Wednesday, January 28, 2004

 
What a lousy blog, eh?

Just too busy to bitch. I've written like, 5 short scripts in the last few weeks, I'm trying to get this friend to get all excited about channel101 so we can send something in (channel101.com, too lazy to link), and I've been working on the documentary a few of you so generously donated to. It's not as bad as I thought. The scope of the film is going to be much, much smaller than I originally wanted (and it was small to begin with), but I think it might be OK.

And I'm refinishing this cool 50's rattan and mahogany thing me and my lady bought almost a year ago.

And my car got broken into and my craftsman rachet set that I've had since I was 14 or 15, with my old skool "Mountain Bike Action" stickers on it (I raced in a couple races when I was younger) was taken from me (my girlfriend forget to roll up the passenger window and I didn't notice it).

That really sucks. I loved that ratchet set. If you're the handy type, if you like to build stuff and work on stuff, you know what I mean.

Here's something I find a little disturbing, which makes me more disturbed. That is, it seems like something that shouldn't disturb me, but it does, and in such an odd, subtle way it disturbs me even more:

Here is the creator of Earthworm Jim. He's obviously a very talented and creative guy. His review of Lethal Weapon's Mel Gibson's Passion of Christ was at aintitcoolnews and is reproduced at the above link. This disturbs me:

I?d like to start by stating my bias since I don?t see how a Christian like myself could watch a movie about the being I?ve given my life to and simultaneously dismiss my baggage to watch it as some neutral piece of media.

Replace "Christian" with "Raelian" or "Zorkian" and it creeps you out. "[T]he being" is a weird way to describe Jesus, I mean, the whole thing about the J-C is he was a man, right? That's what was so special about that whole deal... I dunno, it's just weird.

You sit at the last supper lit by a candle and the air is thick and present. It feels like you?re sitting there watching the real deal. Of course, my religion warns us of graven images, and I have to keep thinking to myself, ?these are actors, that?s not the Christ.? It?s that realistic and engaging.

That's. Weird.

As I spend my days working in Hollywood, I get to hear my God?s name used as a cuss word. He?s the brunt of jokes. Jesus is dismissed as a myth. I get to hear the name of Jesus and honor of Christians spoken of with deep distain or stereotyping ?my people? as shallow, violent, intolerant fill in the blank. This is about the being I have sworn my allegiance to and it is refreshing to see a movie where the subject matter is boldly presented with respect.

Nobody can watch the Passion of Christ without having some sort of reaction. Jesus doesn?t inspire neutrality in people. This film has already had some controversy?over-bloated by media no doubt, but this movie does make one think. It makes us argue, defend, accuse and cry. I love some aspects of the controversy of this film because THIS is what film is supposed to do. Remember? There is something here for the church and the un-churched.

Maybe he missed the miles and miles of "Jesus is God. Read the Bible" stickers here in LA.

OK, first of all I could watch a million movies about Jesus and not have a big reaction to it. Maybe that's because I don't have to tell myself it's not actually Jesus up there, I dunno.

What's so disturbing about all of this is he's describing his faith in terms that sound like a gung-ho fascist describing his feelings for the leader. I'm not throwing "facsist" out there to be a jerk, that's just what it sounds like. "Allegience" is a bizarre way to describe faith. Last I checked Jesus wasn't asking anyone to take an oaths.

"[S]worn my allegience to" is really creepy because, well, the whole concept of faith is about the embracing of the mystery and the unknown- there's no one to swear allegience to, really; you just have to believe. So, it creeps me out when someone essentially says they've joined God's army. Man, Kiss Army-- fine. God's Army? Creep-out crazy time.

Hey, I'm no practicing anything, but I know enough to understand Jesus is new skool and was more about the love and all that shizznit and not "swear me your allegience so we can go stomp ass". It's disturbing that he's so deeply religious but at the same time seems to have adopted faith as some sort of militant club he and his "people" are part of and they're fighting against the infidels, somehow. Screw that, man.

Ya scroll down you find he was all excited about capturing Saddam to the point that he sez:

Like George Bush or hate him, don't let your dislike of cowboys distort your vision of what just happened. George Bush was already a hero, and now he is a superhero. I love this cowboy, who tore down the real life Saruman.

Dude. Dude. Dude. He was not a real life Saruman. LOTR wasn't about defeating bad guys in the real world. If George Bush is a hero than the word is meaningless.

Man, I know what happened. A man who would normally be unfit to lead a nation was installed as president. A terrible thing happened and this man, who's largely a puppet and emotionally immature (I should link to Rice trying to coddle him into talking to Schroeder- what a fucking baby), seized upon the tragedy as an excuse to push through every sick agenda the GOP has had waiting in the wings for years, including occupying Iraq. The removal and capture of Saddam was the only good thing to come out of the war and on a humanitarian cost/benefit analysis (damn, I should link to that report) things are much worse now that we're occupying the country.

I dunno, has to remind himself that's not Jesus!, thinks Saddam was a real life Saruman, thinks George Bush is a hero for ordering the deaths of thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of others all for no real gain save the removal from power of a tin pot dictator of which there's 10 or 15 more that we're best buddies with as we speak... maybe it's the tenuous grip on reality that makes him so creative.





posted by Tim 9:55 PM

Wednesday, January 21, 2004

 
We should all hang our heads in shame... for about 15 years.
[Longest post ever]

There is a sort of an ideological movement among conservatives lately that can sort of be summed up thusly:

You're only poor if you're starving and/or homeless.

There was an article in the Opinion section of WSJ recently that said as much. Basically, "poor" people have VCRs and cars, so therefore they're not poor. Poor people are often fat, therefore they're not starving, therefore they're not poor. And the idea that comes out of all of this logical deduction is one I've heard many, many times from wingnuts in and around the blog-world: we need a new definition of what is poor, because "poor" people aren't actually poor.

There's another ideological movement that can be summed up like this:

Free market theory is more real than reality.

Basically every jackass who ever took econ 101, or read something about Adam Smith (now there's a guy who's turning over in his grave!) firmly believes the world works according to free market, utopian theory. Their solution to everything tends to be: let everyone do what they want and market forces will work it out to be perfect.

They apply this delusion to people, too. They have no compassion for poor people (well, first of all, they aren't poor, remember?) because the US is a free market meritocracy. To wit: If you work hard enough you will succeed. If one job is not good you can leave and get a new job. If one town has no jobs you can move and get a job in a new town. If you field is running out of jobs you can get new training. Etc., etc.

Basically their conception of the world seems to be like one of those sliding puzzles. The system is such that there is always a solution; it never becomes too crowded, somehow the opportunity to move (change jobs, retrain, etc.) is infinite, and yet at the same time the system is completely closed. Basically, there is always a way to become a winner. Always. All you have to do is work hard (move around on the board) and you will make it. You have to.

I don't know if that helps you to visualize it, but what this line of thinking does is remove all context, all chance, all circumstance.

I'm personally disgusted by it. If there's anything that's clear about life in general it's that context is everything. Otherwise there's no explanation for anything in the world except deliberate intent and lack of intent. It's binary. Either you're a 1 and worked hard and smart and "made it", or you're a 0, because you were lazy and shiftless. It's sick.

But it's exactly how the folks at Tech Central Station or the trolls that frequent Calpundit's comments explain the world to themselves. It's a very, oh... how to say this?... mastabatory world view. The believer, if a "winner", automatically occupies a lofty, noble position. After-all, in this sliding-puzzle universe, there are only 1 to 1 correlations, so if you're a "winner" that can only mean you worked hard and smart. Conversely if you're a loser that can only mean you were lazy, stupid, shiftless, whatever. Also, even if not a "winner", if you hold the same sliding-universe belief, you're not a loser. In fact, you're already a winner because you're just simply in the process of working toward becoming a winner. You're a pre-winner, but since you're working hard you can only become a winner.

It makes small people feel big. It makes them feel full of integrity and will power. After all, that's all you need to win, and if you don't have those qualities you will lose.

All of this adds up to a complete inability to sympathize or empathize with the "poor" (because, as we've learned, it can only be their own fault they're poor and, they're not poor anyway). Well, maybe that's not true, but the same idea is always present: they don't have to be poor, the only thing keeping them poor is their unwillingness to move, work hard, retrain, etc. There's infinite possiblity in this closed system.

They don't like welfare because if there was no welfare people would be forced to work, they would stop being dependant on others in a psychological sense and because they're in the work force they would learn all you have to do is work hard to make it, many of them would do so.

Public education, social security, they don't like those things because my money is going to someone else, mainly. But also neither program makes sense because of the closed system. If you work hard and smart you won't need a government check when you retire. If you work hard and smart you won't need the government to educate your children. And if you don't work hard and smart, I shouldn't have to pay for your mistakes.

It's easy to understand why they think government is the problem, or why taxes are stealing; the system is quite literally perfect. People aren't perfect! No, no. There's going to be people who are lazy and refuse to take care of themselves, and there are going to be people who can't join the system, like severely handicapped people, but the system itself is perfect: If you work hard and smart you can only make it (barring things like natural catastrophy, of course).

It's the way they explain away everything. Enron? All those people were stupid to put all their money into one company, it's their own fault. In fact, the bankruptcy of Enron proves the perfection of the system: bad companies go bankrupt. Laid off? The most efficient thing to do was to lay people off, but the money and business was only shifted somewhere else. One sector's downfall is another sector's rising- all you got to do is find it. Also, you can always open your own business.

Like I say, it removes all context, but worse than that it makes people nothing more than economic animals. It makes life's motivation nothing but a pursuit of monetary and material comfort. The system is perfect, as long as all you care about is making money.

I have a hard time explaining all this succinctly because it's just so ridiculously stupid. Their world works like the Zombie Simulator. Everyone is programmed for the same thing working in a level playing field. It's only a matter of hard work and time, but eventually everyone will turn. I'm doing a bit of a straw man thing here, but I'm more or less only repeating what I've read and heard, which is sad.

Well, all of this is segue for a couple things that illustrate so well how people like the TCS people are fuckwits who need to be beat with a sock of shit.

First, briefly, is this book, Myths of Rich and Poor, which is essentially some wealthy guys telling you there aren't really any poor people so all you need to do is worry about not paying taxes. Fuel for the despicable "I just want to build wealth for me and my family" generation (wealth to what end? At the cost of societal programs? Screw you I got mine... "for my family"? Do we really want to live in a tribal nation?).

Next is this great article,
A poor cousin of the Middle Class.

Caroline Payne embraces the ethics of America. She works hard and has no patience with those who don't. She has owned a house, pursued an education and deferred to the needs of her child. Yet she can barely pay her bills. Her earnings have hovered in a twilight between poverty and minimal comfort, usually between $8,000 and $12,000 a year.

... [but she can move!!]

Always in search of something better somewhere else, Caroline has moved from job to job, from place to place, from New England to Florida and back -- and now to Indiana -- without anchoring herself solidly in a community that can offer support.

... [She can retrain!]

She had achieved two of her three goals. She had earned a college diploma (a two-year associate's degree), and she had gone from a homeless shelter into her own house (owned mostly by a bank). The third objective, ''a good paying job,'' as she put it, still eluded her. Back in the mid-70's, she earned $6 an hour in a Vermont factory that made plastic cigarette lighters and cases for Gillette razors. A quarter century later, she earned $6.80 an hour stocking shelves and working cash registers at a vast Wal-Mart superstore.

... [She's not workign hard enough!]

She was not the victim of racial discrimination; she was white. She was not lazy; she was caustic about colleagues who were. She was punctual, rarely out sick, willing to do night shifts and assiduous in her work habits. The Wal-Mart manager, Mark Brown, called her ''a nice lady'' with lots of enthusiasm. ''She's self-driven,'' he observed. ''She's always willing to learn and better herself. She's got potential. She can definitely move up.''

But she did not move up. She had never moved up.

...
Again and again, she applied to manage one sales department or another at Wal-Mart, and again and again she was passed over in favor of men -- or, she observed wryly, women who were younger and slimmer.

''I work my butt off, excuse my language,'' she said sharply. ''I'm there most of the time, but that don't matter to them.'' She was paid a dollar an hour more during nighttime shifts, nothing close to what her flexibility was worth to a store that stayed open around the clock. Trying to get ahead, she always made herself available to change hours and fill in, even during evenings when she had to leave her 14-year-old daughter, Amber, home alone. Without a car, Caroline had a 20-minute walk each way, trekking back and forth at odd times of night in all kinds of weather. One cold February day, walking gingerly along icy streets, worried about her temperamental back, she trudged from her house to her job at her normal time of 10 a.m., only to be told to come for a shift beginning at 1 p.m. instead. So she made her way home and then returned to the store: three trips consuming one hour before earning her first dime of the day.

... [She wasn't thrifty enough!]

So she moved with her children into a small apartment and bounced between welfare and dead-end jobs, supplementing her income by scavenging for cans. ''We'd go and watch a ballgame at school, and I'd take bags and stuff them in my pocketbook,'' she recalled. ''After the ballgame I'd be going around poring through the garbage cans picking out 5-cent cans.'' Her first daughter would ride her bike as far ahead of her mother as possible to avoid any hint of association. ''I figured that a few cents buys some milk, buys some bread, things that you need, you know what I'm saying? It all helps. But it embarrassed her. She hated it as she got older.''

... [There's always room somewhere!]

Sitting for hours at a time, she began to get acute pain in her legs and finally went to the emergency room. Her back was the cause. ''And so the doctor says: 'I want you to take one night off and rest as much as you can. Stay off your feet. Stay off your legs.''' She called Tambrands, owned by Procter & Gamble, to tell them she wouldn't be in on Sunday because of her back. Monday morning the temp agency called: she had lost her job. So she returned to the sewing factory and was laid off two or three times. Working at the edge of poverty means working on the coldest side of corporate America.

...
After a month at the wallpaper plant, the temp agency offered Caroline a job back at the Tampax factory for $10 an hour, the most she had ever earned. She took it, but there was a problem: Procter & Gamble had organized the factory on rotating shifts. One week she left the house at 5:30 a.m. and got home at 2:30 p.m., the next week she was gone from 1:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., and the third from 9:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. Putting aside the question of sleep, stamina and the basic requirements of an orderly life, the swing shifts raised havoc with Caroline's arrangements for Amber. Unable to find care, she very reluctantly left the girl home alone during her evening and nighttime shifts.

There's more. Go read. This is America and it doesn't work like theory.

[update]- From the Poor Man, I find the "Independent Women's Forum" response to the above mentioned article. They're some creepy libertarian, conservative outfit.

They're even worse than the straw-man I constructed above. It's just fucking despicable.

Hey, IMF bitches. So you hate feminism and liberalism and probably anyone with black hair (you know, mexicans, blacks, chinese, etc.)? OK. Then you won't mind me calling you a bunch of fucking c*nts, now will you?

Didn't think so, c*nts.
posted by Tim 9:52 AM

Monday, January 19, 2004

 
Happy MLK day everyone!

Remember! MLK's dream wasn't that the government and everyone else stop acknowledging race! You know how some conservatives (fuckwits) try to usurp MLK's legacy by claiming what he meant with "content of their character" and not race was that you must not ever acknolwedge race in any way?

Yeah, see they claim that racism is just individuals acting poorly to other individuals and the only broad-based racism out there, the real problem is the acknowledgement of race at the government and corporate level. See here's the trick, since MLK dreamed of a day when black kids would be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, if you point out a kid is black for any reason, like say, there's fewer blacks per capita in college, you're being racist!

Get it? They try to tell you things like affirmative action go directly against MLK's teachings because all MLK wanted anyone to do is never, ever point out anyone is black.

Yeah.

Apparently they missed out on all those "black people have been getting screwed for a long time and the government has never done anything to right the wrongs" ideas MLK had.

So today to honor this great man who, to paraphrase Woody Allen, if he came back today and saw how is legacy and ideas were being abused would never stop throwing up, go out and kick a "the only racism is the acknowledgment of race" conservative in the balls! Or ass, if a lady.


posted by Tim 2:21 PM

Saturday, January 17, 2004

 
Car Wreck

You know the phrase, "like watching a car wreck", right? Well, this is the first time I've seen something that truly deserved a comparison to gawking at dead bodies smeared across the side of the road.

Via Tbogg we find the World's Worst Mother.

If you haven't read anything from the Malaria Swamp before, this woman has either:

a) The world's creepiest family ever. Or,

b) A severe mental disorder that makes her believe she has the world's creepiest family, or,

c) A gift for fiction that's sort of like Boy George via Taboo's gift for understatement.

This is the most bone-chilling part of this particular road-smear:

"Oh, no!" Molly wails. She climbs up on the wall on our side, peering uselessly down to where the rabbit is catching his breath — and probably sniggering.

"I'll go," Paris declares, Walter-Raleigh-like, and strips off his sweater. He does not place it on wet ground for a queen to step on, but he does plunge, without a moment's pause, into one extremely cramped, spiky, dark place, and his unaffected chivalry makes me almost swoon with love and pride. That's the kind of boy he is.

Meanwhile, we dainty ladyfolk all hold our breaths and clump around in our outlandish footwear, in the case of Violet and Phoebe, as Paris crashes and fights his way through the fierce stalks of bamboo, and then, unbelievably, from the dark —

Read between the lines:

...catching his breath... "I'll go," Paris declares, Walter-Raleigh-like, and strips off his sweater. ...wet... queen... he... plunge, without a moment's pause... extremely cramped, spiky, dark place,... his unaffected chivalry makes me... swoon with love... That's the kind of boy he is. ...we dainty ladyfolk all hold our breaths... in our outlandish footwear,... as Paris crashes and fights his way through the fierce stalks of bamboo, and then, unbelievably, from the dark —

It's just disgusting.


posted by Tim 9:36 AM

Thursday, January 15, 2004

 
I'm funny

This is a copy of a very profane rant I sent to my friend. He's thinking of moving back to Seattle. I thought it was pretty funny- hyperbole, for sure, but written only slightly toungue-in-cheek.

Names were changed to protect the innocent, some references won't make sense. It's all about the crazy rant so just accept it and go with it.

Dude. Don't. Move. Back. To. Seattle. I was there in September and jesus christ what a shit hole. There's nothing to do there except go to bars and all the bars are being turned into yuppie hangouts to attract more money. Ernie's is now another Julia's, that fucking shitty, overpriced food cancer that's slowly eating every neighborhood.

The economy is for shit up there, the weather sucks, everyone runs around in cliques, the girls are sometimes easy but for the most part they blow (and not in the good way), and everyone constantly masturbates when they tell you how much they love that shit-hole city with nowhere to drive to and plane tickets that cost a fuckload of money no matter where you want to go.

Dude. Don't do it. Don't do it. Seattle is a shitburg.

Marge sez: it's a drain on your soul. It's a black hole to creativity. It's a culture-less vacuum. If all you want to do is sit around and drink lattes with white yuppies in their thirties you'll have nothing else there. Plus it's expensive. There's no jobs. It's like living in a mall or something.

She could go on.

Jim is a bad influence on you. Tell Jim to take his city recommendation and shove it up his ass- Seattle sucks!

Dude, the white people. Seattle is nothing but self-righteous white people. Wait, make that faux self-righteous white people, they can't even be bothered to pretend to be indignant about shit any more, they just pretend they pretend they give a fuck.

Every restaurant is Julia's or the Deluxe post-renovation. Nice to visit, but it's yuppie shit.

And then the ol' familiars like Beth's or the Hurricane... man, I knew Beth's was a shithole when I lived there. Now I realize it's the shithole of the creature that was spawned from the droppings of the first thing that took a shit in the first place! Same with the hurricane and every other shithole anyone ever used to hang out at.

Oh! You can go to the NiteLite or the Lava Lounge or the Comet, you say? Well have fun going to the same fucking 3 places every night for the rest of your life.

Jesus man. What the fuck is wrong with you? There's nowhere to go in Seattle. Whaddaya going to drive to White Center to go to that 7-11?

Half of Pioneer square is propped up by sticks after the earthquake, Belltown is gone- replaced by an endless string of condos and scotch bars, downtown sucks as ever, Fremont is even more annoying than before, and now it's clad in corrugated steel...

It's a fucking rat trap when people endlessly mill around the same goddamn places pretending they're not affronts to the cosmos.

The only good things about Seattle are: there's good beer there, if you're into outdoors stuff (you're not) the cascades can be nice, and the reclaimed wetlands down by the UW stadium are cool, but I know you don't give a shit about ducks and griebs.

Man, don't move there. Why on earth would you consider moving there? Because it's familiar?

There's nothing going on there that isn't an inbred circle-jerk of some sort, man! You want to put yourself in a permanent rut for the rest of your life like Doug then by all means move to Seattle (don't tell him I said that, but, let's be honest, he's the rut-king, unless of course he's not and I don't know it).

Seattle infects you with spores and slowly eats you out from the inside and it's all fed by the rain, man. It's Spore-ville. Fucking populated by pod people.

Man, move back to LA. Me and Marge live in Mid-wilshire, Korea-town and it kicks Venice's ass. You were all cloistered in that pocket of nothing and bullshit in Venice and didn't get out into the city enough to appreciate it. That's my theory. Everyone around us is either an immigrant central-american or south-korean. They all can't drive to save their lives but I can walk to an El Salvadoran place, a Guatemalan place, a Korean place, and I'm pretty sure I could scrounge up underaged hookers if I put my mind to it.

There's that Channel 101 thing, me and Tony are going to be making sexy zombie movies, you put an ad in backstage west you got 50 honeys willing to shake it for free.

I've got a camera, mic, editing system, getting some lights together- man, I'm gonna start hittin' it. You could ride that wave of creativity, with world-class museums and the beach and cheap, good food and dim-sum on Saturday in Chinatown with the desert east, the mountains north, cheaper flights, and las vegas a few hours away or you can shake some spore pellets into your head and start becoming a loser all over again.

Do the right thing.

posted by Tim 6:18 PM

 
Well good for us

No one made a stink about those shells that turns out didn't even have a blister agent in them.

Good for us not being so crazy.

posted by Tim 6:17 PM

Sunday, January 11, 2004

 
OMG! All you wingnuts were right!!

From CNN comes the headline:

Report: Chemical Weapons Cache found in Iraq.

That's the headline for the article on the homepage. You actually click the link (the same link as above), this is what you get:

Suspicious shells found in southern Iraq

Mortars thought to hold blister agent left over from war with Iran.

If you saw the headline for the same story at Yahoo, on the front page, in the News section, they use the same headline for the link as for the story:

Chemical Found in Iran-Iraq War Shells.

Quite a different initial effect, isn't it?

So some shells left over from the fucking Iran-Iraq war, buried for at least ten years, have some sort of blister agent in them, apparently. And CNN is hyping it as a "cache". What's Fox got to say about this?

On their front page the lede is this:

Chemical Weapons Found in Iraq Mortar Shells

Click the link (same as above) you get this:

Blister Agent Found in Buried Iraq Mortar Shells

I feel dirty for even going to their site.

"Chemical weapons found in Iraq mortar shells" doesn't even make sense. The shells are the weapons. The way the headline is written sort of makes "chemical weapon" a seperate thing in and of itself, as if you found a jar of anthrax in a lab and called it a "chemical weapon". It makes no sense. The word "agent" should be in place of "weapon".

God I despise Fox News.

So essentially it's nothing. The shells weren't usable, they weren't "cached" in any way, they were just buried and not part of any current arsenal. If you look at the photos you see a bunch of junk, not weapons.

But how long do you think it will take for Prez Turd to mention them? How long till the wingnuts latch onto it with all their might, ignoring every aspect of the story but the "blister agent" part, and use it as proof of their correct thinking at every opportunity till the end of days and their last breath is breathed and they finally get buggered by satan?

Man, I hope I'm wrong and no one latches onto it because I am just so tired of being confronted by the fact every day that I live in a nation full of insane people.
posted by Tim 10:31 AM

Friday, January 02, 2004

 
Is that a copy of The Fountainhead or are you just happy to see me?

If you're not familiar there's a - ahem- girl, that goes by the name of Amber Pawlik who's a bit of a minor blog celebrity in the "train wreck" genre of celebrities. See, she seems to be rebelling against her parents for that time they went to a key party by writing totally creepy stuff all over the web. She's a favorite whipping girl of tbogg and World O' Crap, among others. She's obsessed with Ayn Rand, Ann Coulter, and presumably Ann of Green Gables.

She's also obsessed with sex, but not in a good, dirty way we can all enjoy along with her. Let's take a look at some of her writing:

The phrase "to make money" originated in America because America was founded upon the principle of freedom.

From an essay titled "Make Love"... it is about sex, hold on.

Similarly, there is an American phrase which describes a proper sexual process.   In America, when special, intimate sex is had between two adult lovers – we say they made love.
...
When we say a couple "made" love; we are saying that each partner created something special among themselves. I went on a journey to see how other cultures refer to the sexual act.  From what I could find, many of them “do” sex.  “Do” and “make” may be derivatives, but they are different.  Man “does” the mundane; he makes the beautiful.  Man “does” the dishes; he makes dinner.

Went on a journey, screwed a guy named Pablo, same difference...

The original source for the creation of pleasure is the same original source for the creation of wealth - man's mind. Man's sexual organ is not his genitalia - they are merely the servant's of the sexual pleasure.[snip]

The sexual process is a very rational one, involving at its first level – man's senses or rather, sensuality. Man's sexuality begins with a host of different sensual stimuli given by his 5 senses: visual stimulation, physical stimulation, auditory stimulation etc.

This shit goes on for about 5 more paragraphs like an alien trying to describe human behaviour, and then we come to:

Just as the purpose of making money is profit; so the purpose of making love is pleasure.  [snip] Yes, Objectivists undeniably support a man’s right to pursue sex and money.  And, it is only in America that these things are unapologetically celebrated. 

From Reason magazine,

Reason. Magazine. A quote on sex from Reason. We'll have to skip it. It's just too hot.

Many young girls have failed to reach orgasm in their lifetime.  They line up at the Vagina Monologues because it gives the promise of teaching a girl to orgasm.  But a woman’s primary sexual organ is not what is in between her legs, but what is in between her ears – a concentrated conscious mind, and sharp senses are more important than any type of physical stimulation.  This is the advice I give to young, confused women.

Uh, honey? You are a young, confused woman.

All spoken like someone who wouldn't know an orgasm if it came up behind her and-

OK. That's "Make Love". Let's move on to "Hedonism leads to Bad Sex", something I'm sure Amber "I have brain orgasms" Pawlik knows all about.

Sex was one of nature's greatest gifts to man. [snip]

Yet, over the course of the past 40 years, the enjoyment in and even the desire for sexual reward has deteriorated. [snip]

This is probably the most important piece in my series on sex. Our culture is slowly but surely falling to a lower and lower strung of hell, and the attainment of sexual pleasure has become one of our casualties.

Excellent! Amber's gonna' school us all in how to have awesome sex!

This is going to be HOT!!

It is not a prophetic or original truth to point out that constant indulgence leads to boredom and disallusionment with said indulgence. Those who seek ideals and preserve the sanctity and dignity of sex are those with the most rewarding sexual engagements.

Uh... OK. Really teasing us... come on hotness!

When you look at people who have some semblance of values, usually religious values, sexually, what you find are people who have healthy, vivacious "sex lives." In an editorial in the USA Today, it was reported that of all women, Christian woman have the best sex lives. What is the reason for this happening?

It is because Christians only have sex after achieving an ideal -- in this case, living up to the Holy Scripture.

Holy... scripture? USA today? Uh... OK. Hot coming?

Only when there is some standard, some ideal that man strives to achieve -- can there be sexual pleasure. Sexual pleasure can only be achieve one way -- as a reward for achieving an ideal.

Kinda losing it here...

The ideal man, the image of man that Objectivism projects -- is that of man the producer. [snip]

Sexual pleasure can only be achieved as a reward for achieving an ideal. The most profound sexual pleasure you can attain is the achievment of becoming man the producer.

Really? I thought it was "gettin' your rocks off real good".

That wasn't hot. Where's the advice? Where's the personal anecdotes- When I was in Frankfurt Gino took me to this nightclub that was completely covered in rubber and... ?

OK. Let's look for the hotness in "Dating: The meeting of minds"

A "date," is an event in which two people go out on a planned event to see if they...

OK, forget that.

How about "The type of guy I like"

The type of guy I like looks like he is an overgrown 8 yr old. If you could freeze the cute boyishness of any male child and oversize him into an adult, that is what he would look like.

Hmm. So... like some sort of malformed freak? Because a large boy is less threatening than a grown man who can use his penis?

Just asking.

The type of guy I like owns a dog. He trains this dog to do all sorts of tricks for him. The dog is well fed and well groomed.

The type of guy I like always golfs, he drinks coffee, and has a stock portfolio. He reads the Wall Street Journal and always wears a nice shirt and sharp pants to work.

OK, I get it now...

Daddy! She wants to marry a guy just like the guy that married dear old mom. How sweet.

The type of guy I like looks straight at you when having sex. His moves are simple yet firm. His moves are not learned from HBO sex shows on how to please women - his sexual energy stems from his immense capacity to negotiate life which is projected from his naked body unto yours. He need not learn all the moves -- his masculinity is enough. His presence alone engulfs you with pleasure.

Oh jesus I think I'm going to be sick.

OK. Enough of this.

Amber... honey....

Amber, let me give you some advice. I was young once, young and stupid, not as stupid as you but stupid nonetheless. I'd get drunk. I'd go with my friends to a dirt road to puke. I'd chew Skoal "Bandits" to get high off the nicotine... I've been there!

I know what's it like, sitting in the back of that truck, coming up with crazy theories about sex that have to do more with your sexual frustration than actual sex, writing them up on a webpage, asking people to read my fantasy about the overgrown 8 year-old boy who stares at me while we fuck- oh wait- while we make love... I've been there.

Let me tell you, one day you're going to wake up and realize what an annoying asshole you were way back when in... let's see... June of 2002. holy christ on a... ONE DAY you're going to realize what a pain in the ass you were and if you've got an ounce of intellectual integrity (doubtful, I know) you're going to have to wear a t-shirt for a week that reads "I love being a dirty slut" just to atone for your sins.

You see, I've been in the "having awesome sex" business for a few years now and I can tell you what everyone else in my line of work knows as set-in-stone fact:

Shut up and bend over.

OK, that was crass. Crass and accurate. But seriously, anyone who writes so much dry, de-stimulating treatise on sex couldn't know the first damn thing about it. Describing ideal sex in Randian, Objecto-speak? Puh-lease. If you ever had a guy give you one of those "holyshitholycrapohmygodohmygodholygodshittycrapgoddywholeholyshrapOH MY GOD!!!" orgasms you'd know it, and you wouldn't be deconstructing your mental state afterward to write in your blog, you'd just be making him to stay in there and trying to remember the angle.

And the next day when you'd reminisce and pull out that mini-vibe your friends gave to you as a gag-gift, you wouldn't be concentrating on your brain, honey.

Or maybe you'll just live our your life a repressed, angry, suburban WASP soccer mom and not heed any of the wisdom I have imparted. That'd be too bad.

To paraphrase Superintendent Chalmers, the rod up that girls butt must have a rod up its butt!

posted by Tim 7:16 PM