The Gay Science (Fiction)

•I met the lovely Allison Mack of Smallville yesterday (and enjoyed the play Apple Cove), and in other comics-type news, I notice that the final issue of DC Comics' latest time-warping miniseries, Time Masters: Vanishing Point comes out this week, on Groundhog Day.  Coincidence?  Maybe due to changes in the time line in their next such series, Flashpoint, they won't yet have failed to go back to not having never not had no alternate timelines now. 

•Speaking of repeating things, Darren Aronofsky, I kid you not, had been scheduled to direct a remake of RoboCop before he ended up doing Black Swan (though the latter also sounds pretty Verhoevenian, actually).  I hope all the ballet buffs who enjoyed Black Swan will flock to his next film, also animal-themed, namely next year's X-Men sequel The Wolverine.  From orthodox Jews to addicts to immortals to wrestlers to ballerinas to ninjas -- is there anything Aronofsky can't do?  He also has a Batman comic book coming out.

•Yet I, too, am a Renaissance man (or "dabbleur," if you will): I noted yesterday my impending theatrical/art performance (in Don't Tread on Me, this coming Sunday at 3pm at Momenta Art in Williamsburg), and I am not without past theatre experience. 

In addition to acting a bit in high school and college, I took a playwriting course at Brown from Adam Bock, a man who I see has gone on to some success and who makes no bones about his authorial orientation, being quoted as saying: "I’m a gay playwright.  I like being called a gay playwright.  It’s who I am. It’s how I write.  I have a very specific take on the world because I’m gay."  Reading between the lines here, I suspect Bock is gay. 

Back at Brown, it occurred to me that Bock looked a lot like a character who was on TV at the time (and held somewhat similar views): namely, Dieter from Saturday Night Live.  (Universal apparently sued Mike Myers for $3.8 million for abandoning his plan to do a Dieter movie because he was unhappy with his own script, which I do not doubt was bad.  However, suffering that financial loss for the sake of his art shows Myers has transcended the cash nexus of late capitalism, fraulein.  Interesting that David Hasselhoff and Jack Black were supposed to be in it.  Maybe one day Dieter could do a cameo in a Bruno sequel.)

For Bock's class, I wrote an absurdist play about Nietzsche (the original Superman writer), as I recall, and I cannot pretend my sensibilities have changed much since.

Adam Bock, though Canadian, was not, I should note, the Brown instructor of mine who had the class watch a graphic video created by the (presumably small) political group Gay Asians of Toronto (note: which is not a Broken Social Scene spin-off band), a video which was supposed to teach me tolerance of gays, Asians, or Canadians, I think, but mainly taught me that men on the receiving end of anal sex do not necessarily look happy.  I draw no moral conclusions from this, though, and have nothing against gays or Asians -- and to celebrate the final day of this blog's "Month of Haters," I will even stop picking on Canadians.  (As always, I really just want budget cuts and deregulation.)

It never hurts to be reminded that philosopher professor Martha Nussbaum (then of Brown, now of Chicago) looked like Robert Plant, either. 

And on that odd note: on to the intensely heterosexual "Month of Lovers" tomorrow.

Todd Seavey Dances in Williamsburg: One Week from Today!

•Why are my arms outstretched like Superman's in the photo nearby?  Is it to celebrate the fact that Allison Mack, who plays Clark Kent's best friend Chloe Sullivan on Smallville, debuts this week in the play Apple Cove written by my friend Lynn Rosen?  Hell, no (though you should go see that).

•Rather, that is a production still of me engaged in modern dance suggestive of Randian supermen, you philistine.  Why?  Because one week from today, on Sunday, February 6 (at 3pm), I will be one of the performers in the multimedia performance art piece called Don't Tread on Me directed by Chelsea Knight, featuring real-life libertarians and right-wingers presenting aspects of their views as speeches and other modes of art, put on at Momenta Art in Williamsburg (359 Bedford Ave.).  Come see the rational dancer.  Come hear me quote from the best speech ever, Reagan's 1964 speech on behalf of Goldwater.

Chelsea has shown marvelous tolerance throughout, trying to capture the essence of Atlas Shrugged, Reagan, and the Tea Party movement even while herself being a leftist raised on some godforsaken commune in Vermont or something. 

•If you need still more Rand, she and several other capitalistic authors will feature in my next monthly Book Selections entry, coming up that same day, Sunday one week hence.  Think of it as an unofficial online extension of the day's multimedia experience. 

•You can enhance the world's libertarian multimedia options yourself by e-mailing the contact info of movie theatres who you think might be persuaded to show the upcoming (April 15) indie-film version of Atlas Shrugged: Part One to this e-address: theaters@atlas-shrugged-movie.com .  It might not suck.

•Speaking of libertarian film celebrations, Reason posted a video clip about their party at the burlesque club the Box last month, honoring the major First Amendment courtroom victory for John "the Buttman" Stagliano against anti-porn laws, in part over his film Milk Nymphos, and Scott Nybakken points out that you can see me in the lower part of that overhead still tracking shot that occurs right after the opening soundbite (of the Reason clip, I mean, not Milk Nymphos), talking to bespectacled and bipedal conservative commentator S.E. Cupp as well as bald and bearded National Review staffer Kevin Williamson.

•On another multimedia note, here's a pop culture history question I could probably figure out online but will have more fun trying to solve using my friends' and readers' memories (which is sort of apt): Seinfeld aired from 1990-1999, but did the show ever mention the Internet? 

Oh, how times have changed if not.  The unofficial ten-years-later reunion episode that occurred "within" an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm in 2009 doesn't count, although it featured a subplot about George inventing a toilet-locating app and then losing the vast royalties due to having invested all his money with Bernard Madoff -- "Madoff!!"  I think I will buy an iPhone myself this week, in part due to my Mac ownership, which leads me to think that unforeseen compatibility synergies may well arise that wouldn't if I got a Droid, much as I love the name and understand some people's fear of the iPhone touchscreen taking the place of a keyboard.  I am open to counter-arguments.

•Finally, in the realm of installation art, critic Chuck Blake notes these fine pieces by Terry Border of BentObjects (and says, "I like the marshmallow pirates").

Todd Seavey at Republican Liberty Caucus (RLC): Two Weeks from Today!

•If you're in the DC area on Sat., Feb. 12 (9:45-10:25am), please come hear me talk about the Tea Party movement and what comes next.  I'll be on a stellar panel featuring Murray Sabrin (not to be confused with the recently deceased Joe Sobran), Joe Seehusen (Ron Paul campaign vet), and Chip Tarburton (Tea Party leader) -- moderated by Corie Whalen (not to be confused with Elizabeth Whelan) -- all of it part of the Republican Liberty Caucus convention at the Hilton Arlington (Ballston), 950 N. Stafford (or, y'know, let me know if you wanna have brunch the next day). 

The RLC convention, the biggest-ever gathering of avowedly-libertarian Republicans will also feature Randy Barnett, David Boaz, Rep. Justin Amash, NYC's own Thor-worshipping councilman Dan Halloran, petition-happy Paul Jacob, and an array of exciting guest stars (though not legendary funnyman Alan King, who passed away several years ago, striking a decisive blow to monarchy in the U.S.).  Sign up now.  I will attempt to make a bigger splash than I did with my last panel discussion.

•I'll tell ya this much right now, though: It's too late in the day for any more "stealthy" approaches.  Libertarians, including me, spent the past few decades learning how, at various points, to talk like liberals, ally with conservatives, show people we're in some sense moderates, debate with left-anarchists, reassure environmentalists -- even keep the peace with various nutty subsets of libertarians.  No more time for that.  Cut spending and deregulate radically right now or the whole civilization comes crashing down.  That is the one mission that most matters.  Anyone claiming to be engaged in something called "politics" without having that as priority #1 is an obstacle. 

This mission is too urgent to need any stealthy or proxy labels -- right, left, even "libertarian" if that's too vague a catch-all for some people (including some libertarians) to keep straight.  Shrinking government is simply the immediate program for survival, by any name.  Like medicine or food production, it need not be "framed," historicized, rendered as part of the dialectic, placed on a "spectrum," contrasted with the Enlightenment, put in a cultural context, or translated into electoral rhetoric.  It is just what must be done.  All else is armchair nonsense and pageantry.  

I'm speaking to Republicans in one week, yes, but at this point I'd say the same thing to Marxists -- and dare hope even they might leave the room convinced on the spot.  Sane people of any nominal political tribe must now stand up for economic sense or drag us down to ruin, and even decades of calling oneself a "communitarian" or something are now irrelevant as this yawning economic abyss rushes up to consume all and render abstract, intuited notions of rights and responsibilities moot.

Fascinating careers can be built around indirect approaches to the big issue -- talking about whether religion correlates with success, or how ethnicity affects things, or gender, urbanization, optimism, even punk, what have you.  But I think the time for the sophisticated, asymptotic, we'll-get-there-in-a-decade approach has run out.  Time to yell "Stop spending!" and "Deregulate!" loudly and often.

•But mentioning rock n' roll dismissively in that paragraph doesn't mean I can't see the potential for making traditionalism hip when a band like Iron & Wine (with Edie Brickell opening) plays Radio City Music Hall, so I'll still go to that tonight.

•In another test of priorities, I will do my part to hold the free-market coalition together by

Now Entering 2003 or So

Some of you know how truly lo-fi Todd HQ here on the Upper East Side has been for the past decade, but the next several days should yield a lurch into the twenty-first century, after which a more natural and steady rhythm of the blogging, blog-glitch-fixing, tweeting, following, Facing, meeting-up, podcasting, cell-phoning, and cable-viewing should occur -- all without imperiling the overdue apartment-cleaning and the ongoing actual bigtime work-assignments-doing.  Bear with me just a bit longer.

In my defense, I successfully waited out Friendster without ever joining, so trying the same with Facebook and a few other things (cell phones, oxygen) seemed worth a try.  I can't claim to have conservative leanings and just leap on every passing trend, can I?  (I once asked John Derbyshire if he had a cell phone, to which he replied: Of course not, I'm a conservative.)  As a man of science, I never stopped believing in the power of media-assisted social networks or the eventual takeover of the planet by robots throughout it all, though. 

On the other hand, I see that Web-co-founding Rasta man Jaron Lanier, the Harry Knowles of cyberspace, now thinks that the key to rescuing the culture and restoring individual creativity is destroying the hivemind/packdog effect created by the Net, according to an interview with him in the leftist book Death of the Liberal Class (but more on that in my March Book Selections entry -- see, those of us with less of the instant-gratification tech are more accustomed to advance planning).  The Net may not be the problem, though.

Might the simple answer to this month's implicit question on ToddSeavey.com, "Why all the hatin'?" be just this: because now the smelly mob, which (if history is any guide) would normally be setting things on fire and attacking witches, mostly convenes in comment threads?  Maybe humanity was and is always this awful and we just didn't have to hear from them so much before.  And I know what you're thinking: "What becomes of the social-democratic dream of Habermas and his ilk if the masses are really just a bunch of jerks you'd rather not have to talk to?"  February is this blog's "Month of Lovers," so we'll have to fix the jerks problem in March or so.  Until then, at least the Web gives them a place to get it out of their systems. 

And the sci-fi fan in me can't help but think with a shudder: "Imagine if they all had telekinesis -- not telepathy, mind you, but telekinesis!"  Oh, wait.  That was the climax of the awesome 60s sci-fi movie Quatermass and the Pit, come to think of it.  No wonder both Greil Marcus and I love it.  If you haven't seen that movie, I hereby viciously denounce you online.

Literature Preview

Last night I saw a so-called Literary Death Match (just before NYC became Hoth), and starting in the middle of next week, it's a month of my poetry, right here on ToddSeavey.com.  That's right, each day (aside from a few necessary announcements and the like) will be dedicated to a different (unnamed) woman from my past, in chronological order, as the "Month of Lovers" reminds us all what art and love truly are -- teaching us more than a little about ourselves in the process -- and maybe reminding those PUA simpletons once more how it's done.  Naturally, I intend to write "eighty-eight lines" in all, in keeping with alternative rock tradition.

Shazam! A Comics n' Literature Update

(This entry will mention which member of the Fantastic Four died this week, so if you're one of the few readers who care and don't want to know, best not to click on the "Read more" button below.) 

After a total of about three months of not blogging on my old usual topics (for various simultaneous yet mostly unrelated reasons), I had ten pent-up thoughts about rock and politics to disgorge yesterday, so you won't be surprised to see ten items about comics and sci-fi today:


1.  In combo superheroic/rock news, I notice Michael Rosenbaum from Smallville created a SyFy comedy series about has-been sci-fi actors, called Saved by Zeroes -- making it a quasi-sci-fi show with a presumably Fixx-inspired title.  That's good nerdery. 

(Side note: singer Cy Curnin was reportedly unhappy about the Fixx song "Saved by Zero" being used in a Toyota ad, which is not surprising given that he's a Luddite socialist who believes we should all simplify our lives -- get back to zero -- and eliminate unnecessary material trappings such as cars, though presumably not electric guitars and synthesizers.)

2.  Bane is reportedly one of the villains in next year's The Dark Knight Rises.  Bane is the villain who, in the comics, broke Batman's back in a storyline called "Knightfall."  Thus -- you heard it here first -- I predict a publicity-stunt title switch at the eleventh hour from The Dark Knight Rises to The Dark Knight Falls, a la the last-minute switch from Revenge of the Jedi to Return of the Jedi back in 1983 (to which the Episode III title Revenge of the Sith was an homage).  I also predict that Anne Hathaway as Catwoman will appear quite genuinely insane. 

3.  And that logically brings us back to the subject of my day in a women's prison, which Gerard Perry asked about.  I actually found the thick cell doors and constant-lockdown feel of a maximum security facility rather reassuring and would probably feel safer there -- or in solitary confinement -- than more readily mixed in with the general prison population.  If I lived in Gotham, I certainly would not plead insanity for fear of ending up in Arkham Asylum, though the odds of breaking out of that place would certainly be pretty good, if past trends hold. 

And I share Gerard's alarm at all the kids who now go to They Might Be Giants shows, of whom I was largely unaware until the band members whipped out some talking broom puppet from their recent TV appearances.  Then again, I always said they'd work well with Muppets, and that's to be admired. 

As for whether Firefly is good art, which Gerard also asked about: of course, and we nerds have taken over the commanding heights of respectable popular culture generally, from the indie rock to the high-concept sci-fi films.  It is good to be alive.  Some of us foresaw this day back when there were just occasional cyberpunk references in Chris Claremont's X-Men comics and a few bands obsessed with synthesizers. 

Indeed, tonight, the brainy and nerdy and yet hip Literary Death Match event at Le Poisson Rouge, which I plan to attend, will feature none other than cartoonist Roz Chast among the participants.  Roz Chast is art. 

4. Before seeing that, I must buy one -- just one -- comic book today.  Yeah, I know, but I've been clean for like a year and a half and don't plan to start up again.  It's just that the Shazam! one-shot out today might fix some of the weird cliffhangers that the Marvel Family has been left with over the past several years, various members being turned into statues, insane, powerless, what have you. 

One weird aspect of those characters -- who generally speaking transform by saying "Shazam!" or some variant -- is that at least a couple are kids who transform into adults, and one of them, Mary Marvel, has by my count been rendered comatose or corrupted (and even turned into a sex-starved killer wearing black leather) by something like six different characters now, by my count: Spectre, Black Adam, Eclipso, Darkseid, Desaad (ahem), Black Adam again, and in the one-shot probably the demoness named Blaze.  Has Mary no integrity?  Or is she not really the twisted one in all this? 

5.  Speaking of corrupting the youth, it seems only yesterday that it was still a novelty to

The Decemberists, Robert Novak, and Ending Government (with ALF cameo)

Last night, in advance of tonight's State of the Union address, I saw with my own eyes a piece of evidence that President Obama is a communist. 

1.  Or at least, I saw the Decemberists in concert again, and one unusually rabid right-wing site I glanced at once listed the Decemberists' performance at an Obama campaign event on the West Coast as evidence of his communism, since they're named after a (politically ambiguous) Russian revolt that the band themselves describe as proto-communist.  (And so an army of unemployed millennials lean back toward thinking Obama may be cool after all, which is the kind of aesthetics-based knee-jerk politics I'm trying to combat.)

2.  Of course, I'm not denying Obama and virtually all your indie rockers and your hipsters are leftists.  In fact, last night, wearing a bit more flannel and sounding a bit more country and jangly, the Decemberists seemed more R.E.M. than usual, which is fine with us Gen Xers (even ones who weren't happy about R.E.M. performing at Bill Clinton's inaugural gala back in the day, since that was evidence he was a Southerner and a closeted "third way" socialist with power pop influences -- well, it was). 

3.  And articles like this one pointed out to me by Gerard Perry (who has asked a couple comments thread questions I should address in tomorrow's entry) show that "science" is not exactly apolitical either (but note: John Horgan is the same idiot who declared the "end of science" in a book by that title a few years ago, so take his declarations of the end of gun ownership and capitalism with comparable grains of salt). 

4.  I also cannot deny that the Decemberists are likely trying to take Valerie Plame's side in their clever song by that title -- which probably makes me one of the few people to go to two Decemberists concerts yet also to be persuaded, in person not too long before he passed away, by the late Robert Novak's account of the whole affair, which is that it was a non-Bush-camp State Department official, Richard Armitage, who revealed Plame as a CIA staffer; the CIA itself who implicitly told Novak it'd be no big deal to report it when he cautiously asked them; and the special investigator who sat on that rather boring account of things, ordering Novak to keep silent about a non-Bush-loyalist being the initial leaker, while going on a meandering hunt for Bush-embarrassing post-leak leaks (and glory). 

Armitage was not even mentioned in the Sean Penn movie about the affair, apparently, and I assume Scooter Libby was made to appear the moral equal of Darth Maul. 

5.  I am not biased in my view of all this, I think, by the fact that I am now not just a Phillips Fellow (for having years ago gotten grant money from the Phillips Foundation) but, due to a posthumous renaming in Novak's honor, technically a Robert Novak Fellow (would that they simply redubbed us Princes of Darkness).  I'll speak to such of my fellow Fellows as choose to rally in NYC on Feb. 18 -- and to listen to the break-out session I lead -- about tips for appearing on TV.  (Note that I am drawing primarily on my experience as a producer.) 

6.  With this blog's "Month of Haters" yielding to its "Month of Lovers" next month, though, I will endeavor to leave partisan rancor -- and even much of the "right/left" talk -- behind in favor of educating one and all about economics, which is the most important thing (catch me trying to do that, in very different ways, in Williamsburg on Feb. 6 and in Arlington on Feb. 12, as noted in the right margin of this blog's front page). 

With Congress once more divided, split largely over the spending issue at a time when welfare-statists are not nearly as confident about what to do next as they pretend to be, it may be time to teach the fundamentals again -- once more treating talk of war or, say, obscene art as distractions.  (And emphasizing econ is by no means to de-emphasize humanity and morals, as this NYTimes blog entry pointed out to me by Ali Kokmen eloquently explains.)

7.  Sounding a bit R.E.M.-ish is a significant chronological leap forward since the Decemberists' previous album, which sounded more medieval, placing it in the prog rock era that began in the twelfth century and ended around 1974.  That prior album, The Hazards of Love, seemed

Shock and Audience

Wasn't I just talking about mass-murdering political figures in yesterday's entry?  As this blog's "Month of Haters" nears its end, I receive some hilarious tyrant news: a film adaptation of a novel by Saddam Hussein.  May 11, 2012 will see the release of The Dictator, with Sacha "Borat" Baron "Bruno" Cohen as a heroic autocrat fending off the evil forces of democracy threatening to unravel his rule. 

I think that is one of the best ideas for a movie I have ever heard.  If it's a hit, it might even start a comedy trend of adaptations of novels by dictators.  Gaddafi has some fantasy novels, I understand.  And there were rumors al Qaeda was named after Isaac Asimov's Foundation, so maybe Roland Emmerich could incorporate that into his planned adaptation somehow (he can work on multiple levels of meaning).  Couldn't be any worse than adapting the Asimov novel faithfully.

If all goes according to schedule, The Dictator will be in theatres one week after Joss Whedon's The Avengers.  The world may be coming to an end that year -- but not heroic entertainment!

Helen Rittelmeyer

[This entry was about that ex of mine from the CSPAN2 appearance, but it’s been a few years, I think she’s not only moved to Australia, gotten married, and matured but grown a bit more libertarian in the process to boot, so don’t waste any more time reading my comments about that old conflict. Read her more recent work if you like, and, our differences notwithstanding, I’m sure it’ll be smart and witty.]

Tracing One Kind of "Christianity" Back to Eve

By noting yesterday how Helen Rittelmeyer's attitudes may (ironically) have been influenced by an unwitting Dawn Eden, I do not mean to gloss over my own culpability in aiding and abetting a monster.  I was the one who spent two years telling the world -- including editors at National Review and HarperCollins -- that Helen is brilliant, and in some ways she is.  She's just evil, by pretty much any conventional moral standard, religious or secular. 

She does not stand, say, with Catholics against atheists or with rural populists against urban elites in her unique philosophical loyalties, despite her frequent attempts to triangulate in that way and appear loyal to some "team."  She stands alone -- or should -- against all remotely compassionate or ethical, non-sadistic members of the human race, longing for an unending, vicious war of all against all and making do with small personal harms in the meantime. 

Now, you'd think I might have noticed that sooner, what with dating her for nearly two years -- and her praising boxing, rioting, and constant verbal abuse as hallmarks of civilization and all -- but, in my defense, she knows full well that the layers of irony and double-meaning in both her written and spoken words create just enough plausible deniability that (A) good people will give her the benefit of the doubt (so she gains the strength in numbers and comfort that come from appearing to stand with them) and (B) bad people will be delighted at the hints that she's "in on the joke" (allowing her to stand with them when what she considers the real fun starts). 

That's her shtick, and it's not a bad means of getting away with a great deal, both philosophically and personally. 

•••

Another, also presumably unwitting, influence on this dangerous, nasty, William Blake-like combo of the sacred and profane was Eve Tushnet from Yale's Party of the Right (mentioned, as it happens, in a piece by Jonah Goldberg back when he visited the POR in 2000 and noted its odd penchant for ritualism).  I will assume Eve, perhaps best known for being the celibate Catholic lesbian blogger (and a columnist for Pat Buchanan's magazine American Conservative), is a fine person, and I share her enthusiasm for comics and alternative rock, but I can no longer

Beast of Eden (plus: Nick Drake)

The Christian blog Patum Peperium suggested that Helen Rittelmeyer, the ex with whom I sparred on C-SPAN2, should have read my earlier ex Dawn Eden's book on Christian dating, Thrill of the Chaste.  Dawn's subtle and indirect influence on the C-SPAN2 fracas is ambiguous, though (aside from the more concrete post-panel facts, such as her giving me -- not Helen -- a consoling hug when I got down from the podium and later trying to convince me, for good or ill, to take PR cues from Opus Dei on how to handle the subsequent controversy -- advice which I worry might simply have led to people thinking I was trying to kill Tom Hanks or that there was some element of cultish sadomasochism involved). 

True, if Helen had taken Dawn's warning in Chapter 18 not to date atheists like me literally, we would have avoided some conflict.  On the other hand, Helen doesn't like to take anything literally, despises truth-telling and rationality (bad signs, in retrospect, I admit, as was her contempt for kindness), was already quite familiar with Dawn's views and my relationship with Dawn before dating me (and had met Dawn), and has repeatedly dated either atheists or libertarians, always preferring to have something to fight about.  Always. 

Furthermore, atheism was not the problem.  (The problem, in a nutshell, was that I am good whereas Helen is evil.  I know that might sound to some like a slight oversimplification -- the sort that would make it hard to keep credentialed relationship counselors in business -- but I'm not even sure Helen would disagree with it, which is the scary part.  We'll render final judgment upon her in Sunday's entry, though.)

For now, let me just say that Dawn -- who I think is one of the most well-meaning people I've known even if I don't always agree with her methods -- made admirable efforts to avoid hypocritically glamorizing her pre-conversion rock groupie years in Thrill of the Chaste, despite me arguing back when she was writing it that the best marketing approach might be to split the book down the middle, devoting as much time to her years reporting on and sometimes dating 60s and 60s-influenced rock musicians as to her later conversion to Christianity, and call it From Mod to God.  (Since I dated her during a transitional period in which she'd recently turned Christian but not yet Catholic and not yet opposed to premarital sex, she might also have considered From Mod to Todd to God, though the order is a bit ambiguous.)

Despite Dawn's best efforts, though, there were bound to be some younger women out there who saw in

Religion Round-Up

If last year taught us nothing else, it's that religion, despite all the hype, really seems to do nothing at all to make people more moral, which is no big surprise.  Or rather, in some cases it does, in some it doesn't, and in the end it's not clear what it's accomplishing, on balance, given all its downsides.  "Yes, it's irrational, but on other hand it may make people behave even worse!" 

(Some of you reading this may actually recall my ex from last year saying at Lolita Bar that she believes religion improves people by making them less nice.  In retrospect, that was a crucial warning sign of just how inhumane her own take on her adopted Catholicism is, with moral and behavioral consequences I only wish I'd been wary enough to predict, especially before introducing her to my parents, who never before in two decades of my adult life had to deal with the spectacle, however slowly brought into focus, of me dating a bad woman.  They'd seen crazy maybe, but never before bad, never before proud-of-doing-harm, like a sad, juvenile sadist pulling wings off a fly, all the while calling it wit and scrappiness and even excellence, pretending to improve the world by flailing at it destructively and thereby testing it -- and by this pretense delaying the day, which I suspect she fears is inevitable, when tolerant, patient people finally realize just how dangerous she is and turn on her.)

Religion isn't just the destroyed skyscrapers and the censorship and the imprisoned gays and all that, annoying as all those things are, there's also the more nearly universal way in which religion sets at the very center of moral thinking -- where we should be most honest and careful -- a love of self-deception, flattering the sensibilities of precisely those people whose mental habits ought not to be encouraged: liars, self-haters, the delusional, the alcoholic, the question-dodgers, the blame-passers. 

I know religion can inspire people to endow hospitals, but I've met atheists who have done such things as well, no tortuous reasoning required, whereas I've never met an atheist who said, "Immorality is inevitable given the fallen nature of Man, so I can't be expected to behave well, but a magical entity will simply erase my horrible moral record when I'm done with my crimes, as long as the magical entity is the one being for whom I show some love and respect!  It's like a Get Out of Jail Free card, even if I haven't done a thing to compensate my real-world victims!  Yay, redemption for the wicked!  Party on!!"

And in the final three themed entries of this "Month of Haters," over the next three days, I must note the roles played in this month's story (or perhaps I should say last year's story) by a trinity of vexing women, all converts to Catholicism, none of them haters themselves as far as I know (even the climactic one, the aforementioned ex from my C-SPAN2 appearance, claims not to be one and sent a Christmas gift -- whether for altruistic or purely-strategic reasons the historians and psychologists can debate). 

But for now, a round-up designed merely to remind us of the unending variety of religion's effects, not to build any particular argument:

Greg Gutfeld, My New Blog Epigram, and Life's End

My second entry yesterday, the alphabetical new "personal ad," probably owes some subconscious inspiration to the brilliant book The Alphabet of Manliness (written by a friend of a friend of mine, as it turns out, though I didn't know that when first amused by its glorious man-vs.-gorilla fistfight cover painting).  And it is largely of men, smelly and uncouth though they are, that I must blog today. 

1.  First of all, while the commentary proles -- all those anonymous, near-mindless comment thread participants -- often weighed in against me after the C-SPAN2 confrontation with my evil ex, whereas those close to the situation (non-famous wonk types in many cases) tended to weigh in in my favor (forming a solidly moral "commentary bourgeoisie," as it were), the commentary elite (bigtime media such as Washington Post and the like) seemed more divided, less knowledgeable about the details than the commentary bourgeoisie but generally more willing to admit their confusion and ignorance than the commentary proles. 

One of my favorite balancing acts in this department (and I don't think I'm biased by the fact I was working for the same network at the time) was the reaction of the funny and too-rarely-seen 3am Fox News political humor show Red Eye, which on October 19 had a panel of anti-Todd talking heads, including two women I didn't recognize and that recurring Red Eye participant who looks like a bald lesbian but is in fact a man, whose name I forget.  Sort of like a Frank Black gone bad. 

They reacted to a very brief, edited version of the already-brief C-SPAN2 clip -- their even-briefer version leaving out the crucial detail that my nominally-traditionalist ex actually acted upon her sociopathically sinister plan to bring together and then break up a couple for kicks -- and they did not react to the clip wisely.  That guy who looks like a bald lesbian -- and who I'm told has gone on about his penchant for hiring prostitutes on previous shows -- even took the time to call me chinless and unattractive and to say that he has the hots for Helen.  He also hypothesized (quite erroneously, I must say) that I must have a small penis.  Again: the bald lesbian-looking man who has to hire prostitutes hypothesizes that I have a small penis. 

And this went on for about five minutes, apparently to the horror of some internal Fox forces who didn't

Todd Seavey Personal Ad #2

It was mistakenly claimed by NPR and others that my old joke Personal Ad from this site was written in response to events in 2010.  In fact, it was written back in 2006, as the site was first being assembled (well before I had the misfortune to meet the woman NPR claimed inspired the ad). 

In any case, one's needs change over time, so the following bare-bones ad, like the old one, notes broad, manifestly-awful female psychological types I'd like to avoid.  This joke ad is a better representation of what I'm looking for in a woman now than the old joke ad.  I'm really not setting the bar all that high with this list, either, so anyone who thinks it sounds too demanding or narrow-minded is likely insane.


Herewith a simple "alphabet" of deal-breakers:

More PUA B.S. plus BSS and Crazy Chicks in NYC

Tonight, I'll see the band Broken Social Scene, of whom about twelve other bands from Montreal are subsets. 

Larger even than the total population of Montreal, though, is the number of women slept with every week by each practitioner of Pick-Up Artistry (PUA), or so they claim when they aren't criticizing me for denouncing one of my own exes on C-SPAN2 a few months ago.  There's less than a month until Valentine's Day, though, fellas, and my real concern is whether you'll find true love. 

(Next month here at ToddSeavey.com, to balance out the current "Month of Haters," will be my "Month of Lovers," each day bringing a poem about a different ex of mine.  No names.  And in a few minutes, I'll post Todd Seavey joke Personal Ad #2, for those wearied by the length or duration, so to speak, of my old one, which yet lives in the Archives of this site.)

One reason to be wary of the wide-net approach taken by the PUA types is, of course, the ever-present danger of sleeping with a crazy chick.  And there are crazy chicks out there.  Take, for example, this description of last week's reading at the swell and lit-friendly bar the Half King, which I have taken the trouble of filling with ellipses, since we've all heard this tiresome story in 6,000 different forms from 6,000 different crazy chicks (I suggest saying "Yadda yadda yadda" aloud at each ellipsis).  All together now:

In...Loud in the House of Myself: Memoir of a Strange Girl[, Stacy] Pershall chronicles her lifelong struggle with mental illness.  Like Susanna Kaysen's Girl Interrupted and Elizabeth Wurtzel's Prozac Nation...unique, heartbreaking, but ultimately redemptive...woman who is "different"...grew up in Prairie Grove, Arkansas...(population: 1,000)...prevailing wisdom was that Jesus healed all.  Deeply sensitive and intelligent...Bullying by her peers and a bad boyfriend...rapid downward spiral...In her mind, there was one person at fault for her suffering, one person who deserved to be punished again and again: herself. From starving herself for days to forcing herself to sleep in her closet because she wasn't "worthy" of the comfort of a bed...self-loathing...anorexia...Alternately diagnosed with bulimia, major depression, attention deficit disorder, bipolar disorder, anorexia, and borderline personality disorder...studied theater, fell in love...moved to new cities...mental illness that followed her wherever she went or whatever she achieved.

Pretty good bet she likes Oscar Wilde, astrology, and/or Breakfast at Tiffany's, I'm guessing (I recall a woman I knew back in 1992 whose dad had been an abusive rural cult leader but who managed to make it to an Ivy League school and then end up thinner, pale, bi, impatient, chain-smoking, Wilde-citing, lying, and music-savvy -- that sort of combo apparently being an aspiration of crazy chicks).  And I worry that more than a few of these banal stories involve New York City -- a.k.a. Crazytown, USA -- in the aforementioned role of "new cities." 

NYC offers crazy people the anonymity of crowds and generous social services, making it ideal for both your functional and your dysfunctional loon, or for people still mulling which option to pick.  I saw a color-coded map once of rates of mental illness in the U.S., and