Jeremayakovka

Buffalo Minds

A current piece at FrontPage reminds me of a line from David Mamet's American Buffalo in which the worst accusation one man can make against another is that he is ... a child.

From "Children of Light": [M]aturity has only solidified our delusions about the world while decking them out in the garments of later sobriety. We have “stayed too long” and seen to it that the intellectual development and critical independence of our students, offspring and successors have also been cropped and stunted.

RARE Video Footage: Stanley Ann Dunham's Last Breakup Before She Met Barack Hussein Obama, Sr.

Something is missing....

Sandra Does Sarah

* Updated *

You can put lipstick, pearls, and even a cocktail dress on a self-pitying, rage-filled, liberal snob of a Jewish dyke, but it's still a self-pitying, rage-filled, liberal snob of a Jewish dyke.

Sandra Bernhard on Sarah Palin:

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* * *

Not included in the video: Bernhard's boast that Palin, in New York, would be gang-raped by blacks. The threat (or, more perversely, the taunt) of rape to keep disagreeable women in their place. Original.

Later Bernhard explains: [The gang rape comment] is part of a much larger, nuanced, and yes, provocative (that's what I do) piece from my show about racism, freedom, women's rights and the extreme views of Governor Sarah Palin, a woman who doesn't believe that other women should have the right to choose, Bernhard told the Daily News today.

Women deserve better, she continued. I certainly wish Governor Palin no harm. I'd just like her to explain to me how she can hold such outrageous views - and then go back to Alaska.

[Update: Women do deserve better - better than you, that is. S.E. Cupp replies in the Daily News.]

Palin's "extreme" and "outrageous" views are hers alone and she owns them. Her influence with them as vice-president would be slight, and even as president, while real, would be far from absolute. One aspect which Bernhard ignores, as do most pro-choice advocates, is that to people who are pro-life, any abortion is extreme.  (And to people of mixed opinion, either extreme is dispiriting to listen to for very long.) If Bernhard were serious about wanting an explanation from Palin, she would ask politely but firmly, then listen. She would not turn her comedienne's stage into a bully pulpit. Further, it's not as if explanations of pro-life positions aren't readily available. It's just that seeking them out would mean Bernhard would have to do some legwork to understand how somebody who disagrees with her thinks.

Bernhard's claim that she wishes Palin no harm is highly disingenuous. Of course she wants Palin "harmed": humiliated (which all threats of rape are - humiliations - in this case even more so because it's public) as a preliminary step to being politically diminished, neutralized, and - if possible - banished from the national stage. As for physical harm, what Bernhard means is, I wish that Palin comes to no physical harm as a direct result of my comedy routine. Shit, then I'd be in real trouble!

That trope of  criminally rebellious black men (or boys) being Bernhard's "brothers" - as rapists-on-call or as a tangental, amorphous punishing force or as some kind of Black Avenging Angels - is contemptible. It's worn-out "black Orpheus" or "white Negro" attitudes that poisoned the Western intellectual well the moment Sartre and Mailer poured them in over 50 years ago. In short, Sandra Bernhard needs to grow up. Finding her own power will have little to do with put-downs that trickle down from "Fight The Power." But if she insists on buying in to the myth of demonic, black moral and sexual potency (or supremacy), then emptor caveat: Give V.S. Naipaul's Guerillas a go before going any further, girl.

Oh, and Governor Palin went back to Alaska because that's where her home, her job, and her family are. Of course, I realize that what Bernhard means is Get the hell away from New York!

This is timely, Gentle Reader. At stake right now is that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, is insisting on representing America, alongside certain New York Jews and in solidarity with the State of Israel, to castigate the Islamic Republic of Iran for its nuclear, jihadist, and genocidal ambitions. So don't let any media hype surrounding Sandra Bernhard, nor any other snobby, liberal Jews in New York, divert you from what Governor Sarah Palin, one righteous gentile, is trying to do.
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Belusted

Frank Marshall Davis, Obama's Communist poet-mentor described affectionately in Dreams From My Father, published a pornographic novel in the 1960s that featured statutory rape -- and then some. Read more about Sex Rebel: Black.

At the time, defying obscenity laws and daring authorities to prosecute oneself was innovative as well as risky. Like most pornographers, however, Davis published under a pseudonym. In any case, at what cost? Remember James Baldwin: Every loveless touch is a violation.

The Womanization Of America, c. 1962

Late Night Thought #231 re Norman Mailer (updated):

Often tagged as "reactionaries" or accused of being unthinking apologists for the "radical Right," many so-called "neoconservatives" simply (but doggedly) preserve or re-examine or simply call attention to sometimes forgotten, often virile strains of 20th Century American liberalism.

One thing that often gets lost in today's culture war over persistent claims being made for gender and sexual identity(-ies) is the fact that men need to become men. In the 1950s Simone de Beauvoir dared proclaim that One is not born a woman, one becomes one. In 1962 Norman Mailer offered an indirect reply (or simply restated the case) in "The Womanization of America," a series of comments that appeared in Playboy magazine:

Masculinity is not something given to you, something you're born with, but something you gain. And you gain it by winning small battles with honor. Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men. The mass media, for instance .... give people an unreal view of life. They give people a notion that American life is easier than it really is, less complex, more rewarding. The result is that Americans, as they emerge from adolescence into young manhood, are very much like green soldiers being sent into difficult terrain ignorant of the conditions. A lot of virility immediately gets massacred.

Particularly famous for the punch and circumstance that couched his career, it's also been pointed out that there wasn't a whole lot in Norman's oeuvre that was astonishingly original -- the originality, on the whole, was to be found in his life. His writing style could be indebted quite nakedly to recent precedents, as it was to Dos Passos and Drieser in The Naked and the Dead. This was true later, during his high-Beat and Camelot phases, when he cribbed a bit clumsily from an American literary scene claiming to know God through sex, drugs, and jazz, and an absurd French one which proclaimed God dead, then  moralized on every subject under the sun. A lack of originality lingered even later, as when he undertook long projects to re-examine Marilyn Monroe or Henry Miller or Pablo Picasso or Jesus Christ. 

Still, as the above quote suggests, this buffalo in the china shop of post-World War II American letters (in fact, he middle-named one of his sons "Buffalo") could spill shelves and smash dishware as much as any bull.

The First One To Say "I Love You" Loses

Make damn sure you don't just say it, but you both feel it at the same time.
If not....

Nobody has to guess
That Baby can't be blessed
Till she sees finally that she's like all the rest
With her fog, her amphetamine and her pearls.

See also: Dennis Prager's thoughts on love.

Australian Woman Asks Right Questions Re Bhutto Assassination - Plus, The Thot Plickens

* Update (01/03) *

A pathological and bizarre script, no? Or am I missing something here?;
Irshad Manji on the exceptional leader Bhutto wasn't.

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As a supplement to last week's visceral, visual, and musical reaction, here's Pamela Bone in The Australian of January 2:

If the fact that she was a Western-educated woman seeking power in lands they claim as their own was not reason enough, killing her meant they could disrupt the scheduled elections and maintain instability in Pakistan, which would allow them to continue using that country's territory to train the increasing numbers of willing martyrs, funded by trillions of dollars from opium sales.

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Fausta continues to round up probing links, video clips, including a link to the source of this image:

Show Us -- Not Your Tits, Hillary -- Show Us Your Blood!

(Update 12/31) Sen. Clinton, a candidate for the leadership of the free world, apparently doesn't know the first thing about the country referred to by some as "the most dangerous place on earth."

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Benazir Bhutto becomes an unwilling (including far from perfect) martyr for representative democracy, and is it just me who thinks Ms. Rodham Clinton is out of tune with the day the Muslim music died?

If she had the right stuff, if she were a great leader waiting for History and not just a politician waiting for opportunity, Ms. Rodham Clinton would be making the Speech Of Her Life about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and Muslim jihad, about the sanctity of the democratic process and women's eligibility for politics, about the savagery of the mortal enemies of freedoms we habitually take for granted, and about the shining moral, political, military compass that the United States of America is (or should be) to the entire world. She'd be making the Speech Of Her Life and the whole world would be watching. Instead of frigid heiress to the highest office she'd be an avenging Amazonian androgyne -- Jack Kennedy, Maggie Thatcher, and Athena rolled into one -- if Ms. Rodham Clinton had the right stuff.

But she doesn't, so she's not.

Instead she's calling for "an international, independent investigation" into the assassination. Yes, let's investigate al-Qaeda. That'll teach 'em! The leading Democratic presidential contender is a one-worlder machine pol who once a decade will wow a women's conference in an imperial capital, but ... chug upriver into the heart of History's darkness?

Not on your life -- and not on Benazir Bhutto's death.

In the wake of Bhutto's assassination every hour that passes without a great intervention by the woman being sold to the American electorate as a genius, as a compassionate heart, as a champion of children and the disadvantaged, etc. etc. is another reason why "Hillary" is indeed a brand name, is another reason why she's a cranky, overeducated, cuckolded White Hausfrau and not a majestic statesman.

On behalf of all prospective voters, I gotta say, Show us -- not your tits, Hillary -- show us your blood!

That's what Benazir did.

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Show us what you're made of, old gal. At this arresting moment in world history, we have a right to demand of The Woman Who Would Be Potent POTUS Over Us, What the hell flows through your veins? and What are you willing to do to prove it's for real?

While she's miscalculating an answer, waiting for a cooked up cue during a cardboard Q&A, I'm gonna cue up a little Tina ...

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... then a little T & A.

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Aside: Found at Andy Cooper's weblog, intellectual boytoy Reza Aslan speculates that the U.S. removal of Saddam Hussein -- and Ms. Rodham Clinton's initial support for it -- led to Bhutto's assassination. Says who? Says Obama's people, says Aslan.

Related: Brando via Coppolla & Milius via Conrad, "Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared." (scroll down)

Lisa Schriffen @ NRO on the USSR's long shadow over, MSM's "deathwatch" in the subcontinent.

The most pitched and informative takes on Bhutto, Paki politics rounded up by Pamela and Fausta.

Someone In Ann Arbor Is Doing Their Homework

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This is the post they're looking for.
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Why Become A Republican?

.Serious.

.Sexy.

.Silly.
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Memo To Conservatives: Avoid Ad Feminam Attacks Against Ms. Rodham Clinton

* Updated (10/23) * HRC's pollster boasts that 1/4 of GOP women will vote for her.
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This past weekend TAPPED blogger Kate Sheppard reacted to something I've sensed from the very outset of Ms. Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign: ad feminam attacks against the former First Lady do nothing to engage the left nor (more importantly) the middle during the long, rhetorical slogfest underway between now and November 4, 2008. Here Sheppard is less than impressed with talkradio personality Mark Levin for having dubbed Ms. Rodham Clinton "Her Thighness."

As matters of principle and strategy, conservatives should not dismiss Sheppard's complaint. Principle, because the candidate needs to be confronted on her record; strategy, because "ideologically moderate white women" just might hold the key to the White House. Indulging a conservative chuckle now could easily lead to hearing the roar of many a woman voter later. For believe it or not, as this poll suggests, Ms. Rodham Clinton could (if only by default) prove "a uniter, not a divider." Then again, if we grant that a woman deserves to be respected for her mind, we should also insist that a woman be disrespected for her mind, if she so deserves....

For my part I prefer more substantive and slyly argumentative epithets to demolish the polished artifice of "Hillary," such as "the junior senator from New York," or "the Shady Lady," or "Madame Macbeth." Or as I once quipped here:

Oh, and I was going to have some comments about that other Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton, but it turns out that under a Rodham Clinton Administration, you could be audited by the IRS if you use the word "dyke."

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Previous:
"Excuse Me? God Has Summoned Hillary Rodham Clinton?"
"Southpaw Hillary Throws A Sucker Punch"
"C'mon Hillary, It's Chinatown"
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Why Step Out Into The World When So Much Of The World Deserves To Be Stepped On?

From one of the most influential American novels ever written:

-- Darling, you take everything too seriously. One is not supposed to be intellectual at a ball. One is simply supposed to be gay.
-- How? By being stupid?
-- I mean, for instance, didn't you enjoy meeting the young men?
-- What men? There wasn't a man there I couldn't squash ten of.

(Written during a time when "gay" meant happy, light, care-free, etc.)

Love In The Time Of Necrophilia

Even if a husband lives ... two hundred fucking years ... he's never going to be able to discover his wife's real nature.

Welcome to "an Atlas lovers art thread" (Thanks, Pamela):

Better in many ways than his iconic turn in Apocalypse Now, but to many Americans less relevant probably, is Brando's tour de force in The Last Tango in Paris. Here's even more Brando, by quality and quantity, than in The Godfather. "This is one of those performances that goes beyond acting into something more confrontational." It goes without saying that the above scene hits harder if you're watching the whole flick.

The Last Tango in Paris is not about sex per se, no matter how famous (or infamous), no matter how startling, how unprecedented those scenes. It's about the infiltrating onset of decay -- the decay of ideas and possibilities, of desires and affections, all sheltering but festering lustfully still in a mind housed agonizingly in the flesh. It's about the decay of that flesh -- flesh livid and vivid, alluring and onerous, porous and odorous, yielding and unyielding. Whether stumbling, agog with helpless wonder and hesitant trust, upon life's fullest vigor, or contemplating with bracing bewilderment and piercing bitterness its incrementally impending exit, The Last Tango in Paris is decay by degrees. It is decay on the installment plan.... Not coincidentally, the film also sifts the diminishing returns of the barbed shards of shattered historical expectations -- revolutionary, colonial, decolonial. (Note well, apart from this clip, a certain earlier monologue, plus two later dialogues.)

The vigor of The Last Tango in Paris is a vigor mortis, its love a love in the time of necrophilia.

The Coyote Call And The Howling Winds Wail

You say "potayto," I say "potahto."
They say "Brokeback," I say "The Cowboy Song."

If you don't know Thin Lizzy ... it's time you did.

If You're Going to San Francisco ... Don't Bring Bill Clinton

Those feeling frisky about marking the 40th anniversary of the "Summer of Love" in San Francisco would do well also to mark, in the very same city, the 35th anniversary of the dog days of a Summer of Criminal Lust. For the purposes of "Hillary Watch," that was the summer of 1972, during which a dog named William Jefferson Clinton (who answers to the name of "Bubba") sexually assaulted and nearly raped a woman in Golden Gate Park.

Since he lunges after Democratic women only, stories like these almost never come to light. Enter Christopher Hitchens. From No One Left To Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family (1999):

[I]n the third case I know about [alleging rape or attempted rape by the prospective First Gentleman], which is so far unpublished anywhere, the story came to me without my asking, let alone soliciting. I was in San Francisco, and got a call and later a visit from a very well-known Bay Area journalist and editor. He's a veteran radical and was once quite a Clinton fan; we'd argued about the man before. He wanted, he said, to disburden himself of the following information.

He (I can't give his name without identifying her) had once employed a young female assistant. In the early 1970s, Bill Clinton had come out to the Bay Area to see his fiancé [sic] Hillary, who was then working, for some other friends of mine as it happens, as a legal intern in Oakland [for veteran Communist lawyer Robert Treuhaft]. An introduction occurred between young Bill and my friend's aforementioned assistant. He asked her out for lunch; she accepted. He proposed a walk in Golden Gate Park; she accepted that too. He made a lunge at her; she declined the advance and was rammed, very hard indeed, against a tree-trunk before being rolled in the bushes and badly set-upon. She's a tall and strong woman, and got away without submitting. She told my friend the same day, and he'd kept it secret for almost thirty years....

Years later, the woman was sitting at her desk when she got a telephone call from Brooke Shearer, who is also Mrs. Strobe Talbot and a veteran of the Clinton kitchen-cabinet. "Bill is thinking of running for office," said Mrs. Shearer. "He wanted to know if that was all right with you." My subject was annoyed, but she had retained her old liberal allegiances. She also -- see how this keeps coming up? [cf. the rape allegation of Juanita Broaddrick (then Juanita Hickey)] -- was thinking of getting engaged and becoming a mother. She replied that she wouldn't stand in the way of a Clinton candidacy. But I have since talked to two further very respectable San Francisco citizens, who have neither met nor heard of my original informant (nor he of them). I know the woman's name; I know that she has married well; I know her maiden name at the time of the assault; I know the high-powered Bay Area foundation where she works on good causes; I have communicated with her by Federal Express and by voicemail. I have excellent witnesses who have heard her say that if the story ever breaks she'll deny it under oath. I don't blame her -- though in our present unshockable moral atmosphere it's very unlikely that reporters, let alone prosecutors, would ever turn over in bed before consigning the whole thing to the memory hole. It is time, as we keep hearing, to put the country behind us and move this forward. (At least, I think I've got that right.) [pp. 114-116]
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Some will say no doubt that I am being too hard on this and other Democratic women who are victims of "the man from Hope," women who then are pressed -- by persuasion, intimidation, or (dare I say?) personal preference -- into service as his enablers. I concede that such critics may have a point, no matter how bitterly ironic. To whom, after all, are these women going to turn in their moment of acute embarrassment, shame, and need? The National Sexual Assault Hotline? For the record, that number is 1-800-656-HOPE.

* * *
I can contribute one point only in Bubba's defense (and a shoddy defense, at that): that he was "under the influence" of George McGovern's insurgent presidential campaign. From Robert Novak's column of April 27, 1972 [read by Tim Russert on Meet The Press, July 15, 2007]:  "The people don’t know McGovern is for amnesty, abortion and legalization of pot," [one U.S. Senator] told [Novak]. "Once middle America—Catholic middle America, in particular—once they find out, he’s dead." Sound familiar?

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Keep hope alive: a free concert commemorating the "Summer of Love," anticipated for this September in Golden Gate Park, has been cancelled (H/T Sanfransanity).

Narcissism in Power - The Clinton Inaugural

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For he that soweth to the flesh shall reap corruption;
but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.
(Galatians 6:8)
-- Bible verse selected and sworn upon by William Jefferson Clinton
for his inauguration as 42nd president of the United States
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A consequence for all who pursue (or merely acquiesce in the pursuit of) social agendas set by radicals is the demolition of a strict sense of personal moral responsibility. Those convinced of the righteousness of morality and faith rightly mistrust such people. For with such people morality is relative and religion, inevitably, a ruse.

During that inauguration the profession of civic religion was also a ruse projecting, in the name of personal faith, a man's ill-acknowledged, personal folly. Political theater staging a solemn, sacred ceremony, its proportions were nevertheless narcissistic. Even Manchurian. The gesture of political theater was a proper public profession. The actual deeds: careless confession and pithy projection.

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What comes across as the most important source of Clinton's uniqueness as president is the nearly unbelievable degree of his essential unfitness to be president -- his profound immaturity, his pathological selfishness, his cynicism, above all his relentless corruption.
- Michael Kelly, Washington Post

A Sadistic Thought For This Weekend's Ex-Gay and Ex-Ex-Gay Conferences

As already referenced more than once, diametrically opposed conferences on homosexuality are being held this weekend in Irvine, CA. The larger, longer, and more longstanding one is for those seeking a heterosexual life animated through the Good News of Jesus Christ. The other, lesser one is for those who have tried that route and found it impossible. The one tries to save people from homosexuality; the other tries to save people from being saved from homosexuality.

While more sympathetic to the aims of the former conference, I am also not signing up for it. I can't shake the temperamental, freethinking and freewheeling skepticism which took me, first as a young adult, away from heterosexual norms, and then when more mature directly back to them. This has nothing to do with denigrating the core Christian essence of the evangelical conference, nor with denigrating religion generally. Nor, for that matter, with embracing a supposedly more "tolerant" interpretation of religion that accommodates (or even celebrates) homosexuality.

While coming forward about being, what other people call, "ex-gay" (a ridiculous label, if there ever were one) if I have any message to preach, any principle (let alone, light) to prize, any faith to profess, they're not so much those of Jesus Christ as those of the one French marquis who still boasts marquee-name recognition:

Let no one accuse me of being evil's apologist; let no one say that I seek to inspire wrongdoing or to blunt remorse in the hearts of wrongdoers: my sole purpose throughout these endeavors is to articulate thoughts which have gnawed at my conscience since I was first able to reason; that these thoughts might be in conflict with the thoughts of some other persons, or of most other persons, or of all other persons except me, is not, I believe, sufficient reason to suppress them. As to those susceptible souls who might be "corrupted" by exposure to my writings, I say, so much the worse for them. I address myself only to men who are capable of examining with an objective eye everything before them. Such men are incorruptible.
-- Donatien Francois Alphonse de Sade, Philosophy in the Bedroom

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If I were in Irvine today, I'd be shuttling between the two gatherings with a sign reading: XXX-Gay Curious?

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(Is any of this surprising? Seemingly unnecessarily? Even tortuously complicating? Ah, Gentle Reader! Expect nothing less from a blog that takes after Vladimir Mayakovsky and Franz Kafka.)

Older Poem - "Naomi"

Naomi
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my heart
torn from
her breast
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The Heart of Germanness

Heartpiece
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ONE: May I put my heart at your feet.
TWO: As long as you don' t soil my floor.

ONE: My heart is pure.
TWO: We'll see to that.

ONE: I can't get it out.
TWO: You'd like me to help you.

ONE: If you don't mind.
TWO: It's my pleasure. I too can't get it out.

ONE: (CRIES)
TWO: I'll take it out by surgery.
What do I have a penknife for.
We'll get this in a minute.
To work and not despair.
Well, it's done.
But this is a brick.
Your heart is a brick.

ONE: But it beats only for you.
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- Heiner Müller (1929-95)
from Hamletmachine and Other Texts for the Stage, Carl Weber, ed.

Chillin', Not Trillin (No. 6) - "Close, But No Cigar"

A journalist asked Bill Clinton whether French presidential candidate Ségolène Royal conformed to his idea of a beautiful woman. He said, "Close, but no cigar."
-JMK

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For previous "Chillin', Not Trillin" click here.

James and Me

One can learn from one's errors. What one cannot survive is allowing other people to make your errors for you.
-- James Baldwin, No Name in the Street

One can learn from one's Eros. What one cannot survive is allowing other people to make your Eros for you.
-- Jeremayakovka
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James and I go way back, Gentle Reader. It's good to bring him into the present. Bringing him into the future will be even better.

Pachelbel Cowboy

When was the last time you listened to this?

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Whenever I hear "Pachelbel's Canon" I'm reminded of Ordinary People whose opening sequence it dominates.
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(still from Ordinary People)

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Some movies have completely exhausted me -- Raging Bull, Brokeback Mountain, Midnight Cowboy, The Last Tango in Paris....

Others have reduced me helplessly to tears -- Crooklyn, Ordinary People, Blue Velvet , Glory....
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Chicks don't dig it when I tell them I admire Last Tango. (I do, Gentle Reader, I really do. I admire it and I say so.) They think, Oh! He's itching to rape me in the ass. Scenes of such criminal marital desperation made current by Last Exit to Brooklyn and Brokeback Mountain overinform the popular imagination. In Last Tango that rape scene -- the second in the movie, but the only one anyone remembers -- was part of a more artful progression. And chicks really don't dig it when I then inform them that a while back I dated men. They think, Shit, now I know he's primed to do it.

Chicks want someone to take them to chick flicks -- When Harry Met Sally, 13 Going on 30, and whatnot. Most women, just like most men, don't want -- refuse -- to see the whole picture.
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(still from Midnight Cowboy)

That's a big part of why for years I gave up completely on American women and was only able to hit it off with European-born ones.
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ENDNOTES and AFTERTHOUGHTS:
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* Who else can act so brutally and imply such vulnerability and need?
-- Roger Ebert on Brando in Last Tango (Show 'em how it's done, Marlon!)
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* We fight for men and women whose poetry is not yet written.... (audio)
-- Matthew Broderick as Col. Robert Gould Shaw in Glory
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* She was stroking the innocence out of him.
-- James Baldwin, Another Country
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* Salvation lies within.
-- The Shawshank Redemption

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Previous: "An Open Letter To Matt Sanchez", "De Profundis Clamavit", "Recent Poem - 'Miserere'"

Recent Poem - "The Poet And The Beautiful Mariposa"

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The Poet and the Beautiful Mariposa


If I am dreaming, do not wake me
If I am walking, do not stop me
For I am seeking the beautiful mariposa
The mariposa that is looking for me.

And when I find this beautiful mariposa
The mariposa that is looking for me
If I am walking, do not stop me
And if I am dreaming, do not wake me.
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ENDNOTES and AFTERTHOUGHTS:

* It's salvaged (savaged) from an unfinished short story. Have mercy on me, Muses -- though I know you won't!

* (Aside) What's the difference between wonder, horror, and desire?

Before wonder we say Oh! Wow!
Before horror we say Oh! No!
Before desire we say Oh! Yes!

Ave, Maria

With a little voiceover added to the mix, legendary Maria Callas renders "Habanera" from Bizet's Carmen. (You know it -- Si tu ne m'aime pas, je t'aime ... -- Fully translated here.).

The newspapers say, Oh! that terrible Callas that gains [makes] so much money in one evening! Oh! she is a capricious so-so-so-so! But it's not so. What am I supposed to say?

Who is my double [understudy]?
Nobody can double Callas!

It fails me entirely, Gentle Reader, why some were caught up with, say, Audrey Hepburn when La Divina had so much more going on.

My work is alone. It is creation, so you have to be alone to do that....

If you prefer: a longer and purer version of her "Habanera" (w/o voiceover).

Chillin', Not Trillin (No. 5) - "Ann of Arc"

I was going to have a few comments on Ann Coulter, but it turns out that you have to go into rehab if you compare an American conservative to anything French.

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Ann Coulter these days reminds me of Joan of Arc, to wit:
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Ann of Arc

In a land overrun by foreign enemies ... divided within ...
she's the bravest warrior to appear in generations ...
inspiring thousands to battle ...
and victory.

Then she's betrayed by her own people ...
put on trial for heresy ...
convicted ... condemned ...
and publicly executed on a pile of faggots.

.
* * *

And now, a public service announcement and station identification politics....

.
It's a subject "polite" people don't talk about, but every 11 seconds in America a woman thinks Well-behaved women rarely make history. A woman can think about making history anywhere, anytime: at home, work or school ... in a back alley or bedroom ... behind closed doors or in the great outdoors.

Often a woman thinks about making history in the presence of a man she knows intimately. It can be her husband, boyfriend or even another family member. Only a fraction of the times after a woman thinks about making history does she ever tell anyone about it. A woman who thinks about making history might spend the rest of her life burdened or even consumed by intense feelings of shame, inadequacy, and rage. And studies show that thinking about making history damages not just the woman who thinks, but all her relationships. Everyone is affected when a woman thinks about making history.

But there's hope. Thanks to the courageous efforts of many women (and men), today all across America women are no longer just thinking about making history. Women are talking about and women are making history. Now. More than ever.

The next time a woman thinks about making history in America -- the next time a woman makes history in America -- what are you going to do about it?

.
* * *

I have pre-dated this post for March 8 in honor of International Women's Day Ann Coulter.

Fox News Channel recently rolled out the 1/2 Hour News Hour featuring her as vice president. So far, so good. I dare Fox and the Rightosphere to take it to the next level by declaring

March 2: "International Ann Coulter Day"

Lenny Bruce was reincarnated as a shicksa Republican goddess and career conservatives can't deal with it. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, George Will.

Ann, you are right, it was an excellent joke. Thanks for beginning "the conversation"!

* * *

Rehab "a total indulgence," says American Idol judge.

From George Bernard Shaw's introduction to his play Saint Joan (which I read in high school and out of which copied the following into my diary): The test of sanity lies not in the normality of the methods, but in the reasonableness of the discovery.

Edwards "kind of cute." -- Barack Obama

* * *

Oh, and I was going to have a few comments about the other Democratic presidential candidate, Ms. Rodham Clinton, but it turns out that under a Hillary Administration you could be audited by the IRS if you use the word "dyke."
-- JMK