The other day I was feeling kinda snivel-y and wondered if anyone was out there reading. I have to say that y'all helped turn my frown upside down, campers. And I wanted to make sure I answered back to those of you who commented, so;
ael: I appreciate the shoutout, and I do know you're there - I always get a lot from your observations.
Charles: I do understand, and your other priority needs to be staying healthy. Hope you're feeling better.
Pluto: Good points, which I why I had to go with lard. You can't NOT have something to say about lard. But I'm as vain as the next guy, so even a "Hey, nice post, liked it" is a worthwhile comment. Let's me know I'm within my Probable Error of Range (see Jim's comment, below).
Paul: Ta.
Jim: Check and rog. The problem I have when there's no comments is the lack of adjustments - I'm not sure if I'm in the right grid square. OF course I do this to entertain myself, but I also try to make it readable for you all. Unless I get something - even a "round unobserved" - it's hard for me to figure out if I'm doing things right or just completely messed up...
Barry: Point well taken. Thing is, I feel like I've been on a blogging roll (blogroll?) lately. But the lack of comments made me question whether I'd lost the mojo or not...
Lisa: (blush)
Don Francisco: Check back in April and May, then, when it's All-Scotland All The Time. April's DB is Culloden, May's is a little known fight from the Civil War called Auldearn. The former shows what happens when you have no real strategy and make the stupid mistake of letting your enemy maneuver you into a decisive battle you don't want, the latter shows that you can, as Sun Tzu said, win 100 battles and still lose if you don't know your enemy and yourself.
EGrise: Thanks - encouragment is always good.
Up next: the Decisive Battle (or Campaign, perhaps, is a better word) for February - Tet, 1968.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
Hegemon's Dilemma
"As his troubles waxed, he became increasingly authoritarian and unapproachable, content to be set apart. (American general X) was not the only one who had difficulty making an appointment. Officials waited weeks to see him... By keeping rivals off balance through a technique of "fear and favor"...he appeared strong and indispensable, but he did not know how to make a government...his mind was narrow and his education limited."
"His most serious handicap was the lack of competent government servants. He never allowed a really able man to reach an important post lest he become too strong. Because he made loyalty rather than ability the criterion of service he was surrounded by mediocrities."
"The (ruling coalition) never succeeded in really uniting the country. Aware that the past had left too many pockets of doubtful loyalty, (he) could not trust all his armies. The opportunity for social change passed him by. Dependent more than ever on the (warlords)...he could not afford to antagonize them by reform measures. He governed by survival and ignored what he wanted to ignore. As a chief of a system without an exit he was, as (American general X) wrote, "in a hell of a fix."
"The (U.S.) President could see no alternative to support for the (foreign leader). Fearing a vacuum after the defeat of (the external enemy) and repeatedly advised that only (foreign leader) could hold (the country) together, he gave him support in the form of a blank check. He was continually warned by (the country's) friends, who from sincere or self-interested motives wanted to get aid to (the country), that any slackening of support would lead to the collapse of the (capital city) government."
"In a typical alarm of this kind, Dr. (conservative leader) of the (large conservative political organization), informed the President that (the country's) morale was "deteriorating rapidly", the "defeatist element was gaining support" and "danger grows of (the leader's) losing power and of a compromise between the (foreign country) and (the enemy power)."
So...is this Rajiv Chandrasekaran writing about Hamid Karzai and the Marjeh Offensive, 2010, or Barbara Tuchman writing about Chiang Kai-shek and the fall of Burma, 1942?
(Cross-posted to MilPub)
"His most serious handicap was the lack of competent government servants. He never allowed a really able man to reach an important post lest he become too strong. Because he made loyalty rather than ability the criterion of service he was surrounded by mediocrities."
"The (ruling coalition) never succeeded in really uniting the country. Aware that the past had left too many pockets of doubtful loyalty, (he) could not trust all his armies. The opportunity for social change passed him by. Dependent more than ever on the (warlords)...he could not afford to antagonize them by reform measures. He governed by survival and ignored what he wanted to ignore. As a chief of a system without an exit he was, as (American general X) wrote, "in a hell of a fix."
"The (U.S.) President could see no alternative to support for the (foreign leader). Fearing a vacuum after the defeat of (the external enemy) and repeatedly advised that only (foreign leader) could hold (the country) together, he gave him support in the form of a blank check. He was continually warned by (the country's) friends, who from sincere or self-interested motives wanted to get aid to (the country), that any slackening of support would lead to the collapse of the (capital city) government."
"In a typical alarm of this kind, Dr. (conservative leader) of the (large conservative political organization), informed the President that (the country's) morale was "deteriorating rapidly", the "defeatist element was gaining support" and "danger grows of (the leader's) losing power and of a compromise between the (foreign country) and (the enemy power)."So...is this Rajiv Chandrasekaran writing about Hamid Karzai and the Marjeh Offensive, 2010, or Barbara Tuchman writing about Chiang Kai-shek and the fall of Burma, 1942?
(Cross-posted to MilPub)
Sunday, February 14, 2010
In Praise of Women II: The Feast of Valentine
Back in January I posted a brief discursion on the subject of women as they appear to me speaking both as a man in general and this man in particular. I wanted to talk about how I perceive the differences - and similarities - of the genders, starting with the notion that we are somehow fundamentally more different than similar.
Because this seems to be a very common male assumption, the notion that we're some sort of raging red Martian, all hair and tumescence, and they are some sort of silky Venusian, wanting us to use a napkin and put the seat down afterwards. Or, more simply, that there IS an "us" and a "them", and (since we're male and something like 6,000 years of Western civilization has told us that we are the lords of creation and masters of all we survey) "our" way must and always shall be better.
Hell, some jackhole even made an expensive commercial about it:But I cannot find in my personal experience any real systematic evidence that women and men are somehow different at the cerebral level. For every stereotypical "manly" man I have known men with a surfeit of the "womanly" virtues: talkative, intuitive, emotionally open and sensitive to nuance, romantic to the point of foolishness. And for every "womanly" woman I have met another who is shrewd, calculating, opportunist, direct, rude, callous, efficient or gruff.
I find that women's minds are interesting as the people within them are interesting. I find female fools no more bearable than the ones with chest hair; I find smart, witty, gifted women interesting and likable for reasons having nothing to do with their reproductive capacity or their silhouette.
But...this is where the difference creeps in.
I have many men friends whose company I find entertaining, enjoyable, stimulating. And while I enjoy spending time with them, that's as far as it goes.
But a woman whose company is enjoyable also has the ability to make me desire a more intimate companionship, and therein lies the mystery.
Because, while I can appreciate the beauty and grace of a man's body it does not bring about anything more. But I find the simplest things about the physicality of women delightful.
It may be the strength of her fingers, or in the shining fall of her hair. It may be in the way she laughs, or the play of expression on her face. Many women are more gracile and finely made than we males are, and I have always enjoyed the more gently rounded point of shoulder and fullness of hip, the slimness of ankle and wrist. The lush curve from ribcage through the hollow of waist into the rich embonpoint of thigh and buttocks is heartbreakingly beautiful; the soft swell of bosom and belly is an ancient fertility made flesh.
(I should add here that I have been...I have to use the word "accused", although I don't really get it as an accusation...accused of liking a certain fullness to a woman's appearance. Well. I'm not the product of a culture that finds obesity alluring, but I will simply reply that I revel in a woman that looks like a woman. After all,
Women come in many shapes, sizes, hues and dispositions. If you treasure women, I insist that there is nothing intrinsically unpleasant about any one of them.)
A woman, just like a man, can make herself unpleasant with anger, pettiness, or greed. Of course she can. Gluttony can bury her in grossness; vanity or social fear can waste her away to a frightful and ugly thinness. But from the time the menarche has ripened her into woman's estate until senescence shrivels her sexual appeal into barrenness, I find that there is something I find winsome, something appealing in every woman who combines a heart, a soul and a wit.
And I find it a little sad and a lot more enraging that we - particularly here in the industrial West - have made a fetish of some sort of skinny but buxom, depilated, glossy, mindlessly available sexbot. As if the physical appear of a woman should be restricted to and aroused only by some anorexic swimsuit model's silicon-inflated frontispiece.
How petty! How truly, grimly, limply unimaginitively small! To - not just forget but actively deny - that the magic is not in some sort of perfect pink-tipped parabola of some laboratory-crafted, airbrushed idealized paradigm of a breast, but in the glance from under her jumble of dark bangs, in the imagined tang of the sweat of hard work you know you'll taste when you press your lips to her temple and feel the fast, hard pulse beneath that tells you her heart has sped to match the rhythm of your own.
That the magic isn't in the touch of some flawless expanse of marble thigh or arch of fatless back, but in the play of the light upon the imperfect skin of the one whose intimacy makes you gasp and shudder, whose nearness only makes you burn with the need to extinguish the last atom of distance between you, to be around and within and encompassed by the scent, the touch, the rough, smooth, cool, lambent heat of the woman whose simple existence sets you alight as balefire in the night.
There IS a difference between men and women. And the difference IS primarily physical, and the sad thing is that we men, generations of us, have spent those generations building ourselves idols to a rag and a bone and a hank of hair and worshiping it without a hell of a lot of us ever remotely understanding what it is about that woman that seduces us.
Or being too simple to ever get past the obvious...
Sometimes I wonder how we ever manage to succeed in finding women to spend any real time with us at all.
And on the feast of St. Valentine I should add to my own love:
"'TIS true, 'tis day; what though it be?
O, wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise because 'tis light?
Did we lie down because 'twas night?
Love, which in spite of darkness brought us hither,
Should in despite of light keep us together."
J. Donne
Da mi basia mille, amadis, da mi basia mille.
Because this seems to be a very common male assumption, the notion that we're some sort of raging red Martian, all hair and tumescence, and they are some sort of silky Venusian, wanting us to use a napkin and put the seat down afterwards. Or, more simply, that there IS an "us" and a "them", and (since we're male and something like 6,000 years of Western civilization has told us that we are the lords of creation and masters of all we survey) "our" way must and always shall be better.
Hell, some jackhole even made an expensive commercial about it:But I cannot find in my personal experience any real systematic evidence that women and men are somehow different at the cerebral level. For every stereotypical "manly" man I have known men with a surfeit of the "womanly" virtues: talkative, intuitive, emotionally open and sensitive to nuance, romantic to the point of foolishness. And for every "womanly" woman I have met another who is shrewd, calculating, opportunist, direct, rude, callous, efficient or gruff.
I find that women's minds are interesting as the people within them are interesting. I find female fools no more bearable than the ones with chest hair; I find smart, witty, gifted women interesting and likable for reasons having nothing to do with their reproductive capacity or their silhouette.
But...this is where the difference creeps in.
I have many men friends whose company I find entertaining, enjoyable, stimulating. And while I enjoy spending time with them, that's as far as it goes.
But a woman whose company is enjoyable also has the ability to make me desire a more intimate companionship, and therein lies the mystery.Because, while I can appreciate the beauty and grace of a man's body it does not bring about anything more. But I find the simplest things about the physicality of women delightful.
It may be the strength of her fingers, or in the shining fall of her hair. It may be in the way she laughs, or the play of expression on her face. Many women are more gracile and finely made than we males are, and I have always enjoyed the more gently rounded point of shoulder and fullness of hip, the slimness of ankle and wrist. The lush curve from ribcage through the hollow of waist into the rich embonpoint of thigh and buttocks is heartbreakingly beautiful; the soft swell of bosom and belly is an ancient fertility made flesh.
(I should add here that I have been...I have to use the word "accused", although I don't really get it as an accusation...accused of liking a certain fullness to a woman's appearance. Well. I'm not the product of a culture that finds obesity alluring, but I will simply reply that I revel in a woman that looks like a woman. After all,
Women come in many shapes, sizes, hues and dispositions. If you treasure women, I insist that there is nothing intrinsically unpleasant about any one of them.)A woman, just like a man, can make herself unpleasant with anger, pettiness, or greed. Of course she can. Gluttony can bury her in grossness; vanity or social fear can waste her away to a frightful and ugly thinness. But from the time the menarche has ripened her into woman's estate until senescence shrivels her sexual appeal into barrenness, I find that there is something I find winsome, something appealing in every woman who combines a heart, a soul and a wit.
And I find it a little sad and a lot more enraging that we - particularly here in the industrial West - have made a fetish of some sort of skinny but buxom, depilated, glossy, mindlessly available sexbot. As if the physical appear of a woman should be restricted to and aroused only by some anorexic swimsuit model's silicon-inflated frontispiece.
How petty! How truly, grimly, limply unimaginitively small! To - not just forget but actively deny - that the magic is not in some sort of perfect pink-tipped parabola of some laboratory-crafted, airbrushed idealized paradigm of a breast, but in the glance from under her jumble of dark bangs, in the imagined tang of the sweat of hard work you know you'll taste when you press your lips to her temple and feel the fast, hard pulse beneath that tells you her heart has sped to match the rhythm of your own.
That the magic isn't in the touch of some flawless expanse of marble thigh or arch of fatless back, but in the play of the light upon the imperfect skin of the one whose intimacy makes you gasp and shudder, whose nearness only makes you burn with the need to extinguish the last atom of distance between you, to be around and within and encompassed by the scent, the touch, the rough, smooth, cool, lambent heat of the woman whose simple existence sets you alight as balefire in the night.
There IS a difference between men and women. And the difference IS primarily physical, and the sad thing is that we men, generations of us, have spent those generations building ourselves idols to a rag and a bone and a hank of hair and worshiping it without a hell of a lot of us ever remotely understanding what it is about that woman that seduces us.Or being too simple to ever get past the obvious...
Sometimes I wonder how we ever manage to succeed in finding women to spend any real time with us at all.
And on the feast of St. Valentine I should add to my own love:
"'TIS true, 'tis day; what though it be?O, wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise because 'tis light?
Did we lie down because 'twas night?
Love, which in spite of darkness brought us hither,
Should in despite of light keep us together."
J. Donne
Da mi basia mille, amadis, da mi basia mille.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
What IS the Internet for?
I'm thrilled that my little guy is getting excited about playing soccer.
He's slowly getting the fever from me, and he's all atwitter after finding me filling out his application for this year's Timbers Kid's Club.
So we're in the process of trying to find him a soccer club. With luck, the coach there can stop him toe-punching the ball. Lord knows I can't, and I've tried since he was a toddler and should have been old enough to know better.
But just as an observation and not like I was actually looking for it, but why the hell is it so easy to find tentacle rape porn
on the Internet and so friggin' difficult to find contact information for a U-7 soccer club in St. Johns, Oregon, especially since I know there is one, it's listed on the OSA website but the "link" leads you to some sort of useless dead end?
Dammit, maybe the internet really IS for porn.
I mean, your search engine can turn up about forty zillion places to find the most bizarro perversions imaginable - not that I'd knocking bizarro perversions; each to their own is my philosophy, so long as nobody gets hurt and everybody involved is a consenting adult - but finding something as simple as the phone number, address or contact person for a group of people in charge of a kid's soccer club?
It's like finding the Seventh City of Cibola.
I know, I know, "The Internet is for porn". Sigh. And let's not even go into "Tentacle Grape".
I suspect there's some sort of deeper economic and social observation to be made here, but my mind is so stunned by the whole Tentacle Grape thing I honestly cannot encompass it.
I'll have to go to Chinese New Year and check back in later...
He's slowly getting the fever from me, and he's all atwitter after finding me filling out his application for this year's Timbers Kid's Club.
So we're in the process of trying to find him a soccer club. With luck, the coach there can stop him toe-punching the ball. Lord knows I can't, and I've tried since he was a toddler and should have been old enough to know better.
But just as an observation and not like I was actually looking for it, but why the hell is it so easy to find tentacle rape porn
on the Internet and so friggin' difficult to find contact information for a U-7 soccer club in St. Johns, Oregon, especially since I know there is one, it's listed on the OSA website but the "link" leads you to some sort of useless dead end?
Dammit, maybe the internet really IS for porn.
I mean, your search engine can turn up about forty zillion places to find the most bizarro perversions imaginable - not that I'd knocking bizarro perversions; each to their own is my philosophy, so long as nobody gets hurt and everybody involved is a consenting adult - but finding something as simple as the phone number, address or contact person for a group of people in charge of a kid's soccer club?
It's like finding the Seventh City of Cibola.
I know, I know, "The Internet is for porn". Sigh. And let's not even go into "Tentacle Grape".
I suspect there's some sort of deeper economic and social observation to be made here, but my mind is so stunned by the whole Tentacle Grape thing I honestly cannot encompass it. I'll have to go to Chinese New Year and check back in later...
Friday, February 12, 2010
Last Stand
The original is here. I missed it during the game, but have run into it since then as one of the "best commercials" from this years SB (and as an aside, since when did the Big Game become as much about the commercials as the onfield play? Oh, yeah, maybe since there have been so many truly sucky Superbowls...).
I watched the commercial and thought it was just whiny and stereotypical; boy has to do "girly" things for his girl but he gets to sport his woody behind the wheel? Gee, that's original, Dodge. Get over yourselves, guys. Get a friggin' Chevy Nova or whatever and just drive to the damn grocery store. Your ride has nothing to do with your pecker, get it? And for God's sake quit whining about your girlfriend. She's willing to put up with YOUR shit without whining about it.
Or not.Heh. Get some, gals.
I watched the commercial and thought it was just whiny and stereotypical; boy has to do "girly" things for his girl but he gets to sport his woody behind the wheel? Gee, that's original, Dodge. Get over yourselves, guys. Get a friggin' Chevy Nova or whatever and just drive to the damn grocery store. Your ride has nothing to do with your pecker, get it? And for God's sake quit whining about your girlfriend. She's willing to put up with YOUR shit without whining about it.
Or not.Heh. Get some, gals.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)