The Orthogonian: August 2004

Down, Set, HUT!!!

Continuing my series, a (borrowed) photo essay of John Forbes Kerry, here's the Mass. Senator breaking it down in the prep leagues. I've always wanted to use this headline.

UPDATE: Photo op

As I told you on June 4, I wrote the White House requesting a photograph suitable for framing of our president. Get instructions for how to get your own presidential portrait (or first lady, or vice presidential, etc.) here. It takes 10 weeks, but if you delay you might find it's a limited-time only offer (November).

What's in your platform

If you haven't figured out by now, I'm pretty conservative. Here's confirmation. According to this website, I am 346/475 Republican - that's 72.8 %. See how you do.

Phase 2

Due to the lack of activity, one anonymous reader wondered if I had suffered from the same fate of the Florida woman stranded on her sofa for six years. Let my fans be relieved: I am liberated in my person and my home is feces free.

However, I should note again that this blog is winding down while a new blog is ramping up. The new blog, which should have been up on Monday, will eventually be a collaborative effort between me and this guy Jason Hunter went to HS with. Stay tuned.

Feminism out of control

As my friends can attest, I am the best feminist out there. Ok, maybe not. But at least I'm not as bad as some schlubs. Still, this worries me. What is with feminists and their offense at men standing to pee? I mean, who wants to be a sitzpinkler, as the Germans call 'em.

I was duely stupified reading John Leo four years ago when he described a feminist group's cause to eradicate urinals from Stockholm University. Here's what Leo wrote:

Young women in Sweden, Germany and Australia have a new cause: They want men to sit down while urinating. This demand comes partly from concerns about hygiene -- avoiding the splash factor -- but, as Jasper Gerard reports in the English magazine The Spectator, "more crucially because a man standing up to urinate is deemed to be triumphing in his masculinity, and by extension, degrading women." One argument is that if women can't do it, then men shouldn't either. Another is that standing upright while relieving oneself is "a nasty macho gesture," suggestive of male violence.

A feminist group at Stockholm University is campaigning to ban all urinals from campus, and one Swedish elementary school has already removed them. In Australia, an Internet survey shows that 17 percent of those polled think men ought to sit, while 70 percent believe they should be allowed to stand. Some Swedish women are pressuring their men to take a stand, so to speak. Yola, a 25-year-old Swedish trainee psychiatrist, says she dumps boyfriends who insist on standing. "What else can I do?," said her new boyfriend, Ingvar, who sits.

Want to see WASPMs protesting like it's 1972? Take their urinals away. Can you imagine the non-violent protests that would come from this? How many UIPs would be handed out?

Six year itch

Here's a sad story. She couldn't move from her couch because her back had fused to it.

Our crisis-filled adult world

Is post-9/11 life too burdensome for many of our European friends and local leftists? National Review spotlights a terrific article by classics professor and historian Victor Davis Hanson which examines the totality of the loyal opposition's message for what it is. His conclusion:

In a word, we have devolved into an infantile society in which our technological successes have wrongly suggested that we can alter the nature of man to our whims and pleasures — just like a child who expects instant gratification from his parents. In a culture where affluence and leisure are seen as birthrights, war, sacrifice, or even the mental fatigue about worrying over such things wear on us. So we construct, in a deductive and anti-empirical way, a play universe that better suits us.

A must read, even if obviously written by a classics professor.

The road home

Without a good internet connection, I've been relying on my picture phone to update my blog. But being that I was on the border of the Smokey Mountains, there wasn't much good cell service either. Thus, I had no opportunity to explain that the previous two photos were taken from wonderful Gatlinburg, Tenn. Yes, the Dirty-Burg. The shop is Cooter's Place (a museum with a surprisingly not-backwoods website), and last Wednesday, Enos from the Dukes of Hazzard was there signing autographs (for $10). I opted not to buy an autograph, but I did snap off a picture of the TV Enos adjusting his trousers.

Tonight I'm in Jackson, Miss., just ate at Keifer's and am sitting in a hotel room pondering the distance between Jackson and Dallas – a whole lot of Louisiana. Get you bug wipers ready.