A book was published in the not too distant past (the title escapes me at the moment) that discussed the notion that different people have different styles of expressing love and affection, and that what people are sending may not be what their partners are looking for.

That doesn't mean the partner isn't loving or affirming, just that the methodology of showing it is incompatible with the other's expectations.

Having been in a marriage where this was the case, I can say that it's like having an AM radio and trying to listen to an FM station. It doesn't matter how strong the incoming signal is, you're never going to hear it. In my case too much damage had been done before we figured out what was happening...but that may not be the case for the LW.

Before concluding that your partner doesn't think you're special, or isn't working to convey that to you, look at what you expect and then at what your partner does. Are you looking for verbal cues, while he's more focused on providing tactile ones? Or vice-versa?

You know, where I work, continually pointing out the problems with an idea without coming up with a better solution is a sure-fired way to get surely fired.

We're waiting.

...that sometimes one must choose between less than ideal options. That the perfect is the enemy of the good. That unless someone has a BETTER idea than wind power, not simply one that has DIFFERENT problems, blanket statements about wind being a dead end are going to sound like they are coming from the most selfish and short-sigthed NIMBYs and apologists for legacy polluters.

And that nobody likes whiners, of course.

but all I can think of is whether Maher expects anyone to take him seriously as a journalist.

My guess is that he expects us to take him seriously as a comedian, sort of like Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert, and other political comedians all the way back to Lenny Bruce and his ilk.

Comedians can write, you know. They learned it from a book.

...so much as he did from Wagner's own medieval source, the Nibelungenlied, with which he had been familiar since boyhood. And the Old Norse Eddas. And the Kalevala. And Beowulf...there is certainly a syncretic element to his work, but some of the themes are common enough in Germanic and Scandinavian literature of the Middle Ages that even "borrow" is a strong word for what he did, unless one also "borrows" oxygen from the air.

Seriously, I opened it maybe once every other week, mostly because I had looked at everything else and had time on my hands.

The talk show listings sound like they filled a particular niche, though, and it wouldn't take a whole lot of effort to track that info down.

First, in regards to:

Still, it's likely more than a few have fled out of plain old cowardice. They don't mind doing the shooting; they just don't like it when the Iraqis shoot back.

Fear of getting killed or injured has never been the chief reason for psychological casualties, as David Grossman amply demonstrates in his important work, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. It's been the natural human reluctance to kill clashing with the intense loyalty to one's comrades. Since VietNam that's been complicated by psychological conditioning techniques designed to make it easier for our boys to pull the trigger. Here, the increasing obvious fact that the war was started for no good reason and a variety of bad ones makes it an even more volatile cocktail.

Second, as to:

Funny how Salonistas constantly rag on GWB for "dodging" the Vietnam War (though he served in uniform and flew fighter jets) even though the same things were said about Vietnam as are being said about Iraq, but somehow think these cowards who have skipped out and left their friends to hold the bag are heroes.

Actually, GWB isn't criticized by us for dodging service in VietNam per se, but for doing so (flight suit and all) and then starting his own equivalent morass for another generation. To dodge a stupid war in your youth only to start a stupid war in one's middle age leaves one open to a variety of, ah, ethical suspicions.

Finally--while under ideal circumstances figuring out what was going on before one was enlisted would have been preferable, I can't fault anyone for having a Pauline moment after the fact, even if they were nearer to Baghdad than Damascus. Remember, at one point most Americans actually believed the administration's line.

...how DO you write fiction? I know I depend on my desire to find out what really makes people what they are when I try.

To wit: I have to ask a question, of the LW and those others here who vent to journals and the like: why exactly do you keep that stuff around after the moment is past?

I thee a lot of pithy people in the Thalon letter thection, every day.

But when it hits you, there's no mistaking it. It often comes to those of us who aren't even looking for it. It hits you over the head and turns your life upside down.

Are we talking about religion here or sexual infatuation?

The problem with this is that clearly it doesn't come to everyone, or a lot more of us would be believers. If God picks and chooses who gets the guaranteed life-changing experience via cosmic dartboard, I'm just as happy I've been spared so far.