Wolf DeVoon

Hahahahahahahahaha, like I can afford to go, have a hotel night. Jeez.

Arguing out of both sides of your mouth. The means of gaining knowledge is regulated by moral facts. The laws of nature are opaque to all species except those who are capable of deceit, fantasy, and murder. Scientists have feet of mortal clay and their balls in a vise, too often led by generals and conquerors and scientific bodies clinging to bullshit. You know this is true, Bob.

That's downright funny. Of course there are rules, except nowadays queens beat everything

Don't be silly, son. I already told you that I'm sunk chin-deep in hardship, which worsened last week, a totally bizarre fight that my 16-year-old started. Guess what? -- none of it matters, no depth of anguish or hunger or winter or abuse -- because https://www.amazon.com/dp/1985339005

We play the cards we're dealt. I don't particularly envy anyone else's fate. One life was plenty, thanks. Slightly less than 25,000 days so far, a big inventory of adventures and disasters and modest triumphs. What else can life offer, except a spiritual treasury of wandering in the world, making decisions? Whether one wins or loses at the fabulously endowed gaming table of competition with 6 billion others, there is no alternative but to play the cards we were dealt by DNA in a place and time not of our choosing.

Hmm. I considered what Anthony said above, and I think rather that the human condition is to play the cards you were dealt.

Okay, only true of 2%, Ayn Rand had it backwards. It is the exceptional man who is incompetent.

I spoke of it to acknowledge that I can't feed myself, no power of technical skill, no talent to produce anything the market wants.

Money by doing what? -- flipping hamburgers, sweating copper tubes under a bathtub, or telling tall tales? hauling crates and hides and sacks of wheat? or driving a car or a truck? or factory shift work? -- I've done all those jobs, required no skill whatever. And worse: none of those jobs would have existed without the enormous legacy infrastructure gifted by our forebears who fought wars, invented and built whole industries, drilled hundreds of thousands of oil wells and built refineries and pipelines that haven't been expanded or upgraded since 1970. A curious year, 1970, peak domestic auto production and peak oil production, long before you were born. The internet was a gift of DARPA and CERN, government agencies. Speaking of which, government spending explains your entire life as a schmoo, a guy without scientific, medical, or engineering skills. Do you like television? -- then thank Philo T. Farnsworth who invented it, a statue in his honor being taken down for some trivial reason, a lack of space to honor an unproductive schmoo. Read how much Farnsworth sacrificed to give you a window to the world. And consider Frank Zappa, who you did not know nor pay a single penny for a genius who illuminated the world at the price of his life, typical of many who gave you x-rays and world security, the Green Revolution and human rights. No genius? No military service? -- you're dead weight, bub, a delusional ingrate who doesn't understand economics. Your money is a $20 trillion handout in Federal debt, a $500 trillion pyramid of derivatives backed by what's known in the trade as good collateral. Guess what that is? U.S. bonds -- worthless paper without the men and women of genius, gambling in life to keep you and hundreds of millions of other schmoos alive, masses who think that they pay their way by doing nothing of note, shopping in stores that they did not build or finance, consuming a bounty that they did not mine, grow, import, manufacture, or transport -- none of which would have existed without daring pioneers and the power they bequeathed. Have a computer? Thank William Shockley, an asshole no one liked, and Ada Lovelace, who public schmoo history ignored. Ayn Rand said that 2% of mankind feed and clothe the other 98%. She was right.

I used to think that, until the humbling honor of my first day on the set, directing a feature film. Failing to make a lasting career of filmmaking, I began to write fiction and of all the characters I created, the women were far and away my favorites. With Rand, of course, it was the reverse, mooning over an ideal man, the hussy.

Has little to do with money, bub. You are the recipient of modern medicine, clean water, and IT, courtesy of your betters.

Thanks for additional media tips. Unfortunately, I can't read or listen to Shakespeare, either, just won't go in. Maupassant, Moliere, Hawthorne, Dostoyevsky, the whole crew, although curiously I understand Balzac completely because he was crazy. Happens with modern authors, likewise. Two pages of Stephenson or Irving, I'd rather eat glass than give them another atom of attention. Great handicap being practically illiterate, except every word of Hammett, Chandler, Rhodes, Rand, and Fitzgerald. Possibly a vitamin deficiency. I deeply regret that Hemingway waited so long to kill himself, age 12 would have been better, Melville, Dickens, and Poe age six.

Over my head. If it's not on the page, it goes right past me.

Thanks for linking to Gutenberg. Pretty hard slog for a heathen. I'm sure it's excellent

Help out a stupid person (me) and point to what you're verklempt about. Thanks in advance.

I know it's too late to fix anything, but the way I read it, Regi spoke about flirting with a girl age 70 not 17

It's a topic that arises naturally in discussion of love. I've never concealed my frank opinion on any question, but don't need to say it twice.

I understand and agree. Glad you posted it. I like the metaphor of magnetism, of which there are many kinds, large and small, permanent, induced, rare earth, electro, flexible, horseshoe. Sciabarra is a dime store horseshoe, picks up light junk-- rusty nails, bottle tops, and ironic graffiti. Straight men are bar magnets of various sizes. If we're not careful we pick up trash and get stuck behind iron bars. Little men are refrigerator magnets, overjoyed to win any kind of female. The fair sex are electromagnets; they have to be careful about who they flip their switch for, because once they bond S to a man's N, they're stuck for life, unless a crash weakens N and she turns off S. I've crashed head first into brick walls on occasion, scrambled my ionic alignment and became weakened, lost women when they de-energized their EMF. To review, a woman with great potential chooses carefully, and when she comes near a magnetic guy, it might happen. She throws a switch and they're stuck. A little passage from (ahem) a favorite book: A postscript for amusement value, to explain how straights view pansies, magnetically speaking. For an 8th grade science fair, I assembled a giant AC coil and a tall thick iron bar, plugged it into a wall socket, pushed a button and launched dainty aluminum rings flying across the room, dented same on impact.

Love guru Chris Sciabarra sez: "I have an almost boundless capacity to be loved and to give love in return. And I mean love in all its facets: the love of family, of friends and colleagues, and of those special people that come into our lives now and then, with whom one can share the kind of love that is spiritually and physically intimate. I can’t think of anything more life-affirming than love." Liar.

Thanks.

Sure. Rand's work was keyed in high dudgeon, triangles, and fatality, using that term as Victor Hugo did. I believed some of it. It's conceivable that stainless heroes exist, men who are celibate and virile (jeez, what a combination!) and gladly stand aside if the babe they love walks off with someone else. Family was not one of Rand's strong suits, mentioned only in passing that Ragnar's wife was a glamorous movie star, and that a mom with two kids had chosen motherhood as a career, which it is most certainly not. It is a destiny for some, a choice for others to toy with petulantly or to reject outright, a common cuckoo ignoring her young. I've known a lot of married couples, life partnerships that turned out fine, and certainly they doted on one another. I'm not certain that's love. It's nesting. There's an old German proverb: "Little birds in their nest agree." Most men are pleased to have a reasonably attractive, reasonably intelligent wife. Can't blame them for gratitude if it works out well. In the old days there would be a passel of children to wrestle through adolescence, then grandchildren to cherish. Modern first and second marriages are a little different, but the basic idea is the same, be helpful and affectionate, candid, sexy, industrious. Not love. Nesting. Let me noodle a bit on what love might and ought to be.

Not unappreciative of other considerations, but I would like to return to the topic of love.

I'm often and easily distracted, partly because I drift off contemplatively, or the environment is a thing of beauty in some aspect or other and it's fun to be alive. For whatever reason, like dressing with eagerness in the morning or perhaps leaving my writing office in a hurry, things often get misplaced. I have to be methodical about checking my pockets for keys, because it's a chore having to break in with a hammer and putty knife. But other things go missing, especially disposable cigarette lighters, which is intensely annoying. I had the damn thing a few minutes ago. It's impossible that it vanished. Which brings me to the business of investigation. I do a lot of it, and often have, reconstructing what happened and why. The inexplicable is merely a mystery that commends focused attention, like finding a fish in the milk. There has to be a chain of events, however bizarre or deliberate, that produced a very odd result. If it involves the death of a business partner by drowning as he casually strolled along the beach in fair weather, a certain degree of skepticism is appropriate and questions need to be asked. And if the other partner, very much alive, reports a burglary the same night in which corporation books were stolen, that is a remarkable coincidence. Being the only investigator on the beach, I went to visit the burglary victims, a husband and wife, lovely people. They claimed that they must have been gassed, because they heard nothing and awoke groggy in the morning. They showed me a torn window screen where the culprit who stole their corporation books must have entered. He didn't take any money but ate food and drank a bottle of beer. There were no footprints in the flower bed under the window because they had replaced the flowers he trampled. Alibis are always bizarre. The dead partner? -- a drunkard, an irresponsible wastrel, they confided. The question of what to do with a guilty party is a separate question. I let them skate because they had a 10-year-old child, not the best reason to excuse conspiracy and perhaps a hand in something worse, but a reason to drop the investigation. I wasn't a cop or a prosecutor. We lived in a place in which personal safety was never guaranteed and theft was common. But the mysterious is never acceptable, and when I had sufficient evidence that witnesses were lying and had a reason to lie, as much of the mystery as I cared to unravel was solved. The wider implication is a way of life, a commitment to investigate matters that stand out in high relief, whether it's a missing cigarette lighter or the chain of events that destroyed Ayn Rand's reputation in the 21st century by cinematic assassination. Objectivism has always aided me in unwinding something odd. A thing is itself. Preposterous alibis by interested parties are unacceptable fairy tales -- like knockout gas injected through a window screen by a barefoot Tico who took no money, drank a beer, and decided that intellectual property was amusing swag, just for the fun of it, to brag to his buddies: "Look what I did!"

That's why we build and calibrate instruments, microscopes, telescopes, interferometers, seismophones, IR detectors, spectrum analyzers.

I often say that I'm good at the obvious, but right or wrong I always say what I think. -- struck me as absurd. Not asking anyone to agree with me. Fire, ouch is not a story, it's experiential, tactile, physical, resulting in a normative abstraction. So is touch typing, sexual experiences, successful cooking experiments (compared to unsuccessful ones) and so on. Story is something completely different, whether related as a selective anecdote or a fictional narrative, and I disbelieve that normative propaganda "plays" if you know what I mean. It usually "bombs" and "smells" (more showbiz terms). Real story as I understand it explores the Unknown, speculates far beyond experiential, tactile, familiar life and its Bibles of various kinds.