Over at Winds of Change, I’ve got a post on ‘Risk’ up.
I was, as usual, led there by my children…

Then it turns out that Tenacious G and the boys haven’t seen the Branagh ‘Henry V‘, so we jump it to the head of the Netflix queue, and it shows up in the mail. We watched it the other night, and it was still wonderful (Yes, Bacchus, I’m still supporting Branagh’s erotic reward). My boys loved it as well; Littlest Guy, who is six, wanted to watch it again the next day, and spent the time after bath and before bed wandering the house in his blue PJ’s-with-rocket-ships-and-feet and a stern look, declaiming “No King of England if not King of France.” I love my sons and they are wonderful, but they are a bit…odd, sometimes. Somehow that line over all the others had caught him, and he and I had a long discussion in which I explained that Henry wanted to be King of France, and that he was willing to risk losing England to get it.

More to come.

Today’s my birthday. It’s a milestone one, so I managed not to tell anyone outside my immediate family or let them set up a party (we’ll be having a big one in a few weeks) so I can just hang out and relax today, thinking good thoughts about everyone and everything in my life.
Then I realize that my house smells like a catbox and I have to close my eyes and work really hard to extend those charitable thoughts to our two semi-incontinent cats…I’m working on it…ommmm…

It’s Valentine’s Day, and I just wanted to interrupt my normally scheduled blogging for a moment to publicly tell Tenacious G that I’m grateful every day that she’s mine and that she’s taken me and all my boys as hers.
Thank you, baby.
It’s been a wonderful time with you, and I hope you’ll be a part of my life forever.

Well, golly…
…it’s funny how the things that I do that are just thrown out there seem to get the biggest responses; as opposed to the things I sweat over and worry about.
The note on dating, below, got more traffic than anything else I’ve ever posted; funny how that works. My kinda serious comments on American political history or on ‘bug out kits’ over at Winds of Change didn’t get nearly the reaction. So I know what’s important to you people…or what you think I might know anything about.
It got fairly widely linked, and then Instalanched, and as a result hopefully I will get to have some interesting dialogs with some new folks.
In other ego-preening news, I (or at least my pseudonym) got into The Atlantic!! In print!! Thanks to Media Minded for ferreting this out…I stood by the mailbox waiting for my copy for five days!!
If my mother knew I was doing this, she’d be so proud…
Speaking of dialogs, I’ll be at the Blogging Event in Chinatown Saturday night; I’m looking forward to meeting some other blogfolks (Tenacious G is tolerant of it…).

So Tenacious G (my sweetie) and I went out for our pre-Valentine’s Day dinner last night. We have the boys Friday, and it’ll be a zoo everywhere, so we went to our favorite neighborhood bistro and had a nice dinner together.
Which was slightly spoiled by the conversation at the next table. I’m usually pretty good at filtering, and too polite to acknowledge that I’m eavesdropping (or reading your mail upside down on your desk), but this was just too much, in every sense of the word.
It was a first date. He was (from the conversation) about my age, but overweight, balding, and with a sunlamp tan and a ponytail…a combination that I can’t imagine the ladies could resist. I’m commenting on his physical attributes (actually more his ‘presentation’ of them) because they meshed so well with the personality that he displayed at dinner.
I kept one eye on my watch for a bit and at one point he talked over three minutes without stopping. I think she said about ten words in the entire hour and a half that we were there, and the conversation from their table never stopped.
They (he, actually) discussed Iraq. He’s against it, but he would have gone to Canada if his lottery number had come up during Vietnam and would personally drive his son to Canada today (in his Ferrari) if he was in any danger of serving in the military. We can’t invade Iraq, he explained, because we haven’t defeated Al Quieda, and we haven’t made a settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians. Once we do those things, he’d be open to considering it if it was OK with the U.N.
I have a discussion on his points over at Winds of Change.
He discussed work. He’s apparently a prosecutor, and he discussed how unfair the laws that he is sworn to enforce are, and how he practices his own form of ‘jury nullification’ on cases that he thinks are just unfair.
He discussed (at painful length) his divorce, his lack of a relationship with his children, and his dysfunctional dating history.
He discussed his cars (a 70’s Ferrari, a 60’s Porsche, and a new BMW).
He discussed dancing, and the kind of music he likes. He went on a long riff about ‘the sensuality of just moving your body to music’…i.e. he dances like a white guy.
So in 90 minutes, he did a kind of miniature ‘Biography Channel’ special on himself.
There are so many problems here…
Look, I’ve never been a ‘playa’, but I’ve certainly dated a bunch (TG would say ‘more than a bunch’) and met a bunch of neat women (even married a couple). I’ve given some dating advice to my sons and to my more relationship-challenged friends (male and female, showing that they’ll take advice from anybody). But it was all I could do not to turn around in my chair last night and go “Stop. Stop now. Ask her something about herself, and let her complete her answer. Explore her interests. Hand her the keys to the conversation, because believe me at the rate this is going you aren’t going to be getting any tonight.”
So let me offer some dating advice to my fellow middle-aged divorced guys:
Shut the fuck up.
Don’t try and ‘sell’ yourself, it’s boring and ineffective. Help her sell herself, and in doing so you’ll sell yourself far more effectively than you could otherwise.
Don’t inventory your possessions, inventory your passions.
Don’t recount, in real-time, the story of your failed prior relationships.
Don’t talk down your exes.
Basically, don’t assume that you’re the only interesting person in the room.
And lose the damn ponytail.

Go read this very funny blog.
I hate golf, by the way.

We’re having a kind of a debate about France over at Winds of Change. I am letting it take me to a philosophical discussion (surprise!).

I’ll suggest that morality and spirituality in politics is central and absolutely necessary, on one hand, and incredibly dangerous on the other. I’ll follow with the assertion that the genius of the American Foundation was that it both provided a sphere for a politics centered on moral and spiritual values, and that it explicitly denied morality and spiritual values a seat at the political table.

This was a brilliant bank shot which has led to the American genius of assimilation and to the cultural openness which has made us the dominant force in the world for over a hundred years.

I’ve got some thoughts about my almost-second country, France.

Our frustration with France comes from our (not unreasonable) assumption that a) since we keep bailing them out of military difficulties; b) we rebuilt their economy twice; and c) they lived under our military protection for twenty years, they would act as allies and assume that our interests were parallel, with small differences involving metric v. English measurement and whether we would sell Michelin or UniRoyal tires to various third-word accounts.
They don’t feel that way.
…

Here’s what the Armed Liberal household packs in our cars:

OK, here are the contents of the first-aid kits we keep in the cars and house. Note that these are way too much for a simple accident; they are intended to support several people over several days and deal with a wide range of injuries and conditions.
…

I have some comments on bureaucracy and the Columbia disaster over at WoC. They may not be what you expect…