I’m sitting on a balcony in Barcelona, Spain. It’s fucking awesome. We came here on a wild hair with some friends with no real purpose or agenda. We are staying in a nice part of town. There is a street sign 5 feet away that says “Carrer Dels Cecs de la Boqueria”. I have a double cappuccino, I slept ’til noon and, needless to say, I am a happy man right now.

I’ve never been to Europe before, although I have been to England and Ireland many times as well as Australia, Mexico and a few other countries. Never Europe before, though. This city seems very European to me. There are people from everywhere speaking every language. The women are ultra fucking hot. My wife says the men are, too. Getting out of the States, it is nice to see thinner people. All of the women are thin, it seems. The only chubby people are tourists, usually Germans and Americans, from what I can tell.

Last night was our first night and we got pretty hammered. We were warned repeatedly about pickpockets and last night we got our first taste of that. First they tried to get me. I was drunk and they acted drunk and were all like “Dude, where are you from?” I was being friendly and the guy sort of “danced” with me. I grew immediately uncomfortable and pushed him away. My wallet was in my front pocket and as soon as we got away from them I had the presence of mind to check my inventory. I was fine, they didn’t get anything. Then (unbeknownst to me) they did the same thing to my friend. He also had his wallet in his front pocket but they got his. By the time he noticed, they were gone. He was drunker than me and his pants were looser. We both felt pretty stupid. The unfortunate moral of the story is that you can’t assume that friendly people are friendly here. The next time they try that “dancing” stuff with me I’m gonna knock the guy on his ass and kick him in the head. I’ll pretend I’m drunk so it seems like an accident.

There was a thread on UTI a few weeks ago about the “ugly American tourist”. I’ve seen fairly few Americans and you can’t really tell people’s nationalities from looking at them, in a lot of cases. So I haven’t seen (or been!) the ugly American tourist except for when we landed in Spain and were going through customs. We got off the plane and, being a bunch of Americans, we queued up politely in line to get our passports stamped. The line was ridiculously long but very orderly. Then masses of EU people came down the stairs and the whole place immediately turned into a mob scene. Utter chaos. They had like 10 stations for checking people in but only 2 were staffed. No one directed traffic, there was no organization, nothing. Chaos. So there are like 2000 people all cramming together trying to get through the gate. The Americans in the group were not happy and I realized that sometimes, perhaps rarely, the “ugly American tourist” is right! I’ve never seen that sort of utter, unmanaged chaos going through customs in the states. Americans, and probably everybody, have a deep sense of fair play and we are not happy when people start pushing and shoving and cutting in line. We expect the authorities to keep order. Any rational person would have 1) opened more stations for checking people in and 2) provided order in the management of the queues. My thought was, yeah, I might be an asshole but you people are retards.

But, of course, it all worked out fine eventually. There is more to tell but this is getting long. More to come!

While I am highly critical of the Bush administration, the Iraq war and the “global war on terror” in general, I am still very proud to be an American and I think the attacks of 9/11 were perpetrated by irrational criminals who should be killed or incarcerated. Osama bin Laden can kiss my ass. He is a hypocrite and a liar and he leads an organization that will never attain any of its goals. I know Islam and Christianity to be religions of peace. The violence generated by followers of these faiths is the exception, not the rule, and all peace-loving people should reject it.

We honor the fallen and we stand together in our resolve to defend ourselves from the hatred of radicals of all denominations, both domestically and abroad, who kill innocent people in the name of god. Fuck you all.

Spammer Goes To Jail

I could not be happier about this. I think spammers are ruining the Internet. You can’t be sure that people see your emails anymore due to the necessity of spam filters. I use more than one spam filter on some accounts. They spam comments on blogs, they spam referral logs, they spam EVERYTHING. These fucking low lives are willing to ruin everything, they burden systems and infrastructure with their bullshit, they lie, cheat and steal and they should spend decades in pound-me-in-the-ass prison. I hope this fucker gets beaten to death in his cell.

Harsh, I know, but what is an appropriate penalty for ruining the Internet? This fuck wit was willing to screw over millions of people for his personal gain. There is an ancient law that spammers are going to have to come to terms with: if you fuck with us we are going to fuck with you.

See you in 9 years Jeremy Jaynes. I suspect it will be the worst 9 years of your life. I sincerely hope it is.

PZ Myers does a better job than I ever could of explaining Plan B. Still, I will try to add my own twisted logic to the debate.

Plan B is not an abortion pill. It is a contraceptive, like a condom. It does not interfere with a fertilized egg in any way, if the woman who takes it is already pregnant. If she is not pregnant, it prevents her from getting pregnant.

So it is, in my mind, impossible to construe Plan B as something immoral. As such, it makes no sense that lame pharmacists would have any reason to have moral qualms about giving it to women that request it.

I also think the artificial age limit is ridiculous as well. If a 16-year old girl is afraid she might get pregnant and she doesn’t want to be pregnant, let’s make sure she can remain not-pregnant. You Christians can get right off your moral high-horse about how she shouldn’t have had sex if she didn’t want to get pregnant. That people, including very young adults, have sex is a fact and no amount of praying or illogical legislation is going to change that.

Rational Right Wingers should have no problem with Plan B. The fact that the FDA held this up because of the religious views of the far right is fucking insane. The FDA has no responsibility to enforce ANY ideology except that of science-based public health. Plan B is extremely safe, it does not weigh in on either side of the abortion debate, it helps prevent unwanted pregnancies and abortions and it is nuts that the religious right doesn’t understand any of this.

AlterNet has an article called The Long Dive of a Woman’s Sex Drive. It discusses that recent studies show that women in monogamous relationships have a sex drive which decreases over time, whereas mens’ stays constant.

On the one hand, this should be no surprise. Men, in general, are much more obsessed with sex than women at virtually every age, place and time. As a man, though, it is still a disappointing statistic. Even in a committed, long-term, monogamous relationship, where we are having the last sex partners of our lives, women, on average, just aren’t that interested.

In the comments in the articles linked above, one sees a lot of variety. There is one women that wants the foreplay to begin in the morning so that just after dinner or so she “is ready”. Wha..? Nothing like a little 10-hour advance warning spontaneity, huh?

Then there is this moron:

As a couples therapist i am getting more and more cynical about monogamy working (especially for women). Is it my imagination but are men morons? I guess I am jaded but I don’t see much in the way of men who are good at multitasking-(father, husband, human being). Women always seem to get holding every bag there is (work, chores, kids, sex…) Men take responsibility for? moodiness.

Ummm, how is your couples therapy business going? Good thing you are not introducing any bias.

Let me be clear: I’m not saying there is anything “wrong” with women or that they have some duty to be fuck-monkeys their whole life. I’m merely stating that virtually all men wish their women would be interested in being fuck-monkeys their whole life. Sex is one of those things which is easy, not particularly time-consuming, it encourages emotional intimacy, it is good for the blood circulation and it makes men (and women) incredibly happy. It’s not a chore, it’s not work, it’s not some further duty on your already over-burdened life, its relaxing, recreational and a very special part of an intimate relationship. I just don’t get why, it seems at times, that men and women look at this so differently.

I’ll add, gratefully, that my wife does not seem to fit the statistic! I hope yours doesn’t, either.

This sure looks like a great place to work!

OK, you Righties, what is wrong with this? Senator Harry Reid said:

United with one voice, Democratic leaders from Joe Biden to John Murtha sent a clear message to George Bush — it’s time for a New Direction in Iraq. Our plan is straightforward: we believe that a phased redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq should begin by the end of 2006. And our soldiers in the region should transition to a more limited mission focused on counterterrorism, force protection of U.S. personnel, training and logistical support of Iraqi security forces.

The problem with the George W. Bush approach is — how do we know when we are done? When did we win? When Iraq has no insurgents? That may never happen. When they have a government? They have one now. When they have an army? Like the one we decimated? They have an army and apparently half of the solders are insurgents, too.

Tell me, oh wise ones, when we will know when we are done in Iraq?

(I am leaving off the table for now my personal belief that our troops are making the situation worse by their presence and not better.)