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Doubts

According to a magazine called Expatica (for American expatriots living in Europe), German intel denies Die Welt’s story about Syria testing chemical weapons in Darfur:

German intelligence sources said Wednesday they had no information which could confirm a report claiming Syria had tested chemical weapons in cooperation with the government of Sudan on black Africans in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region.

Agonistes

As a favor to a buddy of mine, I’m filling in as the online Agony Aunt at an Australian university. I’m not putting the URL up here, because I know that you maniacs will flood it with all sorts of dumb questions, as opposed to the dumb questions that I’m already fielding. To wit:

hi im 15, and have fallen for this guy who’s 20, but he doesnt know yet. Do you think the age gap is a bit OTT? Im really into him but the last thing i want is him turning me down because of my age! please help!!!

Your fill-in Agony Aunt (Uncle Joe) sez that, yes, you ARE too young at 15. It’s a fine line, but there’s a certain level of maturity (by which I mean, the ability to manipulate others) that this guy has probably reached, and that you just wouldn’t be aware of. So, I advise finding a crush a little closer to your age, so you don’t get hurt.

I’ve been going out with this guy for 3 weeks now. I met him a month ago in the internet. And the 2nd time we hang out, he holded my hand and from that moment on we became gf-bf. I told my parents about my boyfriend but they seem not to like this relationship. This is because Im an Asian girl and my bf is an Aussie. But I love my bf very much. He’s my first bf ever and he treats me very nice. I want to keep this relationship but I wanted my parents to be happy about us. What do you think I should do?

Uncle Joe sez: During my first trip to the Antipodes, I discovered that Australian men drink harder than any other human beings I have ever met. He probably seems cool now, but he’ll eventually begin piledriving Bundies-&-Cokes with a careerist determination that will absolutely horrify you.

You should probably play the field a little.

I want to die

What kind of an attitude is that? Uncle Joe sez you should face every day with joy, and live a life of blessings (even if yer an atheist).
If you can’t do that, let me know if you have any cool CDs.

A couple of weeks ago i was going out with this guy, we got on really well and we realyliked each other. Then i wenton holiday for a week and when i came back, one of my mates told me that he;d seen him getting off with another girl!i didnt know what to do! so in the end we sjust split up! After we’d split up i asked him about it and he said that he had’nt now i still really like him but he says he just wants to friends wasi right ti dump him just because one of my m8’s said he saw him? Who should i have trusted?

Trust yer mates. BUT make sure that one of THEM doesn’t start dating him. In that case, you got played out. Uncle Joe has spoken!

Hi. I have been friends with this boy for 5 yeasr now and at first he was the one guy that i could always talk to and just 5 months ago he told me he was gay which i was fine because the more i got to know him the more i thought me might be gay even thou for years he said he wasn’t but since he told me he was gay i have seen a big change in him and the way he acts towards me and my other friends many people have told him and i have sat down and talked to him about it i even wrote him a letter cause i was even finding it hard to talk to him but he didn’t even want to talk to me about it and just put the letter in his desk and didn’t say anything about it but also he is not caring about anybody anymore like he was no fellings and i no this some mad but he is one of my best friends and i dont want to lose but i dont know what to do anymore other people have tryed to talk to him but he wont talk to anybody please do you any way i could maybe talk to him so he will listen to me or anyway i could help him though this change.

Even though being gay is a lot more accepted now than in the old days, it’s still gotta be REALLY tough to come to terms with that. What you need to keep in mind is that yer friend is feeling his way around in a completely different world than the one that he was “prepared for” by our culture. So he’s probably going to adopt some different personae in hopes of finding himself as a sexual and social person. As part of that process, he’s probably going to be a real dick about things (and deny that that’s what he’s doing). If you’re a good friend, you’re going to need to be really patient with him, but also let him know that You Knew Him When, and that you’ll be there for him. But don’t phrase this in a Friends-like “I’ll be there for you” sorta way. Just try to talk to him to understand the world that he’s moving into (It’s a LOT different than yours). So sez Uncle Joe.

I’m dumb and useless

Yeah, but your spelling’s better than anyone else’s on this page, and Uncle Joe sez you should be commended for that.

Happy New Year!

Rosh Hashanah starts tonight: Happy new year to my family, and Jewish friends and readers!

Vice Fund

I like the way this “sin-based” mutual fund buys shares in “alcohol, tobacco, gam[bl]ing, and defense.”

Of course, I always thought that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should add Bowling and NASCAR to its purview, but hey.

Fire Ants?!

New Orleans is my second-favorite city in America (New York is #1, and Vegas is my favorite unreal city), and the official VM girlfriend’s family lives in a small town near it, so I’m really hoping that hurricane Ivan passes it by:

The worst-case scenario for New Orleans [. . . ] could submerge much of this historic city treetop-deep in a stew of sewage, industrial chemicals and fire ants, and the inundation could last for weeks.

Why can’t I bring my gun into the General Assembly?

Lee Smith on the myth of multilateralism:

If we’re still looking for root causes of Sept. 11, Arafat’s coming-out party in the inner sanctum of multilateralism [his address to the UN] is one of them. The Western caretakers of the international community signaled then that since they could not comprehend the actions and read the intentions of men like Arafat, neither could they protect us from them. For his part, Arafat knew that if 11 members of the Israeli Olympics delegation could be executed on television and he was allowed to walk away, then the guardians of world order were weakest when they let the coalition determine the mission. After three decades of consensus-building that has rationalized terrorist violence as legitimate resistance, the butchering of hundreds of children at Beslan is not beyond reason. It is the logical result of accepting our enemy’s description of the world as legitimate.

Mo’ Money

Google‘s convinced me to put box ads here on VM. Click on some of ’em, so I can say that this blog pays for itself!

I spent the first anniversary of Sept. 11 walking around NYC with my girlfriend at the time, taking pictures, listening to the wind, and helping her get an “I Love NYC” tattoo on the back of her neck. Here’s a link to the editorials I wrote for my magazine on the attacks and the first anniversary.

Last year, I spent the day at home, waiting for a truck to bring me 2,000 copies of the 9.11 novel I was publishing, The Immensity of the Here and Now, by Paul West (still available!).

This year, I drove into NYC to pick up my girlfriend, headed out to a Mac store to pick up an Airport Extreme base station, walked around the town of Nyack for a bit, and had a pleasant afternoon. She told me how, during the ceremony where the names of the dead were read, some elderly couple read a few names, and the wife kept hectoring the husband because he skipped some of them. Here’s the whole list.

During the drive in this morning, I ruminated on the anniversary. Heading out of my town, there’s a wonderful view of the NYC skyline (not so far south as to see the WTC area, unfortunately), and it put me in mind of the day of the attacks, seeing that same skyline from the highway near my office. The weather was absolutely gorgeous here on 9.11.01, and a plume of dark smoke stretched north across the island of Manhattan. On one hill, people were setting up tripods and taking photos of the city. Memento mori.

I don’t feel like going into it too much nowadays. We all responded (and continue to respond) in our own ways, and I try not to begrudge anyone else’s ways of approaching it.

About a week after the attacks, I was able to start listening to music radio again (I’d been unable to take anything but news radio at first). One of the rock stations played “New York,” by U2, from its most recent album. I’d never heard the song before.

New York, by U2

In New York, freedom looks like too many choices
In New York, I found a friend to drown out the other voices
Voices on a cell phone
Voices from home
Voices of the hard sell
Voices down a stairwell
In New York
Just got a place in New York

In New York, summers get hot, well into the hundreds
You can’t walk around the block without a change of clothing
Hot as a hair dryer in your face
Hot as handbag and a can of mace
New York
I just got a place in New York
New York

In New York, you can forget, forget how to sit still
Tell yourself you will stay in, but it’s down to Alphaville

New York, New York

The Irish been coming here for years
Feel like they own the place
They got the airport, city hall
Dance hall, dance floor, they even got the police
Irish, Italians, Jews and Hispanics
Religious nuts, political fanatics in the stew
Happily, not like me and you
That’s where I lost you
New York

In New York, I lost it all to you and your vices
Still I’m staying on to figure out my mid-life crisis
I hit an iceberg in my life
You know I’m still afloat
You lose your balance, lose your wife
In the queue for the lifeboat

You better put the women and children first
But you’ve got an unquenchable thirst for New York

New York, New York

In the stillness of the evening
When the sun has had its day
I heard your voice whispering
Come away now to New York

9/11 Voters?

Gore won NJ by 16 points in 2000, but according to the Newark Star Ledger, I now live in a swing state.