This link was furnished by a poster on the forums. Read the entire linked post. It’s excellent. Then, read how the whole post is dashed to the ground by a responder insinuating that the person who posted this must be a perp somehow because the post was “loaded with NLP”. After that, all the responders do is argue whether the post is “loaded with NLP” rather than openly discuss OS/EH. This happens all the time as perp infiltrators hijack threads to their liking.

I took my girlfriend to the terrible “Pearl Harbor” movie. In that movie, they detailed for the audience all the warning signs for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. My girlfriend, an apolitical person asked me a serious question: “How could we be so stupid?” I informed her of the theory that FDR wanted to get us into the war, but even I didn’t believe that one. I said it could’ve had something to do with politics. Isolationists, like Charles Lindbergh, held great sway at the time, and FDR would’ve surely lost re-election if he issued the order for a pre-emptive attack. But I digress, when someone says: “How could we be so stupid?” they are usually speaking in hindsight. They don’t believe that we would ever let something like that happen again. We have precedent now, don’t we? Enter political correctness. Who do the political correct crowd attack more than any other? Who is their target? Some would say schools, well that battle could be considered a total victory. How about the workplace? To my mind, that battle was won long ago. The next great battle is in the military. I think Fort Hood stand as a shining example that the military and the US government have been compromised by politcal correctness.

- L’humiliation ?

- Il est, assez vite, devenu évident pour moi que Jean-Christophe ne pourrait se contenter d’un seul garçon. C’est toujours un choc, une meurtrissure qui vous reste, longtemps, en travers de la tête, de découvrir que celui à qui vous faites confiance, à qui vous ouvrez chaque jour un peu plus votre porte et votre vie, s’est donné à quelqu’un d’autre, lui donne ce temps là, ce temps précieux du plaisir partagé, de l’abandon… (Un silence)
Jean-Christophe n’avait, pratiquement, connu personne avant moi. L’envie d’expériences nouvelles, la tentation des autres, le plaisir de la séduction allaient bientôt le rattraper. Ce garçon là, que je pensais – avec une belle naïveté – garder pour moi seul au titre de mes évidentes qualités personnelles… ce garçon je l’ai vu, en spectateur impuissant, se découvrir, se transformer, se révéler, enfin. De quoi tu te plains ?! Tu m’as déjà pour toi tout seul toute l’année ! me renvoya-t-il, sérieusement énervé, un jour où je lui demandais le pourquoi d’un tube de gel et de quelques préservatifs découverts dans une poche de son sac à dos… L’histoire continuait, cependant.

- Oh mais je vous crois ! Même si j’ai, déjà, mal pour vous…

- En vérité, je n’étais pas décidé à le quitter. Non. C’était plus fort que moi. Et puis il faut compter, aussi, avec le poids des habitudes et le confort de vivre avec des ornières vissées au cœur… Jean-Christophe oscillait, parfois ridicule, souvent joueur et touchant, entre un grand adolescent et un redoutable prédateur sexuel. Ne riez pas : ces bêtes là ont, sur moi et sur quelques autres, des pouvoirs insoupçonnables ! Ma tactique consistait à vouloir le suivre dans la spirale qui l’emmenait toujours un peu plus loin d’une relation exclusive, avec l’espoir, tout aussi ridicule et touchant, qu’en partageant ses fantasmes, qu’en me prêtant à son jeu, il me serait plus facile de contrôler la situation. C’est à l’occasion d’une virée à Bruxelles, avec pour seul objectif de découvrir un sauna réputé, que j’ai compris combien je pouvais être exclu de son territoire de chasse. Au long des escaliers, d’étages en cabines de repos, de regards fuyants en propositions directes, il s’était métamorphosé : un lion au milieu de l’arène, prenant des poses, se donnant l’air méchant, cultivant son « mystère » et sa « mâlitude ». Comme un requin luisant dans les eaux claires du désir collectif. Je le suivais, je le perdais de vue, je le regardais faire. Je n’étais pas un ami, je n’étais pas son amant. Je n’existais plus, tout simplement.

- Au moins, vous aurez appris à mieux vous connaître. Je suppose, évidemment, que le suivant a été davantage « sélectionné » en rapport avec votre sensibilité, avec votre besoin de stabilité…

- Je l’ai supposé, moi aussi.

- Les morsures d’un grand brun ne vous avaient donc pas suffi ?

- Le suivant était blond et timide : je ne pouvais tout de même pas me douter…

I was just messing around on the computer when I decided to google someone I used to know years ago after reading a post by a forum member who did some research and pretty much found the source of her stalking.

I used to know this man years ago and he was my friend (or so I thought) right before my stalking started. The person who introduced me to him I thought was a friend as well, or so I thought.  He was very kind to me and made me feel I could trust in him and confide in him. Later, a couple of years after the shit started in earnest, he “turned” on me and started treating his “friend” like shit, but, I figured that “everyone else” turns on me so it just fit the pattern.

Strangely enough he sort of remained in my life even though I had nothing to do with him as a friend. I’d see him all the time but he’d treat me worse and worse till it got to the point he would not even say “hi” to me. Of course, I blamed myself: I was too difficult, too fat, etc.

Turns out our boy is a MASON. Bet this mofo started the shit on me back in the 1980s. Why, I don’t know. He never acted angry at me and I don’t remember doing anything to him that would make him angry. There were rumors that he was having affairs outside his marriage with certain members of a vulnerable population, but, he never ever even kind of came on to me. He was a gentleman. I think I suspected he was “messing around” with another friend I had that “turned” on me not long after I knew this man but I never looked into it since she was not that good looking and he was kinda hot back in the day.  This lady had “connections” since her husband was in the entertainment industry in town, so, maybe our boy decided I was vulnerable and stupid enough not to catch on a conspiracy was hatching around me for years.  He was right.

This is not to say that all Masons are perps, but, as this man knew me around the beginning of my stalking and knew too much about me, and also since my grandfather was a high ranking Mason, I wonder.

Even back in the day when we were friendly I noticed he seemingly sabotaged me when I needed him the most but fluffed it off to him being unfamiliar with the situation I was having and not knowing what to do.  Now I wonder.  Otherwise, despite that, he was sweet and kind and cute and even though others sometimes complained about him I thought they had just gotten onto his bad side and were unfairly castigating him.  I was proud of my “favored” status with him.  HE MADE ME FEEL IMPORTANT when I went through my life being stepped on. I was so stupid.  And wrong.  He hated me from the start, I bet.

Let this be a warning to you all.  If someone is buttering you up, take another look.

He was no moral icon, having been married and divorced several times, but that had nothing to do with me.  I just decided he picked the wrong women or he had too many emotional issues for them.  Rather, he was a bastard to them and they left him.

I never saw it.  I was young, and he had a nice ass, and, even though I knew even then I was not attractive enough to get a piece of that ass (I was not saved yet) I valued his input as a friend.  My girlfriend back then was uglier than I, how did she get him, if she did?

If this boy wasn’t the main perp that “got things started” then he was one of the few at the top.  He knew things about me that became my main “protocol” over the years.  I had overlooked him.  Well, wasn’t it Agatha Christie that said the guilty one was the one that you suspected the least?

[Guest writer : Pollux, qui tient à signaler que la teneur hautement outrancière et mégalomane de cet article est sponsorisée par Benjamin Le Reilly.]

Le silence est pesant, l’éclairage au néon et le ronronnement des machines ne faisant qu’accentuer la tension de l’atmosphère. L’échange de regard est bref : défi, méfiance. Le vendeur RNAC sait qu’il vient de perdre le premier round et que la jeune étudiante étrangère en face de lui ne prendra pas le nouveau 17 pources d’Acer : elle veut un netbook ! C’est pour prendre les cours et se glisser dans le sac à main pouffiasse rose bonbon, pas pour jouer au dernier Resident Evil en dolby surround ! Et non, elle ne veut pas non plus MS Office à 99€, elle a Open Office. A quelques pas de là, anonyme parmi la foule, j’esquisse un sourire ! Good job ! Elle s’en sort bien la bougresse !

-Par contre, je vous mets notre pack anti-virus spécial netbook [et la suite MS Office] ! Non parce que les anti-virus [logiciels] gratuits, ça tourne pas sous les netbooks, s’pourça…

What the frack !?! Il vient d’accoler sa proie avec un mensonge si grossier qu’il en devient crédible ! La jeune fille, prise au dépourvue, hésite, et tombe dans le panneau. Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein ! Il est temps d’intervenir !

Y’a pas plus menteur qu’un vendeur RNAC. Si, peut-être un vendeur Darty. Certes, ils ne font que leur boulot d’esclavess sous-qualifiés, obéissant à des logiques mercantiles édictées par les marketeux sur-qualifiés des grandes marques d’informatiques, Ô combien philanthropes. Mais moi, au fond, bah ça me fait du mal de voir une petite vieille qui cherche un cadre photo numérique ressortir du magasin avec un HP 15 pouces sans vraiment avoir compris ce qui lui est arrivé (“Vous aurez vos photos en encore plus grand !”). C’est comme si je voyais quelqu’un s’envoyer des cocktails au GHB dans une soirée glauque sans pouvoir rien y faire (tiens le Reilly, ça va t’attirer encore plein de requests bizarre sur Google ça !!) Alors,pour tuer le temps entre la fin des cours et le début du ciné, je me pointe dans les grandes enseignes d’informatique, et je court-circuite les vendeurs !

-Et psst ! Y’a le même 50€ moins cher à Planet Saturn, juste en face !

Mais au fond, tout ceci inspire un brin de pitié pour ces pauvres vendeurs (juste un brin, promis !). Il faut se mettre à leur place : leur job, leur profession, le magasin même où ils travaillent est menacé à plus ou moins long terme par l’avènement d’un nouvel outil technologique : l’inteweb ! Qui sont-ils pour nous conseiller aujourd’hui alors que leurs moindres murmures seront contredits dans la seconde par une poignée de blogs et de forums hyper-spécialisés ? Au font, ils doivent ressentir un peu la même chose que le Pr. Grant lorsqu’il découvrit que son métier de paléontologue n’avait plus aucun sens avec l’avènement du Jurassik Park, l’extinction. La race des vendeurs dévoués et compétents est quasi-éteinte aujourd’hui, ne restent que des apprentis marketeux qui, dixit l’un d’eux, sont la pour « vendre des prix plutôt que des produits ». Et à nous de dépenser sans compter.

Mais que cette pointe de sentimentalisme mièvre ne vous trompe pas ! Cela fait un bien fou de tacler les vendeurs RNAC ! Vivement que le Reilly rentre sur Lyon que je l’initie, j’suis sûr qu’on pourrait en faire un bon sketch bien rôdé, ou au pire un plan drague original ! Parce que finalement, il ne s’agit pas que de faire son intéressant (mais un peu quand même ! Faut pas déconner !), mais de défendre la vérité, la justice et le geek way of life !

Demain, on parlera d’un  film qui sort mercredi.

Charles Krauthammer on the Obama Administration’s pathetic conduct of foreign affairs:

Henry Kissinger once said that the main job of Anatoly Dobrynin, the perennial Soviet ambassador to Washington, was to tell the Kremlin leadership that whenever they received a proposal from the United States that appeared disadvantageous to the United States, not to assume it was a trick.

No need for a Dobrynin today. The Russian leadership, hardly believing its luck, needs no interpreter to understand that when the Obama team clownishly rushes in bearing gifts and “reset” buttons, there is nothing ulterior, diabolical, clever or even serious behind it. It is amateurishness, wrapped in naivete, inside credulity. In short, the very stuff of Nobels.

It’s a stinging indictment based on the revelation during Secretary of State Clinton’s trip to Moscow this week that the Administration truly got nothing from Moscow in return for backstabbing Eastern Europe over missile defense – nothing, that is, other than a humiliating slap in the face.

And why anyone seriously thinks Hillary is more qualified than Obama is beyond me, particularly when it comes to foreign affairs. During the campaign, she looked accomplished only by comparison to the utter naif who eventually beat her to the nomination. Considered on her own… Well, her performance since taking office says all that’s needed.

Our nation’s foreign policy is in the hands of New Left, neo-McGovernite incompetents who would make Henry Wallace proud. It’s going to be a long few years until 2012, and I only hope disaster doesn’t strike in the meantime.

Ce n’est pas vraiment une nouveauté, puisqu’il y a un petit moment que ce mickey raté,  espèce d’écureuil-mousquetaire, rival et peut-être inspirateur du sublime TRONY, pollue l’environnement urbain.

Pour les plus pervers, on peut voir la mascotte gesticuler et pisser en flash ici

Il n’y a pas que moi qui me penche avec complaisance sur les accidents de la com.

Le sympathique blog “la quincaillerie du Centre” a dégainé plus rapidement que moi face à l’événement de la rentrée : l’apparition d’un  “mickey” , ambassadeur (comme on dit dans les powerpoint marketing) de la Foire du Trône, le royal goret TRONY.  On est consterné par la servile mentalité des décideurs qui, remarquant que la parc Astérix avait sa mascotte, et que Disnayland Paris avait un Mickey,  imaginèrent naïvement que si un personnage peut donner naissance un parc d’attractions, l’inverse doit être possible. Le personnage est immonde, goret bipède revétu de jeans et d’un t-shirt sur lequel son nom est taggué en style street culture pour faire jeune et popu, pourvu d’une couronne pour justifier le nom du parc et montrer que c’est lui le chef ; de plus notre ami TRONY, au nom téléphoné, souffrant déjà d’une absence totale de fonction et de légitimité pose dans une attitude complétement désœuvrée, à tel point qu’il ressemble à un d’épouvantail.

Comment ne pas penser, devant ce style contrefaçon chinoise, aux mascottes des paquets de céréales chocolatées vendues chez Lidl ?

Le personnage a inspiré une sympathique dessinatrice du dimanche, La lutine, pour un comic strip dont voici la première planche :

La suite ici.

Abject. C’est tout ce que j’ai envie de dire de cette affiche qui commet des attentats à la pudeur et au goût à chaque coin de correspondance. Pauvre Marie-Anne Chazel, plus très fraîche, exis-transformée, photoshopée par un handicapé de la souris… Est-ce bien une comédie que l’on promeut ou une performance artistique vouée à susciter le malaise ? On la sent quand même plus à l’aise dans son deuxième accoutrement.

Depuis la fenêtre d’un véhicule. On aurait aimé que le détourage des cheveux de la fillette file comme le fromage. Notez les lignes dues à une imprimante à jet fatiguée.

On est bien en peine de commenter cette production graphique naïve et malsaine à la fois, ni quel sentiment elle est censée susciter chez le passant. En tout cas le collectif inter-associatif”existrans” qui lutte contre la “psychiatrisation” du transformisme vient de marquer un point contre son camp.

Monstre graphique croisée dans une station service le long de l’A4. Il trônait dans l’indifférence générale. Les yeux rougis de larmes cachés derrière des lunettes de ski, ce héros inconnu a adressé à mon objectif un sourire vainqueur, dans un sursaut de dignité ; mais il n’a pu cacher ce stigmate de ses échecs : un front que les soucis ont silloné de chevrons.

Notez le modelé des drapés et la délicatesse des carnations.

Ce qui est amusant, avec cette immonde réclame croisée dans le métro, c’est qu’on peut s’amuser à reconstituer, comme le médecin légiste, la suite d’incidents qui a accouché du monstre. Une chose est sûre, peu de gens ont travaillé sur le projet, sinon il se serait trouvé parmi eux, en vertu des lois de la probabilité, une personne alphabétisée pour signaler que, lorsqu’il s’agit de personnes humaines, on n’emploie pas le verbe “amener” mais “emmener.”

Va aussi falloir amener la vache à l'taureau, vindiou.

Ceci posé, j’imagine très bien des personnes haut placées chez “Sky Europe” fantasmer d’attacher à leur boutique une égérie people, à l’imitation des marques de luxe, et imposer cette contrainte à l’agence. Plus les cadres supérieurs sont grossiers, plus ils aiment, par exemple, choisir eux-mêmes les modèles pour le shooting, chose très justement décrite dans “99F”.Le genre petit patron qui, à la cinquantaine, s’offre une poule de luxe… des pays de l’est.

Une fois l’égérie choisie, on peut deviner qu’ils ont cherché en vain une façon de la rattacher à leur message commercial. La solution est d’une simplicité proverbiale : identifier la blonde avec un avion. Hélas ! S’ils avaient connu l’illustrateur d’Orangina, ils auraient sûrement créé une délicieuse femme-avion. A défaut, ils se sont contentés d’un collage improbable d’où aucune intention droite ne ressort.

On pourrait disserter à l’envi sur le processus de création alambiqué qui a poussé à utiliser un cartouche en forme de post-it mais ce serait faire trop d’honneur à une image qui commence à me fatiguer.

Time to order new busses: it’s getting crowded under the ones the White House currently has.  This time the clowns have dropped the ball on closing Gitmo

Greg Craig, the top in-house lawyer for President Barack Obama, is getting the blame for botching the strategy to shut down Guantanamo Bay prison by January — so much so that he’s expected to leave the White House in short order.  

But sources familiar with the process believe Craig is being set-up as the fall guy and say the blame for missing the deadline extends well beyond him. 

Instead, it was a widespread breakdown on the political, legislative, policy and planning fronts that contributed to what is shaping up as one of Obama’s most high-profile setbacks, these people say.

Hilarious bungling.  Might as well move the White House to Hollywood where image is everything. Is this any funnier, or more pathetic than the faux Grecian temple BO erected in his own honor back in the primaries?

I am eagerly awaiting the spin that shows why this is different than “B-b-b-but Bush’s” foto op on the carrier

Was I not listening to the bazillion times my mother responded to me with “Life’s unfair – get used to it!”

As the travesties of injustice build and gain momentum, I am child-like indignance, mounting frustration, bordering on anger.  As I begin to slowly comprehend the “crazy” people of the world who just snap one day, having had far more than they can live with peacefully in ignorance…and more poo after poo piled on their head. Far more than they could ever shovel through or shower off! 

I do not have it so badly.  People are people, with their self serving ulterior motives and it’s-all-about-me attitudes.  Of course…that is the way of the world and I confess on occasion, it is my tendency as well.

My lesson here has been in trust…do not trust…anyone.  The more you find yourself buliding trust in another, the faster you should run from them and maintain an attitude of suspicion. People are not innately trustworthy.  They aren’t to blame; it’s just human nature.  The modern day version of survival of the fittest.  Only those whom can create trust with others, while simultaneously caring for their own best interest, are the very people sitting comfortably in the cat bird seats.  They know they have the edge over the naivete and desperation of the rest of us.  And apparently tunnel vision, while cruising through life, is by far the best perspective.  I’m going to be a much happier person if I can tell myself that stepping on someone’s toe in the grocery store was that person’s fault…after all, they got under my foot!!  Right?  It isn’t that I should be watching where I’m going, taking others around me into account.  No, it’s more fitting that I just lolly about my own way and righteously expect others to stay out of my way.  It’s perfectly appropriate for me to sneer and/or swear at them under my breath should they choose to not follow this rule.

Likewise, friends who screw you over for their own gain cannot be blamed.  Only the fool who puts themselves in a close enough proximity to get screwed over can be blamed.  They are the one’s going the wrong way down the one-wa streets of the tunnel of life…it’s walls plastered with indignant red graffiti screaming, “ME, ME, ME”  “It’s my world, the rest of you just live in it!” “ME, ME, ME” “Don’t forget to look out for number one – ME”

I realize that my growing resentment and frustration results merely from the silly presumption that we are morally responsible to the other human beings on this earth.  It is my fault after all.  If I were going the correct way down this tunnel, were my tunnel marked with the appropriate graffiti, then I would not get under other’s feet on their way through minding their own business…others would get under mine of course!  Perhaps then, I should even be completely unaware that I’ve trampled anyone and the few who dare to point out that I did, I would release my furiously righteous indignance that they had the nerve to get under my foot.

I am a slow learner, but I do believe I’m starting to learn this ugly truth.  Kindness does not get the right-of-way on these streets and tunnels.  Kindness merely gets underfoot of the righteous people doing their own thing, watching their own backs for survival of the fittest, which will clearly never include the kind-people.  They get trampled first..and while they are busy apologizing for getting under another’s foot (GASP- the NERVE!), they get blindsided by the next truck cruising along looking out for Number One.

Will I fully comprehend and have the ability to utilize this lesson in life before I’m 80?  Or am I going to continue to insist that since I have it morally correct, then I should continue to ignore reality and merely plan for the high cost of regular, chronic medical attention to help  me put all my pieces back together after the tramplings?

Someday, I will learn.  I must.  Someday, I will scrub away all the graffiti of kindness mantras plastered all over my tunnel and replace them with screaming reminders of ME!

President Obama believes his good press far too often, trusts his advisors’ agreement as a sign of genuine critical analysis, and believes the American people are too unenlightened to truly understand his methods. All three realities push the President further into an altered state of worldview that are having disastrous impact on the life of average Ameicans.

From The American Spectator:

The comments after the AS article are interesting as well.

A year ago today, I found out that I was, in fact, happy.

Not that I suddenly became happy. It’s just that, at that moment, I realized that I had reverted back to my happy self. After about twelve years of forgetting how to be happy.

Here’s the backstory before the story itself…

In the summer of 1987 began the first period of intense happiness. At age 15, I became happy. Not joyous, pleased, chirpy… Profoundly happy. Happiness as a process in which I was able to cope with almost anything. Every second of my life, I felt good. Even when I was sad or hurt. There was an underlying feeling of well-being. Serenity. Then.

It started very simply, but the start of that process was the end of another one. For a few years prior to that moment, I was having something that others might have considered a somewhat typical “adolescence crisis” but which was, in my mind, a full-fledged existential crisis. I was literally digging into existential issues through tools like philosophy classics and existentialist literature. As I was reading, say, de Beauvoir, Heidegger, Vian, Maupassant, Camus, Descartes, Sartre, Nietzsche, and Freud, my own approach to Life, the Universe, and Everything began to emerge. It may seem that my reading was necessarily naïve and superficial, since I was a teen at the time. But, to this day, I feel awed at how profound the process was. Nowadays, I can’t read as deeply as I did then. I understand most of what I read, of course, and it’s much easier for me to read stuff which is deemed difficult. But my “comprehension” isn’t nearly as thorough as it was then.

I didn’t necessarily feel unhappy, at the time. But I was going through a specific kind of crisis. I felt troubled by the fact that I was unable to make sense of the many things about which I cared, including such “trivial” things as the meaning of life.

Then, things changed rather radically. It all made sense. In the sense that life not making sense suddenly made a lot of sense.

This, to me, was a lesson from one of the least-acknowledged existentialists: Boris Vian. Vian, who died almost fifty years ago, isn’t usually considered a philosopher. But I read him as one. I gained as much insight through Vian’s work as others might through Foucault’s œuvre. To me, there was (and still is) deep wisdom in quotes like this one, my favourite:

«Doué d’une naïveté maladive, il vivait plus que les autres.»

“Compulsively naive, he was living more than others were.”

Not sure I read this quote before or after that 1987 moment, but Vian was clearly at the back of my mind as I first found out my happiness, on that fateful day.

Here’s how it happened.

I had been spending some time in Switzerland with my father, his companion, and her daughter. The first part of that trip was mostly devoted to social activities which were somewhat dismissed as «mondanités» (“fashionable gatherings,” “niceties”…). To me, these were a period of fascinating discovery, especially in terms of food and drinks. As a proto-hedonist, I was “tasting” life in a new way. We were also having an intense social life, which suited my sense of social well-being. As a child, I was often ostracized, despite my sociocentrism. This period, during the summer of 1987, was an occasion for me to feel accepted.

The second phase of our Swiss stay was devoted to hard work. My father and I were collaborating on setting up some things for my grandmother. My father’s mother is one of my rolemodels and the notion that I was contributing to her well-being certainly played a part.

So is the fact that I discovered coffee at that time. This one may seem, again, trivial. But it clearly had an impact on my life. I can live without coffee (I’ve done so, for extended periods of time), but being a coffee lover is an important part of my life. That summer, coffee was a way to get a “boost” so that we could work efficiently after waking up at dawn, my father and I. But it also became a part of me: my hedonism, my social life, my intellectual stimulation, my personality.

Something I haven’t thought about much until today but which was probably significant as the onset of my first happy phase is the fact that I was able to spend some quality time with my father. In the US, the stereotypical equivalent would be the father-son baseball session. In a Swiss context, it’s fitting that it had to do with work.

So, the time I spent in Switzerland had prepared me for something. I didn’t fully realize it at the time, but it was there.

Switzerland helped me be happy. And I have the t-shirt to prove it.

What’s funny is that, at the time, I was suffering from a series of ailments which were later diagnosed as hepatitis A. A few years prior to this, I got mononucleosis. My memories from that time have more to do with the comfort of sleeping all the time than with any malaise. My hepatitis was fairly similar.

And, as I got back from Switzerland, I got what I tend to call an “airplane cold,” a common cold which comes from the closed environment associated with air travel. Though I know it makes no sense in terms of epidemiology, I tend to think of “airplane cold” as if it were a specific type of virus.

But I digress…

I got back to Laval, Qc, with this benign cold. And I felt, generally, really tired. Possibly because of the hepatitis, jetlag, and the hard work I had been doing over the latter part of my Swiss summer.

So I slept for something like 28 hours over the course of two days. Seriously. I don’t remember the specifics but I remember waking up after something like 16 hours to do a few things before going back to sleep for another twelve hours or so.

When I finally got up, I felt very rested, obviously. But I still had that cold.

While I was in Switzerland, my mother was in Greece. From there, she had brought back a blue and white striped cotton sweater that I tend to associate with mariners. It’s quite possible that those sweaters aren’t typically worn by mariners, in Greece. But it was my «pull de marin grec».

This was during the dog days of summer and I had a cold. Based on an idea that sweating is a way to get rid of some symptoms of the cold, I decided to wear my sweater as I went out of the house to run a few errands in downtown Montreal. Though it was made out of cotton, that sweater looked much warmer than it actually was.

So, there I was, in downtown Montreal, wearing a sweater on a very hot day. As I was walking on Crescent toward St. Catherine, I remember thinking that others might find it strange to see someone in this attire. Maybe someone even looked at me in a strange way. That, I don’t remember.

But I do remember my realization: I simply didn’t care about people thinking about me as strange. After all, this notion wasn’t hurtful to them. The only their opinion might affect me is if I let it affect me. And I really didn’t mind it if their opinion of me were based on how strange I looked. My empathy for humankind was even enhanced in this whole notion that I was allowed to be strange. I wouldn’t try very actively to be as strange as possible, but it was then possible for me to take people’s opinion of me with “philosophy.”

Which made me realize that I was happy. I felt “good in my skin” («bien dans ma peau»).

And I remained happy until the summer of 1996.

This 1987-1996 backstory I’ve been telling on several occasions. In a way, this is almost the “canonical” version, even though I don’t care for canons.

But there’s more.

Briefly on the 1996-2008 period….

I didn’t really become unhappy. At least, it didn’t feel as if I were unhappy because I was “too busy being happy all the time.” But I forgot how to be happy. For twelve years. From the period surrounding my 24th birthday to a few months after my 36th.

Which gets us back to September 23rd, 2008, at 10:24. The point at which I broadcast the fact that I got my groove back.

What’s the story for that one? Come to think of it, I’m not sure this is the right time to expand on it much. But it does involve a sense of purpose, despite all signs to the contrary. It also involves coffee. And a set of social relations. Contrary to the “Greek sweater” episode, the triggering event wasn’t that straightforward. It was actually a set of circumstances including a colloquium on intersubjectivity in ethnographic disciplines, contacts at Café Myriade and at Brasserie Benelux, the Podcamp Montreal unconference,  a teaching workshop, and a bunch of amazing people.

The awesome thing is that I found my soulmate almost exactly four months after finding my personal happiness. Which means that, in the same week, I get to celebrate our eight months “anniversary” (I call it “mensuversary,” because it’s in months) and my happiness anniversary.

Who could ask for anything more?

Christopher Kane's summer 2010 collection debuts in London

I happend to be reading a fashion review today in the New York Times. (No I don’t watch America’s Top Model or Project Runway. I promise.) The star of the show was designer Christopher Kane, whose collection, he says, was inspired by Jonestown. Pretty dark, huh? The Times writes that Kane managed to infuse his dresses “with the sense of innocence on the cusp of broken dreams.”

That got me to thinking. Is innocence sexy?

It is, isn’t it? But there is a thin line between innocence and naïveté – and a thin line between selling an image of innocence versus selling the image of innocence soon to be spoiled.

Looking at these photos, it strikes me that the image of beauty that is untouched, virginal, almost unreachable CAN be incredibly captivating – if it is a sophisticated, confident and wise kind of innocence, a willful innocence. That’s what chastity at its best is really about.

Spears on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1999

But I think there is another, more naïve, image of innocence that our culture frequently presents us. It’s the kind of innocence Britney Spears embodied when she first hit the big time – Telletubby in arm, pouty lips, dripping with a hyper-sexual undertone that makes the “innocence” nothing more than pretense. It’s a turn-on, to be sure, but a cheaper, more temporary one.

The first kind of allure is shrewd and hard-to-get, the other cheap and naïve. I can see shades of both in Kane’s collection.

The shrewd kind of innocence is truly captivating. It is willful, powerful, and worth giving everything one has in order to win it over.