"No, no. Dick is my MIDDLE name."

I was recalling a bit of witty dialogue I had with a one-time friend of mine the other day (and by the other day, of course, I mean nearly 5 years ago. Memory is a funny thing.) Anyway, the conversation was about the resplendence of our respective todgers. You see, I was trying to ball his girlfriend at the time (or, more appropriately, she was trying to ball me and I was feeling terribly sixteen about the whole thing), so of course it makes sense that our simian minds would find some verbal sparring about the worth-and-girth of our junk to be in order. I'll try to reconstruct the crescendo here:

One-Time-Friend: My dick is so big it has several distinct climate regions.
Yours-Truly: The US Congress appointed a committee to study the matter of my dick further.
OTF: My dick is visible from low orbit.
YT: My dick is the obscure Sumerian god "Absu".
OTF: My dick has consulates in all the world's major cities
YT: My dick is responsible for 20% of the volume at NASDAQ.
OTF: My dick needs a crew of fifty stout men to sail it.
YT: My dick made the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs.
OTF:...touche.

Here at the Enfranchised, we like a good non-sequiter almost as much as we like the 1991 Don Johnson/Mickey Rourke classic Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man. So I invite my fellow bloggers and our readers to make appendages to this post about your appendages. How big is your dick?

Review: The Communist Manifesto

[printed in the entertainment section of today's Stanford Daily]

["The Record Bin" encourages readers to try oldies but goodies by reviewing art that's moved from the new releases shelf to the classics rack.]

Reading it now, "The Communist Manifesto", by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, seems prescient. It predicted the rise of consumerism, federalism, and intellectualism: aside from also forecasting a quick and permanent revolt of the working class, Marx and Engels were right on the money.

These authors actually created the now-cliché genre of "boy meets girl, boy is downtrodden by bourgeoisie, boy overthrows yoke of oppression, boy engages in dialectic." And the plot grips you from page 1 and never lets go. They trace the roots of communism from ancient Rome to the discovery of American (in a blatant attempt to spice up the visual appeal of the movie adaptation).

But their work is not without flaws. The opening sentence introduces and names their main character: "A specter is haunting Europe--the specter of communism." But what next? We are not given any description of the specter. Even rudimentary details like eye color, height, or visible scars/tattoos would turn this sweeping philosophical movement into a believable person.

And at a few points, the authors allow their other interests to peek through. Marx and Engels pulled the 18th-century equivalent of printing a paper in 14-point courier when they start the second chapter with 11 consecutive one-sentence paragraphs (at the time, political tract publishers paid the author not by the line or sentence but per paragraph) And though they do offer a concise version of the entire work in the sentence "the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single phrase:", they do so deep in the middle of prose where skimmers will repeatedly miss it, consequently earning them further royalties from sales of the Cliffs Notes.

Of course these are all criticisms born out of a deep love for the work. M&E were the first to do what they did, and arguably the best. Who can forget the haunting refrain of "They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder." or the melodic, poppy jingle "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." So when I complain that the final sentence "WORKINGMEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!" is just one gtg and two lol's away from being the product not of two enormous economic minds but a 13 year-old girl on a cellphone, remember that it is done as a longtime fan.

After writing the Manifesto, Marx and Engels broke up. The reasons? A mixture of skyrocketing production costs, their deaths, and the tiresome meddling of Yoko. So don't wait to catch them on tour and pick up this book. [A cautionary note: most bookstores will try to "upsell" you to a premium edition of the work, perhaps leather-bound, that includes B-sides, demo tapes, or live versions. Avoid these like the plague, or you'll end up as ashamed as the time you walked into Tower looking to buy "The Sign" single and walked out with an Ace of Base box set.] This collaboration marked the peak of each of their careers: Marx's sophomore effort, Das Kapital, is admittedly genius, but also an FDA-approved treatment for insomnia. And Engels never managed to regain his footing after the emotional toll of the faction, instead spending years in and out of rehab hoping against hope for a reunion tour and writing no fewer than twelve distinct prefaces over the next forty years.

Which isn't a bad thing, per se: if some other fallen legends had taken a similar route, our world might have been spared both Wings and "Ringo and the All-Starrs".

Friends Don't Let Friends Whine Punk

How well do you know your punk-teen?

I know, its a scary question. Time was when you wouldn't even have to think about it. When you asked your punk-teen just where she thought she was going at this hour, you could be sure that her response of "Away from your Fascism, Helen!" meant the Social Distortion show at CBGB (OMFUG), where she'd spend her hours in a 120 decibel catharsis before emotionally enslaving the Bassist from Jones Crusher and brutally stopping his advance from Second to Third.

But in these trying times, can you be sure even of this? Every day--in the paper, on the evening news, at your dinner parties--there are new stories about punk teens trading in their mohawks for faux-hawks, piercings for clip ons, filthy for "vintage". Why, I'd be as wealthy as Good Charlotte if I had a nickel for every time I heard about a parent accidentally walking in on an embarrassed punk-teen scrambling to cover up his iPod or to change the channel from MTV2.

It wasn't long ago that you'd see cheap, basement-made EP cassettes and vinyl lining your punk-teen's bedroom floor, those days when your intrusions would meet with screaming and door slamming and even the occasional wish for your death. But sadly, this is no more.

The vaguely directed rage has turned to Meloncholy (sans, even, The Infinite Sadness); the mood-swings of emotional breadth have turned to brood-swings of emotional depth. I'm afraid to say that our children have lost the Parental Advisories on their music, and with it, their innocence. There is a growing underbelly of archy out there; of well-organized, well-funded music shows at big venues, complete with sound engineers and lighting technicians, tickets to which are available only from Ticketmaster (R). Indeed it seems that the only constants in this age of uncertainty are the amorphous angst and the black eyeliner. That's right, friends:

Your children are so fucking Emo that it literally hurts.

But its not too late. Talk to your kids, tell them that its ok to be effectual again. Tell them its ok to want to get laid for its own sake, and not just for the post-coital longing. Tell them that its ok to turn up the volume and the gain on their Marshall Stacks; or, if your youngsters have already unplugged, that its ok to play major progressions again. Tell your son that the number of tattoos he has should be proportional to his chances of winning a fight, not inversely proportional to it. Tell your daughter that there will be plenty of time for unexplained emotional distance once she's married, and that its possible not to fall in love with every sickly sixteen year old who sort of looks like Chris from Dashboard Confessional. And most of all tell them that sometimes, just sometimes, the sigh and the thousand-mile-gaze are inappropriate responses to external stimuli.

All this and more in my forthcoming educational video: Blood on the Frets.

An Open Letter to Pop-Punk Emo

Dear Pop-Punk Emo,

Why must you be so good? You don't help me feel better about myself, my life, or my future. In fact, you make me feel bad. And not naughty-but-exciting-bad or evil-archnemesis-but-worthy-foe-bad. I mean curling-up-in-a-corner- and-then-being-sad- that-i-can't-do-anything- even-just-crying-right bad. Why must your lyrics be so creative and compelling when they are, objectively, about situations and circumstances quite awful. Why must Saves the Day's chords be so angsty but also bubblegummy? Your ironical sense of the world, finding the cloud around every silver lining, is reminiscent of Hemingway or Fitzgerald, but instead of having short sentences or fluid prose, you pile misery upon bad luck.

And yet, I come running. I heart your titles with their poignant combination of literary allusions, pop cultural references, and more words than can fit on one line of my iPod/iTunes/iClaudius interface. I have come to you many a night when the last thing I needed was to dwell on matters now ancient. And you, you with your backing vocals and well-timed-regression-to-acoustic informed me that I still had open wounds by rubbing the salt of your melancholic melodies into them.

But it is time to take a stand. No more will I listen to any album whose subtitle could very well be "50 ways to kill your significant other". Or that tries to sound triumphant through 40 minutes of complaint. Please release from your grasp and take me off your mailing list.

Unless you have new releases forthcoming because, if nothing else, I need new songs to get stuck in my head.

I remain your humble servant, &c.,
Dan Bentley

Pissing In The Wind: Short, unfunny, and not wrong

So many words, so many links this week. What more can I say/point to?

Instead, I offer a suggestion: what if girls are innately worse at math and science? But not math and science in general, the math and science that predominately men have spent centuries creating? A math and science that, created by male minds, fits itself to male minds?

Great Minds Think Alike, for the appropriate definition of great,
Dan (probably speaking for the other Dan and the Lev)

Pissing in the Wind, Round ?: Orgasmic Chemistry

Before I get into this week's topic of gender roles/differences, as articulated by Harvard President/bull-in-a-china-shop Larry Summers, I should make a quick disclaimer. Like JFK, Natalie Portman, and the Unabomber, I'm a product of The Kremlin on the Charles, and have seen my share of Harvard debates turned national debates. Mostly, the only reason they get press is because of where they take place. Were this to happen at, say, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, I doubt any newspaper besides the Star Ledger would waste any ink on its behalf. So I tend to not take these things very seriously. So keep that in mind, as well as the distinct possibility that I've been brainwashed by the elitist, intelligentsia of fair-at-all-costs Harvard. But anyway, let me begin...

America is a nation of whiners. Always have been, always will be. We were founded by a bunch of whiners. "We want to practice our crazy religion and churn butter all day long," the Puritans whined. Thus, Massachusetts was born. "We don't want to pay our debts," and thus, Georgia was born. "We don't want to take showers," and thus, New Jersey was born. Then we whined about taxes and sequestering soldiers and having to chop down cherry trees and being forced to lie about it. And thus, America was born. The South whined about taxes, we whined back about slavery, and we had the civil war. Then a bunch of stuff happened which we naturally whined about...

Fast-forward to the 1960s. It was then that whining reached it's zenith in America history. Whining became a way of life. In fact, whining became its own movement, captivating the disillusioned youth and inspiring them to stage numerous sit-ins, teach-ins, LSD-ins, and other acts of symbolic protest which required little to no effort. They whined and they whined and they whined. And eventually, they won a few battles. We withdrew from Vietnam, and Nixon was forced to resign.

But then the generation of whiners grew up. Their whining was turned elsewhere. Rather than taking on The Man, they took on The Corporate Ladder. Instead of protesting the government's role in world affairs, they protested the government's role in their lives. Supply-side economics was Hot, and bellbottoms was Not.

What does this all have to do with Summers saying women suck at science for a reason? Well, if there's one thing the ex-whiners turned Reagan Democrats love to whine about, it's whining about how much the current generation whines about political correctness. Summers response was met by the religiously-PC camp with accusations that Summers thinks women (or rather, wimmyn, womin, or whatever it is you're supposed to say) are genetically stupid, and on the other side, by the religiously anti-PC faction that Summers' deriders were freedom hating lesbian-communists whose aim is to hyphenate every word in the English language. Allow me to take a side somewhere in between what I have misrepresented these two sides as saying.

I once read of an experiment where a group of Asian schoolgirls (easy there, perv) was given a math test. When they took it the first time, they filled out their name and gender on the answer sheet. The second time, their name and race/ethnicity. The two tests were relatively the same degree of difficulty. Surprisingly--or perhaps not--when they wrote "female" they did worse than when they wrote "Asian." And when they wrote "Asian" AND "female" the research team became incredibly turned-on. (Sorry, couldn't resist).

Obviously social roles, expectations, et. al. have something to do with performance. Granted not everything. I seem to remember reading once that males and females have their brains wired differently--one is more left-brained or right-brained than the other. But I'm sure that doesn't explain why the vast majority of people teaching or majoring in one of the hard sciences will be male, and the humanities female.

To be honest, I think the more interesting question is the relation between good-lookingness and intelligence. Go to any Ivy League campus and look around for a while and tell me what you see. I guarantee you'll see a student body composed of wildebeests, hunchbacks, and the disfigured. Do the genes that control for facial symmetry also control one's preference for shiny objects and loud noises? Is IQ lessened by 10 points for each cup size after A? Sure there are exceptions--myself and my co-bloggers obviously included--but by and large this holds true.

Just think about when you meet a person who is both good-looking and intelligent. You don't trust them. You just know there's something wrong with them. They're either: 1) an alien, 2) a free-mason, 3) a robot, 4) psychotic, or 5) gay/taken. Either that, or: 1) you're actually quite slow yourself and the person isn't all that smart, 2) you have painfully low standards, or 3) you're drunk, and it's a combination of 1 and 2.

Like Foster, I'd also like to close with a joke of my own:
A man walks into a bar. Ouch.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

(Same post, different blog)

A Monologue of silence

In honor of the passing of Johnny Carson, a man funnier than Foster or The Leviathan can ever hope to be, I offer these snippets from his final monologue:

"The greatest accolade I think I received: G.E. named me 'Employee of the Month.'" [Editor's note: his show was the greatest moneymaker in NBC history, and at one point was 19% of the network's profits.]

"Farewells are a little awkward, and I really thought about this -- no joke -- wouldn't it be funny, instead of showing up tonight, putting on a rerun? NBC did not find that funny at all."

"During the run on the show there have been seven United States Presidents, and thankfully for comedy there have been eight Vice Presidents of the United States."

"And I said, well, I would prefer to end like we started -- rather quietly, in our same time slot, in front of our same shabby little set. It is rather shabby. We offered it to a homeless shelter and they said 'No, thank you.' I am taking the applause sign home -- putting it in the bedroom. And maybe once a week just turning it on."

And, finally, the way I hope I feel, said better than Nietzsche or Thoreau could, of a highlight reel: "If I could magically, somehow, that tape you just saw, make it run backwards. I would like to do the whole thing over again."

Pissing Into the Wind: "...but men are innately worse at shaking their sweet little asses"

What is it they always say on TV? "Art imitates life?"

Well, whatever it is, it's true. Bentley's topic couldn't be more topical--no more than 24 hours heretofore, over fish and chips, I delivered the Daniel R. Foster Memorial Lecture on Political Correctivity to an audience of severals and severals of people. My topic was, of course, the rt. hon. President Lawrence Summers' recent comments on the stuff chicks aren't good at.

So, although my remarks here mustn't cannabilize too much of what I intend to set forth more thoroughly in a monograph of the lecture tentatively titled Cute Things Girls Do, I will say a thing or two about the issue of gender differences.

Summers' comments were in bad taste. Let's all of us agree to that. The President of an American institution of higher learning should know better. You simply don't go out in public and suggest heterogeneity or deviation from uniformity of any kind. Unless of course, you're celebrating diversity (having filled out the appropriate paperwork in triplicate, and thus obtained the necessary permits)--in which case the bigger the cultural difference, the bigger the celebration. The annual Inuit-Zulu mixer, for instance, puts Carnivale in Rio to shame.

But lets leave aside for a moment the fact that it was Cretinous for Summers to open his mouth(it's my understanding that many at Harvard did not get enough iodine as children). Is there anything objectively wrong with what was said? Surely, the properly indoctrinated liberal* in you says "Aye! Summers' suggestions about differences between men and women undermine equality!"

And alas, that Janus-faced beast, with each of its free and equally malevolent aspects, rears its civilly liberated head. We Americans may be free to worship as we please, but in the end we kneel before one altar, worship one God, fondle one boy: and his name is Equality. A word so far up the American poopshoot, that there was a time in middle school when I believed they called it 'egalitarianism' because that's how it was done in the land of the Bald Eagle.

But what does it mean to be "equal"? Does it mean that each of us are entitled to be treated as ends and never as means, that we possess some innate, inalienable status as moral beings irrespective of things like race or creed? If that's what it means, I Kant say I disagree. But it seems equality is more than a moral notion, its a political principle as well. So what does equality in politcs mean? Does it mean we each of us have the same right in determining our modes of governance and the basic structure of our society? Does it mean the gaurantee of the equal protection of the laws? To the most extensive system of liberties compatible with similar such systems for others? If this is what political equality is, I'd gladly take a graze to the arm from a small caliber pistol to defend it.

But it's quite clear that if equality ever was one of these quaint notions, it has since ceased to be. I may not be the most astute of political observers, but it seems to me that political equality in America today consists mostly in white men in ties apologizing at press conferences and summarily tendering their resignations. Liberal political equality--as set forth on paper by a long list of non-American dead white mean who preferred cravats to ties, never held press conferences, and resigned only to obscurity--was a foundation, a preliminary maxim necessary for the formulation of substantive political principles. It was never, so far as I can tell, to be trumped as a political virtue in itself, but only (ideally) as a means of inviting everyone to the table to take part in the Great Conversation that is republican** politics.

But that's precisely what it's turned into, equality as an end unto itself. The thinking, I suppose, is that there's rarely much fuss among lemmings, and even less if they're issued modestly-priced SUVs, 3-bedroom ranches on quarter-acre lots, and have access to 162 unique blends of Ethiopian coffee. All we'd need is a tireless and dedicated Handicapper General to make sure nobody takes unfair advantage of their natural abilities.

Exactly where this thinking went wrong is unclear to me, but I'd like you to close your eyes and imagine for a moment that I've just presented all the arguments against the primacy of equality set forth in Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind. Go ahead, I'll wait....

There. Now do you see what I mean? Good. So we're in agreement that equality as virtue in itself is completely vacuous and arbitrary. What's this got to do with our ould friend Larry Summers? Summers, according to his own account of the incident, was asked to attend a conference on the status of women in the "hard" research sciences, not as Chief Company Man of Crimson Incorporated, but as an economist. He was asked, in this capacity, to be provocative. While he refuses to provide a transcript of his remarks, reports suggest that he provided three hypotheses about why women tend to be underrepresented in the hard sciences. "The biggest, he suggested, was that fewer mothers than fathers are willing to spend 80 hours a week away from their kids. The next reason was that more boys than girls tend to score very high or very low on high-school math tests, producing a similar average but a higher proportion of scores in the top percentiles, which lead to high-powered academic careers in science and engineering. The third factor was discrimination by universities."

It was in stating the second hypothesis that Summers apparently used the words "innate ability" or "natural ability" as a potential explanation of the differing test scores in men or women. So what if he said it? Is the God of Equality so cruel It will smite thee simply for suggesting there might be a trace of difference between the sexes? Would Summers have taken just as much flak if he had suggested that "men, by and large, tend to have bigger penises than women"? My guess is he would have. Why? Because we're The Man. And we've played cricket and golf and hunted and lounged in recliners and drank Tom Collinses and fucked our secretaries and whipped our slaves and raped and pillaged and undervalued your currency and sent you to finishing school and converted you by sword and drank Old-Fashioneds and raped and stole your natural resources and kept you out of the Augusta and disenfranchised you and hosed you and drank Ginandtonics and sent you on the trail of tears and put you in the kitchen and circumsized and pacified you and drew humorous cartoons about it all in the New Yorker and who the fuck do we think we are? Fine, I've gotten used to the Dutch-Door, Kill-Whitey mentality and I understand that I'm not allowed to complain.

But Summers was expressing an empirical hypothesis, something we can test scientifically by collecting and interpreting data. Do I think that women are innately worse than men at math and science? Probably not. Do I think we could study the question in a meaningful, interesting and objective way? Absolutely. Do I think it will turn out to be the case that the under-representation of women in the hard sciences is attributable in part to socially defined gender roles? Almost certainly. Do I ask myself questions and then answer them with annoying frequency? You bet your ass I do.

But the point is that Mighty Equality can have my tax dollars and my soul and my first born, but It CAN'T HAVE THE TRUTH. It can't silence a well-defined hypothesis, however crazy, except by disproving it. So why don't all the female scientists so enraged by Summers' suggestion set about to showing that it's bunk? Because Equality would rather throw Summers into the bigot's dungeon and let him rot then DEAL with the fact that the diversity they perversely trump maybe, just maybe cuts both ways.

Maybe its the case that we can't all be particle physicists or astronauts, maybe women are from Venus and straight white men can't dance. But if you're the one heterosexual WASP who can really cut-a-rug, get out on the floor and do it. Not for straight guys everywhere or white guys everywhere but for you. And if you're a female grad-student studying Quantum Mechanics at MIT, don't let Summers (or Bentley) get you down, you publish that paper on wave-particle duality and stick it right the fuck to the man.

The Individual, my friends, is the ultimate minority.

And now a joke: A guy walks into a doctor's office and says "Doc, you've got to help me, I'm twelve years old and I have a full beard". The doctor examines the patient thoroughly, from head to toe, and after some time says, "Son, you're not twelve years old, you're a midget."

If that joke is against the spirit of equality, then call me the George Wallace of humor.

-The George Wallace of Humor


NOTES

*No, I don't use that word in the sense Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson use it. Instructions if this isn't clear to you: Put down your copy of USA TODAY, turn off The O'Reilly Factor, hit yourself in the face with a shovel, and go to a fucking library.

**See above if you think by 'republican' I mean Trent Lott.

Pissing In The Wind: You add like a girl!

The President of Harvard recently tried to explain that part of the reason women don't achieve as much in math and science is because they're just innately worse at it. There's been a maelstrom of negative press, no doubt protests are about to commence, and let's see him try to get a date now.

But was he wrong? Men are faster than women, by and large. Women look less ridiculous when figure skating, perhaps without exception. So is it that unbelievable that women just don't quite get the wave-particle duality?

Or is it all a masculine-based construction? Maybe the very concept of measuring liquid with a graduated cylinder is rooted in a phallic object for a reason: to exclude women.

So, this week, we present the battle of the sexes. Foster, Levi, I put it, what are women better at, what are men better at, or is everybody equally good at everything? Are the Olympics a social construction that if we didn't go into it with preconceptions would have every man, woman, child, and animal finishing the 100-meter dash in 8.43 seconds?

Phone-a-Shmuck

A friend's recent blog post highlights cellular companies' latest bid to wring money out of the people who can least afford it: recurring charges for what barely constitutes content. The $1.99/month charge that they charge would be criminal, and is only made more so by offering you a Sir Mix-a-lot Ringtone. Let's face it, if you're appearing on VH1's I Love The 90's, Part Deux, nothing you are involved with is worth paying for.

But that isn't to say your star has completely faded. Cash in on your has-been notoriety! What if for that $1.99/month, instead of getting a Sir Mix-a-lot ringtone, you got a call from Sir Mix-a-lot! What else is he doing? Sure, this may be a pay cut from their star days: Optimistically, this would be equivalent to them living off the interest of $5 million, which is far less than they earned during their peak. But, I'm willing to bet, a lot more than they have in the bank.

So, let's set it up. You subscribe, and everytime you're out with your friends, you get a call from a different B- -list star. I know I'm looking forward to the day I'm bowling with a prospective mate and appear that much more sexy for being worthy of a ring-a-ding from Erik Estrada.

-D"As long as it's not Carrot Top"an

The Logical Construction of Personality: A Long, Technical, and Marginally Humorous Study of Getting Laid

If you're like me, you want to get laid. And to do that, you'll need a modicum of looks, and (thanks to women's sliding scale of attraction) a heaping helping of personality. Nick Carroway said that personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, and he was gay, so he probably had plenty--that's how he managed to bed Jordan Baker, and she was gay. Most of us straight guys aren't so fortunate. But we do have a bit of a secret weapon in the fight against endless masturbation: science.

Let me explain what I mean. If we take Carraway at his word (and we can't, according to the same critics who have him longing for Gatsby even as he pals around with his golf-club-toting-ingenue-uberdyke beard), then it seems personality isn't some intrinsic property in a subject, but rather something extrinsic, in other words, something a subject does, a series of gestures, patterns of speech and behavior--a construct made of a particular sequence of ostensions and utterances. In still other words: Bullshit.

The good news about this account of personality is that you needn't waste any time attending wine tastings, Kabalah classes, foreign films, or, worst of all, being yourself. This is because your "self" is merely the affects of this logical construction of utterances and gestures. It runs no deeper than that. So all you need do is pick a mark--that is, some woman (or man) F-- and retire to the lab to build a personality P suitable for the job of bedding F.

Elsewhere, Jones and Foster (2004) have conjectured that for every woman f, there is at least one set of propositions (in this case, speech acts and physical gestures) call it p(x), which, when performed in a particular sequence (s), will succeed in rendering (f ) vulnerable to bedding (L). Call this expression Lp(x(s))f a bedding theory of f. The logical notation here might be a bit confusing at first, but it translates simply into "p(x(s)) L's f" or "the set of gestures p(x) in sequence s will bed (or make bed-able) f."

This theory is expressed in various ways in the vernacular: seducing f, wooing f, picking-up f, slipping f a roofie, etc. But, of course, the consequences of formalizing and systematizing such a theory are profound and far-reaching. Imagine, a universe of ass at the fingertips of every nerd with a graphing calculator or a slide-rule and basic hand-eye coordination. Provided you are neither troll nor troglodyte, you, dear reader, could very well bed Natalie Portman, or that girl from Accounting, or your TA, or the Queen of England. You just have to do the math.

Now, I know what you're saying: "Dan, where's the fucking empirical data?!? Do you expect me to swallow some a priori theory based on nothing but the Romantic musings of a fictional narrator and the anecdotal conjectures of two third-rate armchair philosophers?" Well, it'd be nice if you did, but I understand your hesitation. Here, take three test cases.

1) In one possible world, that is, the fictional world of the adult film classic "Buttbanged Hitchhiking Whores", our test subject Lex, executes a short series of gestures that secures him the bedding of not one but TWO attractive blondes. This particular instantiation of the theory Lp(x(s))f contained two gestures: one physical and the other sentential or propositional. Gesture g1 is physical; it entails Lex stopping his car at the side of the road. Gesture g2 is an utterance expressing a conditional proposition, which can be paraphrased thusly: "I will transport you and your compatriate to the destination of your choosing if you agree to engage with me in various unprotected acts of lechery, including several distinct sodomous acts." We can formalize this theory for getting laid by two blondes f1 and f2, thusly:

Lp(x(s))f = []Plc, E(x) [E(y) [((x=f1) . (y=f2)) . (Ql(f1 . f2) --> Dl(f1 . f2))]].

Notice how crucial the sequencing is here. If Lex had not pulled over his car before making the conditional proposition, it is doubtful he would have bedded either, let alone both, of the attractive blondes.

2) The most rudimentary of sequences. Our test subject is John, and the mark is Debbie, the village whore. Again, the theory contains two gestures, one physical action and one utterance. John first removes a five dollar bill from wallet and holds it stiffly in front of him, next he utters the English language phrase "blowjob". Needless to say he succeeds in bedding Debbie. Here the sequencing is less important; it seems fair to infer that the sequence [g1, g2] here described could have been replaced with the sequence [g2, g1] to much the same effect.

3) This is an extraordinarily complex instance. The test subject is Agememmnon and his mark is Helen of Troy. A complete model of the theory-sequence used to bed Helen would occupy countless pages, but suffice it to say it contains thousands of physical gestures--including boat trips, gorings, beheadings, horse-constructions, and body-draggings to name a few--and as many utterances in the form of dialogue and soliloquoy.

Of course, if you don't have the logical capacity or technical know-how to construct a set of gestures sufficient to bed the woman of your choice, there are two options. You might try the trivial gesture-sequence--that is, the set of all gesture-sequences. Elsewhere, my girlfriend has referred to this is as the "Groundhog's Day Sequence". Given enough time and access to a particular mark, you just continue to say and do things until she gives in. Lastly, researchers are hard at work on coming up with universal gesture-sequences, or sequences that work on all women. Preliminary calculations show that something called the "Pitt-Clooney Set" is probably the best bet. It includes being ridiculously good-looking, moderately talented, and fantastically wealthy.

Pissing In The Wind: Wrap-up

So many good points by the two of them, fighting like hamsters who are in one corner of the cage fighting like... hamsters.

But what can I say that isn't said so much better by:




-D"Consumer*ist* whore"an

P.S. Buy the computer I'm orphaning to make space in my room, wallet, and heart for a mini the day they come out.

Gates, Jobs, Gates' Job, and Jobs' Gate

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Pissing in the Wind, Round V: iThesis

It seems that Dan's topic for this week is somewhat less controversial than last week, and as such, less prone to inspire me to launch a barrage of baseless accusations at him. After all, how can you turn: "Apple or Microsoft" into "Dan's mom: lesbian Eskimo or just Canadian?" Unfortunately, you can't, so you're all just going to have to settle for some good 'ol fashioned cool reasoning.

________________________
Apple or Microsoft? iBook or PC? OSX or Windows? All questions we've undoubtedly thought about in passing two or three times in our lives. But did you know that hundreds of computer programmers have lost their lives in this bloody conflict? Deep in the heart of Silicon Valley, a vast guerilla war has been raging between the two tribes ever since Al Gore invented the internet. It includes numerous, unspeakable atrocities, like: 1) saying the other side's computers are slower and less technologically advanced than the others, 2) insults like "giga-nerd" and "mega-gay," 3) disparaging comparisons to the more unpopular characters of Star Wars and Star Trek ("Your wife uncrossed her legs and I thought I saw Chewbaca), and worst of all, 4) "super-dirty bombs"--flaming bags of shit the size of which you've never seen. But the Leviathan is all about peace and love, and so let's try to settle this in a sensitive, bitechnical way.


First, Apple has the following pros:

1. A sleek, sexy look to all their products. I don't often say an inanimate object turns me on, but just seeing one of those smooth, metallic wonders makes me want to download porn that much faster.
2. Cool names. You have iBook, iTunes, iPod. How fucking cool is that?! Put a lower-case i in front of anything and it spices it up. iLeviathan--me, but more fun! iCar--hold on to your seatbelts, this is gonna be one fantastic voyage! iRabies--I almost want it now! iCUP--hahahahahaha.
   
3. No viruses. Since no one owns a Mac, no one's gonna make a virus for it! Don't worry about your credit card number, social security number, or your ATM password. You can even save them as your wallpaper! And when applesecurity@hotmail.com asks you for them, go ahead and give it to them! I...I mean, they...just need to make sure your system is running OK.

But it does have it's Cons:

1. One mouse, one button. Forget about right-clicking anything, now you're going to put down the juice box so you can click with one hand, and press a Ctrl with the other. If anyone tells you they make a mouse with two buttons, don't listen to them. They have shit for brains.
2. Poor music downloading software. If you thought Metallica was uncool for making you pay to download music, you really have to ask yourself: why the hell did you think Metallica was cool in the first place? Get ready to shill out change for every song you download, because the iTunes store will be your home away from home.
3. Really, really annoying commercials. If you think the U2 commercial is annoying, think back to when iPods first came out. Remember when they had that goofy white guy with his iPod on rapping "I like big butts?" And that obnoxious little kid doing it to "The real Slim Shady?" That's right, you're only encouraging them...
   

But enough about Apple, let's take a look at Microsoft. What Pros do they have:

1. Software-friendly. Everything you could ever want in a Mac and more. Media players, music-downloading software, everything. Hell, they even have iTunes and iPods for Windows. And get this? They even acquired it legally! (You know Gates was going to steal them at any time).
2. Fully-equipped from purchase. Microsoft everything. Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, even anti-virus software. And the best part? Their constant security updates will make sure you don't get the latest worms or viruses--or competing products like Firefox...
3. Bill Gates! C'mon, what's not to like about him. He's been knighted for his foundations work in combating AIDS in Africa. He dropped out of college and still became the richest man in the country. Let's face it, in this uber-capitalist culture we live in, Bill Gates is about the closest thing we'll get to rags-to-riches. Call it: well-off to maniacally ruthless CEO (made for TV movie coming soon).

But like Apple, Microsoft has it's cons:

1. Viruses. Contrary to Macs, you will get a virus. It's virtually guaranteed. In fact, if you don't get one within the first 6-months of owning your computer Bill Gates will personally send you one so you have to pay an exorbitant price to repair your computer. And it's not just Bill Gates you need to worry about. Every no-good, pimply-faced, punk teen will--when not loitering outside of convenience stores and making strange, whale-like noises while gawking about passers-by to their equally awkward pasty-faced friend--be designing a virus that brings them no tangible reward except for the cheap satisfaction of pissing me off (see also here).
2. Bill Gates. Once you buy a computer with windows, Bill Gates now, legally, owns your soul.
3. Pop-ups. "Want to date me?" "Improve your sex life." "Assholeclickswhat." You can download all the pop-up stoppers you want, but nothing will stop them. They'll become a part of your daily life. You'll see salesmen promising to enhance your penis size pop out of nowhere in your office. Strange men with dollar signs all over their suits will follow you on your way home. Co-eds asking you if they're hot or not will fill your dreams. Pretty soon, you'll speak nothing but catch phrases, and hear nothing but jingles.

So there you have it, the pros and cons of Apple and Windows. I'll leave you all to make a decision based on the above criteria for yourself, but I, for one, will living life with only my abacus and Ham radio. How did I write this without a computer, you ask? With freedom, comrade, with freedom.

(Same post, different blog)

Pissing Into The Wind: What Kind of Man Are You?

There are certain questions that get to the root of a soul. Are you a dog person or a cat person? SUV or Prius? Innie or Outie? But, of course, no nerd will start talking to you without first asking (of course, in some cases, they don't have to ask, and can know just by looking at you): Mac or PC.

The times have been a-changing recently. Previously, it was easy to cast off the lovers of that harsh Apple Mistress as bourgeois, who daily gorged themselves on caviar and washed it down with all sorts of expensive liquids: champagne, experimental pharmaceuticals, unrefined sweet crude. But Apple has made a few moves towards accessibility. iTunes[sic, and goddamn you Steve for making me mess with the capitalization that has been handed down father to son for centuries!] now exists for the PC, convincing a few otherwise lost souls to see the nirvana that is applications that, get this, have a brushed metallic look! Why, it hearkens back to the day that computeres were mighty beasts of machines!

And then today, apple introduced the cheapest Mac ever (at $499) that is also the smallest computer, and an obvious competitor for the cutest of the current year. The new iPod shuffle is a stripped-down sibling of an already petite product. But at only $99, and coming with a lanyard to prominently display it around your neck, you definitely get more bling for your buck.

Make no mistake about it, this is as monumental as BMW coming to high schools everywhere and saying, "No longer are we a mark of being Daddy's Favorite Expense. Give us your tired, your Dodge Daytonas, your Plymouth Voyagers, and we will issue to you a BMW 1-series. Sure, it may have the engine that we laughed at 18 months ago as outdated and slightly prone to igniting in holy inferno, and sure, the wheels may not be 'round', but, it's still a BMW."

So, commentators: after all the shakes-up and announcements, which way do your prayer blankets point: Redmond or Cupertino?

Crimes Referential

Randy Moss, that Vikings curmudgeon, is going to be fined. Normally, the schadenfreudic in me would take delight at this bully-gets-his-lunch-money-stolen story. But look at his alleged crime: pretending to moon fans! Even if he had mooned those Cheese Wizzes, woudl that have been so bad? You're allowed to show asses on ABC (though not the oldest network *cough*CBS*cough* ABC is the most disney, and hence representative of red state family values as well as blue state proclivities for dressing up), even when they're Dennis Franz. If you can get away with it on broadcast tv in the days of Herr Powell, you know that you're offending no more than 3 people and a dachsund with the FCC complaint line on speed dial. (he barks a tough but fair rant)

But Randy Moss, I'd like to highlight, mooned no one. He was merely informing the audience that he had a posterior, which was, in fact, covered. This is like someone going to jail for saying, "there are terrorists", which doesn't happen until Gonzales is sworn in as Attorney General.

My biggest fear in life is that our reality will devolve into a Monty Python sketch. And so I can just imagine a defendant (true fact: John Cleese studied law at Cambridge, and in a giant Fuck You to everything British then wasted it by appearing in Charlie's Angels 2) in a poorly-staged court. The solicitor (they wear wigs. Haha! Wigs! And are actually willing to identify themselves as Tories!) asks him what happened, and as soon as he explains that the defendent held the gun, just so, constables (what do you need those stupid hats for? to hide your stupid wigs? stupid) rush in and arrest him. And at his crime, his accuser does the same, and so on, until we are all in prison for the awful crime of knowing crime. Punishment for Original Sin, rendered unto Caesar.

-D"I expect the Spanish Inquisition"an

On Insults

[Today, a piece that I originally wrote 3 years ago.]

The American lexicon has evolved, over the last decade, to have absent from it terms that can hurt people; I am, of course, thoroughly thrilled at such a happening. Such derogatory terms as “faggot”, “Wop” or “Mick” are no longer used, except by the coarsest of speakers, for fear of insulting “homosexuals”, “Italians” and “Irishmen” everywhere. I am pleased beyond belief at the deep, or at least surface-level, progress this highlights. But if our language is being smithed to prevent accidentally hurt feelings, then what the hell do I call someone when I mean to malign them and everything they stand for?

One solution proposed to the significant problem of insulting an individual instead of a group is to drop hurtful terms for their stereotypical characteristics. Dropping “gay” for “effeminate”, however, creates an affront that sounds forced and technical, and does most definitely not assign to the pejored shady morals and weakness of character. Indeed, replacing “Scotsman” with “Frugal” changes the character of an attempted insult so much as to sound congratulatory to the insulted for his ability to keep track of his fiduciary well-being, and forgets to suggest that he wears, late at night, the “tightest of woolen sweaters”. Thus, political correctness has disarmed my wit and taken from me my one mode of self-improvement in this world.

Hence, I have decided upon a course of action that I must undertake to rectify this problem. With my method, I intend to do for the English language what men such as Kipling , with the Indians, and our own Stanford, with the Chinese, have done in the past. I intend to set out on a voyage around the world, and find an heretofore undiscovered tribe of native people. They will then bend to the power of our “self-propelled howitzers” or, as they refer to them, “marching fire-ants of death.” Once enough of them are killed, the rest shall bend to our 21^st-Century Manifest Destiny, an empire on which the sun sets only rarely.

The vanquished will supply us with a new cadre of insulting terms. Long after the Sex Workers Union deprives us of “cheap whore”, their delightful and primitive face-markings will give us a term for any gaudily-made-up woman. We will cast their men alternately first infertile and then savagely over-virile, as our needs suit us, on the brink of a bar-fight to challenge a drunkard’s convictions. Their children we shall view as wholly stupid, through-and-through, which shall reinvigorate conversation on playgrounds of our country from Maine to Washington, California to Florida, and provide our children a new reason to study their language.

Eventually, it is certain, “tree-huggers”, such as the Sierra Club, Amnesty International and Dendrophiliacs United, will grow wary of our treatment of these poor creatures. As such, they shall eventually be assimilated into our culture and assume the same place as every other minority in our “melting-pot” society, i.e., they shall claim their own strip of land and not associate with anyone else. Their lawyers and own anti-defamation league will strike from our tongues their name as an insult, and innumerable sports teams shall be renamed. I write this, therefore, to offer to future generations a blueprint for finding a new butt for their jokes, and young men with a new adventure to take up for the betterment of their people.

Pissing Into The Wind

So the Piss has turned, has it? Both my commentators have agreed, leaving only the moderator to reap vengeance? Fine.

Point Number 1: Under Capitalism, man screws man. Under communism, it's the other way around.

Agenda Item Letter B: I love America. Because I live in it. But if you're on the outside looking in, this "outpouring of aid" is more like a giant's pumpkin pie crashing down on you because his feast was so bountiful that he pushed it off the table. What the woodchuck are you going to do with a giant pumpkin pie? It's not that healthy, and fuck if you don't even have any whip cream, of either brobdingnagian or lilliputian proportions to eat it with.

Argument Animal Fish: Yeah, maybe the public did right in this one instance. But you know why? Cause it was photogenic in that awful, makes you face your own mortality kinda way. (When my roommate saw this, his first response was a shocked "oh my god". His second a "that reminds me of sim city") But Americans woudl donate so much more if we saw a picture of a puppy about to be ground up and fed to orphans, all of whom have lisps, stutters, or some other sort of speech impediment. Speaking of which, another of my friends recently referred to a Parkinson's as "speaking sign language with a stutter." He's going to hell. And so are you for laughing at it. Are these the kind of people you want making choices of aid distribution? No, of course not. Admit it, you're pulling for the bureaucratic, faceless, compassionless arm of the law to come through.

-D"Though I don't know what kind of arm does have a face"an

Editor's Note: For a scholarly (that is to say, unfunny) exchange about the aesthetics and psychology of tragedy, see Bentley's seminal Theory of History, and Foster's 7 Theses in response.

...and the Southern Shaved Bush refutes the going botanical orthodoxies

Kudos to the Leviathan on his brilliant repost-riposte below. I hate to draw attention from it, but I was glancing over the Oxford homepage which I so often ignore, and I stumbled upon what may just be the greatest and best thing in the world.

Great Tits Challenge Evolutionary Theory

Now, I'm led to one of two conclusions, each of which is sufficient to convince me that, in Hemingway's words, the world is a fine place and worth fighting for. Either Oxford--the oldest, most prestigious and best educational institution in the world--has still got the sense of humor and set of balls so utterly lacking at the likes of Fenlands Polytechnic and the place my Bulldog-associate so lovingly calls Epcot Oxford, or the old Oxonian dons are so sublimely oblivious to all things peripheral to their ivory towers that this Pulchritudinous Pun simply swam over their heads with all the grace of a swan on the River Isis.

-H.R. Chortleton IV

Pissing in the Wind: Round IV, or, Why Dan Hates Freedom

I wholeheartedly agree with what Baron von Foster wrote, and honestly, have little to add. So to diverge from our usual weekly format, I will now direct my ire to Castro de Bentley.

In the original posting, Daningrad wrote:

President Bush has made it clear, though, that any more aid is going to come not from the government but form the public. Right. Cause Americans have such great hearts.

Why, comrade, do you hate America? Is it the freedom you hate? In an obscure post from several years back, he wrote:

Yes, I hate freedom.

(note: the author is paraphrasing)

So there you have it. He hates freedom.

A bureaucratic eunuch from the UN, financially supported no doubt from Dan's anti-freedom PAC, claimed America was being "stingy" with their aid. To which America grabbed our collective crotch and replied, "Stingy deez nuts!" Private donations have been pouring in so heavily that agencies have more than they can possibly use. Doctors Without Borders even told people to stop donating money to tsunami relief (people are more than encouraged to give money without earmarking it to the Asian crisis, but that's a whole different story).

But back to why Dan prefers to sleep with a cool, all-encompassing iron quilt rather than a nice, warm capitalist blanket. Digging further into Dan's shady network of writings, we find another window into his drab, beige-colored mind:

You know what I hate even more than freedom? Private property. Know what I really get off on, though? The rationing out of resources.

(note: this quote is from an actual article that was never written)

So Dan likes to give away his things to super-happy-fun-benevolent government, and then stand in line for hours on end to get his weekly allowance of slurry. Well, what's keeping you, Dan?! Is it freedom that's keeping you from doing this?! Why do you insist on hating freedom!

"Communism was a good idea," he says, "it just had some bad leaders." Know what else was a "good idea" with bad leaders? Gigli, and that movie fucking sucked. "What about socialism? Sweden and other Scandinavian countries are basically socialist, and they're doing fine." Oh, they're doing fine, alright. But when Lars and Hans aren't too busy building clogs, ice-skating around in chocolate leotards and combing each other's white-blonde hair they're hurling themselves off buildings. Not to mention their governments aren't socialist, but actually run by free-masons with idyllic visions of an uber-Aryan state.

I don't know about you, my sickle and hammer bearing friend, but I'm going to go buy some deep-fried fast food from a multinational corporation, make numerous unnecessary purchases of goods produced cheaply in third-world countries, and go write inflammatory things about my government.

(Same post, different blog)

"Knock Knock","Who's There?", "Tsunami", "Tsunami Who?" "Tsunami gonna come up with a punchline for this joke"

Let me just start, as all startlingly unoriginal polemicists do, with some statistics. Some agents of the United States of America, which UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland called "stingy" last week, have ponied up the following:

-Pfizer: $35 million
-Coca Cola: $10 million
-Exxon Mobil Corp: $5 million
-Citigroup Inc.: $3 million
-Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: $3 million
-Merck & Co. Inc: $3 million in cash, plus drugs and health supplies
-Johnson & Johnson: $2 million, plus drugs and health supplies
-Abbott Laboratories Inc.: $2 million, plus drugs and other supplies.
-Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.: $1 million in cash, $4 million in antibiotics and antifungal drugs.
-Nike Inc.: $1 million
-American Express Co.: $1 million
-General Electric Co.: $1 million
-First Data Corp.: $1 million
-Amazon.com: collected about 87,000 donations totaling more than $6.2 million for the American Red Cross
-Wal-Mart Inc.: $2 million, plus donations.
-Catholic Relief Services: $25 million

That's more than $125 million and counting. This list is non-exhaustive. Also, it's a week old. Oh, and it doesn't include personal donations. Um, or the $1 billion in aid set to be paid out by the Feds themselves.

Just for grins, one could add that the US was responsible for 40 percent of all disaster relief aid paid out this past year. And if we were feeling particularly saucy, we might even let slip that Uncle Sam (or is it Uncle Scrooge?) donated $826 million to the UN World Food Programme, $100 million more than all the EU countries combined, despite the EU's larger population and GDP.

Stingy? If the US is stingy, then I'm unpretentious and satisfied with the size of my penis.

But boy, am I just all broken up about the fact the UN, the EU, the pot and the kettle all think we Yanks are a bit tight with the pursestrings. Its just that, by the time Marshall and Eisenhower and the boys got around to unclusterfucking Western Civilization and getting the electricity and running water turned back on in Brittain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the whole of Scandanavia, Germany, Austria, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, the Balkans, the British and French Near East, Northern Africa, Turkey, Greece, Japan, China, Indochina, the Phillipines, Australia, Micronesia, and Luxembourg, we were a little light on walking-around money and a bit wary of real estate scams. But, if the free world is done borrowing the Modernity we loaned it, it could give it back and we could totally hawk it at the pawn shop for like, at least a hundred bucks.

See, what's sad is that a handful of minor powers have seen fit to make a point of outspending the US in Tsunami relief. The goal is to get into a pissing contest. If for nothing else, we can credit Bush with not biting. No press conference or forced contrition, just an envelope under the table and another subtle fuck you to the UN. Bush himself donated a measly 10K out of his own pocket. Why so little? Two reasons: 1) Sitting Presidents' assets are placed in a blind trust, and word is Bush's portfolio took a dive on account of some bad advice about Enron, and 2) Bush is setting a realistic example for every American. Nobody has to break the bank to help out. If you've got a hundred decent regular people, you don't need one Hollywood hero.

And you don't need your government proxying for you either. The American people are perfectly capable of recognizing a noble cause when they see one, and the needy are far better off when that recognition comes at the business end of a debit card than when it comes at the business end of a 155mm Howitzer.

There's a little spark of something left on this side of the pond that some other parts of the world look at as peculiarly as if it were a BetaMax(R) cassette player, and it's called Civil Society. You see, Civil Society is where people get together and do things without inviting George Bush and Nancy Pelosi. Sometimes they do silly things like sell each other tupperware, or collectively ape Oprah's literary tastes, or bowl for the league championship; and sometimes they do naughty things like dress up in latex and spank each other, or burn crosses, or vote; but every now and again they do something downright strange, like put a couple cans of soup or a few dollars or a little brawn and elbow grease on a plane and send it to people they'll never meet so their lives can be a little less miserable. Odd, I know. But then again we've always been a little fucked up like that.

I close, as all startlingly unoriginal polemicists do, with a quote--nay, a Gospel--from a petty Minnesota bourgeoisie by the name of Scott Fitzgerald. He said, "France was a land, England a people. But America, having about it still that quality of the idea, was harder to utter. It was the graves at Shiloh, or the tired, drawn, nervous faces of its great men, or the country boys who died in the Argonne for a phrase that was empty before their bodies withered. It was a willingness of the heart."

Now, despite my wont to make the occasional lighthearted quip, there is absolutely nothing capricious or funny about Mr. Fitzgerald's words. Except that "heart" rhymes with "fart".

-The Ugly American

Pissing Into The Wind

Are we stingy? We've been guilted by the liberal and Jewish-(mother-)dominated press into pledging $350 Million towards Tsunami relief. As near as I can figure, this is approximately the same amount it costs us to be in Iraq for 74 seconds. (twice in a row)

President Bush has made it clear, though, that any more aid is going to come not from the government but form the public. Right. Cause Americans have such great hearts. We being the nationality most able to avoid eye contact with people in squalid living conditions who are yelling at us directly. And we're going to open our hears and our pursestrings for victims that had the beachfront property we all secretly wish we could have instead of this stupid-ass-Ranch-split-level-condo-in-a-gated-community-ohmygod-i-hate-the-burbs.

So, commentators, have at it. Illuminate us. What should we do to help our brethren? Would the response be the same if the wave had hit Western Europe instead of Asia?

Newest Year Ever (or: The Metaphysics of Then)

Faced with the choice that befalls every man at some point in his life--spend New Year's Eve with the ones you love, or with the ones you love and a hundred assholes--I opted, as a change of pace, for the latter. I was invited to a party at popular high school acquaintance x's house, and there promised to be a cadre of TNA and a contingent of Ubercrombie there to help vomit forth the new year in suburban style. Now, I know you, dear Reader, would never guess it, but old Foster kid wasn't often invited to the cool-kid parties back in high school. But I married up, and the girlfriend managed to secure spots for me and a crew of friends so motley we make Vince Neil and Tommy Lee look about as well-ordered as the set of positive integers.

So what was it like to hobknob with the beautiful people, the quarterback, the homecoming queen, the social directors, the winners of yearbook superlatives? Well, this isn't fucking page six. If you want a tit-for-tat account, go read Live Journal. We here at the Enfranchised deal in Big Pictures. Often of naked ladies. But I digress...

Suffice it to say that watching the ball drop while taking a trip down memory lane that goes all the way back to when your balls dropped, was a bit surreal. I've been quoted by some sources as saying that youth is a funny thing in that you're supposed to be young when it happens, but I was old at sixteen, too fucking old to go around being reckless and carefree.

When high school ended I remember realizing with a gasp and a blink that I only had four years left to do the things I was going to regret for the rest of my life, and that if I didn't I'd regret it for the rest of my life. But I didn’t have the stomach or the semen for that.

Besides, freshman year at university is neither what’s expected by hopeful intellectuals nor what’s portrayed in B+ movies. I rarely did find the bunchings of sensitive sophists, eagerly powwowing around the vast depth of smart things and/or painstakingly harvesting their collective minds for one kernel of Universal Truth. Therewere no academic orgies, nor orgies of any kind. The frat houses were shotgun and brick affairs that led one into the other along the mediocrity of H Street. Their pulp-fabled glory was non-existent. The parties were—for lack of a better word—lame. And then I asked myself, What did you expect? Corridors of alternating pulpits and soapboxes manned by the future giants of art and politics situated under a cherry tree and flanked on either side by Coors’ Light Gardens and hook-up chateaus, fueled by a never-ending string of full frontal shots and gross out jokes? Is that what you expected? Yes. Yes it is.

But, alas, people were either typical or typically atypical of the most common common denominator. They’re Thin-Candy-Shelled-Men wandering in the RecycledLand, whose deviancies and rebellions fall neatly into accepted norms. The last new idea was that we should be open to new ideas, and now all that's left are second-rate, third-generation Subterraneans who wear their old costumes with all the oblivious absurdity of a British Magistrate in his powdered wig...

Maybe that's why the suburban shindig at x's house was so oddly satisfying. Call it the-devil-you-know, but these people whose adolescences waltzed with mine all those years ago, they were somehow softer now, realer and less anonymous than the herds of WASPs and JAPs and BoBos in training who graze on stale beer and resin at America's institutions of higher learning. Now they're my small town heroes: The prankster who joined the Corps and ships off to Iraq next month, but not before you buy him dinner; that popped-collar who kicked his low-grade coke habit and worked his ass from County Junior College to Big State University, and dropped some of his superiority along the way; the dandy who's finally out and happy and minus one chip on his shoulder; and, of course, all the girls you thought you could have saved, the best of them with something like a self now to go along with the flesh.

If I've rambled its because the point is slippery here. Essays that hit a vein ought, if 9th grade biology serves me, get eventually to the heart. But essays that hit an artery...well, there the end of the road is a thousand other roads. But I suppose if there's something to be gleaned from this dwelling qua prose, it's the lessons of that temporal nexus we call midnight--when the bleary-eyed, sentimental longings of the past and the bright-eyed, zealous pronouncements for the future hurdle toward one another for about ten seconds, and collide for the briefest of instants at the orgastic Nowly Nowness of Now. Its just about the only time the artist, hedonist, and scientist versions of You are ever seen in the same room together.

-The '05 Baby.

PS: How obscure was this post? Your opinion is valuable to us, and will help us continue to bring you only the most obscure insight here at The Enfranchised. Please vote using the Modern Language Association's Obscurity scale: 1 being Charlie's Angels and 10 being Finnegan's Wake.

Luxury's Lap

Mich Napolitano always was a funny bird. One of those guys who would be eccentric if he had money, but as things stood he was just plain crazy. I remember him explaining his Wiccan beliefs to seventh-grade me (he was an illustrious eighth-grader), when my knowledge of witchcraft was almost entirely culled from Nick-at-Nite reruns of Bewitched. And he and John Atkinson did a great scene from The Importance of Being Earnest at some high school drama festival (I can't remember who was Algernon and who was Jack, but, neither can the characters, so it evens out). So maybe it's because he's carved himself a niche in my mind's pantheon, but Mich Napolitano is the only person whose choice of Dunhill cigarettes I can respect.

You know Dunhills. Reds, Blues, Menthol Greens. They're the "top shelf" pack on the 7-11, holding their noses higher than the Camels and Marlboros to the left. They cost more, sure, but remember: you're not paying for a premium blend, you're paying for status. These have not one but two of those tin foil wrappers on the inside, presumably because a "Dunhill Man" needs to savor his cigarettes with a bit more freshness.

But if you really care about the quality of your tobacco, are you really shopping at the 7-11? No, you are not. You are shopping at Nat Sherman's or Mac's Smoke Shop or some store which caters to your taste. You are buying a brand no one has heard of because you think it will suit your palate better. If you are buying Dunhills, it is because you have an extra $1.80 burning a hole in your pocket and you want to treat yourself to "the best". The same reason that people buy Grey Goose or Glenlivet or Tanqueray Ten. These are not the best, these are just the best popular members of their classes.

So, enjoy your faux luxury. Drink it down. But I hope a small part of you remembers: there's no such thing as the best rum. So either invest as much time as disposable income and sample a wide range of sorts to develop your taste... or drop a packet of sweet and low in ethanol and call it a life.

How the Reviews Were Won [UPDATED]

In Today's Times, Margo Jefferon calls out performance artists. Great, the kind of sneering disdain for those cream puffs of the art world. Normally, I live for this kind of stuff.

"Do what you're good at," she yells (paraphrased, cause she's, well, let me put it this way: she hates talking in straight lines when circumlocution will do). Her call for collaboration is appreciated. But only as a critic. Any artist would be a fool to listen to her, unless they actually cared about the art.

Americans don't want to believe in collaboration. They believe in the monoartist: for a film, he writes, directs, lights, dresses, dollies grip, and controls each of the actors with an elaborate mannequizing machine he designed himself. Oh, also, he *was* the sick kid that inspired the whole damn thing. If a singer took Jefferson's advice not to write their own songs, every middle-class critic (the kind who actually create middle-class snobs, who are the ones spending middle-class dollars to create media-class empires) would deride them as just another pop-tart, propped up on the backs of hacks so untalented they can't even get their names known.

If you want to make it as an artist, you have to be Woody Allen. I mean, except for the, well, you know. But this is something so devious you have to be as neurotic as Woody to get it: every time somebody criticizes his jack-of-all-trades-approach by saying, "he may be a great director, but he limits himself with his acting", well, he just got you to compliment his directing.

And that's one more compliment for directing a major motion picture than you've ever gotten.

[Of course, the thing Jefferson would hate most is a world in which instead of using another's points, we responded directly. Shakespeare and his cronies^Wpeers were the men who took a tale they liked, and redid it. Now such productions are the province of Jerry Bruckheimerettes, looking for a cheap way to generate power by harnessing the rotational energy of Jimmy Stewart's Grave. How ironic to shape something out of the ashes of a movie called Flight of the Phoenix, eh? (if this blog were a Batman-era comic, there would be a sound effect balloon with the words, stylized, "Unintended Irony!") Of course, this is what English is like nowadays: armchair readers who only write about emotions at several syllables' distance. And historians have long since stopped talking about events, and only now discuss analyses of second-hand retellings.

Or, maybe in her darkest nightmares, she envisions a land in which some awful blogger, finding himself with nothing else to say, decides to tear apart nonsensically her earnest warning, instead of just taking to heart what substance he could find in it.]

Taunting on the Company Dime

Ah, New Year's. 'Tis the season for remembrance of a year gone. And of course, being Americans, that means that we have to quantify our appreciation in lists of ten. Every critic out there has taken it as his God-given right, responsibility, and privilege to espouse the top ten books, top ten pop albums, top ten movies, top ten top ten lists. Fine . Great. Good way to encourage people to think the way you do and buy more of your yellow journalism. But the one that struck me most was Ben Brantley's Top Ten Plays.

The thing about theater is that, well, you can only enjoy it if you're in New York, which the majority of NY Times reader's aren't. But, fine, this is their little nod to metrosexuality, or whatever. But fully half that list has already closed. So, basically, Mr. Brantley here is just bragging to you about what you missed. And this is what we're supposed to pay for?

Man I wish I'd gotten to see Jumpers...

Majored in Drama, with a concentration in disembowelment, specialty of self-evisceration

For years, television acting has been a field in retreat. First, simple reality: The Real World. Then, game shows (remember a simpler time? When Who Wants To Be A Millionaire was all we could hear about and we were only afraid of our own children turning guns on us, their peers, and eventually themselves?) roamed the earth. When the two were merged, the behemoth Survivor was created. Survivor begat Big Brother, and Big Brother begat a crapload of crappy, campy, crap.

Every show that had a script feared for its future. Those with intellectual humor ran and cried underneath a sofa. So did Frasier. It seemed like the only way to survive was to create characters so boring and predictable that no one would believe a writer had taken time to craft it. Cf. the longevity and popularity of Friends.

But the renaissance we are now experiencing is limited: you must be morbid to make it nowadays. The CSI's, SVU's, and ER's are taking over. Fox's House (about a quirkily genius doctor that I try hard not to enjoy, but still do) meets that network's definition of a smash success. Even this season's breakout hit, ABC's Desperate Housewives, features more dead bodies than fat ones.

Which leads me to wonder: how do actors prepare for this? Has Julliard begun offering a course in how to decompose? "Think like the worms. Feel the worms." How do you even cast that? "Well, I loved #17's rack, and her headshots were flawless, but let's not kid ourselves, #23 nailed that Grand Mal Seizing!" Or telling your relatives? I mean, it's at least respectable to only have part of your body featured if it's, e.g., the ear with that Diamond Tiffany's stud. But do you really want to be sitting around the Thanksgiving table, explaining to old half-deaf "Uncle" Tomas that you were the severed limb in the landfill on episode 712A3-- oh, and could you pass the meatloaf?

This is why, I say, we should forbid any expression that involves dead people. All sick must be played by bunnies and body parts replaced by lollipops.

-D"The Tell-Tale Sucker"an

Lowered Decision Expectations

Well, after weeks of turmoil and strife, the Ukraine is calm. Night has fallen, the birds are humming doo-wop, &c. And how was this Balkanesque dispute settled? By a Herculean margin of victory with Yuschenko pulling down (drumroll) 51.99% of the vote.

Wait, what? Less than 2% above even can now count as an irrevocable mandate of the masses? Well, I guess this is what we've been preparing ourselves for all these years. It's all been downhill since Reagan in 1984, when Mondale's mother sat little Walt-Walt down and said, "I'm sorry, honey, but he just seems so honest and damn loveable" before casting her vote for that proto-Schwarzenegger.

I mean, in Washington, people are basically just accepting the race is over because the current winner now leads by a commanding 130 votes. This is after she was losing by 261 votes after the initial count, and on the second recount. But, this is 13 times as large as the lead she first had: 10 votes. 10 votes! I've personally lost campaigns by a wider margin (I would have made a great homeroom representative).

But what use is just ranting? I guess I should just sit back and learn to love an electoral system that can be decided by someone nudging the voting booth a bit too heavily.

-D"TILT!"an

This Side of Purgatory

Well, now that Jesus H. Christmas is over, it's time for us all to stand up, dust ourselves off, and see what we managed to hang on to in the bumrush.

I'm happy to hear they still read print on the west coast, and that Bentley still reads so much of it. Word to the wise compadre: The things you don't get in Vonnegut--you don't get them because they're not funny. Also, there's nothing to 'get' in Anderson that you don't want there to be. Bottle Rocket is about being fourteen. Rushmore, Tennenbaums, exercises in the meticulous Peter Pan sublimity of being fifteen and sixteen, respectively. No doubt The Life Aquatic is about the vague meloncholy of seventeenness. Beyond that, Anderson's the tofu of filmmakers. It's all in how you cook him.

Because I know you, dear reader, hang on every word, I'll let you in on what kind of culture I've been conspiciously consuming in this post-coital, post-solstice winter.

Moby-Dick: I'm enjoying it far better the second time around. Maybe it's because when I read it the first time in high school it was presented to me from within the fascist restrictiveness of the middle-American, late-capitalist, faux-egalitarian educational system. Or maybe it's because I've been laid since then. Regardless, it works on two levels: 1) Minor hero in decline chases Death, Revenge, and a White Whale on the high seas (I know what you'll say, total Wes Anderson rip-off), and 2) the same exact thing, but replace hero with America and villains with Industry, Capital, and Manifest Destiny. Watch out for Melville's wit. They never tell you in school how brutally funny that m.f. is.

The Pentagon's New Map: Thomas P.M. Barnett is to Security Studies what Mos Def is to hip-hop: without them, their professions are just a lot of borderline sociopaths bragging about all the shiny things they've bought. Barnett is like Jack Ryan, Tony Robbins and Drew Carey rolled into one, and he's presented a theory of military power in the 21st century that should command as much of your attention as those Doritos presently are (I'm looking at you, New Jersey).

Esquire: Still the best glossy in America and the one with the best mix of high, low, and unibrow humor. The New Yorker be damned! Damned, I say! (By the way, te-hee-hee-hee).

Michael Loux's Metaphysics: If you only read one introductory treatment of Aristotelian metaphysics this winter, it shouldn't be this one.

John Broome's lectures on Normative Ethics: If you only read one series of unpublished lectures on Normative ethics given at Oxford University in the fall of 2004 which you were supposed to have attended but didn't, it should be this one.

Closer: This is the movie everybody should be talking about, but they're too busy talking about how Garden State is the movie everybody should be talking about. Great material, acted greatly. Even Julia Roberts shines. Highlight lines:

Ann: "Why?!? Why do you want to know?!? Why is the sex SO important to you?!?!"
Larry: "BECAUSE I'M A FUCKING CAVEMAN!"

and

Dan: "She has a good heart, too good for you [paraphrasing]"
Larry: "Have you ever seen a heart? It looks like a clenched fist covered in blood"

Anyway, run along now and do my bidding.

A M[icr]o[wa]veable Feast

Ah, Christmas Day. And while all you suckers are either celebrating the birth of Our Lord (gentiles) or plotting our downfall (you don't think we know what the rest of you do on this day?), us lapsed Protestants are bunkered away doing all of nothing.

In preparation for the closing of everything good and decent (ironically enough, on the day that I'm supposed to be most consumerist, I find nothing open), I stocked up: microwave dinners galore, diet coke to feed the 3rd Marines for a month or me for a weekend, and books. So many books. Yet to touch, I have Gravity's Rainbow, Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons (winner of a British award for worst sex scene of the year), Orson Scott Card's Enchantment, Jasper Fforde's Something Rotten (the most recent in the Harry-Potter-for-English-Majors Thursday Next series) and Godel, Escher, Bach.

Also in the basket was "Nothing Feels Good", a history of Emo. I couldn't pass up reading a chapter entitled "The Curious Case of Weezer." Turns out, odd guys. And I'm halfway through Angels in America (thank you, Jill Wurzburg, for recommending it.) And I finished Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle (again, for suggesting, you get a shout out Justine FuckIForgetYourLastName). And then this morning, I saw Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

I realize now that the reason I've not truly enjoyed Vonnegut and Wes Anderson in the past is that, well, I feel like there's so much of it I'm not getting. I feel like everyone else who likes them listens to me say what I like, then laughs at me when I leave. Why is it so jumping? When I read Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, I feel like I get about 95% of what they put on the page.

But, you know, maybe I'm supposed to feel lost reading Vonnegut. Maybe Mr. Anderson's movie are supposed to seem odd, but laughily so.

Or maybe you're all just laughing at me.

Merry Saturday.

Legal Defenses TDQMIAWIFCMD

We all know about patient-doctor confidentiality. And husband-wife confidentiality. And owner-dog confidentiality (though not if your dog is a parrot).

Wouldn't it be great if alongside this recognized reason to shut up, and the fifth amendment, and "it depends on what your definition of includes includes", you were *allowed* to swear an oath, be on the witness stand, and say with a straight face "What Happens in Vegas Stays In Vegas"?

I.O.U

I hereby owe you, the reader, one (1) pithy, intelligent and reference-laden response on Blockbuster and Iraq. Since you are few in number this time of year, I hope the damage will be contained. You see, Christmas is both the most wonderful time and the least timely wonder of the year.

-D.R. Kringle.

Round Three--The Adventures of Captain Lowbrow

I had fun getting the last word in last week's edition of "Pissing in the Wind," but now it's my turn to be left vulnerable, with a big matza ball hanging out of my mouth. Since I don't trust people to actually check how Dan specifically lays out this week's topic, I'll copy and paste:

This week, I would like each of our panelists to respond to two issues that, when you think about it, are really quite related.

a) The Army is deploying people to Iraq who were scheduled to retire. They're deploying people who thought they were retired but hadn't filled out the proper paperwork to resign their commission. What's next? Slipping roofies into drinks and she wakes up in Iraq after Uncle Sam's had his way with her?

b) Blockbuster is dropping the concept of late fees. Is this a good idea? Or merely the last gasp of a dying monopoly?

You may wonder, what do these two things have to do with each other? Nothing. Except that they've been providing Dan with masturbatory material for the last few weeks. "Report to HQ drop those late fees, Private Spears. You're about to be dishorably discharged upon." You sicken me, Dan.

But I digress...
______________________

Before we decided to go into Iraq, there were skeptics who worried the war in Iraq would turn into another Vietnam. For the Vietnam vets turned AARP members who have been called up for duty again it literally has.

How the hell did this happen? Is our military really stretched so thin that we'll now take whatever help we can get, regardless of whether or not they rely on a walker for day-to-day activities? Or have the eugenicists hijacked the Pentagon? Is troop morale so low that we've resorted to massive "When I was your age" campaign to give our soldiers a "good talking to?" Well Uncle Leviathan's got the inside scoop for all you freedom-hating, UN-mongering, French food eating, ANTI-AMERICAN people who dare to question The Mandate.

The reserves is pretty much what it sounds like--a reserve. If the army, say, falls in quicksand, or finds Curly's gold somewhere out in the desert and we need some extra manpower, we have a "reserve" of troops to draw from. The thing about this is that when you sign up for the reserves, you sort of consent to this. It's not the "Paper-pushers," "tomb-guarders," or "flag-folders," it's, well, the reserves. When you decide you want out of the reserves (after the stipulated time), you make it official and sign some shit so you stop getting a check in the mail.

(As an aside, I know this because one of my Uncles used to be in the Marines, but has given up certain benefits so this won't happen. On the other hand, another of my uncles, in the Army Reserves, is a few months away from completing 20 years, and while well aware he might be called upon to serve, he wants to finish up his 20 years to obtain a certain bonus.)

Long story short, I have sympathy for those people who honestly didn't know you had to make it utterly explicit they were no longer in the reserves. For all I know, they might have stopped getting checks, and assumed it was official. The people I unfortunately don't, though, or those who knew this and complain now. Not that I think they're trying to abuse the system, or that I'd be jumping at the chance to go to war any more than they are. But they did know this very well might happen when they signed on the dotted line.

It's sort of like...hmmm, I don't know...renting a movie from Blockbuster and forgetting about it for two weeks. All the sudden you get a call from some no good dirty teen about how you have a fifty dollar fine for "Rubdown." Now, I might very well have watched Rubdown the first night I got it, took it out when I began "A Clockwork Orgy," and forgot all about it. Forgetting that other people might have wanted to see Rubdown while I had it out (pun!), I really shouldn't be charged for this. I watched it once. I enjoyed it in the allotted 2-day period (it was a new rental). I just plumb forgot about it.

On the other hand, if I started watching Rubdown that first night, got interrupted by a special airing of "Citizen Kock" on AMC (that's the American Masturbation Channel, for those unacquainted), and watched it in 15-minute chunks over 10 days, I have been reaping the benefits of Rubdown, and hence, should have to pay the late fee.

Rubdown and this Reserves problem, when you think about it, long and hard enough, are quite similar. If you're still not seeing it, it's probably because you're thinking short and flaccid. And if you still don't see the connection, then you're a free mason.

Same post, different blog.

Pissing Into The Wind

This week, I woudl like each of our panelists to respond to two issues that, when you think about it, are really quite related.

a) The Army is deploying people to Iraq who were scheduled to retire. They're deploying people who thought they were retired but hadn't filled out the proper paperwork to resign their commission. What's next? Slipping roofies into drinks and she wakes up in Iraq after Uncle Sam's had his way with her?

b) Blockbuster is dropping the concept of late fees. Is this a good idea? Or merely the last gasp of a dying monopoly?


-D"Shanghai!"an