A woman I've been spared meeting face to face began an e-mail exchange by interrogating a male acquaintance of a friend of hers as if the man was guilty until proven innocent. This began with whether he was "bisexual" and cascaded downwards. A woman who hates men that much should try women.
Indeed, an increasing number of women could use some finesse in the way they approach men in whom they might have an interest. Especially when the person in question is not a total, absolute stranger, but someone who comes recommended or is in some way a known quantity.
Women seem to feel that their negative past experiences with men entitle them to be rude.
One woman I know asks men she might date whether they have ever declared bankruptcy. Another asked whether the Mercedes in which she was being driven had been bought new or used.
Honey, if you're that interested in my bank account, good-bye.
Sure, some women are preternaturally stupid about money in a romantic context. One story of woe included moving in with and co-signing the purchase of a house with a man she'd known only three months: yes, he was interested in her money.
Still, not all men are cads, prefer men and have the law after them. Indeed, men weed out women by observing discreetly; a little discretion in sizing up other people would go a long way. Espy subtly, without implying the man is a criminal before you've met him (even as a "joke").
Besides, in all my ax murdering I have always had to catch the victim unaware. For some reason, women don't want a date once I tell them I am an ax murderer. Women!
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Monday, October 11, 2010
Europe's Columbus Day
Some 518 years ago today, Luis Torres, a Spanish Jew, became the first European on record to set foot in the New World. While we still debate the fateful consequences, I am struck by the comments of a contemporary European, to whom Christopher Columbus is a minor 15th century figure.
Indeed, in modern Europe, only Spain celebrates October 12 as a national holiday. In the Iberian peninsula, it is the "Día de la Hispanidad." The holiday that celebrates the common language and culture of the roughly half-billion people worldwide touched in a fundamental way by Spain, starting October 12, 1492.
Why would the other countries celebrate the day? Italians in the New World claim the Genoa-born Columbus as their own, but apart from a few historians Italians in Italy largely ignore the explorer.
Otherwise, the other Europeans associate the New World with the Spanish plunder and enslavement of which Eduardo Galeano memorably wrote.
Of course, the French forget about Haiti and Quebec, conquered just as savagely as were the francophone countries of Africa. The British forget their fateful invention of biological warfare against the natives of New England, just as they forget their invention of the concentration camp in Africa.
The Europeans just didn't have much of a chance to despoil in America. They had to wait to do so in Africa and Asia.
Moreover, Europeans think in centuries, so anything less than half-a-millenium old is "new" — as are nations such as Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico and the United States.
Across the Atlantic, the dominant narrative is still one about plucky European emigrants who somehow chucked their Europeanness and became American.
And Columbus? My unscientific sample said Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press in 1450, or polymath Leonardo DaVinci, born in 1452, were far more significant.
To Europeans, that is.
Indeed, in modern Europe, only Spain celebrates October 12 as a national holiday. In the Iberian peninsula, it is the "Día de la Hispanidad." The holiday that celebrates the common language and culture of the roughly half-billion people worldwide touched in a fundamental way by Spain, starting October 12, 1492.
Why would the other countries celebrate the day? Italians in the New World claim the Genoa-born Columbus as their own, but apart from a few historians Italians in Italy largely ignore the explorer.
Otherwise, the other Europeans associate the New World with the Spanish plunder and enslavement of which Eduardo Galeano memorably wrote.
Of course, the French forget about Haiti and Quebec, conquered just as savagely as were the francophone countries of Africa. The British forget their fateful invention of biological warfare against the natives of New England, just as they forget their invention of the concentration camp in Africa.
The Europeans just didn't have much of a chance to despoil in America. They had to wait to do so in Africa and Asia.
Moreover, Europeans think in centuries, so anything less than half-a-millenium old is "new" — as are nations such as Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico and the United States.
Across the Atlantic, the dominant narrative is still one about plucky European emigrants who somehow chucked their Europeanness and became American.
And Columbus? My unscientific sample said Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press in 1450, or polymath Leonardo DaVinci, born in 1452, were far more significant.
To Europeans, that is.
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
The Revolution Will Not Be
In 1971, Gil Scott-Heron composed one of the poem-songs that in many ways represents that era, called "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." It looks as if in 2011 the revolution will not be; the Republicans will put the last few nails into the coffin of "change we can believe in" and it will be back to "no, we can't."
Scott-Heron's song, which has the elements of what later came to be rap, hip-hop and the myriad of related genres of which I know very little, had a point, which he made in his last stanza:
To read the whole lyric, which is a beauty, click here.
Scott-Heron was cognizant, as I wasn't, that even in 1971 we were already in George Orwell's 1984 (a date with the reversed last two digits of the year in which the novel was published, 1948). In the USA, Big Brother did not need to force anyone to watch television; everyone had been addicted to it, worse than they were to become addicted to crack. I should know: I was a recovering TV addict. Television tells us what to think.
To some, George Orwell is the man of the Left who unmasked Stalinism. He was a reverse "useful idiot," to use Lenin's fateful phrase: his writings were put to use to serve the interests of the capitalist elite he detested.
Just as to others, Karl Marx is the man whose ideas led inevitably to 1917. Yet, despite Lenin's clever dialectical word games (such as calling his own minority a majority, bolsheviki), Marx expected socialism to arise first in advanced Germany, not in backward autocratic Russia, much less in China, one of the societies Marx had in mind when he coined the phrase "the Asiatic mode of production," in his view a deviation.
For my part, I expected socialism in the United States. Not through a revolution, nor through an evolution à la Eduard Bernstein, but through the very Marxian process of the internal contradictions of capitalism. So far, I have not been disappointed: capitalist society is in a very advanced state of decomposition.
Obama has failed to rescue capitalism, as have the social democrats of Europe. Once President Palin is inaugurated, the system will be allowed to run wild again.
The revolution will not be.
Scott-Heron's song, which has the elements of what later came to be rap, hip-hop and the myriad of related genres of which I know very little, had a point, which he made in his last stanza:
The revolution will not
The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.
Scott-Heron was cognizant, as I wasn't, that even in 1971 we were already in George Orwell's 1984 (a date with the reversed last two digits of the year in which the novel was published, 1948). In the USA, Big Brother did not need to force anyone to watch television; everyone had been addicted to it, worse than they were to become addicted to crack. I should know: I was a recovering TV addict. Television tells us what to think.
To some, George Orwell is the man of the Left who unmasked Stalinism. He was a reverse "useful idiot," to use Lenin's fateful phrase: his writings were put to use to serve the interests of the capitalist elite he detested.
Just as to others, Karl Marx is the man whose ideas led inevitably to 1917. Yet, despite Lenin's clever dialectical word games (such as calling his own minority a majority, bolsheviki), Marx expected socialism to arise first in advanced Germany, not in backward autocratic Russia, much less in China, one of the societies Marx had in mind when he coined the phrase "the Asiatic mode of production," in his view a deviation.
For my part, I expected socialism in the United States. Not through a revolution, nor through an evolution à la Eduard Bernstein, but through the very Marxian process of the internal contradictions of capitalism. So far, I have not been disappointed: capitalist society is in a very advanced state of decomposition.
Obama has failed to rescue capitalism, as have the social democrats of Europe. Once President Palin is inaugurated, the system will be allowed to run wild again.
The revolution will not be.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)