i was very glad to see this article in Salon. i am happy living alone, and get irritated when coworkers and other casual and not-so-casual acquaintances assume i am unhappy. I wonder how they would react if i were to attack their life choices with assumptions about the quality of their homelife. This book is a breath of fresh air in the current soul-choking environment of Bushistic mind-control.

I agree with CalliXCarrie's letter.

I want to add: i heard a story once about a greek philosopher (Socrates I think) who, when asked how he felt about losing his sex drive due to old age, replied that it was a relief to no longer be slave to the charms of young men.

from the vantage point of advanced age (56): it helps when 2 people living together share the same life-philosophies, for example, "how important is it to follow meaningless cultural dictates such as shaving legs?" (this is hardly a matter of "hygeine" since leg hair doesn't even hold body odor! removal of leg hair is if anything anti-hygeinic as it subjects the pores to infection and the skin to irritation by the process itself plus by environmental factors.)

does the couple agree that it is very important to engage in the current style of hyper-grooming? It reminds me of the "Sex and the City" episode where Carrie comments about her Brazillian pubic wax (total removal of all pubic hair including on labia, as far as i can tell): "I feel like walking Sex." The episode involves her subsequent humiliation when she realizes she is having an affair with a poser. The man she thinks is a rich talent agent is actually just a house-sitter for celebrities. They are discovered in bed by the homeowner's unexpected return. Ouch.

Sex as it is now stylish is like fast food. It tastes good even if we are not hungrey due to all the sugar and fat. But it is ultimately unsatisfying and harmful to health. Sex based on primping leaves the soul hollow.

just a thought:

although this woman said she was checked out by medical professionals and given a clean bill of health, medical science does not know even half of what there is to know, and even then doctors often do not check everything they could.

could it be that this woman's vagina has some unusual abnormality about it that makes sex feel indifferent and even repellant?

"...in the long run..." Cary?

i have encountered way too many rich but clueless, arrogant soul-less spawn of owning class parents. their easy life never allows them to develop the ability to repect themselves, or other people for that matter. They only listen when money talks.

Then there is the bigger picture that owning class people only exist because other people are living in poverty, including third-world, grinding, lethal poverty, war-torn, banana republic poverty. In a way, they are like the characters in "The Matrix" who opt to exist in comfortable denial rather than deal with the truth.

I cannot believe you expressed such a narrow-minded materialistic view of life, Cary. i thought you had a social consciousness. i thought you were aware of the deeper currents in this plane of existence we naively call "life."

WARNING: LW IS OVER 50. MAY CONTAIN CHESTNUTS.

"my parents, who are vibrant, well-read, well-traveled and generally interesting people, tell me horror stories about work lunches where people spend one whole hour discussing the best way to chlorinate their pool."

quote previous letter

The sad truth is that, once the young hipsters stop posing and conforming to each other, they become an eclectic gaggle of diverse individuals. I suspect the pool maintenance conversation was in essence a kind of tribal ritual to allow the members of the tribe (i.e. the fellow empoyees) to listen to each other respectfully and demonstrate a mutually helpful attitude. But on the surface it looked like a bunch of drones talking about how to chlorinate a pool, how b-o-r-i-n-g.

I wonder how many of the LWs have ever met a "fundamentalist" in real life. I run in to them all the time, and I hope it's because this town has more than the average.

Here's a sample of their thinking: they will not accept a particular type of healthcare because it is "not mentioned in the Bible," yet they drive cars, etc.

Irrational as all hell.

Are they raving schitzophrenics? Should doctors tie them down and administer electric shock until they are well?

It's been done for lesser cause.

oh please! What a limited vantage point you have, looking out down your nose.

Even if some flight attendants are as you say "trapped in perpetual childhood," is that any worse than being trapped in perpetual constipation (as you seem to be). So you "do not view the position of flight attendant to be one of great romance, ... or skill." Do you actually imagine that people view YOUR JOB as romantic, fullfilling, etc.? You yourself sound so VERY BORING, so SELF-IMPORTANT, so OBTUSE, by the same analogy that person= job i would guess that your job is boring, etc.

if your head was on your shoulders you might have noticed that skill is involved whereever the job requires public contact and crowd control.

So to you the meaningful life is about grasping at "gold rings." Wow. That not only sounds childish, as in maybe age 3 years, but not too bright either.

PS. Cary, i enjoyed reading this letter and your response, it's okay that you felt a little lazy, since you admitted it at the start. it makes me feel like you are a real person, having some off days, having some awesome days, it all evens out.