Smarty pants

Just took an online IQ test at Tickle...while watching Superman Returns...and I'm 131. Pretty close to my usual. Puts me in the top 2%, brainwise...even though I was watching Superman Returns :))

"Your Intellectual Type is Insightful Linguist. This means you are highly intelligent and have the natural fluency of a writer and the visual and spatial strengths of an artist. Those skills contribute to your creative and expressive mind."

But as my ex never tired of reminding me, you can be really smart and really stupid at the same time, and that your intellectual quotient and your emotional quotient are not necessary connected.

Maybe that part of why he's my ex.

Post 9/11

I got through yesterday just fine. But today, not so fine.

Six years ago yesterday, when I saw those images on the television, I couldn't stop crying. For the next month I had acute stress disorder. And the world has not looked or felt the same to me again.

I think of that day every day. But I am rarely able to think about it because it still evokes brokenhearted sorrow in me, and seething rage. I am feeling some of that today.

This past winter I had an addition done to my 14-year-old tattoo. Part of it is IX XI...the Roman numerals for 9 11. It is literally under my skin...for the rest of my life.

The day the world changed

(I will not submit)

Friends

Billy Clinton --for whom I voted twice, by the way-- announced to the annual gathering of the saints at Davos that he felt most ideologically at home in...Iran. And then, so no one would mistake his words for an out-fo-context slip, repeated the praise to Charlie Rose.

Michael Moore outed himself in France as a longtime Marx-inspired socialist and wondered with his typical contempt if it would take a baseball bat to wake Americans up to that fact.

And Osama Bin Laden has apparently singled out for praise that paragon of USA Jewry, Dr. Noam Chomsky.

Did I say something recently about starting a series called "What's Wrong With America"?

The Lion of Chaironeia

This statue stands on a tall pedestal over the grave of the Sacred Band of Thebes, an elite military company in ancient Greece. It was composed of 150 pairs of lover-warriors. Archeologists have found the remains of these men where they were buried after their final battle, against Philip of Macedonia in 340 BC. When Philip surveyed their bodies on the field, he said, ""Perish any man who suspects that these men either did or suffered anything unseemly."

My cyberfriend A. and his lover MJ, both Marines severely wounded in Iraq, are marking their second year together next week. They met while in the hospital. They belong to an ancient and noble lineage. This is for them.

Revolting

Since I am a self-confessed (self-admitted, self-acknowledged, practicing)...American, I sometimes think I should balance out my patriotic attachment to my homeland with a series called "What's Wrong With America". It could consist of a list of names.

In serious competition for First Place: Michael Nifong vs. The President and Faculty of Duke University. Corruption masquerading as highmindedness: the besetting sin of the Boomers.

It takes a village...

...Oh, sorry, Hillary. It takes the State...to threaten to take an as yet unborn child from her mother because a doctor who has never met the mother suggests she might develop a very rare psychological syndrom.

And once the decision is finally made, anyone who discusses it in public...including the mother...will be held in contempt of court!

England.

Malesoul8

BTW

BTW is cybershorthand for "by the way". I have learned that when someone overtly reduces the importance of the following remark by prefacing it with "by the way", we are actually getting to the heart of the matter.

So, BTW, my car got stolen.

It was old, so the insurance will provide very little towards replacement. I will have to discharge a chunk of change that I really can't afford. I will have to go through all the business of buying a new one. And I will have to play all the regulation, form-filling and on-the-phone and on-long-lines bullshit that comes with automotive regulation: titles, plates, insurance, registration, parking permits, etc.

The guys who stole it will not be caught.

I am trying not to let this ruin the next couple of weeks of my life, since, in the cosmic scale, it is annoying, and nothing more than that.

This, BTW, is how I actually feel about it.

On becoming even handsomer :)

The oddity of men calling me "handsome" in the last year has not, despite my effort to practice dealing with it, ceased to be...a little odd. I no longer make overt protests, just say "thanks", and move on to other things. I think it has a lot to do with my levels of self-confidence, playfulness, directness and, well, testosterone.

This week a guy saw my online profile and wrote, "I know you must get this a lot, but you look like an older Brad Pitt."

Now THAT, I have to say, while very charming, is something I can make no sense of AT ALL. "I know you must get this a lot..." Uh...how about never? I did send the fella a thank you note, though.

Well, at least, being older and wiser --ok, older--, I had the good sense to avoid Angelina Jolie!