The Ivory Tower

[Today's entry is by Joel Cretan, a frosh at school, as told to me]

College: A time for minds to bloom. So when Dan asked me to contribute to The Enfranchised, I knew I could come up with something interesting to say. Until I couldn't. It was then I realized: college is a way to keep us down. I should be able to spin philosophical dialogue between Locke and Rousseau, but instead I spend all my time fighting between Ken and Ryu.

I'm not alone. If I were a sole soul lost in a sea of my own creation, you'd owe me no pity. But look at my peers: How many Nobel Prizes were lost to that bottle of Winner's Cup? How many Pulitzer Prize-winning novels have been forgotten while playing Halo 2? And since Devo was two decades ago, will I really be able to get any musical inspiration doing Whip-Its?

And so it seems that college is the Great Equalizer. Take an inspired young man, give him ten weeks of the Nintendo-and-Stoli prescription, and you make him turn his 20-unit Honors Quarter into a charade of 15 units (thank you golf and Band!) And while I'm out sipping my martinis and riding my polo ponies, the lower class can figure out how to throw off the yoke of oppression!

Except, it's not only been my studies that have suffered. I used to volunteer. I taught janitors how to read. Fuck. I would climb into trees and rescue kittens while at the same time performing the Heimlich maneuver on an infant. I was a Golden God. My Facebook profile still says that my interests include saving AIDS orphans from ethnic cleansing, but it’s been a while since I’ve gotten around to that. Now I just control a 1" by 1" pixilated rendering of an Italian plumber and call it a night. How are they going to set fire to the symbols of our bourgeois control when they can't read the instructions on the match
books? (Hint: "Close cover before striking.")

There comes a moment in every man's life, and I fear that for me it comes right now, when he begins to understand Trickle Down economics. So, to the rest of you, I give you this warning: skip college, and beat us up when you see me on the street. And to college: you have wasted the finest minds of our generations, and in so doing damned our society to perpetual similitude.

-Joel Cretan

P.S. In case you're wondering, Ryu always wins. Ken's such a pretty boy. For Ryu, the fight is everything.

Double, Double, Oil and Trouble

At first I was puzzled by Bentley's choice of topics. You see, I'm supposed to be the conservative foil to Mr. White's New Democratism. Indeed, White has appropriately taken on the blogonym "Leviathan", putting him in close company with everybody's favorite 17th-century New Dem', Thomas Hobbes. As for me, I admit I'm guilty of a certain kind of conservatism. For one thing, I objected to White being added as a contributor to this blog. Too hasty a change, I said. Will incite the proles. Nevertheless, I tend rather toward the Bull Moose on certain issues, which puts me in the interesting position of playing the tree-hugging progressive (?!?) to Mr. White's reactionary centrism. Truly a stroke of Bentleyian postmodern genius. So before I dive in, I just want to say kudos to our iconoclastic moderator for 'undermining privileged discourses of power and problematizing false binaries' in a manner befitting a Lit Crit. major at Stanford.


So.......energy, eh?

Let me start by saying it's nice to hear that Mr. White is so amicable to the Republican plan to drill for oil in ANWR. Its high time we saw some bipartisan support for bringing huge MNCs and hundreds of thousands of tons of wrought steel into federally protected pristine wilderness. If Mr. White likes the filibuster-immune 2003 budget rider on which the drilling plan is predicated so much, I've got another one for him: H.R. 1912 "A Resolution to Pry Open Teddy Roosevelt's Casket and Squeeze out a Cleveland Steamer on His Chest."

But let's be fair. I'm sure Mr. White's support for ANWR drilling is contingent on a few conditions. (1) The rig operators and Caribou-relocation engineers must be closed-shop union represented, (2) Nobody on site must be forced, asked, or allowed to pray to or mention the name of God Almighty or any lesser deity, and (3) Anybody who knows and/or likes Dick Cheney must be excluded from profit.

I take a cue from Dennis Miller when I say that I, for one, think drilling in Alaska makes about as much sense as Odin blowing Margeret Fuller at the Hartford Convention. And as for the perpetual drinky-birds, I quote the Tao of Homer (beer not epics): "In this house, we OBEY the laws of thermodynamics."

So what of alternatives? I think White misses the big picture when he bemoans the Mideast Oil-War nexus. The idea is that petroleum is made out of long-since-dead things. So more dead things, more oil. And these Islamic fundamentalists aren't killing themselves...er...right.....(bad excuse for a bad joke: "Is that an RPG in your pocket, or are you just Wahhabi to see me?). In the meantime, we can conserve by confiscating all the H2's in this country and issuing their owners vouchers for penis-enlargement surgery and hair plugs.

As for more long-term solutions, I jotted down a few things the Democrats might donate to burn instead of fossil fuel:

1. Red tape
2. Howard Dean
3. Copies of the Starr Report whose pages are hopelessly stuck together
4. Their souls
5. American flags
6. Clinton's "bridge to the twenty-first century"
7. Ted Kennedy's liver (who needs cold fusion?)
8. Pork barrels
9. Howard Dean's charred remains
10. "terminated" Fetuses (Fetii?)

Perhaps Mr. White can pass it along to Terry McAullife at the next DNC meeting miles below Cambridge, Mass in the bowels of Harvard college.

But, of course, if it's truly 'clean, alternative' power we're looking for, we might take a cue from our friend House Resolution 1912. Let's tap the graves of Jefferson and Adams and Lincoln, and hook the old boys up to generators. Surely, they're spinning fast and often enough to keep us all up in SUVs and tanning beds till Kingdom Come.

-The Lorax.

Pissing into the wind

I know nothing about energy policy. Absolutely nothing. The only area of politics I know or care less about is Medicare, social security, and the rest of that geriatric policy area. So this is going to be, as Foster said, an exercise in pissing into the wind. Since the point is to disagree and yell at each other, I can only hope my piss hits Foster.

So here goes.

I think the point of contention in energy policy is drilling for oil in the Arctic. I, for one, don't give a shit. As long as you're not drilling for oil in baby seals or Eskimos, drill away. I'm not too comfortable with us relying on Middle East oil, so at least with drilling in the Arctic we don't have to worry about propping up any pro-American dictators or invading any countries.

The dirtiest of the dirty hippies might object to this, since we're hurting animals and whatnot. But know what? I'd rather have a few polar bears covered in oil than start wars for control of oil. And I'll tell you something about polar bears. They'd kill you and everyone you know and love if they had the chance. Don't let those beady eyed, coca-cola guzzling killers fool you. They're only cute until they maul you to death for some drug money and a cell phone.

Not that I'm advocating killing animals, but the utilitarian in me just puts human lives over animal ones. I eat meat. I kill bugs. Hell, I poured salt on a slug only last week. Whatever.

I suppose there are some alternatives to oil as a source of energy. You have solar. That's pretty interesting, but it has it's limits. For example, the Polish-invented solar powered flashlight... That met the same fate as their submarine with screen doors.

Nuclear is another option, but Chernobyl taught us a little something about that. Plus that's really just an invitation for super-villains to steal our plans and blackmail us with a nuke. Or worse than that, free masons with nukes...(shudder).

Word on the street is that "scientists" have been working on "hydrogen fuel cells" for "cars."
I seem to remember Bush saying something about that in his State of the Union a few years back. Something to the effect of cars spitting out water instead of exhaust with this technology. Sounds pretty cool, but I don't see this sitting well with the fat cats at Poland Spring (which apparently is not in Poland!) I say, if they're going to work on converting exhaust, why not invent a butt muffler so my farts smell like roses. Or a reverse one where roses smell like farts. Haha. "Happy Valentine's Day, sweetie. What kind of flowers are these? Oh, I think they're navy bean roses."

If you ask me, what scientists really should be working on is a perpetual motion machine. Yeah, yeah, I know it's physically impossible, but there's got to be a way around friction. The United States will not seek a permission slip from the laws of thermodynamics to defend out nation! Those quasi-perpetual motion machines work pretty well--the ones with the four balls hanging that keep bouncing back and forth. Or better yet, what about those drinky-birds that bob up and down drinking water. They're almost perpetual. We'd just need to build an army of those, and pay some guy to tap their tails every couple of hours when the motion dies down. Now how hard is that, really?

So until we build a frictionless drinky-bird, magical water car, or just settle for having energy during daylight hours, I say drill away. And aim for that polar bear...he's eyeing my coke.

(Did the best I could with the topic and a headache. As for the name of this weekly feature, I propose "pissing in the wind." It has a nice ring to it).

same post, different blog

On the Internet, no one can hear you shout

Today on the Enfranchised, we begin a new feature! Arguing! No longer will our rants be monologues. Instead, they will be picked apart, thrown back at us, and then ground into our faces like we deserve. Every Tuesday, I will post a topic for discussion. Every Wednesday, one of my co-bloggers will respond. Every Thursday, the other co-blogger will explain to him and you exactly how he (the first he) was wrong. You may have noted that on the authors bar, there are now three of us. I'm proud to welcome Ryan Graham "Leviathan" White yadda yadda formal courtesy extended.

So, without adieu, the first topic: energy policy. Recent reports indicate that the Arctic seabed teamed with life at some point. Conclusion: somewhere down there, there's oil. Is this a viable strategy, to keep looking for oceans to tap and countries to invade? Is nuclear the answer? Solar? Wind? Lots of hampsters on wheels? Enlighten us, oh pundits.

So it turns out Rudy can fail...

No, I'm not talking about Clash songs, I'm talking about Sean Astin, perhaps now better known as Samwise Gamgee. He put in an appearance at the Oxford Union last nite, strolling into the great debate hall in a smart three-button suit replete with half, nay, full Windsor pink tie, his lovely daughter Alexandra in hand. We managed to get seats on the floor, in a small section unified by, if nothing else, our support for the introduction of a measure to the effect that "This House believes Rudy is the greatest sports film of our generation." Of course, Oxfordshire is Tolkien country (The Hobbit was written about fifty yards from where I sit, in Staircase Two of Pembroke College), so needless to say there was about as much support in the room for the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame as there was for the Fighting Irish of Belfast. Thus was I fully prepared to see a species of nerdery different than my own take the day, and listen to Astin struggle in vain to satiate the tremendous demand for the inducement of childlike wonder among fan-fic writers and theatre-girls alike.

As chance would have it though, these Serfs of the Ring were doomed to disappointment. Instead, what we got from Mr. Astin was an eloquent, if not at times loquaicious and contrived, treatise on morality and world-view formation. Reading at first from "prepared remarks", Astin managed both to affect the American self-loathing commonplace among liberal apologists with European audiences, and to quote Malcolm X at great length. I will say of him that he is bright and intellectually curious (having worked his way through community college and UCLA on his way to a degree in American Studies), but I wonder in the end if he's really being honest with himself.

Two points struck me as particularly disingenuous. First, a comment about having "spent two-thousand dollars on books, about the war and the president and the politics" and thereupon "spreading them around my apartment, and reading the titles trying to make sense of my worldview"; suffice it to say that the reading of titles does not an education make; a studious trip to the Bodliean will save one both time and money if a spatial arrangement of similarly provocative epigrams is all one is after. But perhaps this is unfair--Astin was speaking in anecdotes, and we can only assume he's read more than just titles. Still, the second comment irked me, and as he was addressing it in response to a question posed by a friend Alex immediately to my left, I can't help but feel that my cringe at its utterance was both recognized by Astin, and cause for his retreat into safer waters.

You see, he was fresh from confessing to us his difficulty in "reconciling free market capitalism and democracy". Fair enough, Goonie. But as your new book, on your own account, deals quite explicitly with the pragmatics of movie deals, agents, franchise rights and the like, it seems as though you've got a working grip on how the market works, and how it works for you. But the the death knell, for me, sounded when Astin implored all of us to see The Corporation, a no-holds-barred documentary that makes Farhenheit 9/11 look like a soft jest from Cheney to Bush. (To be equitable, The Economist called The Corporation "surprisingly rational"). I do not doubt that we all should see this film, or more appropriately that we should avail ourselves to the truths presented therein. But perhaps Mr. Astin ought to see it again, and figure out if he can "reconcile" his admiration for it with the fact that his checks are signed by TimeWarner Inc.

I didn't intend for this post to get so long, and for it to be so unfunny. So I'll finish off by saying that, ceteris paribus, Sean Astin is one of the good ones. An Alec Baldwin or Sean Penn he is not, and he seems genuinely committed to public service (working, for instance, with President Bush's volunteerism board, the Secretary of the Army, and with the Carter Foundation). The case of Astin just goes to show how easily (unavoidably?) we slip into hypocrisy, and how unpalatable that hypocrisy can sound to a kid from Jersey whose parents were not, in any case, Gomez Addams and Patty Duke.*

-Citizen Foster

*I should also note that granting Astin a reprieve was made a great deal easier when, yielding graciously to my request, he helped us all to the Chester Copperpot speech from Goonies, and to a stirring rendition of Charles S. Dutton's famous "Five-foot-nothin, a-hundred-and-nothin" speech from Rudy (the greatest sports film of our generation).

Shitty Inheritances

My last name's Bentley. This means I get asked a lot if I'm "one of those Bentleys". Including when I'm at a Toyota dealership buying a Prius. Look, if I was one of those Bentleys, I'd save gas by converting my car to burn 100-dollar bills. But the point is, I'd love to be "one of those Bentleys."

So it kinda makes me feel for people with last names whose association is not of Old and Nouveau Riche, commuting together. But what about the Alzheimers' reunion at Disneyland? They can't get shirts. And if you thought, like I did, that the reason for their not getting shirts was not the fear of askance glances but because no one would remember to pick them up, you're going to hell too. But, hey, those names got their fear through study and effort, and that is to be admired.

It's the Shrapnels who bear the original sin of their progenitor. Lieutenant Henry Shrapnel devised a way to kill people that would be unsurpassed for 100 years. And so he became famous. But not in the, y'know, good way.

For the solution to this problem, which Harry could hardly have foreseen, we must turn to that great compendium of knowledge and sage advice: Professional Sports. Selling naming rights on his new invention would have yielded riches enough for him to endow a prize better than Alfred Nobel's. And he could have made more than mere stadia because everyone can agree on a negative. To wit: only GM would want to name a new pleasurable experience the, e.g., GM Orgasm. But every car company in the world that isn't Honda could agree to call a new munition the "Honda Accord Instrument of Death and Sadness."

Out of the frying pan and into the Shire--

The thing about Seattle is, they tell you it rains there all the time. They learn it as kids and they grow up and travel the world and perpetrate this as platitude wherever they go. And one day—my guess would be the early nineties, what with the Portland/Seattle grunge axis—there came a tipping-point when the burden of bearing this fact shifted from Washingtonian to outsider. No longer did the former offer it in response to the query: What’s it like there? Instead, it was the New Yorker or the Chicagoan or the Suburbanite who proffered it in conversation, called up from the same socially distributed databank of small-talk potpourri as gems like: Wasn’t Mark Twain’s real name Samuel Clemens? Or, Now, is it true that they circumcise their women? So, the outsider asks, almost by reflex: Rains all the time, eh? And the Seattlite responds: Sure does. The thing about Seattle is, it isn’t true. The winters can get dreary enough, for certain, but I’ll be goddamned if the other nine months of the year aren’t somewhere between San Francisco and Shangri-La. They tell you, you see, to keep you away. Having sent forth Starbucks into the world to keep their coffers filled, they laugh and sing and skip around in nothing but fig leaves, in the resplendency of the Pacific Northwest.

The thing about Oxford is, it really does rain all the time.

If Verbing Weirds Language, what does Adjectiving do?

Article at CNN claims that 31 people have committed suicide form the top of the Empire State Building. Wow. That's a classy/famous/awesome way to go. You'd think that they'd be pulling them down, or chaining them to the floor, or something. But no. According to the same article, 3.8 million people visit each year. Pulling numbers and arithmetic operators out of my ass, that means that 1 out of every 7 million people who visits there dies there. I mean, technically not even there. Where else could you take 7 million people and only have one die? And let's not forget the bomber
that crashed into that building. Man, if every place were made as well as the observation deck on the Empire State Building, we'd all be Methusalean.

And Now for Something Completely Different...
Three Lymericks about Sex...

I.
On account of the Clintons' good will
Was I asked to their copulative drill.
Bill handled foreplay
in a sensuous way
Penetration was provided by Hill'.

II.
O! Would that I were Nick Lachay
And wed to fair Jess for one day.
I'd bind her with rope
and jerk off on the dope
'Cuz I'm sure she's a miserable lay.

III.
I chanced upon Spears on the street
And did drop my drawers to my feet.
"Fortune favors the bold",
or so I was told
By her guard as he Tazered my meat.

d.r.f.cummings. (tehee)

A Transcendental Tractate of Caustic Casuistry

Recently was I in receipt of a castigatory epistle from Bentley, something to the effect that my posts are too recondite, or else that they demand of their audience a certain savoir faire which they seem, inscrutably, to lack. "Too high brow" he said; "nobody likes to feel stupid when they read our blog" he said; "most people just don't know who Jacques Derrida is". Suffice it to note that I became both splenetic and dyspeptic as a result of this reproof. Nevertheless, I found myself reconnoitering through my recent posts in an effort to, if you'll forgive the colloquialism, catechize the veracity of his averments.

Alas, my analysis, though prosecuted with all fealty and ardor, produced little in the way of punctilious proof. It seems to me that nothing to which I affix my appellation approaches the bravura or frippery for which I am vituperated. A fortiori, I would deign say that nothing of my oeuvre is beyond the reach of the paradigmatic abecedarian or catechumen. One most certainly need not be of the ranks of the cognoscenti or learned mavens of acroamatic, orphic discourses (most of whom, to be completely laconic, I find more often associated with a kind of specious chicanery than with unalloyed erudition) to make immanent within one's ken precisely that which I try, with all obsequiousness and self-abnegation, to so guilelessly rehearse.

What would Bentley have me do? Reduce my already meager belletristic fruitage yet further still, to the point where it consists in nothing but apophthegmatic bon mot or badinage? Would he have me, for instance, affect the phraseology of so many of the nescient Rationalists? Does he have some baser velleity to see me, compunctious and chagrined, reduced to contriving a précis on Liebniz's dubious theodicy or, worse still, his monadology? Am I to be relegated to producing disquisitions on the immaterialist metaphysics of Berkeley's Alciphron or, God forbid, Ockham's ontological nominalism? Surely not.

Thus, I can only implore Bentley to osculate my fundament.

--D. Richard Foster IV, Esq.

Times of our Lives.

If you don't read the New York Times, you should. Some people may criticize it for a liberal bias. Others for over-intellectualism. Some may dislike its better-than-thou attitude when it comes to journalism. And yes, of course, they're all right. But it's still a damn fine paper. Below are a few gems I have found in it in the last half-week. Where else can you get such constant awesomitude for free?

"Data on Deaths From Obesity Is Inflated, U.S. Agency Says"

This is just a title, but can't you see the reporter just wanting to change it to: "... Is Inflated [Just Like the Obese], U.S. Agency Says"?

From an interview with Robert Downey Jr. on the release of his new album (I know, I know, him singing is about as crazy as Harry Connick Jr. acting!):

"The truth is, most people have realized I'm less a liability on a set than people who get loaded on weekends and might get a D.U.I. and don't want to hear anything about getting sober. I'm a pretty easy read. I'm either doing well or I'm having a sidebar conversation with the valet at your party and we disappear and come back 45 minutes later looking very alert."

And finally, from an article about computers writing:

"On the Internet, the Monkey Shakespeare Simulator (http://user.tninet.se/~ecf599g/aardasnails/java/Monkey/webpages/) generates random keystrokes and matches them against a database of Shakespeare's plays. The record, last time I looked, was 21 consecutive letters and spaces from - aptly enough - 'Love's Labour's Lost.'"

OK, I'll be honest: LLL, not my favorite Shakespeare. But I could never write that in as assumed knowledge to an audience of millions and hope for a knowing chuckle. These guys, the New York Times, they have balls.

It is not the spork that bends, it is you that bends.

:::Knocks on Door:::

Dan: Yeah?
First-Year: Hey man, working on an essay?
Dan: Yep.
First-Year: What's it on?
Dan: This week, the topic is free will vs. determinism.
First-Year: Oh, man...was it optional?


And while I'm at it, I'll go ahead and link to some of my hometown heroes, the boys at Greyfade Media. They do some good film/music/other work and the website's pretty slick. A lot of it appeals to a sort of self-parodying soft-and-hazy existential angst, to which I can't exactly relate, but all things considered the production values and talent are there, and the two seasons of "Boston Place" are priceless. Two "Enfranchised-Iron-Fists-of-Absolute-Power" way up.

Full Faith and Credit

Two nights ago, my roommate and I went to dinner. I paid with a credit card, and after emptying his wallet of dollars, he still owed me $9. All he had left in his wallet was a £5 note. It took us both a moment of soul-searching before realizing that if he handed me the bill... our debt would be clear. I mean, it's in pounds, how am I going to use it in the US?

It's scary to think how fragile our monetary system is. It's all just based on faith. The worst kind of faith: faith in the common man. Sure, Mr. Goodenberger and I know the exchange rates for common currencies. But what if I need to buy gas? Of course I'm out of luck if I'm trying to invoke Her Majesty's Royal Currenfy[sic] of Pounds Sterling and Incestuous Families. But how about the 2 dollar bill? See this description of someone not taking a 2 dollar bill. So does that mean that when you factor in the difficulty of using it, it's really a $1.78 bill?

Leave a comment if you'd accept a debt of $9 in Poundian format.

Against the Very Idea of Jacques Derrida

.



As far as the mainstream press goes, one of the better articles on Derrida's death was printed in the Guardian a few days ago. Though I'm inclined, on a gut level, to be sympathetic with the kind of reactionary-liberal criticism (stay with me folks) levelled at Derrida by the New York Times among others, the Guardian article, I think, offers a fairer and more subtle account of exactly what's at issue when we talk of the differences between realism and relativism, objectivity and subjectivity, analytical and continental philosophy. By the way you can find it HERE.

The divide between French (and to some extent German) thought and its Anglophonic counterpart is at least as hotly contested and nuanced as the divide between french fries and proper English chips. But the stakes are far greater. I'm not going to claim any expertise on the debate, but I am (and certainly we all should be) an anxious and interested party to it. Richard Lea does as good a job of hitting the main points as can be done in a newspaper article, so I won't echo him. But I will disagree with him on one point. Contrary to what Lea suggests, it DOES seem to me that there ARE genuine relativists out there, prominent ones like Richard Rorty, to use a name Lea mentions, and Frederic Jameson, to use one he does not. But the classic targets of anglophonic venom--Foucault, Derrida, and Lyotard for starters--don't, on my reading, come out in the end as strictly relativistic.

Serious thinkers warrant serious consideration, and I doubt there is an analytical philosopher around who could walk away from The Order of Things, Who's Afraid of Philosophy?, or The Postmodern Condition, without being expanded. If the purpose of philosophy is to touch reality, than we cannot reject the continental project wholesale just because we don't like its methods. Regardless, the onus is on analytical philosophy to answer the critiques of the Western Tradition/Rationalism/Humanism/Modernity that the post-Marxists, poststructuralists and postmodernists have put forward. If our analytic is really so much better than their hermeneutic, then why does their's seem to gain ground even as our's loses it? To reply that people are stupid or base is to evade the question. We need better and more usable answers.

This, of course, is not to say that there aren't about a zillion Po-Mo "critical theorists" who will be FIRST AGAINST THE WALL when the Revolution comes. There was a time when the only "critical theorist" around was a Prussian out of Königsberg by the name of Immanuel Kant. Nowadays, any lit-crit with a chip on his shoulder and a Ph.D. in the "Human Sciences" can lay claim to endless stretches of interpretive space and theoretical discourse. These latte-sipping lemmings are about as post-Marxist as Stalin was. I'd like to think that any of the dead Frenchmen mentioned above would have more interest in bedding one of these sophists than supervising their dissertation. But I digress...

The point is, ideas are grand and learning new ones is positively orgaistic. But if there is one thing old Jacques-the-Ripper taught us, it's that ideas, bound as they are to language, are readily hijacked and distorted. Just ask the Editorial Board at Duke University's publication Social Text, who learned this the hard way after falling ass-first into the postmodern parody of Sokal's Hoax (If you click one thing in this meandering post, make it this one. It's positively priceless). So maybe it isn't, as many an old English philosopher have worried, that we have to protect the masses from postmodernism. Maybe it's that we have to protect postmodernism from the masses.

-A Fosterian dialectic

Why the best sex is when you're ugly and she's not.

Let's face it. There are better looking men than me. Sexier men, even. Ok, better looking and sexier. Better, sexier manlier men than me. Alright, I make Jack Black look like Jack Nicholson. Fine, I make Jack Nicholson look like Jack Nicholson 1978. But I've got my charms. Hell, I've even been laid a few times. And now I'm in a damned-fine, committed, loving relationship with an angelic sex-kitten who's so far out of my price-range I've had to take out no-interest loans with the World Bank conditional on liberal economic reforms and the cessation of my long and persistent history of human rights violations.

But let's leave all that one side for the moment. I'm human: bleed if pricked, laugh if tickled and all that...and I'm a thousand miles away from the warm and comforting body of the one I love. What's more, there is still some of that early-adolescent semen kicking around in me, and I'm lustful. Now, I'm not so stupid as to act on this vaguely directed dick-headedness (not that there is a queue of willing, limber, highly-trained virgins forming outside my door to take up the task), nor do I, in any important sense of the word, WANT to. To want something like this is to want it metaphysically, spiritually, i.e. to want the whole shift in the state-of-affairs of the universe that comes with it. This is the last thing I want. There is no sheer quantity nor quality of TNA which can be measured against what I now have with my girlfriend (her TNA, of course, included). Rather, I want as the baby wants from mother's teat, as the dog wants from the bone, as the Republican wants from a Bush victory: the raw, unthinking, visceral bliss of instant gratification, unencumbered by any higher-order reflection on consequence or reason.

But if I'm really honest with myself--and why not, it seems the consensus on the best place to vomit forth one's soul has shifted from the shrink's couch to the blog's html prompt--what I want is simpler still. I want to be wanted. That's why when the few and far between advances come (usually from sweet, tipsy British girls who've always wanted an American teddy bear) the id is tempted even where the ego is strong. For the blessed few among us, this narcissism is satiated in high school or the heady, post-breakup days of freshman year. There, if you are of the Ubercrombie, or captain of the team, or always have the best ganj', you can count on a steady diet of beer-tinged hookups and mediocre blowjobs. But the rest of us have got to earn it. And in the end, its the earning that makes it great. Like so many Stephen Daedelii, with nothing but exhile, cunning and silence to fend for ourselves, we push our wares, work our small miracles, and from the ashes of adolescence build for you the man you can desire; not for his abs but for his guts, not for his dick but for his balls (and his dick).

Closer in figure to Buddha than Adonis, more of a mind with Tacitus than Ovid, we nevertheless somehow find the words, the gestures, the deeds to win you to our cause. And before you can say Cyrano de Bergerac, you are lying, bathed in moonlight, naked and breathless and quivering on our bed...

I assure you, my friends, that there is no greater ego boost than leaving a sexually spent woman to wash your face, and, in catching your reflection in the mirror, thinking "what the hell is she doing with me?"

-Fostanova

(scene 5) (the same as scene 1: a party, with subscenes)

(scene 5a)

(enter Guy and Randall)

(in the corner of the party is Horny, making out with the never-before-mentioned William)

Randall: Look, you're going to have fun tonight. You need to have fun tonight. I need you to have fun tonight.

Guy: OK, I'll try. (walks in, sees them) (freezes)

Randall: What? You haven't even stood in line for crappy beer yet--

Guy: No. That's, that's--

Randall: (looks over, but only sees William with a girl he's had less experience identifying) Cause of, that? I mean, yeah, we all think William's a tool. An automated electronic tool. A tool box. A goddamn Home Depot. But you can't let it get to your head just cause he's getting some and you're not. Whatever, a girl who would make out with him? At this kind of party? She's just some sort of slut. Whatever. Fuck that guy and that ho any--(they shift, and it's obviously her) Oh.

(sub-scene)

(scene 5b)

(Needs-to-be-Popular is talking to a few friends. Drunk is hanging on her)

Popular: I just don't know how she could be dating him-- (general agreement from friends)

Guy: (cutting in) Hey, hun, could we talk?

Popular: Yeah, sure. (they step away) (tagged-by drunk)

Guy: So... I haven't seen you much since-- I mean, I know it's only been three weeks, but, I guess it's just weird cause we used to see each other--

Drunk: So, yeah, I'm hooking up with someboedy now.

Guy: Yeah, I sorta got that when I saw you--

Drunk: OK, bye! I need another shot. Who wants to do a shot? (does one that's stationed at a table, runs off)

(sub-scene)

(scene 5c)

(guy is sitting on a couch, hanging with his head back, when Needy walks up)

Needy: Hi. How are you doing?

Guy: (seeing her, finishes his drink deliberately in response) All right. What's up?

Needy: (crashing on the couch) Oh (sigh) I guess I'll be all right, just... th-

Guy: What?

Needy: Well, I had a midterm today. --(tagged-by unexplained coldness)

Guy: What class?

Unexplained Coldness: Nevermind.

Guy: O...K. (pause) Well, I hope everything works out okay. (goes to pat her on the back in an attempt to be... conciliatory? Helpful?)

Unexplained Coldness: Don't-- don't touch.

Guy: Check. Well, I need to freshen-- I need a drink.

(sub-scene)

(scene 5d)

(Guy's standing, Girl walks over to him)

Girl: Hi.

Guy: Oh, hi.

Girl: Have you done anything at this part other than avoid and try to talk to me?

Guy: I've certainly--

Girl: Say it.

Guy: Say what? (she looks at him) OK, fine. How could you be hooking up with him? I'm so much cooler than he is. Ugh, are you trying to drive me crazy?

Girl: Sweetie, of course not.

Guy: Cause, well, I'm not proud of it, but the idea of you, and him. I'm so much cooler--

Girl: And if it were someone cooler than you you'd be just as crazy about it, except it would have blown your self-confidence and so instead of being at this party you'd be sucking your thumb in that one corner of your room. And if he were exactly as cool as you, you'd be freaked out more than you can imagine by the similarities. I know you, you'd sit down and list them.

Guy: OK. Are you two dating?

Girl: I hope not. If I wanted a boyfriend, we'd still be going out. So, are we better now? Can we get back to the prior business of partying?

Guy: Yeah, sure.

Girl: If you have something to say, say it. (tagged-by Popular, but they only get part way to changing the dress before she says the next line)

Guy: No, no.

Popular: OK, fine. (tagged-by Girl)

Guy: Wait, if we talk, can I talk to you?

Girl: Of course-- what do you mean? Who else would you talk to?

Guy: One of your other personalities. Do you not realize this? Yeah, there's you, and I love-d you. And then there are the others. (pulling them off the bench they sit on) There's the needy you, which I at least knew how to deal with. There's drunk you, who is endearing, but won't let you forget it, even when she does. There's the Unexplained Coldness, the time with you when we were sitting next to each other and even talking, but not connecting. There's the you that Needs-to-be-popular and the one with Worldly Ambitions. Those are interesting, because that's having to be accepted by people younger than you and older than you, respectively. And then, how can we forget everyone's favorite dwarf: Sleazy.

Girl: That's very convenient for you, isn't it? Breaking me into those parts. You think you've got me covered?

Guy: I spent a lot of time observing you. Especially when you wouldn't talk to me. Just sitting there, limply holding hands.

Girl: OK, well, how about this one? The Motherly side of me.

Guy: I-- I don't know that one.

Girl: That's right, you don't. She never got a chance to come out in our relationship. You were always so good at taking care of me, but you were pretty lousy at being taken care of.

Guy: Well, you're complex. I wasn't sure that you'd be there-- I wasn't sure if I could trust you.

Girl: (during this speech, she pulls out his personalities, which we hadn't even thought about. Aha!) It showed. And do you think you're so damn simple yourself? You would sometimes be amazing at bringing out the best in people in simple conversation. And then I'd come over, and you'd be too busy playing online chess to notice I wore the shirt of your favorite band.

Chess: But it's timed, and this one's rated!

Girl: You can go from giving your friends the best hugs in the world to suddenly being silent whenever anyone else enters the conversation. Where do you find inside yourself to hide? And why? What happens to the boy who always has to call me after he drops me off to make sure he was properly understood? And how is he possibly the same guy who can't resist the temptation of a bad joke? (to the Joker guy) Weather's here.

Joker: Wish you were beautiful.

(just to clarify, at this point, the stage is full of, like, 15 personalities)

Girl: And then there's the you that's not quite horny, but treats sex like you're a kid in a candy store, looking to get one of every type of grope and nuzzle. You're ridiculous!

Guy: Why did we break up?

Girl: Because you wanted to.

Guy: And then I changed my mind. Why did we stay broken up?

Girl: Because I was happy being single. Because I knew I couldn't marry you.

Guy: Y'know how it seems to me? It's like we bought a car together. And I had never had a car before. So I was disappointed when the car wouldn't go, like, 700 mph, and that you had to put some effort into it, change the oil, wipe the windshield. Cause I had only see cars in movies, and you never have to do that in movies. So I was like, "let's return the car." And you were like, "uh, okay." Then a week later, I come back to you and say "wait, I was wrong." And you were like, "I like walking."

Girl: Haha. That's an awesome way of putting it!

Guy: I don't know how you can see that and not agree with me that we should still be together.

Girl: Because I don't feel that way anymore. I'm sorry, I don't. No, I take that back, I'm not sorry. I'm not trying to feel that way. I don't. I still think you're great, but--

Guy: But you could. It's possible you could feel that way.

Girl: That's like saying it's possible to walk to the moon.

Guy: No, no. They're completely different. That's not possible, in the universe.

Girl: When you're talking about feelings, how I feel is how the universe works. How can you feel this way? You're the one who just told me how I was an awful and schizophrenic girlfriend. We were lucky to get five good minutes together in a row.

Guy: But those five minutes. Most people are lucky to get five minutes those good in their life. There's no one I'd rather have mutual, poorly-timed, reinforcing mood swings with. I don't know how you could give them up so easily.

Girl: Maybe I just got greedy and now I want something where I can have 10 minutes in a row. Or 15. Or maybe a whole day. Or more.

Guy: But until then, it's worth a month of unexplained coldness.

Girl: There's the thing, it may have been unexplained coldness, but it was never unexplainable.

Guy: So why didn't you? So why don't you? I'm listening.

Girl: Because sometimes you just can't talk about them. Ugh. Why must you gloss over all the problems and just focus on the positive.

Guy: Oh, I don't gloss over anything. It's just that you see the positive and the negative. I see the positive and what could be fixed.

Girl: Great. Then fix it with the next girl.

Guy: Why can't the next girl be the last girl? (she's bothered by that statement) Look, yeah, there was a lot of stuff that I disliked. And stuff about you that grated me. It did. Stuff that I knew was never going to change some I've told you about, some I didn't even bother. Cause I knew it would make no difference. Sometimes you really frustrated me.

Girl: Then stop wanting to go out with me. Find someone perfect for you. You're right, it was pretty great. And the way to honor that isn't be fawning. The best thing I can say for our relationship is this: it's worth being honest about.

(scene)

Rice sticks to your Colin

-The prospects of a reconciliatory second term for President Bush are mixed at best. While Ashcroft is set to be replaced by a less zealous (and less white) Alberto Gonzales, Secretary Powell, once thought the Spock to Dubya's Kirk, has been asked not to ask to ask to be asked not to leave and is set to be replaced by the more hawkish (and more black) Condy Rice. While Rice has a lot of things going for her, I can't help but think of Andrew Johnson replacing Abe Lincoln at the table with the confederates, of Clement Atlee subbing for Winston Churchill at Potsdam, of Ben Affleck stepping in for Harrison Ford in The Sum of All Fears. . .

AND ANOTHER THING. . . We may like Ryan White's blog, but I can't help take issue with some of what he had to say about "Why Kerry Lost". Now, I am not picking on Mr. White (and I'm sure that even if I were he would be more than capable of defending himself), but I think his pathos is emblematic of much of what's going on in the Democratic party right now. White's analysis, though in his own words "half-assed", is still as good as any unpaid pundit out there blogging. But what worries me isn't the analysis, it's the ideology, or rather the strange quasiology that seems to occupy an awkward space between pragmatism and utopianism.

White says one of the factors contributing to Bush's victory was the surprising salience of 'Value' issues among voters, but that "moral issues does [sic] not necessarily translate into gay rights, abortion, et. al., so there's no need for Democrats to move to the right on these issues." That the first response White ponders is a shift in stance is very telling of the Democratic condition! White goes on to say "we can't simply run away from moral issues. When we use doublespeak and beat around the bush when asked a question about this, we look like we're hiding something. We need to adopt a consistent stance and stick with it." Look like you're hiding something? Look? And does the need to adopt a consistent stance and stick with it imply that hitherto the Democrats have had an inconsistent stance (or no stance at all) that they have not stuck with?

The troubling implications continue, as White bemoans the lack of a "reliable" Democratic base, and considers labor unions, minorities, Hollywood, and college students among the available options. What a motley crew, indeed. It seems the only thing these potential bases have in common is the general inclination to like happiness and sunshine (and, of course, scab-busting).
Maybe the debasement (if you'll forgive the pun) of the Democratic party has something to do with another problem White mentions, namely the Dems' complete and utter lack of message. White's got a solution, though: "We shouldn't be defending the status quo and government programs when we're shut out of them." Instead "We need to say we're the outsiders, like "the people," fighting against those fat-cat bureaucrats."

I'm going to let that one sink in for a moment...

And then ask, without further comment on the almost inexplicable disingenuousness of those comments, exactly what there IS to the Democratic party that's WORTH saving?

I'm inclined to think very little. The Party revealed this election year is shallow, aimless, cannibalistic (just look at the job they did on Dean), and worst of all spiteful. Even assuming there is any progressiveness or substantive idealism remaining in the American Left, I find it difficult to see how it can be reconciled with these, the lesser demons of your nature. Mr. White puts the "sharp" in sharpton on this point. He recognizes acutely that the punditnistas and backpackerazzi who spoke for the Left in 2004 are condescending and alienating. It's like my uncle Richie told me when I was twelve, something I've never forgotten: "Dan," he said. "Nobody likes a smartass." The widespread unpopularity of this blog can attest to that fact, but so too can the "impact" of the Michael Moores and Jon Stewarts of the world on Kerry/Edwards 2004.

What's needed is that the Democrats do more than just "say" or pretend to be the "insurgent" party, but for fuckssake actually BE the insurgent party. Too risky, you say? Too marginalizing you say? Impossible to do while surviving in the two-party system, you say? Maybe so, but either way the Democratic party is dying, bleeding to death not from the heart, as conservatives may have suspected, but from the balls, or rather, where the balls used to be before the Blue-Dogs and New Democrats blew them off. When will LIBERALS learn that the Democratic party is NOT your party, that your party has been TAKEN from you by the likes of Harold Ford Jr.? When will DEMOCRATS learn that Bill Clinton was the exception and not the rule, that your "centrist" rhetoric has failed to pick up control of any branch of the federal government since 1992? (Even in 2000, with the notoriously stellar American economy and jizz-stained coattails of W.J. Clinton). The third-way was a hoax, Mr. White. The method of either swallowing Republican issues as your own, or else defining your agenda as vaguely opposed to what the Right supports, is not going to cut it anymore. And a party that believes only in its own survival is no party at all.

Mind you, all this comes from an embittered quasi-libertarian Bull-Moose perspective that, for all its fervor, is less-than thoroughly grounded in pragmatics. But perhaps an excess of pragmatism is the Democrat's greatest problem. I am no happier than Mr. White about Bush's victory, but when I looked to Kerry I saw little more than a rough outline of a man and a curious blurriness where the convictions were supposed to be. I can respect Howard Dean, Al Sharpton, and Ralph Nader, about whom the fact that they actually believe in something does little to mitigate the capital-crimes of "unelectability" and "spoiling". What is there to respect in most of the Democrats on the hill? Oh yeah, they're not Bush.

-Publius Fosterius

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These Guys Know How To Mosh

Arafat was buried today. The Times' take. I decided to compare it to my own experiences as a reveler.

"thousands of Palestinians climbing the walls of his compound, surging around his coffin and trying to bear it aloft." And I thought crowd surfing the lead singer of Unwritten Law was an accomplishment.

Continuing, ' Wails and chants of "We will sacrifice our blood and souls to redeem you," and "Yasir, Yasir,"': Hey, it's no "We're Number One!", but, maybe something's lost in the translation. Yeah, okay, I'm still with them.

"competed with gunfire from scores of young militants in Mr. Arafat's Fatah movement." OK, this is where they start being positively more badass than me. I've taken too much physics not to realize that shooting straight into the air is the same as shooting at yourself. I would never have the balls to do this. Not the burial of Michael Chabon or the wake of Ben Gibbard could ever inspire me to such cartoonical disregard of F=ma.

OK, fine, he's popular. He gets 20,000 people to come rally his body. If I died, three friends and a badger would show up at the funeral home, which would have forgotten to put my coffin out anyway. But, what else are you going to do as a refugee except cry over spilt blood?

Here's the part that gets me: "Daoud Kuttab of Al Quds University in Jerusalem also wanted to be at the funeral even though Mr. Arafat jailed him for a week in 1997, simply for broadcasting a legislative session about corruption."

!!! Some people might call this Machiavellian, but, no, he got them to love him after he had oppressed them. He is a model to every abusive boyfriend out there. "Hey, baby, I'm sorry, you know I love you, it's just, sometimes, you push me too hard, and, yeah, I go a little crazy. I might smack ya, or I might abridge your freedoms of speech, assembly, and press. Don't mean I don't love ya."

Prolegomena to any Future French-Bashing

Well, I'm headed off to Paris this evening. Scott, Ernest, the boys and I are swinging down for Hank Miller's gangbang. Should be pretty wild. Hear Gertrude's gonna be there.

But seriously people, if you got even half of those oblique-and-yet-surprisingly-sophmoric literary references, then you have an idea why such a ranging anti-Frogite like myself would be caught dead on the Left OR Right banks without at least a mechanized infantry brigade in tow. I'm looking forward to seeing the city, eating the food, and trying to be as respectful as possible in deference to the short-but-distinguished (like Bentley's Johnson) list of cool French people:

-William the Conqueror

-Alexandre Dumas

-Joan of muthafuckin Arc

-Louis Pasteur

-Marie Curie

-Cyrano de Bergerac

-Montesquieu, Rosseau and, I'll even give you Michel Foucault

-Jean Reno

-The Marquis de Lafayette (better known among British redcoats as "The OTHER Marquis de Sade")


I've always said that the only good thing about French men is their close resemblance to French women, but I am open-minded. Let's see if my unfounded, know-nothing nativism gets some ex poste facto justification.

-Fostier