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At a Blowout Party for Unsung Republican Heavyweights, the Men Were Drunk--and Anxious - A journey into the Republican soul in 2023.

The headline for this is interesting in what it leaves out, because the article is all in the context at a giant convention for car dealers. It's one of the more popular ways of making a lot of money, but it's a middleman role, and dependent on the regulations that prevent car makers from selling direct (with Tesla being one of the foremost challengers to those rules - as well as being the harbinger of a probably pivot to EV, where it's not clear that the pickings will be quite so ripe for the dealers who make so much bank on providing warranty service.) But dealers also have a strong reputation for backing local charities and sports leagues and what not - kind of a well-distributed resting point from the American tendency to always channel wealth upwards.

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"color" is absolutely one of those words that looks like it can't possibly be spelled correctly if you look at it too much.

Though I guess folks from the UK might say there's a reason for that, come to think of it. https://lighteningpool.tumblr.com/post/652733072808296448 A few related thoughts on food these days:

1. Don't you hate it when you're more or less newly back from a masked grocery store adventure, but you didn't get anything you're actually excited about eating that much, and you know that's like your eating future for the next few weeks?

2. Countering that: I'm always looking for ice cream treats, especially those that come in a fair amount per box and are satiating without too many calories. ("Chilly Cow" used to have some superb options but they got taken off the market.) Current new favorite: "Bomb Pops Middles" S'mores variety. Ten in a box, about 120 calories each, really interesting texture because of the marshmallow inside and the thin hard chocolate coating, graham cracker flavor between. One of those a day makes quarantine better.

3. For some reason salads made at home (or at salad bars, back before they felt like death-via-shared-tongs) never seem even in the same league as, say, a bowl from Sweetgreen. Almost to the point where what should be a delightful fresh salad was making me sad. For a while I thought it was because the flavors didn't have time "jell", but now I think it's just more or less boring flavors and textures. Cooking up some quinoa and getting and putting it on some of those pre-mixed baby greens boxes, along with a distinctive sesame-ginger dressing might be the solution was looking for, and still relatively cheap and very easy.

4. Speaking of easy: I do feel like less of grown-ass adult because I don't cook much at all. It's a somewhat mindful decision: I don't have much of a gourmet palette, and so the time and energy of prep + cooking + cleanup vs the time actually spent enjoying a meal always felt way out of whack. (I totally get why people Instagram that stuff - it's not just showing off, it's also have a record that lasts more than like 20 minutes or whatever!) I admire people who take on those challenges... the transmorgification of basic foodstuffs into tasty meals is a bit of wizardry, but I am ok with anyone (including myself) who channel their energies into other pursuits, and make due with prepackaged meals or simplistic dishes (chicken italian sausage in a wrap with crumbled tortilla and horseradish mustard has been a staple of mine since March) See, unlike programming, cooking doesn't have an easy "Undo" or "Delete" key...

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Jesus what is going on with police response to protestors

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Watch City Swans
So I've kept up a long lowkey friendship with Johnny, a gal from Portugal who is a ferociously good writer. Ten years ago today I reposted this entry from her blog, and I think it's still a great piece and so I'm reposting it today, partially to think about what in this list I am good at and bad at.

It's been a girl fest lately, and we've been discussing relationships a lot. Men often complain they don't know what women want. This is what we, my mates and I, have to say.

We're in our early thirties-late forties and are, respectively, the ones who are happily married, the ones who are happily together, the one who is so happily together she's doesn't seem to get it anymore, the one who is happily not looking for together right now; the one who is unhappy bcs she keeps breaking up and falling right back into it; the one who can only do flings and has a little black book, the one who cannot do flings at all bcs she always becomes emotionally involved, the one who thought she could cope with flings and is unexpectedly smitten, the one who had a fling turn into an actual love relationship, the one who doesn't even want flings bcs she is perfectly happy alone with her child; the one who says she doesn't want a relationship bcs she was hurt too much but secretely harbours hope, the one who says she does but is visibly too jaded and out of faith; and the one who is waiting for her boyfriend to move out of his ex's flat. We don't always agree abt the details but we know what we want from our men and, for most of us, this is it:

1. We want our men to understand that sometimes we have Bad Hair Days, Bad Bum Days, and we need an extra ego booster - extra bcs we want our men to think us beautiful and sexy anyway, and to fancy us like bloody hell, and to show us that they fancy us like the bloody hell.
   
2. We want our men to understand that sometimes we want them to devour us, we want to merge with them, become one amidst a charm of hummingbirds, but partnership doesn't mean parasitism. We are fiercely independent too, and it is healthy that we meet our mates alone sometimes, that we actually want to, healthy to not always be joined at the hip.
3. We want our men to not be intimidated by our strong personalities, intelligence or need for a life beyond them, this isn't a geisha drive-thru; in fact, we want men who'll thrive on it.
4. We want our men to say 'No', and stand up to us. Please stand up to us, we need our men to be men we can respect.
   
5. We want our men to be intelligent and cultured, we want to be able to chat with them for hours abt big things and small things, to always want to chat with them; our men may sometimes be aggravating but they're never dull.
6. We want our men to not be put off by our tears, bcs we sometimes cry and it won't always make sense, they can't always fix it - and it IS alright, we just need them to hold us and pull us onto their laps and cuddle for a bit.
7. We want men who are manly, bcs if someone's going to be girly in a relationship it'd better be the girl. We respect men who can cry, men who can show pain and sadness, men who can be vulnerable without pulling away - and we want those men as well - but little whiners make us shudder.
8. The Porties among us want our men to not ever - EVER - read Paulo Coelho/be too esoteric bcs we, as a whole, have found out that that equals absolutely, staggeringly, unbelievably mindfucked.
9. The Porties among us want our men to keep their bleeding mouths shut regarding past relationships/sexual encounters for the most part. It is not included in our cultural mating rituals, it is no one's business, and we firmly believe there should be only two in bed, not dozens.
10. We want our men to be able to discuss everything with us, including their exes , we want them to be able to vent if they're still ruminating, if it was traumatic, if they're still finding their footing again - but no ad nauseam obsessing though.
11. We want our men to make us laugh and giggle, we want to be able to be silly together.
    
12. We want our men to make us laugh in bed, sex must never be a power struggle or a source of grief. One of us had a boyfriend with always half-mast erections actually tell her The others were tighter. [And we stil want to kill the limp little fucker.] We want men who will tell us how they like it, show us how they like it, show it when they like it. No need to wake up the neighbourhood really but they must never just lie there like a log. This isn't assisted masturbation, and a huge chunk of our pleasure is enjoying theirs.
13. We also want our men to be able to listen to what we actually like without being emasculated. One of us once heard back I know what I'm doing!, prompting her to snarl in frustration If you did I'd have had an orgasm long ago!
    
14. We want our men to not be selfish, we want to be part of their lives, not a hobby. We will happily and yet with a certain amount of self-sacrifice accommodate exes, children, pets, relatives - we certainly expect the same. If their backs are spasming so badly that they can barely move, let alone drive the 40 minutes to be with us, we will be furious when we find out they spent that very evening jumping up and down at the corner cafe watching the football match with their mates [and that's part of the reason the one of us who keeps trying to break up keeps trying to break up].
    
15. We want our men to not be threatened by our mates who are men. Our mates who are men are honorary girls and they've long accepted the fact that, to us, they don't really have a penis. One of us was accused by her boyfriend of coming out of the garage with her mate while wiping and smacking her lips. [Knowing that people expect from others what they themselves would do, all of us are so disgusted we can barely look at him.]
    
16. We want our men to like our mates who are girls. The one of us whose boyfriend has yet to move out was out looking at flats with him and they were discussing the space they needed (she has two pets and a tiny flat and they intend to mostly stay at his place) when he said And I probably should get an extra room for *insert her best friend's name here*. It was adorable and profoundly right, we're super loyal - but we also want our men to know that our mates are good for them, and very often we have not started a fight or nagged bcs during a dissection session they told us to not be daft and brought us to reason. Our mates know more abt our men than our men are comfortable with but they reign us in, and our men should kiss their feet.
17. We don't want our men to move in with us right away. In fact, were they to offer [one of us experienced this on the 2nd day], it'd cause a stampede for the hills. But we need to feel that we can build a future together, that it is indeed a partnership, not a protracted affair.
    
18. We want our men to be emotionally available. We know that being wanted is a turn on and during those tentative early days we reply to them when we feel like it, bcs we do feel like it, and we want our messages to be clear. If they want us, they should let us know as it happens - not by Wednesday at the earliest so we don't think them too eager. Interest begets interest, and waiting in trepidation for them to deign to move their King doesn't do much for our self-esteem. It makes us feel rejected and ugly and by now we know better than that. We're not playahs and we don't do games.
19. We want our men to be emotionally honest. We want them to ring when they said they would, to show up when they said they would, to do what they said they would (we also want the rest of the world to behave this way, btw), and to NEVER make promises they cannot keep. We want our men to know we are trying out best to be lucid and not create expectations, but if they create them for us and not follow through we will be FUCKING PISSED OFF. The one of us looking for flats was in tears today bcs the ex is emotionally blackmailing the boyfriend, begging him to stay, asking what has she ever done to him that he wants to leave her, and he is ravaged with guilt.
20. We want our men to know we certainly are not like that, WTF?! A man who stays with us stays with us fully, completely, all of him. We want our men to know we can have understanding and patience but there's only so much time we will wait for a proper outcome. We can't say when we will say Enough!, but we know we will say it soon enough. And then our mates will help us cry it out and cry it out we will, but we never beg.
    
21. We also want our men to know that we don't like ambiguity. We don't like to remain in a limbo while they sort out their sorry lives. We'll survive the Nos, it's the eternal Maybes/Eventuallies that make our sanity disintegrate. Pain is harsh but prolonged pain is impossible to bear. Our men made a decision? We want them to fucking own it already.
22. We want our men to have the courage to tell us they stopped wanting to be with us the moment they stop wanting to be with us. A man who no longer wants us we no longer want, even as we still do. We live by blunt truths.
23. We want our men to know that if they were brave enough to end it when it needed to be ended we may spin from the pain but we will feel respected; we will forever respect them in turn.
    
24. We want our men to be absolutely decent human beings, there's nothing better than being able to trust someone. We don't like bad boys and their drama and anxiety-inducing ways at all. It's a home, not a misfits' retreat.
    
25. We want our men to protect us from the Big Bad Wolf. We can be fierce and stand on our own feet, we carve our own way, but we need a cave to retreat to. Our men are it, or they're not our men.
    
26. We want our men to be good fathers, and we'll forever be judging their capabilities/potential on that. Husbands/boyfriends don't last forever, we're acutely aware of that (and yet we all pray ours will) but fatherhood does. The sort of men they are matters not only to us but to the children we'll hopefully have with them. And if we can't dream of having children with them, whichever way they come, then there's no point.
27. We want our men to understand that our pets are family, and untouchable, and we are and forever will be animal daft. One of us had to once point out to a fling that it could never go beyond that and state his dislike of animals as one of the reasons (there were more); he replied But if I made you choose btwn your pets and me you'd choose me, right? - and to this we collectively say 1) No one makes us choose anything and 2) Oh, honey...
28. We want our men to realise that our evergrowing piles of clothes, books, shoes and bags make us better persons.
29. We want our men to leave the toilet seat down.
    

This is what we want from our men, and it is not too much to ask, we know it isn't. And we know it bcs we would never ask for what we ourselves aren't more than willing to give.

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Batman: shine this light in the sky when u need me

Gordon: u live in a cave how are u gunna see it?

Batman: ...text me when u use it

I haven't seen Solo yet (and honestly, am a little skeptical of having more than one Star Wars movie every 12 months - the holiday schedule, with every other one being a "main trilogy" flick, seemed a bit better) but I will. I like how talented people with great fondness for the original stuff treat it - though by moving "Han wins the Falcon" and "Falcon does the Kessell Run" from offscreen backstory, the "incredible shrinking universe" effect continues. (Hey Luke- I am your Father. And the Princess is your sister. And that droid? Kinda like your brother. And that desert planet, you know, "If there's a bright center to the universe, you're on the planet that it's farthest from"? We're gonna keep going back to that place, actually everything happens there.)

But via io9 ,it's StarWars.Com's Making Lando's Millennium Falcon and these concepts... (Odd that some of the designs are "mirrored")

I love the idea of exploring the Falcon used to look, before Han made his modifications or just got it banged up. It was tough for a kid in the 70s or 80s to understand Leia when she asked "You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought", because the Falcon's asymmetrical design just seemed hella cool. The prequels made everything shiny and new looking (though it's hard to know how much of that was just iffy CGI) but still - this was the chance for the designers to show just how cool it used to look.

The final new old design kind if "fills in" the old mandibles, which is too bad because it removes this fan theory about how the Falcon worked as a cargo vessel:

(This use explained why the ship was so fast - mighty engines freed of their massive burden...)

I think for the new ones my favorite design is "21" since it emphasizes the cargo role (though again, might not be suave enough for Lando...) "27" reminds me of the old McQuarry art, "12", "20" and "29" are clear attempts to crossover with other ships in the series. Over all I don't like that ones that make the old Falcon look like it has more engines than the Han's later "hot-rodded" edition.

I also like the idea of hot-rod decorations:

Though it reminds me of how 3CPO's was sporting an intriguing red arm for most of "The Force Awaken", in fact they hung a lampshade on it ("You probably didn't recognize me because of the red arm") but it was magically fixed by the end of movie, for who knows what reason...

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Also from io9, Sesame Street Has Already Lost Its Lawsuit Against The Happytime Murders - this sucks. The had a "red band" trailer before Deadpool 2, and they really do play it up like it's some weird fringe spinoff from Sesame Street or at least the muppets - and it's really, REALLY raunchy and kinda gross and sexual stuff - so if they're using the slogan "No Sesame, All Street", I am kinda startled the judge said they "hadn't demonstrated that moviegoers were confused or that sponsors or parents were complaining".

God knows I'm not much of a prude, but this look is totally muppet, and people are going to be confused, and parents are going to get irritated.

(UPDATE: it's made by Jim Henson's son. It kind of feels like a smear campaign against the Muppets(tm) now owned by Disney...)

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Just imagine taking a gorilla and putting it in gorrila costume then and setting it loose in shopping mall

50 Best TV Theme Songs Glad to see Barney Miller and Sanford and Son there.

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The New Yorker on Heroin and small town America.

Man, what is going on.

A decade ago I thought heroin was just that thing from Trainspotting.

I guess drugs can be one answer to existential crises, but a damn destructive one. Slate makes the Libertarian Convention sound like a fun time.

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Why do birds
suddenly appear
everytime you are near
confirmation bias

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Because of this article on "Frog and Toad" (books I didn't grow up with, but helped some kids with a jigsaw puzzle of them a few years ago) I went back and read some of the titles. I'm not sure if my head is in the right place for it though, because I couldn't stop thinking "how the hell do these guys make a living?" Lately I've been daydreaming about what it would be like to "quantum leap" back into my past self and cope with the technology I was using then. (Of course, I guess it would be more true to the show to try and fix all of the problems I've made for myself, but that's a different episode.)

Just tons of little things: "Oh right, my first iPhone didn't have copy and paste and the network was super slow" "Oh yeah, you used to have to type URLs into the address bar, Google keywords had their own box," "Oops no cellphone!" "Oh dang, Windows 95 didn't really support USB"... " "Windows 3.1 things minimized to icons, no task bar", "Oh tape walkman!" etc etc.

And more recently I've been sorting through old digital photos, separating the wheat from the chaff. And besides appreciating a few well composed shots and savoring photos of people I miss, it's often the background incidentals I find interesting: what was on my bookshelves, how an old shared apartment was arranged, what decoration it had, and of course those glimpses of technology (like an old browser open to some random page, or a PalmPilot lying on a table, etc)

I guess close inspection of these images is as close to "quantum leap" time travel as I'll be able to get. Some I'm disturbed how we're all borderline amnesiacs (this happens to everyone, right?) -- these photos from a decade ago show events I have no real recollection of, sometimes even people I don't know anymore. (Though of course, memories are so often made by later remembrance rather than at the moment of the event, so this kind of photographic review is an exercise in remembering more deeply.)

Right now I'm back to the very early 2000s, which is also when I started a daily diary, so sometimes I'm able to cross-correlate events when the photos don't tell the full story. (You know, there was an uptick in photos around this time as well, and it was after I philosophized my way out of being uptight about death. That might not be a coincidence...)

Of course, the sheer volume is a bit overwhelming. I've been an avid digital photographer for over 15 years (and was taking selfies before it was cool) -- sometimes I'm distraught at how little time I've had on the planet, but these photos remind me by their shear volume that it was actually quite a lot.

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Related: on the benefits of living more deeply in the past... or the future... or the present.

There's a lot to be said for lack of communication and so many problems we can't talk about simply go away after a while, such as the problem of mortality, for example, but a writer's duty is to keep trying.

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Now, of course, young people cross over into the land of bliss pretty much whenever they want to. There are bridges, there are islands in the river, and the water is so low that in most places you can just wade across, but back then the river was wide and deep and fast and the church owned the boats. The church ferried you across to the land of bliss and you stayed there for the rest of your life with the one you went across with, or so we believed. Marriage was a fact, immense.

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When you're a little kid, your heart is open and tender and a harsh word can go straight in and become part of your life.

What every iPhone screen all put together into one iPhone in NYC would look like:

via Stupid Calculations

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When a dog eats the flesh of a goose, it turns into the flesh of a dog.

from Sam Lipsyte's short story "The Republic of Empathy":

"Is it too soon to say I love you?"
"Yes. No."
"Soonish I will say that I love you."
"And in the meantime?"
"I will merely love you."

(via the recent "Sci-Fi" double issue of the New Yorker)

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http://www.wrvo.fm/post/world-war-ii-vet-caught-floridas-voter-purge-controversy Florida Election Officials are amoral Machiavellian jerks. (The state that was home of the Butterfly Ballot and the Elderly Jews for Pat Buchanan that gave the national election to Bush in 2000.) Between this and a nationwide trend of voter role purges, I have to say my opinion of Republicans as jerks who value their own agendas over the process of democracy isn't going anywhere.

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I'm a citizen of the republic of empathy.

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http://www.fastcompany.com/1837966/mustafas-space-drive-an-egyptian-students-quantum-physics-invention Quantum Space Drive??? Oh wow...

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The whole morning I thought my overshirt lacked a pocket. Nope, it was just on inside out. Gonna be one of those days.

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Cap'n Crunch's full name is Horatio Magellan Crunch.

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I know my friends have no shortage of reason to hate PayPal, but their incessant shilling of "Bill Me Later" is what gets my goat.

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Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.

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http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2011/06/windows-8-beginning-of-end-of-windows.html - looking forward to a cheap laptop w/ Windows 8. Expect I might hate it though. Wish OSX was less app, more task based

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You got keys and money? Good, 'cause I got nothin'. Except you. Which is good, 'cause you got the keys and money.

amber and kirk in europe 2011
(the full photoblog)

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Writing well mean never having to say, 'I guess you had to be there.'

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Typography wonks ("use real quote marks damn it! use a hyphen not a dash ") ignore how you can't just type these things (w/o MS-ish "smart" helpers) It's egalitarian. The standard keyboard is the tool of the masses. Insisting on the niceties from the ivory tower of publishing is silly.

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It's rubbish. Singularity is load of religious junk. Christian mystic rapture recycled for atheist nerds.

WAT IS LIFE

BEEN TRYIN 2 WRITE MY THOUGHTS MORE SO CHECK THIS.

WAT IS LIFE? IS IT JUST THE OPPOSITE OF DETH OR IS IT SUMTHING MORE. WE KNO IT IS ALL THINGS LIKE FROGS AND STICKS AND SHIT BUT WHERE DOES THE LIFE GO WHEN THOSE THINGS DIE. I KNO FOR CERTAIN THAT WHEN I DIE I AM RIDING WITH FUCKIN JESUS BUT EVEN THAT HAS GOT BE ASKIN QUESTIONS. LIKE WAT R WE GONNA DO FOR ETERNITY. IS ME AN JESUS JUST GOIN 2 PRETTY MUCH CONSTANTLY FIGHT DEMONS? DO THEY NEVER DIE? WTF R WE SUPPOSED 2 DO IF WE KILL ALL THE DEMONS AND DEVILS AND SHIT AFTER A THOUSAND YEARS. THERES STILL GONNA BE MILLIONS OF YEARS LEFT. MY PAPS USED 2 TELL ME THAT WED BE ROLLIN IN MEDOWS WITH FLOWERS AND SHIT BUT I DO THAT HERE AND I GETS BORING AFTER LIKE 10 MINETS AND MAYBE IF I TRIED REALLY REALLY FUCKIN HARD I COULD ROLL AROUND IN A GRASSY FIELD FOR LIKE MAYBE 30 OR 40 MINETS BUT HOW THE FUCK AM I GONNA DO THAT SHIT FOR MILLIONS OF FUCKIN YEARS. SO I GUESS I HAVE 2 END THIS DA SAME WAY AS I STARTED WAT IS LIFE

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Checking out Amber's and my soon-to-be new apartment, our first official place together... woot!

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Smoky haze and faint burning wood smell all around Boston--Canada's on fire! Canada's on fire! So I'm trying to pull together a trip to Portugal/Germany/Argeles, and my host in Portugal will be Johnny, a friend of my AFS exchange brother and veterinary intern (I think thats a rough idea of her current role) - she also happens to be a ferociously terrific writer as you can see on her blog Which Surprised Her... (Portuguse women often adopt masculine nicknames, a habit that to to be frank I find kind of hot.) A while back she wrote a piece What These Women Want:

It's been a girl fest lately, and we've been discussing relationships a lot. Men often complain they don't know what women want. This is what we, my mates and I, have to say.

We're in our early thirties-late forties and are, respectively, the ones who are happily married, the ones who are happily together, the one who is so happily together she's doesn't seem to get it anymore, the one who is happily not looking for together right now; the one who is unhappy bcs she keeps breaking up and falling right back into it; the one who can only do flings and has a little black book, the one who cannot do flings at all bcs she always becomes emotionally involved, the one who thought she could cope with flings and is unexpectedly smitten, the one who had a fling turn into an actual love relationship, the one who doesn't even want flings bcs she is perfectly happy alone with her child; the one who says she doesn't want a relationship bcs she was hurt too much but secretely harbours hope, the one who says she does but is visibly too jaded and out of faith; and the one who is waiting for her boyfriend to move out of his ex's flat. We don't always agree abt the details but we know what we want from our men and, for most of us, this is it:

1. We want our men to understand that sometimes we have Bad Hair Days, Bad Bum Days, and we need an extra ego booster - extra bcs we want our men to think us beautiful and sexy anyway, and to fancy us like bloody hell, and to show us that they fancy us like the bloody hell.
   
2. We want our men to understand that sometimes we want them to devour us, we want to merge with them, become one amidst a charm of hummingbirds, but partnership doesn't mean parasitism. We are fiercely independent too, and it is healthy that we meet our mates alone sometimes, that we actually want to, healthy to not always be joined at the hip.
3. We want our men to not be intimidated by our strong personalities, intelligence or need for a life beyond them, this isn't a geisha drive-thru; in fact, we want men who'll thrive on it.
4. We want our men to say 'No', and stand up to us. Please stand up to us, we need our men to be men we can respect.
   
5. We want our men to be intelligent and cultured, we want to be able to chat with them for hours abt big things and small things, to always want to chat with them; our men may sometimes be aggravating but they're never dull.
6. We want our men to not be put off by our tears, bcs we sometimes cry and it won't always make sense, they can't always fix it - and it IS alright, we just need them to hold us and pull us onto their laps and cuddle for a bit.
7. We want men who are manly, bcs if someone's going to be girly in a relationship it'd better be the girl. We respect men who can cry, men who can show pain and sadness, men who can be vulnerable without pulling away - and we want those men as well - but little whiners make us shudder.
8. The Porties among us want our men to not ever - EVER - read Paulo Coelho/be too esoteric bcs we, as a whole, have found out that that equals absolutely, staggeringly, unbelievably mindfucked.
9. The Porties among us want our men to keep their bleeding mouths shut regarding past relationships/sexual encounters for the most part. It is not included in our cultural mating rituals, it is no one's business, and we firmly believe there should be only two in bed, not dozens.
10. We want our men to be able to discuss everyting with us, including their exes , we want them to be able to vent if they're still ruminating, if it was traumatic, if they're still finding their footing again - but no ad nauseam obsessing though.
11. We want our men to make us laugh and giggle, we want to be able to be silly together.
    
12. We want our men to make us laugh in bed, sex must never be a power struggle or a source of grief. One of us had a boyfriend with always half-mast erections actually tell her The others were tighter. [And we stil want to kill the limp little fucker.] We want men who will tell us how they like it, show us how they like it, show it when they like it. No need to wake up the neighbourhood really but they must never just lie there like a log. This isn't assisted masturbation, and a huge chunk of our pleasure is enjoying theirs.
13. We also want our men to be able to listen to what we actually like without being emasculated. One of us once heard back I know what I'm doing!, prompting her to snarl in frustration If you did I'd have had an orgasm long ago!
    
14. We want our men to not be selfish, we want to be part of their lives, not a hobby. We will happily and yet with a certain ammount of self-sacrifice accommodate exes, children, pets, relatives - we certainly expect the same. If their backs are spasming so badly that they can barely move, let alone drive the 40 minutes to be with us, we will be furious when we find out they spent that very evening jumping up and down at the corner cafe watching the football match with their mates [and that's part of the reason the one of us who keeps trying to break up keeps trying to break up].
    
15. We want our men to not be threatened by our mates who are men. Our mates who are men are honorary girls and they've long accepted the fact that, to us, they don't really have a penis. One of us was accused by her boyfriend of coming out of the garage with her mate while wiping and smacking her lips. [Knowing that people expect from others what they themselves would do, all of us are so disgusted we can barely look at him.]
    
16. We want our men to like our mates who are girls. The one of us whose boyfriend has yet to move out was out looking at flats with him and they were discussing the space they needed (she has two pets and a tiny flat and they intend to mostly stay at his place) when he said And I probably should get an extra room for *insert her best friend's name here*. It was adorable and profoundly right, we're super loyal - but we also want our men to know that our mates are good for them, and very often we have not started a fight or nagged bcs during a dissection session they told us to not be daft and brought us to reason. Our mates know more abt our men than our men are comfortable with but they reign us in, and our men should kiss their feet.
17. We don't want our men to move in with us right away. In fact, were they to offer [one of us experienced this on the 2nd day], it'd cause a stampede for the hills. But we need to feel that we can build a future together, that it is indeed a partnership, not a protracted affair.
    
18. We want our men to be emotionally available. We know that being wanted is a turn on and during those tentative early days we reply to them when we feel like it, bcs we do feel like it, and we want our messages to be clear. If they want us, they should let us know as it happens - not by Wednesday at the earliest so we don't think them too eager. Interest begets interest, and waiting in trepidation for them to deign to move their King doesn't do much for our self-esteem. It makes us feel rejected and ugly and by now we know better than that. We're not playahs and we don't do games.
19. We want our men to be emotionally honest. We want them to ring when they said they would, to show up when they said they would, to do what they said they would (we also want the rest of the world to behave this way, btw), and to NEVER make promises they cannot keep. We want our men to know we are trying out best to be lucid and not create expectations, but if they create them for us and not follow through we will be FUCKING PISSED OFF. The one of us looking for flats was in tears today bcs the ex is emotionally blackmailing the boyfriend, begging him to stay, asking what has she ever done to him that he wants to leave her, and he is ravaged with guilt.
20. We want our men to know we certainly are not like that, WTF?! A man who stays with us stays with us fully, completely, all of him. We want our men to know we can have understanding and patience but there's only so much time we will wait for a proper outcome. We can't say when we will say Enough!, but we know we will say it soon enough. And then our mates will help us cry it out and cry it out we will, but we never beg.
    
21. We also want our men to know that we don't like ambiguity. We don't like to remain in a limbo while they sort out their sorry lives. We'll survive the Nos, it's the eternal Maybes/Eventuallies that make our sanity disintegrate. Pain is harsh but prolonged pain is impossible to bear. Our men made a decision? We want them to fucking own it already.
22. We want our men to have the courage to tell us they stopped wanting to be with us the moment they stop wanting to be with us. A man who no longer wants us we no longer want, even as we still do. We live by blunt truths.
23. We want our men to know that if they were brave enough to end it when it needed to be ended we may spin from the pain but we will feel respected; we will forever respect them in turn.
    
24. We want our men to be absolutely decent human beings, there's nothing better than being able to trust someone. We don't like bad boys and their drama and anxiety-inducing ways at all. It's a home, not a misfits' retreat.
    
25. We want our men to protect us from the Big Bad Wolf. We can be fierce and stand on our own feet, we carve our own way, but we need a cave to retreat to. Our men are it, or they're not our men.
    
26. We want our men to be good fathers, and we'll forever be judging their capabilities/potential on that. Husbands/boyfriends don't last forever, we're acutely aware of that (and yet we all pray ours will) but fatherhood does. The sort of men they are matters not only to us but to the children we'll hopefully have with them. And if we can't dream of having children with them, whichever way they come, then there's no point.
27. We want our men to understand that our pets are family, and untouchable, and we are and forever will be animal daft. One of us had to once point out to a fling that it could never go beyond that and state his dislike of animals as one of the reasons (there were more); he replied But if I made you choose btwn your pets and me you'd choose me, right? - and to this we collectively say 1) No one makes us choose anything and 2) Oh, honey...
28. We want our men to realise that our evergrowing piles of clothes, books, shoes and bags make us better persons.
29. We want our men to leave the toilet seat down.
    

This is what we want from our men, and it is not too much to ask, we know it isn't. And we know it bcs we would never ask for what we ourselves aren't more than willing to give.

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Just saw "Up" in 3D. Great flick! Also, I'm in love with the typographical trick of the title.

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Last Titanic Survivor Dies - as Lore Sjoberg put it "Time is an iceberg that sinks every ship"

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New (to me) UKism: "Best of British!" (for "Best of British Luck to you") -- I love the kind of casual undertone of "eh wot" superiority... Taking a class in portrait photography. No time to talk!

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Quote of the Moment

We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are.

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Link of the Moment
The humor is often crude, misogynistic or just plain mean, but demotivateus.com has some really funny stuff...


also...

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"when you're at a restaurant where you have to FLIP A SIGN FOR THEM TO STOP BRINGING MEAT its ok to eat a rib with your hands"

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why didn't anyone tell me that the aliens in "close encounters" play tuba? puny clarinet playing humans!

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eenie meenie gypsa-leenie oo bop bop shaleeny every rotchy every crotchy i like YOU... where the hell did i learn that?

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it was nice reconciling a bit with mo and wishing her well if only in a 5am dream.

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weird having to remember INBOUND from Harvard Square This morning by the path to Alewife:

(Or watch a boring Youtube video I shot)

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Quote of a Previous Moment

Personally, I always claim Cecil Earl is a little screwy, or if he is not screwy that he will do very well as a pinch-hitter until a screwy guy comes up to bat.

Its been on my quote file for... yeesh, almost 15 years now, but I still love its construction. I read the book of short stories during the Guys and DOlls revival in the early 90s... Nathan Lane as Nathan Detroit was great.

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Link of the Moment
Programmers who have had to go on spelunking expeditions in other peoples code might like WorseThanFailure, "Curious Perversions in Information Technology", kind of a more hardcore ThisIsBroken. Last night I greeted the money I was receiving from the ATM.

"Hello, money!" I said.

(I also gave it some encouraging talk about how happy I was to see it, and how I appreciated how it was going to help me over the coming week.)

I think I might have been influenced by some recent feng shui reading that suggested if you want to keep the cash-chi/flow of money in good order you should line up the money in your wallet respectfully, not let it get all crumpled and jumbled up.

I'd recommend this to everyone: The next time those "newborn" (or newly reborn, or whatever) twenties poke their way out of the ATM, blinking in the light, nervous about what might be their first time in the outside world, gently pick them up and say, "Hello, money!"

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Article of the Moment
Wait, Jon Katz is on Slate now? I was wondering where he went after that whole Hellmouth thing on Slashdot. Upstate NY, I guess...I liked his piece on the rural man's Grunt and Grumble, patially because I remember the "Stewarts" from my time in upstate NY. Good ice cream there.

Caption Contest of the Moment

--I know I said I was done with these but just got this over the weekend...can anyone think of a good caption?

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Randomness of the Moment
I tried to google up this old McDondald's commercial, it had all these disappointed girlscouts cheering up their rain-filled time at camp with a trip to McD's, and they had a chant that went something like:

"We are Nippersinkers, we're in luck! If it rains all week, we'll pretend we're a duck! Quack quack waddle waddle! Quack quack waddle waddle!"

My family liked the chant and would come out with it at random times. I was never quite happy with it grammatically though, because it makes it sound like all the girls are going to pretend they're a single duck. (Some people suggest the line is "pretend you're a duck." Could be, I suppose.)

For Google I searched on "rains all week" "we're in luck" "quack quack waddle waddle". My favorite part of the search is where Google suggests Did you mean: "were in duck"...because that just makes so much more sense.

So, this Memorial day hopefully I should be a busy little bee packing packing packing. So I'm writing this now, Sunday night...thought I'd catch everyone up on the gory details of my life. (Enough with the interesting links and quotes and content...lets talk about me!)

• Remember my plan to kind of merge alienbill.com and kisrael.com to kirkjerk.com ? That plan is still on, but rather than having it at kirkjerk.com, I grabbed another domain...mortals.be! Snazzy, huh? The cool(ish) part is, in a few days the entire domain "lord.what.fools.these.mortals.be" should work, all pointing to my main site. (Sawers came up with the idea of getting into the .be domain for this...brilliant!)
  The domain works on a few levels for me. One is the obvious fool aspect, and how that ties in with the general goofiness of my daily site. The second is how the "mortals" concept reflects my mortality guide, and sounds kind of existential even by itself. Finally, the photo at the current site gives a special meaning to the quote for me...it's my (now deceased) dad making moose antlers underneath a statue of Puck inscribed with that phrase.
• Here's a photo from the inside of my new apartment. It's the size, location, and price of the apartment that makes it terrific...I'm not crazy about the wood paneling on half the wall, or the carpets, but hey. When was the kind of paneling popular, anyway? Also the top part is a relatively dark beige, not as light as it could be.
  One of the things I don't like about being single is second opinions...should I see if I could repaint the beige wall? How about the wood? Or would that just be goofy?
  Of course, part of the problem is I never did take enough of an interest in this stuff when I was with Mo. I coulda learned somethin'.
• I mentioned the makeover I'm trying to put myself through...one related thing is I've stopped stuffing my pockets with cellphone, camera, palm pilot and started carrying a bag all the time, a coolish canvas courier bag from Old Navy. I say I'm carrying a "man purse", though I should stop doing about it, because the whole "self-deprecating humor" thing isn't doing it's job of short-circuting other people's jokes...sigh.
• My beloved Honda Civic is aging. When I graduated college I said to myself I'd let myself get a new car but I should try to get 10 years out of it...so far its been 8 years, 95,000 miles. And, dangerously, I'm dreaming of Mini Coopers. I want something that's easy to park, and less likely to repel chicks than a 8-year-old Honda Civic. And, assuming everything stays on course with the house, I will have the money kicking around for it...and while I don't need a car quite as nice as that, and could probably go for a while with good ol' Kermit, I will need another car sooner or later...
• I'm feeling some distinct pangs of lonely this weekend. It was a great help when Sawers came over the other night, helped with some packing, played a few games. (And took some candles I didn't want off my hands for Cordelia, and also some material for making his cool decorated boxes.) And I see Peterman and Leslee an awful lot, and that's great. But now more than ever I feel I need to be proactive about arranging get-togethers. One thing I noticed in summarizing older entries in my mundane journal is how many fun cookouts Mo and I. Those were great times, a few friends over, some chiken kabobs and/or sweet corn on the grill, some games, somes boozing, some shmoozing.

Feedback on any of this stuff welcome! Travel Photo of the Moment

I previously discovered that the Euro might not be strong but it is definitely big. Outside the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, 2003.05.26

• What I was not thinking about, however, was the technique I once used to avoid being run off the road by Mexican bus drivers, back when their roads were narrower and their bus drivers even more macho. Whenever I saw a bus barrelling down the centerline at me, I would start driving unpredictably, weaving from shoulder to shoulder as though muy borracho. As soon as I started to radiate dangerously low regard for my own preservation, the bus would slow down and move over. As it turned out, this is more or less what Cheney and his phalanx of Big Strategic Thinkers were doing, if one imagined the Soviet Union as a speeding Mexican bus. They were determined to project such a vision of implacable, irrational, lethality that the Soviet leaders would decide to capitulate rather than risk universal annihilation.
  It worked.

  The quote is tying in Cheney's MX missile strategy with the Iraq gambit (the post was from February, before the war) and how he might be trying to sell us as the ultimate "weaving driver" rogue nation.
• The Lego Tarot. Includes lots of commentary on the cards. Very reasonably clever, as promised by the URL.
• The letters of Olive and Eric, a young English couple seperated by World War II. Makes for some good reading. Post 9-11, I think we tend to forget that we haven't lived through anything as monumental as World War II.
• Computer Stupidities. The thing is a lot of the customer service calls aren't that stupid, just poorly informed. On the other hand, on free disks, "I got one o' these here disks of yours. Is this one a those new home security systems, that all I have to do is put it here in my winda, and it'll scare away burgulars?"

• My heart does not know from logic.

Nostalgia of the Moment
Remember Slim Goodbody, Super Hero of Health? If any skinny freak in a suit that made it look like his insides were on his outside could convince me to exercise, it was him. But honestly, it didn't work that well. I don't know why he's been on my mind lately. Just a little bit of childhood gone by...but he is still kicking around!

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Gamebutton of the Moment

Help the Happy Eater stay happy! Click to open and shut the Happy Eater's mouth to eat or reject the foods that the Happy Eater likes:

Likes :-)	Dislikes :-(
O orange `o cherry ( banana	== celery =D mushroom @ lettuce

Once you make three mistakes, the game is over.
Tip: once you click with the mouse to start the game, the spacebar is much more reliable than the mouse for registering button hits

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Link of the Moment
I wish I could fly. In the meanwhile, I play the old Nintendo 64 game Pilot Wings. Quote of the Moment

God grant him every mercy and God convince us of our phenomenal good luck in having ordinary lives.

He's referring to a recent graduate diagnosed with "a degenerative disease with a brick-wall prognosis."

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Links of the Moment
The Douglas Coupland Dictionary is a glossary of neologisms the author has put forth in his books. Wired's Jargon Watch explores the same territory. Many are too cutesy or complex to enter general use, but some (such as "McJob") have entered common use. Coupland is even credited for popularizing "Generation X", the title of one of those books. (Coupland link via Bill the Splut's the news, Jargon Watch link via...uh...Wired and google)