All About the Girrrrl

Well, the good news is that I took our young blog-busting girl out last night and everything went well. Lips were locked; boots were knocked. The success of the venture is made all the more surprising because I'd always suspected that if someone were to read the disturbing thoughts rolling round inside this Quixotic cranium they'd run a mile.

But, I must include -

NOTE TO SELF: Your sense of humor has a current success rate of around 1 in 10* so the next time you're taking a girl out on the town you may want to hold back on the old comic relief until you're sure you're in with a chance.

* That figure may or may not be comprised of people that are faking laughter plus the criminally insane.

Can a slippery slope made up of the bodies of straw men actually be slippery?

Is that the longest post title ever? Possibly.

And, all I'm going to do is link to another post.

There is a conservative columnist in Australia named Andrew Bolt. His arguments are ridiculous to the extent that reading them ends up being a side-splittingly comedic experience. In fact, if Bolt wasn’t writing for a decidedly Right-leaning newspaper, one could be excused for thinking him to be offering up some sort of deliberate political parody. In a recent column, he's made the 'slippery slope' argument, that allowing gays to marry will eventually lead budding polygamists to stake their claim.

Now, there is an antidote to Bolt's madness, and it's a blog called 'Boltwatch.' Boltwatch replied to Bolt's recent column with one of the funniest dissections of an argument that I've read in all Blogsylvania. What's funnier - the columnist in question reads Boltwatch and goes into paranoid paroxysms of fear when he realizes his disingenuous arguments have been revealed to the world in all their naked horror. He even attempts to respond to Boltwatch. Boltwatch's return of fire is something akin to the response I'd get if I tried to pass Roger Federer with one of my weak forehand shots on the tennis court.

The slap of palm on forehead

I've thought about posting a couple of times. But every time I attempt to key some letters to form some words the correct sequencing eludes me. It is very difficult to write anything knowing that someone living outside of Blogsylvania* has penetrated its swirling mists and discovered this dusty little corner of net space. It's nobody's fault really (actually, it's my fault for leaving links between my real name and this site; I was a fucking rookie when I started blogging); I also suspect that others have been coming here... It's just a hunch. So, I'm going to extract a promise on Thursday night over drinks. I'm going to request that a certain someone not come back here. If that certain someone can entertain that request then I'll keep the faith and resume blogging as normal; if not, I'll have to shut down Quixote Enterprises and return in the form of another ancient literary character. I'm quite fond of blogging, so even if this space has to go there'll be another. I like the ritual of sending out this (sometimes) daily message in a bottle, and the wonderment that comes from seeing which foreign beach this jumble of awkward words has washed up upon. Time will tell, time will tell.

* I've come to detest the term R/L or whatever it is that people have come up with to describe themselves offline - you are all real people, aren't you? I'm not a lab rat caught in some bizarre experiment where the scientists watch me read blog posts written by super smart computer technology, am I?

Am I???

Possible posts for tomorrow:
- The place I'm currently living (you'll be horrified)
- Insomnia (once again, look at the time of this post)
- Sex (shattering some mysteries)

Sweet, Sweet Music

The new Muse song is fucking hot. It's sleek, it's dark, and it's sexy. I love it when a band effortlessly changes tack, leaving me surprised and entranced.

And, I love that song by Tiga:

"As far as I go
As far as I know
I've always got
A place called home
I cross overseas
It's fine by me
'cause I'll never be
Far from home"

It just isn't happening

I just watched Apocalypse Now (redux) and Deer Hunter back to back. This failure to sleep is starting to bug me.

Continuing on from yesterday

Yeah, so I met this wonderful girl. She loves Russian history. I don't meet many girls with whom I can discuss Russian history. She is also damned attractive. But, as she told me three hours into our talk, she has a boyfriend. Now, she said "sort of boyfriend", but to me if you've been seeing someone for a year and a half then they're just a plain boyfriend.

She took down my number, and we've exchanged a text message or two. I won't, however, allow things to go any further than that. It's this damned conscience, see; it gets in the way all the time.

Maybe it isn't even a conscience. Maybe I've just been subjected to that hell in the past and, consequently, I have an acute awareness of what it feels like.

Up Late with Don Quixote

I met the coolest girl at an underground warehouse party on Saturday night. We talked for about four hours. That time seemed to pass in the blink of an eye.

But there are complications, man, there are always complications.

And I have insomnia, as you can probably tell from the time of this post.

More details will come tomorrow.

Two words

Fuck yeah!

Reason #459 Why Ann Coulter Wants to Eat Your First Born Child

Ah, Ann Coulter, purveyor of hatred, crusher of souls, the world's been waiting for your new "book".

But little did we know that your depraved writings would merely be a crude assemblage of other people's sentence constructions. I guess, in this day and age, even pure hatred lacks originality.

Ann Coulter - bringing plagiarism to a bookstore near you.

Update: From PZ Meyers, Ann Coulter believes Darwin's theory of evolution is discredited science, "one step above scientology in scientific rigor," and the only reason that it's been allowed to continue being taught is because "liberals think evolution disproves God."

Funny Update 2: The Rude Pundit describes entering a bookstore to buy Ann Coulter's book:

"When the Rude Pundit purchased Coulter's "book," he went to an out of the way megastore where he could be anonymous. He asked for a paper bag so no one could see what he was carrying. He's been less discreet about buying lesbian porn mags. In fact, when he got it home, the Rude Pundit took the Coulter cover off and wrapped it in a copy of Chicks With Dicks. He'd rather people think that he jacks off to she-males than that he reads Ann Coulter."

A Reflection of Darkness

I'm starting out upon the first few pages of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and already I perceive it is to be one of the most beautifully written books that I've ever read.

It is a quarter to two in the morning. I can't sleep.

Playstation Giving Off Good Vibrations?

This is both extremely progressive and enlightened or completely misogynistic. You be the judge.

And no, I wasn't searching for dirty stuff on the internet.

When Monday's comedown of yesteryear becomes a Wednesday, Thursday or Friday of this year

I was going to write a post about my weekend. But it'd be pretty much the same post as you'd get to describe a hundred other such weekends. We're talking about a photocopy - picture after picture after picture of the same landscape. And as with all copies, the scene remains the same but the colors begin to fade.

As with the rat trapped down the well, I'm circling, circling, circling. With futilely pumping legs I'm treading that water with no hope of rescue. I'm damn tired.

The World Cup at Tomdispatch

A great article from Tomdispatch about the World Cup and how it fits into the larger geopolitical narrative.

I'm not sure I agree with this though:

"...and I'd be surprised if World War II memories escape a mention when Australia plays Japan."

Jon Stewart Vs. Bill Bennett

Seriously, you've got to check out this video footage of Jon Stewart debating gay marriage with conservative Bill Bennett.

A small section of the Crooks and Liars transcript:

Stewart: So why not encourage gay people to join in in that family arrangement if that is what provides stability to a society?

Bennett: Well I think if gay..gay people are already members of families...

Stewart: What? (almost spitting out his drink)

Bennett: They're sons and they're daughters..

Stewart: So that's where the buck stops, that's the gay ceiling.

Bennett Look, it's a debate about whether you think marriage is between a man and a women.

Stewart:I disagree, I think it's a debate about whether you think gay people are part of the human condition or just a random fetish.

A second video would have been great as well. The footage of me pumping my fist and exclaiming, "fuck yeah!" every time that Stewart hit home with another great point.

More on the Spreading Chestnut Tree

Another true hero of the blogs gets shafted by neoconservatives:

'Juan Cole, one of the country’s top Middle East scholars, was poised for the biggest step of his career.

A tenured professor at the University of Michigan, Cole was tapped earlier this year by a Yale University search committee to teach about the modern Middle East. In two separate votes in May, Cole was approved by both the sociology and history departments, the latter the university’s largest.

The only remaining hurdle was the senior appointments committee, also known as the tenure committee, a group consisting of about a half-dozen professors from various disciplines across the university.

Last week, however, in what is shaping up as the latest in a series of heated battles over the political affiliations of Middle Eastern studies professors, the tenure committee voted down Cole’s nomination. Several Yale faculty members described the decision to overrule the votes of the individual departments as “highly unusual.”'

A smear campaign was run in the mainstream media in an effort to quash Professor Cole's nomination to Yale University. Funnily enough, none of his detractors were experts in middle eastern affairs.

(Via Talking Points Memo)

Okay, you didn't ask...

...so I'm going to tell you.

My favorite cake is cheesecake. Blueberry cheesecake.

And, it must be baked.

Investigating "Incidents" in Iraq

Haditha:

(Bold emphasis is mine)

"The process by which all human beings in a region transmogrify into the hated and feared enemy works in reverse as well. As in the case of My Lai, the dead by some strange process can change back into aunts, grandfathers, children, babies. It can happen on the spot. As Ryan Briones, the first Marine from Kilo Company to speak out (though evidently not one of the killers), described the scene: "They ranged from little babies to adult males and females. I'll never be able to get that out of my head. I can still smell the blood. This left something in my head and heart."

The whole article is well worth reading. It reveals the similarity between indiscriminate use of airborne force and massacres on the ground:

(Bold emphasis is mine)

"On March 20th of that year, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld chose to begin the invasion of Iraq with a "shock and awe" campaign of American missile and air wizardry over Baghdad. He meant to shock and awe a waiting world of potential enemies with the news that we were to be the dominatrix of all history. At the same time -- all things for all men -- in one fell swoop the U.S. would also "decapitate" Saddam's regime in downtown Baghdad (and elsewhere). The results: Of fifty "decapitation attacks," as the slaughter that passed for war began, not a single one killed an Iraqi leader of even the most minor sort, but scores of Baghdadi civilians died. In just four of these attacks that Human Rights Watch was able to investigate, 42 noncombatants were killed and many more wounded. One early missile attack was on "a civilian Baghdad restaurant where faulty U.S. intelligence suggested that Hussein might be having dinner," reports journalist Robert Parry. "As it turned out, Hussein was not there, but the attack killed 14 civilians, including seven children." Not quite Haditha numbers, but close enough; and this would set the tone in "accidental" death for the "liberation" of Iraq that was to follow. It simply never ended."

Bare witness. To do so over a long enough timeline will probably be enough to make me lop off an ear and wander away through the wilderness. But it feels like an obligation.

How your private actions impact Christians

Mr. Lefty draws forth the sword of reason and eviscerates the spurious arguments put forward by Australian fundamentalists who believe that gay marriage threatens the fabric of society:

"It is indeed an outrage. Every time a gay person gets married in Canada, it's an impost on Jim Wallace's marriage. Suddenly, he's not as special any more. Suddenly, he starts to look at other men on the street instead of his wife."

Seriously though, I find that the gibbering worship of Christians impacts upon my secular lifestyle. Think about it.

The perennial bad guy

And, speaking of Garry Oldman, I mentioned in the comment reply that I thought his best role was as Stansfield in The Professional. I also said that his maniacal, faux Jamaican character in True Romance was mesmerizing. It was, however, remiss of me not to make mention of the Big Bad, the One and Only - Dracula. Gary Oldman fucking made that movie; he held up Keanu Reeves' end the way Jim Carey held up Matthew Broderick's in The Cable Guy.

Anyway, a little Oldman to lighten up your day:

Mathilda: You killed my brother.
Stansfield: I'm sorry. And you want to join him?
Mathilda: No.
Stansfield: It's always the same thing. It's when you start to become really afraid of death that you learn to appreciate life. Do you like life, sweetheart?
Mathilda: Yes.
Stansfield: That's good, because I take no pleasure in taking life if it's from a person who doesn't care about it.

Rude Punditry

For those of you out there who often wish you knew a little bit more about politics, I'd recommend the Rude Pundit, whose most recent blog post started thusly:

"Whenever Michelle Malkin (who needs to be caged like a rabid shih-tzu) appears on Bill O'Reilly's Fox "News" show, it's a little like watching two hyenas rip into the corpse of a gazelle. They're in it together, their target can't fight back, and they're gonna rip that fucker to meaty shreds until they're good and done. So it was that on Tuesday, Malkin joined O'Reilly (who needs to be sodomized with a microphone) to "talk" about San Francisco's board of supervisors may vote to get rid of the Junior ROTC program in its high schools because of the "Don't ask, don't tell" policies towards gays."

The Rude Pundit makes politics fun and understandable, while at the same time he strikes straight at the beating heart of each issue. If you're thinking about getting in touch with your inner leftist you should check him out.

There is a club, everyone wants in - it's called club "ex"

I've been omitting mentioning something on this blog for the last, oh, six months or so. I guess I didn't mention it because I didn't want to put the kibosh on things. But certain recent events have occurred which now allow me to fill in the blanks. You see I've been (had been) seeing a girl over the last couple of months. She was an art history post-graduate student at a university in the city. There was a lot of things I liked about her - she loved movies, had a charming personality, was far smarter than me, and she could hold fantastic conversations. Unfortunately, over the weekend she decided to join an ever increasing list of girls that have preferred the status of 'ex' Quixotic lover. Yep, she kicked my ass to the curb midday talk show style.

Now when it's one or two girls you can kind of tell yourself that it was bad timing. You weren't suited, you know? It just wasn't meant to be. She didn't appreciate your unique virtues. All the shit that Dr. Phil would tell you to think (okay, that's the second day time television reference - I promise I don't watch any). But when you've built up a base of past girlfriends large enough to fill the southern stand of the MCG you've got to ask yourself some hard questions. Do you smell? Are you an arrogant prick? Do you make Andre the Giant look pretty? The problem is that I'm generally not too bad in a relationship - I don't have high expectations, I'm loyal, I'm not jealous, and I like to maintain a sense of individuality. I think I'm fairly entertaining to be around, and I can hold a decent conversation on most topics worth discussing. I can even bring on the funny. No really.

So what am I doing wrong? Am I too casual? Ugly? Smelly? I'm no Johnny Depp, but who is? And I figure that if John Howard can find a wife then I should be able to find a girl interested in hanging around past the two month mark. One night stands are fun, sure, and yet they get a little yawn-worthy after awhile. Oh well, the idea of spending my days reading good books, watching great movies and listening to my favorite tunes isn't completely unbearable.

"Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me"