Don’t Let Sartre Cook

Do those jaw lines only come in Aryan?

@ManchuCandidate:
yes.
this fool looks just like my baby daddy, the donor.
his grandparents got out of berlin in 1940. hello?
i was ALWAYS suspicious.

and will cooking while thinking like a straight man make it so, gay face, huh???

@ManchuCandidate: You can have a square jaw and still be a nice person. Though he might want to lay off the photoshop.

But this is our great growth industry. Well, along with debt. It infests the evangelical church, business, the military, the movies. Think beautiful thoughts and Jeebus will make you rich/popular/win wars/have a hit. So why not cooking? The only area you don’t want to be positive about is your HIV status. Although even there we have a whole subset of ‘bugchasers’ who want a big strong man to ‘convert’ them? An accident that the language is religious? I think not.

I think positive thoughts at the gym and let me tell you I am pushing some sick weight.

@baked:
Heh. Who knows? It sounds like the plot of a Robert Ludlum novel.

Thinking that chicken fried steak is healthy as a salad isn’t going to help. That would be like thinking that gubbiment run health care is going to kill you or that lowering taxes to the rich is going to increase revenue. Proof that “positive” thinking isn’t always that it is cracked up to be.

What I’ve observed about folks who never “go negative” are more prone to crippling doubts after. These types of folks always tell me that I’m so paranoid or, well, negative or that it will never happen. In truth they are right 95% of the time. I am being negative and wrong. As I told someone: “when I am wrong I look like a paranoid ass but when you are wrong, someone dies/something horrible happens.” Problem is that the 5% more than makes up for the 95%. After something like that these “positive” folks are crippled by doubt and neediness (constantly asking questions like “Did I do good?”) It makes me want to punch them. Not because of the neediness, but rather in a “Where the fuck was this doubt before things turned to shit before it was too late to do anything?”

I have regrets and doubts like everyone else, but usually that is before I make a decision not after. Even if I made the wrong call, I don’t get torn up by regrets because it happened and I can’t go back in time to change it.

@Benedick:
True, but it’s more of an observation and a slightly snide comment about the “ideal” jawline from someone whose people don’t have that jutting jaw (unless he/she is an AmerAsian and the genetic lottery gave him/her one.)

Damn, he looks like He-Man (from the Masters of the Universe Toy and Toy Commercial Show for you olds.)

sorry about my outburst up there.

he was one of my husbands who, in the words of carrie fisher, “forgot to tell me he was gay, and i forgot to notice.”

@ManchuCandidate:
being bi-polar makes everything sooo much easier.
you are either skipping in the garden, or punching someone in the face.
easy.

@ManchuCandidate: My motto of life – prepare for the worse and hope for the acceptable. I’m never disappointed!

@Benedick:

To me, the most annoying thing about the whole “think positive thoughts and good things will happen” racket (see also “Teh Secrit” etc) is when people convert that proposition and decide that “bad things only happen to people who *didn’t* think positive thoughts”.

Down that path, you’ve got both “fuck you, I got mine” and related varieties of “blame the victim” dickishness, and a nasty whirlpool for the depressed.

Since 1988, which was a fluke, thinking positive as a Dodgers fan has been problematic at best. The Cubbies fans here will know what I’m talking about. But, as my buddy said at the game yesterday, any day at the ballpark is a good day.

@baked:

he was one of my husbands who, in the words of carrie fisher, “forgot to tell me he was gay, and i forgot to notice.”

Indeed.

being bi-polar makes everything sooo much easier.
you are either skipping in the garden, or punching someone in the face.
easy.

Couldn’t’ve said it better myself.

@al2o3cr: Word. Prosperity theology (i.e. that asshole Joel Osteen) is a huge help in understanding how charismatic Christians who supposedly follow Jeebus can be such heartless bastards toward the poor, homeless, and needy people in their midst.

its better than flyfishing

@al2o3cr: Exactly. “If you’re sick it’s your fault because you’re too negative”. “Think and grow rich.” “Click your heels together three times.” What’s so fucking great about being happy all the time? What’s wrong with some good old-fashioned heart-break? It does a person good.

@baked: We make good husbands. Apart from the sex thing. I’m reminded (being a pompous asshole as the OH likes to point out) of Beatrice’s reply when the Prince proposes and she turns him down as being too good for everyday use. You should be able to have a gay husband for special events and a straight one for sexy times and the baby to puke on. Makes sense to me. I think a lot of gay men could get behind it. Not just the closet cases. There’s nothing makes one feel like you belong as walking in to a room filled with strangers and saying “This is my wife.” We should start an agency.

The next governor of Tennessee?

@Capt Howdy: Please. That is so Saturday.

@Benedick:

oops
thats what I get for missing school

Give me 30 minutes with any of these Tony-Robbins type fuckers, and I will have them standing on the ledge ready to jump.

@Benedick: I’ve dated what I guess I could only describe as a “bi-ish” guy (we never really talked about it – it didn’t matter to me.). I don’t know the language to use, so I hope I’m not being unintentionally offensive. Anyone and everyone, please feel free to educate and correct me.

We were in the Navy, and he was this absolutely beautiful man (to me): tall, a little buff, which wasn’t really my thing, but his smile and eyes made me melt. He was about 23.

Other dudes would tell me he was flirting with them, and I was like, I don’t care. He was from Littleton, CO of all places, and he had an abusive MACHOMACHOMACHO cowboy dad and a batshit mother. One day she told me, “Oh. We thought [redacted] was gay! We’re so GLAD he’s dating you.” O_0

Thing is, he was incredible in bed. I mean, incredible. I don’t really know how much stock to place in the Kinsey Scale, but all I know is how he treated me, and that’s really all that mattered.

::sigh:: I wonder about him. I know he got married shortly after he got out of the Navy. I just hope he’s happy.

@ManchuCandidate: That is seriously one of the funniest comments I’ve ever read. Well-played.

@Benedick: You can have a square jaw and still be a nice person. For some reason this reminded me that I wanted to tell everyone that I finally watched “Treasure of the Sierra Madre” on one of my plane rides yesterday. Some great lines (Messican dude does not actually say “We don’t need no steenkin badges” – who knew?), and Houston’s dad was great.

Carry on.

@Nabisco:
Thanks. I seem to be my snarkiest on Sunday mornings.

@Capt Howdy: Nothing’s better than flyfishing.

/rolled in exhausted after a two-day hands on wilderness first aid class, now off to write a motion in limine to send out tomorrow. Met the local Episcopal priest who does “Worship in the Woods.”

Found a copy of archie and mehitabel at the library book sale. Among “certain maxims of archy” we find the following: “an optimist is a guy that has never had much experience.”

Dearest Nojo:

“Don’t let Sartre cook.” Wonderful! I know you are the resident philosopy boffin. If you are willing to think about it, I’d love your take on which thinker you would most trust to cook for you and which you would least trust (surely Sartre would not prepare food as lethal and/or disgusting as the fare that Schopenhauer, say, would serve up [not that I’ve ever read Schopenhauer, mind you]).

@lynnlightfoot:

Most trustworthy: Hume. From a friend’s favorite passage…

Most fortunately it happens, that since Reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, Nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends. And when, after three or four hours’ amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.

Least trustworthy: Wittgenstein. No available passage, but there’s a story about him designing his sister’s house, and (expensively) raising a ceiling two or three inches because it displeased him. I fear he would cook food into submission, and insist you consume it just so.

@nojo: Couldn’t get back here to see if you responded until this evening. Thank you! I love the Hume quote. It reminds me of one of my favorite bits from Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Dr. Johnson met a Mr. Edwards, who was pleased to meet the great man. Mr. Edwards said to the good doctor, “I too in my time have tried to be a philosopher but cheerfulness kept breaking in.” (I probably don’t have that quote exactly right – I’ll check it later.)

Was Wittgenstein a very tall man?

@lynnlightfoot: I don’t think Luddie was tall. The issue with the ceiling was purely aesthetic, or some severe view he had about proportions.

@lynnlightfoot: “I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but, I don’t know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.”