[eternal beauty] in praise of the older woman

As one knowledgeable gentleman put it:

They doubt themselves now, but they're more interesting and lovelier than ever. They've had their adventures, they have stories to tell. They're knowing, wry, and speak in husky cigarette voices. They get my jokes. They tango, foxtrot, and swing. They make me feel suave, sophisticated, just like they are. I don't get that from young women (Don't fret, young women, you have plenty going for you, and all I'm saying is the best might still be yet to come).

As another put it:

* An older woman can wear any hat she chooses and nobody will laugh. A younger woman wearing the same hat will always look like a lampshade in a brothel.

* An older woman will never wake you up in the middle of the night & ask you, "What are you thinking?" An older woman doesn't care what you think.

* Older women can run faster because they're always wearing sensible shoes.

* Older women are more honest. An older woman will tell you that you are an a--h-le if you're acting like one. A young woman will say nothing, just in case it means you might break up with her. An older woman puts herself on a pedestal.

* An older woman will never accuse you of "using her." She's using you.

* Older women take charge of the situation. An older woman will call you up and ask you for a date. A younger woman will wait forever, by the phone, for you to call...

* Older women know how to cook. Young women know how to dial Pizza Hut Take out.

* An older woman will never accuse you of stealing the best years of her youth because chances are someone else has stolen them first.

As I put it:

The trick in getting an older woman to look at you is to be ten years younger than you actually are and being prepared to switch to the role of mature escort and confidant at a moment's notice. The great advantage of the older man is that he is a natural rogue and women love bad boys.

[l'ancien sénateur] jette l'éponge

Just love the way the French put it:

Le républicain Fred Thompson jette l'éponge

I'd jette l'eponge too if I was trailing that far behind. The CFR will have to get themselves a new boy. Wonder how he feels too about being called "the ancient senator'.

[blizzard] when being snowed in is desirable

Dave was writing of the philosophy of snow over at his place:

It snowed today. The skies were overcast, the wind blustery, the air crisp against the cheeks. Reminiscent of the Michigan Winters of old, it was comforting, familiar. Being born here, it's difficult for me to imagine what life must be like where there are no seasons, no transitions.

Though his theme was different, still - snow really does transform the whole mood and adds a touch of the exotic. We had a blizzard which went all day yesterday and just looking out of the window down on it was really something. Add to that scene a beautiful half Slavic, half Eastern woman who's just trudged through the snowdrifts in her fur coat and hat and who greets you at the door with her French/Russian accent and it's like living on another planet.

I adore the snow, I adore exotic women and I don't want to be anywhere else at this point in life. If this isn't heaven on earth then what is?

[captcha] a bullet in your skull

Was there ever a device more designed to make you tear out your remaining hair and shoot the offending blogger than the insufferable, obnoxious, mental-health threatening captcha word verification atrocity?

I mean - zvwyoko - really and truly!! Do you really wish to spend the rest of your blogging days negotiating garbage like this?!! Bloggers want visitors and then put up these sorts of barriers and for what? So that we can sit there thinking, 'Now I wonder what words I can make out of this - I know - Yoko [as in ono, as in ononism].'

OK - for some mickey mouse providers like the execrable Typepad, maybe. But Google blogs do not need word verification in the least - there's an inbuilt system of protection.

Let's start up:

Bloggers Against The Gratuitous Use Of Word Verification In Google Blogs

A nice, short, catchy little name, don't you think?

[why not] they laughed at noah

Longrider poses the question:

Here’s an easy question. What do the following have in common - people on housing benefit, people getting child benefit, people wanting to be RAF pilots or Royal Marines, people in hospital and people learning to drive? The answer is that they have all had their personal details lost through government incompetence. And here’s another question. With the national database for ID cards looming, just how much do you trust the government to keep your identity details safe?

Right - so we're not in disagreement over the incompetence but the level of it raises other questions. It's so regularly revealed to the media and they so public pronounce on it with handwringing aqpology that surely one's suspicions are aroused. All public sectors have levels of incompetence but this seems almost to have been orchestrated.

Now what could be a possible reason for this? Perhaps that the people are so sick and tired of it that they throw out the corrupt, self-serving, incompetent bastards and usher in the new slick, efficient EUmodel which looks after the common person's interests with the only drawback being the little chip in the right wrist.

Why not? They laughed at Noah. Time will tell.

[russia] some myths and misinterpretations

Just ran the Dmitri Panov piece past our new Deputat, home from Moscow for a few days.

Predictably, as a former trade minister and now special adviser on trade to the Gosduma, he took exception to some aspects and I'd like to summarize some of his main points from today.

1. That the Russian mentality is historically as different to the western as is the Chinese.

The Deputat disagrees and says that since 1998, great strides have taken place in 'rethinking' Russia's place in the world economy and putting Russia on a stable economic footing. There are western aspects to people's thinking now which might not have been there earlier. To that end, the probable new president is committed to this new Yedinaya Rossiya mentality, as are most of the newer deputats. A lot of people have done a lot of work trying to restructure the Russian economy to perform more effectively on the world stage and negative stereotypes are therefore ultimately counter-productive.

2. Russia has a different concept of democracy to the west's.

To an extent that's true. There is historical local colour in the complex relations between the different nationalities represented in the RF and these require balance. As yet, this country cannot adopt the parliamentary system of, say, Britain because it has a Tsarist tradition and the decades of Communism.

It has to be introduced carefully to allow the people time to adjust to the new realities and the infrastructure must move with each introduced change. Wholesale change too quickly resulted in 1998 and no one wants that to occur ever again, particularly given the western troubles about to bite over there.

So a reserved stance is necessary - watching, evaluating and deciding how much to introduce and how soon. These are not blandishments and you need to be in here at governmental level to understand what really is on the drawing board. Therefore it's unfortunate the way sections of the western media rush to the most negative assessment so quickly. It was particularly impressed on me today that Russia does listen to the criticisms and weighs them up - there is no collective blindness here - but it makers its decisions based on national interest nonetheless.

3. Russia has a newly aggressive stance towards the west [not specifically in the Panov article].

Just as in the west, there are hawks and doves and shades of opinion and there is most certainly a desire for Russia to be taken more seriously on the world stage - almost all are agreed on this - and trade delegations ffom here will continue to push Russian interests as you'd expect they would. But the prospect of a new cavalier attitude and a newly aggressive policy is not a general stance - where it has been highly publicized by the media, it's been more a case of stonewalling specific things certain countries are doing inside Europe to destabilize the sphere adjacent to Russia.

The overall mood and one even agreed by Mr. Zhirinovsky and other hardliners, is that Russia is a major player and cold war tactics have no place in where this country is going. Trade is the new language of diplomacy when it is allowed to breathe and not misrepresented.