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Saturday, Nov 7, 2009
AncientAssyrian
Published Letters: 769 Editor's Choice: 54
Not sure if you've been in love before, but except for the rare and lucky couples who keep each other's socks rolling up and down for years, people starting a relationship often have an initial intense falling in love, butterflies in the stomach attraction to each other, followed by a more comfortable, secure, attachment.
There's even a hormonal basis for it. After "attaching," oxytocin -- a hormone for nesting and contentment -- kicks in, and libido often tapers.
If you have a number of relationships that don't end in permanence, you are likely to go through the intense-->comfortable thing numerous times.
I'm 45, didn't marry till early 30s, and started dating at 15.
And you know what? I was in love and had various relationships before I met my spouse, and every time I fell in love, I thought I would die with all the excitement of it, and every time, after a few months, things settled down into comfortable contentment.
Maybe you'll be lucky enough to be one of those rare birds who lucks into a life-long passionate relationship. But believe me, I know a lot of married couples, and of all of them, I think ONE fits that category, the rest are "comfortable contentment" couples.
You may be too young, and not enough relationships under your belt, to realize that getting back the thrill may not be possible, but embracing and enhancing the contentment -- interspersed with a moment of thrill here and there -- is often the real goal.
If thrill is it, then by all means, date around for a long time, until you get the jonesing for constant sizzle out of your system.
I am adamantly pro-choice, but once I graduated college, I knew that I would never have an abortion from then on unless it was one of those life or death situations.
For me, abortion is not birth control.
For many women, including those of us who are pro-choice, making a decision to have an abortion is a grave and agonizing process.
I'm grateful that I never had to face that issue.
But had I become pregnant like the character in the film, I too would have had the child, and if there had been any thought of abortion, it would have been fleeting, and probably kept to myself.
Just because something's legal, doesn't mean it's always the right thing to do. Just because we're free to choose, doesn't mean we make the right -- or ethical, or moral -- choice in every situation.
Maybe in today's Paris Hilton-esque world, it's de riguer that a minor but budding tv celeb who gets knocked up by a guy who isn't rich/famous/handsome/going to advance her career, etc. should abort the baby without question.
Maybe Apatow, however, has a more nuanced and less cynical view of the world.
Choice means the choice to have an abortion, or not. So Apatow didn't show the emotional or mental process the Heigl character goes through to make the decision...big deal. Every time characters get married in a film, we don't necessarily explore the emotional or mental decision process the characters go through in deciding to marry, even though we KNOW that it's something everyone goes through when considering marriage.
The CHOICE to avoid directly addressing abortion is just that, a CHOICE. And Apatow had every right to make it. Just as the character made a CHOICE to have her baby.
when you write your first book, and I borrow big chunks of it, post them to my website, and earn affiliate income if someone then clicks over to buy it?
And you won't mind when Google makes big chunks of your book available for people to read?
It's always hilarious to me how those who have the least to lose are the ones in favor of loosening copyright protection for books. I've written 9 books, and you can damn well bet I think Google is ripping me off.
Declaring that one is a Democrat -- even multiple times as Camille Paglia has done in this column - does not make it so.
One really must wonder, with Paglia's history of misrepresenting her own politics and leanings, why she seems to find it so difficult to simply admit that she is a Republican, and that in Salon's pages, she's regularly shilling for the Republicans.
Is Paglia she afraid that she'll be labelled as a "Log-Cabin Republican" due to her sexuality?
She had no trouble coming out sexually. Why is it so hard to come out politically?
Global warming agnostic (HAH!)...anti-Democrat...one has to wonder if Camille Paglia is starting to channel odious Conservative Stepford Twinkie Elizabeth Hasselbeck.
Any way you look at it, Salon is lowering itself by publishing this drivel.
Salon is also doing its part to help create the mythology that Democrats can't win, by publishing Paglia, especially as she appears to be doing everything she can to is function as a Republican operative while declaring herself to be a Democrat.
Thanks Salon. You're working for the enemy, and you're even PAYING columnists to do the same. What a swizz.
Boy am I glad that I didn't re-up my subscription fee, which I had gladly paid for years until this year. After Salon's lovefest with Debra Dickerson and Camille Paglia, and Joan Walsh's personal campaign against Barack Obama, my $45 is MUCH better used elsewhere...
-- Ancient Assyrian
P.S. Camille saying she's a Democrat is mythology. Just as much of a myth as the idea that Lindsay Lohan is anything other than a low-talent chippie with a set of implants. Or that Paris Hilton is anything other than a soulless human hanger with a big trust fund.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The Maine fight was supposed to be the dress rehearsal for repealing California's Prop. 8 -- but gay marriage lost
Once one obtains Seriousness credentials in the Washington media, they are irrevocable no matter one's conduct.
Salon headlines in your mailbox
