Jimmy Carter threw Iran into our dustbin of failures.  President “lefty” was proud of pushing a new election in Afghanistan.  So what?  There’s only 1 candidate.  The people there know that Karzai is practicing Chicago mob style politics, so why bother pretend there’s an election process?  Of course Hillary ratted out Karzai’s brother as an informant to our drug war in CIA.  This was meant to scare Karzai from getting his brother killed by the drug cartel.  Karzai don’t care, and his brother will even the score at our expense.

It’s funny that every two bit dictator struts on a world stage, thumbing their nose at us.  Iran will use Russia as cover, North Korea will use China as cover, and our allies cannot rely on the U.S. to provide any cover to them.  President “lefty” will have us slink off the world stage with a trail of our dead military in his wake.

President Woodrow Wilson led us into WWI by his pacificist global pretensions from this college professor.  Our professor community organizer is stirring up these little dictators into believing they can ignore our history of freedom and protection of human rights.  As always it is the blood of the country that is shed by failures of dilettante world strategists.

America loves our fellow citizens and endure hardships and sacrifices as seen in our outpouring of help to the people affected by 9/11/2001 terrorist attack. We did not lynch or repossess property of muslims.  We did not seek a scapegoat to kill.  We did provide more blood and sacrifice to seek justice.  The American people are mad at the failures of our leadership.  The people are prepared to sacrifice for our future.

Dilettante is a social network dedicated to classical music.

There is a YouTube video circulating around, asking the provocative question:  Did Jesus claim that Barack Obama is the antichrist?

This is a perfect example of dragging biblical scholarship through the mud:

Some people should just not be allowed to interpret the Bible.

(Jim, how’s that for a dilettante?)

Last night, Jappy, Afrika and I went to Pizzeria Paradiso because we were exhausted from our hard days of interning and desirous to surround ourselves with hipsters.  Paradiso, as any discerning intern knows, has a wide (obese, even) selection of beer and, even more appropriately, it lists their alcohol content – catering to the cash-strapped masses, man these recessions are useful.  But the cool thing I liked about Paradiso wasn’t the fact that they forgot our bread (or the fact that we had to order it, and pay money for it had it actually arrived) or that our pizzas came out in 15 minutes (seriously? too soon.) or that some dude sitting a table away kept TOTALLY STARING at me when I slowly poked our bill to the edge of the table, no, what I enjoyed was my burr.

This burr.

it even features a chocolate lab, as all young professionals must aspire to one day own

It was a good beer. I actually loved it, because it fulfilled the following desires:

1. It was not a hipster beer

2. It wasn’t hopped out like a fucking crack addict

3. It was delicious and malty, like a milkshake, but alcoholic, so better

and 4. It reminded me of Abbot Ale, which I love almost as much as Cricket Cola, and which I can’t seem to find in the US.

That being said, though I love this beer, my area of expertise is gin, and I will leave it up to Afrika to wax poetic about Belgian style beers, because did you know she studied abroad once?  Also her phone is gold.  But she’ll be in London soon enough, where hopefully she’ll be converted away from her hoppy hipster ales and start drinking beer like one who’s lost all hope in life – constantly, and sloppily without regard for proper parenthetical citations, as a grad student should.

I was a little hard on my parents in my socks post, I know. Truly, I give them lots of credit for having a litter of children and not drowning us in a well (together or separately).

So while I thought about making my first post all intellectual and shit, I quickly realized that would require me going back in time and getting the middle school me, the one who read War and Peace and Watergate transcripts for fun. Because after only 10 years online I’m all, “This is your brain. This is your brain on the internet.”

Instead, I decided to go with my strengths: bitching and pointing fingers.

But NOW I want to talk about this cool psychologist who’s been around forever, because he is the King of Flow and I have kind of been a little bit blocked in that regard for oh, the last 20 years. [If you're the list-making, categorizing, spreadsheet kind of person I hope that explicit number makes you happy!]

I am really into ole Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, mostly because he gives me this big get out of jail free card for my laziness by saying if one hates what one is doing or is plagued by external stressors, it’s hard to focus and get anything else done. I’m sure he’d be rather “WTF??!” about my inability to restart and move forward even the tiniest bit faster, but maybe not. Maybe he’d be thrilled about that because he could put me in one of his long-term studies as a counterbalance to all the successes he tracks?

Anyway, I’m fascinated with MC and his industry of flow books. And I’m really curious about his desire to reclaim the words “dilettante” and “amateur” from the Sneer-n-Snark pile. He doesn’t say amateurs are way better than professionals 100% of the time, of course; as he points out, the Soviets made a huge mistake when they veered away from following experimental evidence and instead stuck to Lysenko’s pro-Leninist theory that grains planted in a cold climate would breed super-corn.

Unfortunately , the ways of politics and the ways of corn are not always the same, and Lysenko’s efforts culminated in decades of hunger.”

Food for thought, so to speak. Maybe it’s time for me to dust off the theories about what will make me happier and more productive and test them out. Maybe it’s time to grow super-Vix.

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Dear patriots: Hold the fort, help is on the way.

Dear Andrew Sullivan, hairless misogyne, dilettante scribbler, and all who lap your poisoned effluvia: Drop dead.  Love, Sarah.

BREAKING NEWS: HRH Princess Caroline of Kennedy has issued an official proclamation, expertly drawn on salted parchment in swirling calligraphy and hand delivered to Governor David Paterson in Albany by velvet gloved paiges, informing the Governor Her Royal Highness is no longer interested in being a United States Senator.

Scented with pomegranate and jasmine, tied up in horsehair ribbons and macaroni, the royal proclamation reads:

Dear Governor Paterson,

It won’t be easy.  You’ll think it strange, when I try to explain how I feel, that I still need your love after all that I’ve done to embarrass myself.

You won’t believe me.

All you will see is the girl you once knew, her face cracked and covered with lines, remembering ponies and sparkles long faded away.

I had to let it happen, for hope and change.  I couldn’t stay all my life down at Bergdorf’s, looking out of the windows, afraid of the sun.

So, I chose boredom.

Running around, trying on all the shoes. But nothing impressed me at all.  I never expected it to.

Don’t cry for me Governor Paterson.

The truth is, I embarrassed you. All through my campaign days. My mad existence.  I kept no promises. Now keep your distance.

Because, as for fortune, and as for fame, you know I invited them in.

Rightly, it seemed to the world they were all I desired.

I am an illusion.

I have no solutions and promise to drag down your ticket in time.

I love me, and hoped you’d love me too.

Don’t cry for me Governor Paterson.

Have I said too much?

Yes.

And there’s nothing more  I can say to you. But all you have to do is look at me to know that every word is true.

Yours in slothful dilettantism,

HRH Princess Caroline of Kennedy

This was the last of the Fearsmag articles that I wrote. I thought of putting it out tomorrow but I could be nursing a hangover, or more likely sleeping in. That’s one of my indulgences.

In whatever stage of abstinence or feeding our appetites that we managed to survive through the holiday season, we now suffer the aftermath. A new year has begun and in many cultures it becomes a time of reckoning, of cleaning our mental houses, of taking stock and changing or honing up on our past year’s progress.

Often January is a time of making too many promises and setting stakes too high. You might say it’s the time of atonement, whether you’re religious or not, for our past sins, be it laziness, overindulgence, taking on too much, doing too little, not changing, lacking stability, clinging to the past or not planning the future. We try to set past abuses or mistakes right with New Year’s resolutions. If we can whitewash the slate, perhaps we can start fresh and ignore all that’s gone before.

Or not.

Not too many years ago, I decided to stop making resolutions. After all, why set yourself up for a fall? We resolve to make these changes in our lives, often drastic ones, and wonder why we then fail to change. In January, because there’s no planning for holidays, we’re broke from spending too much and have already saturated our flesh with sugar, alcohol, salt and fat; we heroically battle our faults. Start a new year, start a new plan, start right.

And time, which is really just a big wound-up clock that we imagine, unwinds the wheel of the year as well as our plans, which fizzle by March if not earlier.

I guess I learned the lesson. Don’t overindulge through the holidays, then you won’t have to diet yourself down to the right size again. Of course, many people control themselves throughout the year and feel that this is the one time to let loose, to balance the scales even if those scales can be tipped to one side rather quickly and it takes the whole year to get back there again. To indulge or not—the fear to let go, to take the plunge.

We have set ourselves a tricky quest in this new century, as in the old. We want to have it all but we don’t want to wallow in it. Gourmet chocolate shops, delectable world-select coffee bars, elite watering holes holding alcohol from every exotic locale, and the finest clothes made of wondrous fabrics not seen since the Egyptians wove cotton, abound in many countries. We surround ourselves with splendor, covet what we don’t have and continue to search for the most expensive, exquisite or unique of today’s fads.

Well, what’s wrong with having the best, of rewarding ourselves for what we’ve accomplished? Nothing, but those that have too much, who can acquire whatever they desire, who have sailed to the highest pinnacle and hover there, are watched by the heaving millions with envy, jealousy and ridicule.

Like Icarus and his fateful flight toward the sun, we view movie stars, singers, politicians, the famous, the rich and the powerful as those who try for godhood and will fall back to the earth. And like scavenging vultures, we wait to pull them down or help them on their descent. Each and every person wants what is rightfully theirs, perhaps more than a fair share and will seek it out. All of us would like to indulge. Those that do are loved at first. We hold them like beacons in the darkness of our obscurity. They shine as examples of what can be done, of what-ifs made real and that some people can have it all. Yet, if they stay too long in the flame, we burn them with our scorn. We hold their lives up to that oh-so-bright light and examine every pore, every crack, every flaw.

Michael Jackson is no longer a rising star. His comet is falling and he receives as much ridicule as adoration, not for his music but for his life that, like any one of ours, cannot stand the polished gleam of godhood for long. Let’s face it, people are hypocrites. It’s all right if I have it, if my loved ones and friends have it, but if others have it and I have to watch for too long, well that’s just not right. Just like the dog that’s done his business in the wrong spot, eventually he gets his nose rubbed in it. Those who have and indulge end up rubbing our noses in it. Not the same as the dog. It’s not necessarily intentional, but many people see this material flaunting as the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots. And perhaps there are the unspoken messages that we really don’t like to hear: Could I have done more? Am I doing anything with my life? Will I amount to anything? Does anything I do matter? Will I be remembered after I die? Why have I failed when others have succeeded?

So it is that to indulge, in more than one culture or religion, is seen as a sin, a luring to the dark side, a vice. Indulgence in itself is not necessarily bad. You can indulge someone, let him or her cry, or rant or be a little crazy once in a while. It makes you look magnanimous, open-minded, loving. Having a little chocolate or getting looped or dancing the dawn into being is okay, once in a while. But do it all the time and you become a pig, a dilettante, a bohemian, a hedonist, a self-centered creature. The names abound.

In the end, our indulgences are our own but it’s our society that really let’s us know what’s not right and what is considered overindulgence. So, don’t make a resolution, until you’re ready to, whether it’s January 1st, March 19th or November 23rd. In the end, it matters only to you, and society, your friends or other forces like your body will tell you when to change. Indulge a little but don’t parade it in front of others. And before you indulge, ask yourself, with just a little fear lacing your veins, am I ready for what it will do to me and how others will see me?

Happy New Year. May your indulgences keep you healthy.

Jean-Claude Floch, known simply as Floc’h, is perhaps my favourite illustrator working today. Although he is probably best known to anglophone audiences for the six covers (and other illustrations) he has done for The New Yorker, his output extends to book covers, movie posters, advertising, and especially bande dessinée (the European art form situated somewhere between the comic and the graphic novel). With François Rivière he co-authored the groundbreaking Une triologie anglaise (An English Trilogy), the first volume of which came out in 1977. This series completely revolutionized the art, taking up the classic ligne claire style pioneered by Hergé and Jacobs while pushing the bounds of traditional narrative, notably through the use of mises en abyme.

Between 1992 and 1994, Floc’h illustrated a series of covers for Eric Ambler and Dan Kavanagh (a.k.a. Julian Barnes) novels published by Éditions du Seuil’s Points imprint.

Among his other covers are illustrations for Jean-Luc Coatalem’s collection of travelogues entitled Les beaux horizons (1997).

Front cover

Back cover

Over a decade later, these same illustrations appeared in the 21 April 2008 issue of The New Yorker.

If you like the sort of thing you’ve seen here, you’ll want to immediately pick up the complete Une trilogie anglaise ($49.95 in Canada) — and related titles — as well as the two volumes of Floc’h illustrateur (the boxed set sells for $99.95 in Canada), featuring all of his non-comics illustration work.

You’ll also want to visit L’homme dans la foule, a growing online collection of all things Floc’h.

This morning I dreamed that I was trying to type web addresses into a window in my iBook (which I haven’t used in well over a year) and they just weren’t working. I’d type in the address correctly and it’d send me to a site in Japanese, or a corporate website, or something. Over and over and over. It was very frustrating.

The Bikram studio I talked about has classes at 6 AM three days a week. Although I said I wouldn’t go back, I’ve been thinking about going again and just avoiding that instructor. If I get a second instructor like that I’ll probably give up until I’m in a different geographical location, but in the meantime I want to give the whole thing another chance. I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of weeks now, and yesterday in the mail was a card from the studio with free guest passes inside. I can’t use them – you have to be a new student – but it still seemed like a little nudge from the universe that I should try again. Also, there’s no other studio nearby that has classes in the morning at a time where I could actually go to them and still be on time for work.

So I says to myself, “Self, if you manage to wake up naturally shortly before 5 AM, you and me should go to 6 AM Bikram.” And what do you know, I woke up at 4:51. Did I get up and go to Bikram? Well, no. No, I didn’t. Because I got all insecure last night (more on that later) and BF ended up reassuring me until about 11:15. And that is not a good night’s sleep.

But I think I might go on Thursday. (Since, after all, I have no class-until-10-PM on Wednesday. Yee!) I’m really curious about what it would be like to start my day that way. Even if it’s bad, I’m still curious.

I nearly called in sick today. A day of rest and relaxation sounded so goddamn good that it was an effort to get my breakfast ready and get out the door. Lunch was easy, though; BF and I went to the Mexican place last night and both kept half of our dinners for later. This place is amazing (to me) – the food is terrific and quite inexpensive, there’s always a table available, the waiters more or less understand English, and the food comes within about 2 minutes of ordering. This is a huge, huge benefit for me, because I’m always hungry immediately, and I hate waiting for 20 minutes for my food, which is what always happens in the fancy-schmancy restaurants where MP take us. (I like the schmancy food, but I hate the wait.) I’ve taken to eating a snack right before we leave for dinner with them. Which is pretty terrible if you think about it.

—-

So when I talked to Mom this weekend, she told me that she thought the 30-day challenge fail was the universe telling me that I needed to slow the hell down. That I didn’t need to complete all this stuff so quickly, and that I was rushing my journey. This is the same woman who completed a 10-year Ph.D. program in four years, and who finished college in three years and got married when she was 20. I suppose this means that she’s the Voice of Experience, but what I think it means is that she’s forgotten what it feels like to have this insane driving need to get everything finished and settled before you turn 30. (I am so Logan’s Run. Which they’re remaking, by the way, those smarmy bastards.)

BF said that he was a bit worried that maybe I’d expend all this energy and effort on the yoga thing and then the bottom would fall out of it for me and I’d lose my passion and move on to something else. This notion has been bothering me since I first fell in love with it in April. He asked why. I said it was partly that I was afraid of losing something that currently matters so much to me, but mostly because I’m extremely afraid of being a dilettante. He asked why. I thought for a minute, and then spun a (true) story of my father and his greatly varying interests over the years. Often he would pick up an interest, invest time and money and get really excited over it, and then three months later it would be in the closet. My mom sometimes nagged him about these interests, why don’t you keep up with those language tapes, don’t you want to read your Civil War books anymore, and I got the feeling that I ought to be ashamed of him for not following through on these things. Not seeing them to completion, somehow. A year ago, I talked to BF’s family at Christmas about how excited I was about my writing; this year it’s all but fallen out of my life, and I have to admit that I haven’t written any fiction in months. That’s embarrassing for me.

He asked why.

I don’t really understand the answer to this. I know that interests fall in and out of one’s life, that you won’t ever again like the Smiths as much as you did when you were 15 and sure that life was only pain (hair toss), that you’ll eventually wonder why you have all those kitchen gadgets when cooking gourmet food is more of a pain in the ass than anything else, that passions will come and go and come again (if they’re lucky) and you will be no less of a person for allowing this cycle to progress. But still. If I change my mind about all the things that I love, who will I be? What defines me, if not my interests? If my interests are always changing, am I not the flakiest person on the planet?

No, you’re not, said BF. If yoga goes away and then comes back again, or even if it doesn’t come back, that’s okay. You had the passion at one time, and that was valuable to you. Something else will fill you up.

It’s that that bothers me. There’s something in the junkyard of my upbringing that makes me repulsed at the thought of being a dilettante, at flitting from interest to interest with no lengthy time investment, something that I don’t fully understand. It’s painful to think about the idea of losing interest in yoga, especially because of the plans I’ve made for myself for the next couple of years. But I have to admit that it’s entirely possible. Which is, I think, at least half of the reason I haven’t gotten that tattoo yet. I’m still not sure that I will be able to define myself partially by yoga for the rest of the time that that tattoo will be visible on my hand. It hurts to admit that.

I realize, of course, that I am far more easily embarrassed than most other people in the world. (A certain mean ex took advantage of this painfully and often.) But it does embarrass me to get all excited about something and then for that interest to erode and lose ground until it’s gone. What would the readers of this blog think of me if I stopped writing about yoga and started writing about – I don’t know – upholstering? They would think I was a flake.

I intend to go back to writing, to reinvolve myself in the worlds I sketched before I started school and I was incapable of keeping up with my own ideas. I hope I can divide my life between yoga and writing, with space for knitting, film, hiking, and all the other things I cherish. I just wish I didn’t go so insane about something when I first fall in love with it. It makes for awkward holiday conversations.

“Don’t be like me. Salvation doesn’t lie within four walls. I’m too serious to be a dilettante and too much a dabbler to be a professional. Even the most miserable life is better than a sheltered existence in an organized society where everything is calculated and perfected.”

–La Dolce Vita

Riche héritier, héros de la grande guerre, AG est une tête brûlée et un séducteur. Il est joué par Jean-Pierre.

LETTERA DEL PORTAVOCE del presidente: «uno sfortunato errore»

ROMA – Una gaffe senza precedenti al G8. Tanto che George W. Bush è stato costretto a porgere le sue scuse a Berlusconi e al popolo italiano. Per quale motivo? Per capirlo, basta leggere la biografia del presidente del consiglio pubblicata nel ‘press kit’ che la Casa Bianca ha distribuito ai giornalisti al seguito del presidente americano.

Nel kit stampa della Casa Bianca «materiale insultante nei confronti del premier e degli italiani»

LA BIOGRAFIA – «Il premier italiano è stato uno dei più controversi leader nella storia di un paese conosciuto per corruzione governativa e vizio – si legge nel profilo -. Principalmente un uomo d’affari con massicce proprietà e grande influenza nei media internazionali. Berlusconi era considerato da molti un dilettante in politica che ha conquistato la sua importante carica solo grazie alla sua notevole influenza sui media nazionali finché non ha perso il posto nel 2006». La biografia pubblicata sul ‘press kit’ non si ferma qui: «Odiato da molti ma rispettato da tutti almeno per la sua ‘bella figura’ (in italiano nel testo) e la pura forza della sua volontà – afferma la biografia – Berlusconi ha trasformato il suo senso degli affari e la sua influenza in un impero personale che ha prodotto il governo italiano di più lunga durata assoluta e la sua posizione di persona più ricca del paese». La biografia di Berlusconi, che cita anche il fatto che da ragazzo «guadagnava i soldi organizzando spettacoli di marionette per cui faceva pagare il biglietto di ingresso», ricorda che il futuro premier italiano mentre studiava legge a Milano «si era messo a vendere aspirapolvere, a lavorare come cantante sulle navi da crociera, a fare ritratti fotografici e i compiti degli altri studenti in cambio di soldi». La Casa Bianca avrebbe prelevato la biografia di Berlusconi dalla ‘Encyclopedia of World Biography’ che risulta aggiornata al mese scorso.

LE SCUSE – In serata, il portavoce della Casa Bianca, Tony Fratto, ha inviato una lettera nella quale si scusa a nome della Casa Bianca: «Scrivo – si legge nella lettera – in relazione a certi documenti di background che sono stati distribuiti ai giornalisti in viaggio sull’Air Force One per il vertice del G8 che si tiene in Giappone. Una biografia non ufficiale del primo ministro italiano Berlusconi, inclusa nel materiale stampa, utilizza un linguaggio insultante sia nei confronti del primo ministro Berlusconi che del popolo italiano. I sentimenti espressi nella biografia non rappresentano le vedute del presidente Bush, del governo americano e degli americani. Ci scusiamo con l’Italia e con il primo ministro per questo errore davvero sfortunato. Come tutti coloro che hanno seguito il presidente Bush, il presidente ha per il premier Berlusconi e per tutti gli italiani la più alta stima e riguardo».