churning like Alec. Churning but stuck. Churning without hope of removal of the indigestible truth of their lives ...

So they strike out. Which relieves exactly nothing. Perhaps only aggravates the churn.

And women are so used to it, I am so used to it, tell me, does it not seem normal? This ... cycle of buildup and release? Don't we pity the poor souls, having no better way? Yes, we do. Pity which has no bearing on the fact, we are maimed. Pity, genuine pity, will get you killed. Hold up a sign, go around, “I feel for you.” See how long—with someone like Alec—see how long you last.

Argggh v.3

Behind Every Great Male Writer , a review by Hadley Freeman:
Many of the most esteemed authors in history have relied on their wives—or if not, conveniently placed women such as sisters or daughters—to help them knock out their tomes: Wordsworth, Nabokov, Carlyle, and, er, Dick Francis, to name but a few ... sometimes a wife's contribution has simply been to smooth the life around her husband as much as possible, clearing the way for him to work, undisturbed, as Jessie (wife of Joseph) Conrad did, ditto Nora Joyce. Both of them, according to Jeffrey Meyers in his book Married to Genius, provided a kind of stability for their highly strung husbands.

Fine. I can take it. Ancient history and all that.

Nabokov is probably the most illustrious example of this type. His wife, Vera, was his typist, proofreader, editor, agent, business manager, chauffeur and, somewhat intriguingly, the person who would cut up his food for him at every meal.

Knew that.

Vera was not, however, his bedmate, according to Nabokov's biographer, Brian Boyd—in this one activity, the author preferred to go it alone.

OFCS. Could we not be spared? Anything?

Everyone has to go just a little too far. Nabokov. The great, great beauty of Lectures on Russian Literature. Did you know that Kitty and—the name of that noble, farming clod momentarily escapes me—(Levin, of course. What a dull name.) are, for whole periods of the book, running six months ahead of Anna and Vronksky?

Well yes, all that making like bunnies. Slow, tragic bunnies. Death? Beneath a train? Feh! Stinkers to Brian Boyd, who just could not wait to issue this lifetime spoiler. Oh, hell. What do I care. Speak, Memory is a tad onanistic, come to think of it.

It's just that there is no more odd a sight—from a purely objective point of view, you understand —than the male, what is the clinical term ... jerking off. Do you suppose it was also Vera's duty to watch? From what I've heard, this is something boys like to do. In groups. Working out, I suppose, their latency issues. The poor sods.

Really. Beneath all the attack and dismissal, girls are rock solid, in that we do not agonize in such manner. It is apparent to us that we are female, and, well, it's the whole Object thing all over again, isn't it. It fucks up their minds, and while many a valiant attempt is made to project this obsession onto women and breast size, try as they might, I'm sorry, there is no female equivalent to a hard-on gone limp. Which I gather to be the ruling fear of this or any other time. Believe me, the fact that you plaster your anxieties all over women, children and weaker nations is the real crime. That's what we're charged up about, not you. It's your goddamn unlived life.

Occasionally, too, it is husbands who have provided support to their writing wives. Leonard Woolf is widely credited for creating a sufficiently comforting atmosphere in which his wife Virginia could, occasionally, find enough solace to write.

Oh, right. And what year did he die.

Guys Say the Darndest Things

Validation porn has had its day. Enough about the brushes already: give me some beauty.

You know, it is just so true.

Execrable taste does bespeak a lack of moral intelligence—as well as vice versa.

Run That By Me One More Time

“Prepare yourself to qualify for good work, treat work seriously, and don't put yourself in a position of unequal resources when you marry.”

Don't put yourself in a position of unequal resources when you marry?

Don't put yourself in a position of unequal resources when you marry?

Betty? Betty? Are you really gone?

This or That

“When you look another man in the eye it means one of two things.”

He waited for a reply.

I was ready with the answer.

“I want to fuck you or I want to kill you,” I said. Everyone turned to look at me.

“Exactly,” said Paul. “I want to fuck you or I want to kill you.”

Oh tis such a cheery thing, to be a male. So ... interesting, so complex, multi-layered ...

Not. Oh God so not.

link: Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey into Manhood and Back by Nora Vincent

Yow!

And she seems like such a nice person:

“To you and me, Shelly, a link is just a link. To a guy, however, a link is something special, a part of himself. The most, um, important part of himself.”

“Mags, are you telling me that guys equate links with their dicks?”

“Shelley, to a woman, a link is a way of connecting and being connected. To hearing and being heard. But not so for a guy. Guys see links as power, and therefore something precious, and to be protected. They hold on to their links as tightly, and as lovingly, as a thirsty drunk holds onto a bottle.”

At that moment I had a mental image, of a male weblogger I know, carefully adding a link to his post, bright, feral grin on his face, manic glaze to his eyes. But instead of typing into a keyboard he was . . . oh, that's disgusting!

Never mind that it's funny. Which I suspect is far more a blow to the ego than the, um, link thing.

Dicks are nothing to laugh at.

She stopped wiping the counter and leaned closer to me, lowering her voice. “The power-link guys have a word for men who link just to link,” she whispered. “They call them linkless.”

The more I thought on Mags’ words, though, the more I could see the truth in them. Much that has confused me about this environment is explained if one considers for a moment that some men think of links as some form of virtual penis.

Sites such as Technorati become the internet version of a locker room, where the guys can hang around, comparing themselves to each other. Those that come up short look at their better endowed brothers with both envy and admiration; sucking up in order to increase their own stature.

When we women ask the power-linkers why they don't link to us more, what we're talking about is communication, and wanting a fair shot of being heard; but what the guys hear is a woman asking for a little link love. Hey lady, do you have what it takes? More important, are you willing to give what it takes?

Oops. Not funny anymore. I mean, Shelley is, her writing is . . . but in truth, my case of heartsick is permanent. Not for myself, but for all whom I hold dear.

More truth? Okay: I just can't get it through my head there is a gender comfortable with, even finding preferable, the exchange of money for sex.

Talk about aloneness. Who will be my boon companion?

If I am a woman, whom, then shall I love?

My Kind of Guy

Lately, it's love that cuts me like a knife.

It's still a slice. Its sudden launch, from within the body—from the stores of memory, from the firings of both heart and brain—is still as much of a surprise. Love hurts, in surprisingly grief-like ways. How to discern, when the heart pores over. When experience (this is my theory) is just too large to bear. The psyche sorts—so Psyche-like—by discarding, expressing, overflowing. I just don't know how you men decide what to keep. I don't know how you manage to live so without living, but I suspect this is at once what it is to be a woman, and the reason that you hate us. The reason, for example, that feminism has become just an increasingly real-seeming imitation of what we're not: invulnerable. Able to carry on. No matter what.

No, correct that: we carry on like hellfire. We just show our pain. Not a stiff upper lip in the house, and what you don't get is that this is endurance, this is our living of this life. I don't care if you do it your way, I depend on your doing it your way. What I would like to dispense with is the idea that when you are dealing with someone, anyone, like me, you are dealing with someone weak.

Check this out: the notion that it is weak to be weak. When did this utter crap-thought arrive? When did testosterone get so out of hand that it became the only thing? It's a boy's game. I point this out ot to condemn, but to redeem what has been trashed. To simply tell the truth. 'Cause I sure as hell know what happened to me, and I do invite anyone to step right up and tell me I deserved it. Earned it. Was karmically due.

It's all your bloody fear of death, and for what. You're going to die anyway, wouldn't it make the most sense to behave with kindness and sense now?

He who owns the most toys, wins—the presidency, no doubt, and a great many other things that ultimately control the winner's life.

I swear I am going to single-handedly bring about the return of Jesus, the guy who stood up for, honored saw the whole point of weak, and he—excuse me, He—fuck it, he—oooh, is he going to kick some ass.

If Women Knew

Marc Maron “What little working free psychic space I have goes into, God, I want to fuck her, and Man, I'm an asshole.”

Like lemmings to the sea. One big mass march. Utterly hopeless. Give it up.

Nice pants.

Goodbye To All That

“Mostly, the Rude Pundit doesn't give a shit what you have to say.”"

My sentiments, exactly. Why? Because it is a hard freakin' job to unpack all these thoughts in any semblance of reason, of order. You know what the web is? One big tangled snare of thoughts. Most of them boring, yes, but that's because nobody thought them, they just sort of—laid them, like a chicken lays an egg. Oh sure, the hen is proud, damn proud. Keeping chickens is an education. Keeping any sort of animals in numbers is a farkin' education, as is observing the behavior of your fellow keeper.

The worst damn thing you can do is say what you think. Especially if you are A: a woman, B: smart, and C: given to marrying stupid men. Men with lots of money who the very last thing they want to do is pay any to you. Who, if they find this blog and figure out who I am, will drag it into court along with the rest of their little kit full of Reasons I Am A Bitch. And should therefore proceed at a whole lesser standard of living? Well, that just goes without saying. Should in the very least suffer some sort of direct punishment, not from God, mind you, but from Little God.

Ah, wot the hell. Is there a woman alive who hasn't watched some guy pull rank, and over her. I'm not saying anyone gets a pass, but you've got to be in a special position—weaker, smaller, sicker, poorer, littler or otherwise dependent upon—to know the the pissant will-to-power that is testosterone gone bad. Like turned milk. It's curdled, in his head, so bad he doesn't know it. If you call knowing, admitting into reality. What did I do? I went about my business. As a woman. An artist, a writer. What did he do?

Why, we know now. To keep our eye on the dollar. We learned the hard way: follow the money. This is the answer to every question that makes no sense, that is contrary to life, that fills the headlines. That built the house of Tom De Lay, that hid the evidence of Condoleezza Rice, that threw the flowers of Donald Rumsfeld, that waved the flag of Swift Boat vets, that ... you know what? I don't think I can take it anymore.

This is the house that lies built.

Rumsfeld Forks Up, Zinni Speaks Up

One of Zinni's responsibilities while commander-in-chief at Centcom was to develop a plan for the invasion of Iraq. Like his predecessors, he subscribed to the belief that you only enter battle with overwhelming force.

But Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld thought the job could be done with fewer troops and high-tech weapons.

How many troops did Zinni’s plan call for? “We were much in line with Gen. Shinseki's view,” says Zinni. “We were talking about, you know, 300,000, in that neighborhood.”

What difference would it have made if 300,000 troops had been sent in, instead of 180,000?

“I think it's critical in the aftermath, if you're gonna go to resolve a conflict through the use of force, and then to rebuild the country,” says Zinni.

“The first requirement is to freeze the situation, is to gain control of the security. To patrol the streets. To prevent the looting. To prevent the ‘revenge’ killings that might occur. To prevent bands or gangs or militias that might not have your best interests at heart from growing or developing.”

I want, as should any responsible citizen, to kick Donald Rumsfeld's sorry ass.

Last month, Secretary Rumsfeld acknowledged that he hadn't anticipated the level of violence that would continue in Iraq a year after the war began. Should he have been surprised?

“He should not have been surprised.”

Is anyone quite so doggedly stupid as a prideful, know-nothing man.


Link: Sixty Minutes