As stunningly ambitious and clear as it is, it hasn’t worked.

Sure it has. Ask around the EUC.

You’re right about the fear, though, wayward. It runs shrieking and screaming off the page.

If you’re going to be a jerk, you may as well be funny…. yeesh. There have been many great and powerful nations democratically led by women, so no, this would not “have forced men around the world to view a woman as an agent of power instead of a sex object,” just certain men in this nation.

His closing argument essentially makes his entire article meaningless. But what would add meaning to his writing?

It just doesn’t seem all that complicated to me. Sorry. Certainly no more complicated than media-generated celebrities, and p.r.-created celebrity gossip, and planned photo-ops, and fashion spreads in magazines (ever talk to a stylist? They spend hours getting that shit “just right”).

I’ll pass on my sympathies to my lover, though. He’ll be confused, but I’m sure I owe him a random apology for something.

I’ll apologize to you, too, for somehow giving you the impression that I’m an evil sex-negative feminazi trying to take your porn away. But only if you apologize for calling me a lousy lay - that was just plain mean!

I don’t mind you missing my point, but please try to at least read the comment you’re responding to. I didn’t make the first claim you impute to me (about porn having greater aesthetic value than other commercial photography). Your implicit claim - that arousal is uncomplicated - kind of stuns me, and I admit that I didn’t think I’d have to argue that point with an adult. Suffice it to say that if you think of arousal as unimaginative or purely mechanistic, in men or women, then please pass on my sympathies to your lover(s).

My suspicion, ksms, is that your implied attitude toward porn (specifically toward men’s responses to it and desire to utilize it) is much more widely shared in this blog community than is readily admitted by community members. But I’d like to keep things pleasant this evening, so I’ll assume that you misconstrued my comment and that you’re reading my talk of ‘arousal’ narrowly for one or another reason that’s little to do with me - perhaps because you thought I was defending Stein’s risible column.

Well ha ha and here’s to us, then! Carry on apace.

She’s back to herself now, but assuming the 13-year-old cat goes first, I’m probably going to have to get the younger one her own kitten to play with or else I’ll go through another four months of neediness followed by biting me. And if the new kitten turns out to mourn in the same kind of way, we might have a vicious cycle here of always having a senior cat and a junior cat.

Pretty much, yeah. We’ve ended up with two younger cats because it turned out that our older cats were much more attached to one another than we ever realized. Natasha died, so we got Boris a kitten to keep him company, but then Boris died about 18 months after Natasha and Keaton (the former kitten) got so bitey and clingy that we got him his own kitten.

(Now he’s turning into an empty-nester because “his” kitten is almost a year old and doesn’t need him as much anymore, but that’s a whole other story.)

And if the new kitten turns out to mourn in the same kind of way, we might have a vicious cycle here of always having a senior cat and a junior cat.

Yep, jewish dyke, you just might. I’ve got that cycle with dogs. Actually, I usually want a new dog soon for myself, not as a “replacement”, but because the neediness of a new pet stops you from just sitting around feeling sorry for yourself, gives you something to occupy yourself with. But the remaining dog has sometimes made me do it even quicker than I would otherwise — when I had a dog that passed away in early December a few years back, I planned to wait til after Christmas to get a new one. But after a solid week of my other dog just lying on the bed and whimpering incessantly I threw up my hands and said, “OK, OK, I’ll go to the pound TODAY!”

As for Joel Stein, he makes me feel so stabby I cannot even formulate a specific on-topic response.

Now that’s some great and creative parody. Arguing the aesthetic value of porn as being greater than other commercial photography - it’s kind of brilliant. Now, that kind of satire is far more rare and subtle than the hackneyed Joel Stein article. Particularly the argument of how arousal over porn is a complex experience.