There's every chance this blog will freeze into semi-perpetuity at midnight.
Technically the cable internet stops at midnight but if I post tomorrow morning, then the technician understood my plea in Russian and switched me over to another month. If I don't post, I need to brush up on my Russian - or else he does.
There've been many American posts here lately but this blog will be back to the UK shortly. I saw this America in the video [why, oh why are there only two minutes of the song?] and I saw the other America too. Interesting place.
There was no shortage of women who didn't like it when men were responsible for everything. They wanted to vote, they wanted to work, they are demanding a turn to take the reins.
Fine, says the modern young man, who has been subjected to 16 years of feminist propaganda that women are just as good - better, in fact - than men at pretty much everything.
Not being given to whining and being largely practical, the young man is happy to leave the responsibility to the women who are demanding it.
Who in their right mind would trade models, games and football for marriage to some controlling bitch who's as likely to leave you as not?
Why do I like that guy so much?
Late note for Welshcakes, who said not a lot but was not happy:
I've just got off the phone from the girl I love and every syllable she uttered went straight through me. She's everything I adore in women - soft to the touch, passionate, exotic, difficult, impossible, superior to me in intellect, a polyglot, impossible not to make endless love to, appreciative of men.
Plus she was tongue tied and at a loss what to say. That's nice.
I ... we ... can adore women and everything about you, from the way you move, the things you do with your lips, the sheer excitement in your presence, the way our troubles just melt away when you're in our arms.
We can adore you and do, including you, Welshcakes.
That's why we hate feminism with a passion - because the strident variety which has consumed one half of humanity is so divisive, so mindless, so designed to separate and breed hatred, so designed to turn men from the women we'd love to love.
To hate feminism does not mean we want to chain you to the kitchen or to dominate you and if you think that, it's so, so sad. Most men - the non-vocal types - want to meet you in a spirit of love, not in a spirit of prune-lipped oversensitivity as to whether we're going to infringe your personal rights as a woman or whether we acknowledge your supremacy.
In my head you are superior and I go back tomorrow to 150 of you in one room with me for four hours - yes, I think you're superior but do I need it shoved down my throat 24/7?
It's one of the key reasons I left to come over here because the "just past young" give ... and I give in return.
One: How can any person take a machete to another human being—whose only transgression might be his race, or his nationality, or his tribe, or his religion— and not be plagued with guilt and agony over the taking of that life? I can't understand it. I can't put myself in their shoes. The enormity of what I'd done would destroy me, and I could not live with myself.
Lost in the mob, the mob mentality, welcome evil - take your place in our hearts and give us our vital spark. Lt. General James N. Mattis, February 1st, 2005:
"Actually, it’s a lot of fun to fight. You know, it’s a hell of a hoot. . . . It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right upfront with you, I like brawling. . . . You go into Afghanistan; you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.”
Two: I am not consciously seeking to discover these linkages. When they reveal themselves I sit back, dumbfounded at the beauty and intricacy with which the unraveled had been originally woven. So too have I come to believe that there is no autonomy. No originality. We build on what has been.
We're not isolated from the rest of the world and yet, even walking amongst them, we can be brain dead:
Three: The people I met there seemed to always be shopping or sitting on benches earning money, for doing nothing. Apart from a group of horse-people (I later guessed I had been talking to a group of 13 year-old girls into horse riding) and a kind chap who gave me a free gun, little conversation was to be had. Will I go back into Second Life? Not unless someone I know goes too. Otherwise it's a waste of time and utterly mind numbing. Without 'Linden Dollars' you can do very little except roam the streets and buildings as though you are the last person alive on Earth.
Think. Feel.
The day we're satisfied with a life of acquisitive routine, punctuated by holidays abroad in tourist centres, we cease to be human. The day we become the mob, we've become automatons.
Are we automatons? A check list - if for us, it's more:
Sex, not love;
Revenge, not forgiveness;
Ego scaffolding, not humility;
Pride, not pleasure in achievement;
Cold cyberworlds, not forest and river;
Pleasure seeking, not pleasure in others' pleasure;
Expensive houses and furnishings, not beautiful homes;
Knee jerk reactions and cliches, not thinking something through;
... then chances are we're well on the way to becoming a global, bourgeois automaton. Not that there's anything wrong in this - every film cast needs it's thousands of extras, after all. Hey, let's get passionate here, for crying out loud! As WarrenZevon puts it:
I'd like to go back to Paris someday and visit the Louvre Museum Get a good running start and hurl myself at the wall Going to hurl myself against the wall 'Cause I'd rather feel bad than feel nothing at all
The clip below is the man who isolates himself from humanity as distinct from the one who loses himself in the mob, both just as bad. First, a portion of the lyrics:
Michael Jackson in Disneyland Don't have to share it with nobody else Lock the gates, Goofy, take my hand And lead me through the World of Self
Splendid Isolation I don't need no one Splendid Isolation
By the way, there's everything in here - the direness of American talkshow TV, compressed into "slots", book-ended with "comedy" and Mickey Mouse, the dated and a bit dorky session musos who are still excellent musos, a fun interview with Letterman and in the middle of it all, observing it all going down - the flawed homo sapiens himself:
Adelaide - is Jocko's home really as bad as Sleepy Hollow, Geelong?
More than half of voters in an Adelaide newspaper's online opinion poll agree with Victorian Premier John Brumby - the city is a "backwater".
The poll had attracted more 2090 votes before 10am today, in response to the question: "Is Adelaide a backwater?"
Forty-eight per cent said Adelaide lagged behind the eastern capitals and another 15% agreed it was a backwater but said that was part of the appeal. Twenty-eight per cent said Mr Brumby was "just a jerk", and 6% based their defence on the number of major events on in Adelaide at this time of year.
The remaining 3% were unaccounted for by the News Limited poll.
Mr Brumby sparked a verbal joust yesterday when he said that unless Victoria pushes ahead with channel deepening in Port Phillip Bay, Melbourne will end up a "backwater", like Adelaide.
