newords

Pinking- Penis thinking

No news here.  We know guys think with their penises, leading us down the road to ruin again and again from the launch of a thousand ships to Weiner’s wiener.  Here’s the thing- Weiner’s approach to penile cogitation is an object lesson- on HOW TO DO IT!  In other words how to try and keep your life together notwithstanding the waggish ways of your wiener. 

What?  you say.  I say, what Weiner did was harmless.  Lying about it was not.  As is so often the case in courtrooms and careers, it’s the lie that does you in, not the act.  So men who are married and being led astray by their wiener?  Try virtual sex.  Openly.  Ideally with spousal permission.  In at least some marriages, if virtual sex substitutes for the actual deed a couple nights a week it may be a welcome respite for wives from nightly sexual expectations from horny husbands.  Or- it may be a good predicate to hot sex, you shop online but you buy at home?  Whatever that saying is.

Will you get spousal permission to have virtual sex?  Probably not, because no one can accept that the wiener will have its way regardless of what we say.  But still the choice- if the Hobson’s choice is between an actual tryst or a virtual one (i.e. you are just another guy with weak will when it comes to the wiener) is the virtual one.  If you get caught, own up immediately.  Is this worse than jerking off with a copy of penthouse?  Yes, but not all that much.  Am I engaging in pinking?  You bet. 

Sogamy- serial monogamy.

There’s no reason this neword should sound so much like sodomy.  Except maybe that we are all animals.  To quote the immortal words of Bloodhound Gang- only because my son listened to this song so repetitively when he was that age that it’s ingrained in the membrane- You and me baby ain’t nothin’ but mammals, so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.

In certain (toxic?) bachelor circles, to admit to monogamy as a goal is to admit to something shameful.  What- not be a poon hound when not in wedlock (lock being the operative word for this crowd)?  UnAmerican!  Stop being a- well, word that rhymes with stussy. 

But I digress. Again.  Bottom line some of us like or need to be in a relationship that lasts longer than a night.  We go for serial monogamy.   

Let’s dissect this.   First- why?  Well I will tell you why, at least from my itsy bitsy corner of the universe as a serial monogaman (that’s right, monogaman! Oh yeah, neword within a neword, ca-CHING!  Wait, there’s no money in newords.  Well, anyway, yeah!).

(1)  For some of us casual sex is an oxymoron.  I tend to be a bit of a- well, the best term I can come up with is J.A.P. and I get to use it because I’m Jewish- about sex.  Everything needs to be right, I need to have trust, I have very rarely done the casual thing and when I did it felt ooky in the morning if not right after.  I’m not putting it down.  I admire and even envy people who are sexual gymnasts, for whom it’s just clean and dirty fun!  Good exercise too.  But I’m not that and I suspect others who engage in sogamy aren’t either.

(2)  We may not be cool and/or beautiful enough to attract numerous partners.  Maybe we  don’t have enough one-liners to use off- or online.  Or we don’t have the looks to attract a barfly or sexual aesthete.  It’s a blessing and a curse.  If you aren’t gifted with great looks and/or the talent for sexually attractive repartee, you have minimized the likelihood you will be used for those qualities, which means people who are going to share a bed with you need to look deeper.  And that’s when you get to say in a hoarse, guttural voice, “I am not an animal, I am a human being!”   (From The Elephant Man- and no, it doesn’t have to be that extreme for this rationale to apply!)

(3)  We may just need the very major benefits a committed intimate relationship brings.  It’s being best friends or partners with benefits.  It’s hard to believe when you’re 25, but sex just isn’t it.  It’s only part of it.  They say looks fade but dumb is forever?  Same for relationships built only on sex. 

I’m not knocking it!  I’m probably rationalizing the fact that I’m not and never will be a stud.  Admittedly sex is necessary to feeling whole, when it’s good it’s almost too good to be true.  As Steve Martin once said, sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy.  I don’t wholly ‘buy’ that, but I do believe sex is sex, love is love and companionships is companionship and rarely the thrain shall meet.  OK there’s no such thing as thrain and the expression is “never the twain shall meet” but they aren’t only two things and “twain” is for two things and I make up new words, so…. Anyway, they can be very separate things.  At this stage of things for yours truly, I value companionship and conversation as much as sex. There, I said it.  And when all three of these elements come together- so to speak- in one longterm relationship, to my mind that’s heaven, or as close to it as we get, more heavenly than the biggest- let’s say sexual experience- you can have. 

The rub is- us divorced guys have all learned the hard way that longterm relationships can be short lived.  Having identified the preference of longterm monogamous partners, how do we deal with and/or avoid the sad fact of their transience?  If I knew that I wouldn’t still be paying the final lawyer bills for my second divorce.  Instead let’s all of us monogamen face the fact that relationships and life in general are trial and error.  We night as well admit to sogamy without shame, and pursue it with as much clear-sightedness as our checkered experiences will permit! 

torld tinderbox world

See also- lorld- lemming world

Japan is melting down. The Arab countries are in revolt. Sleeper cells still plot the demise of the American Empire. The markets march ever more precariously higher, get banged down by events such as Japan, then recover, helped by the huge dollar flows funded by the fed and the gestures of a few puppeteers making sure to preserve and enhance their capital.

Or maybe it’s lemming world- lorld? We all rush toward what we think of as goals, but actually on to- our fate?

Liberating Libya is a lot like- well, fill in the blank. If we think we are opportunistically creating new seedlings of Democracy in the Middle East as unrest spreads like a virus, what happened to the humility if not humiliation we should have developed by not having had ONE war on foreign shores go well over the last half century? After Korea that is- and even that’s not going so swimmingly lately…

So we knock down some Libyan planes, commit ourselves inch by inch to that cause, possibly the democratization of other Middle East messes, until we are knee deep creating multiple Arab vacuums of power into which extremism can rush like air into- well let’s not get repetitive.

Meanwhile our economy arguably sports the lipstick slathered on by the Fed and those that have an interest in propping the markets, while there seems to be less and less room at the trough for pigs without lipstick, which- ultimately—makes the economy vulnerable to a Yertle the Turtle type moment, some black swan event (if Japan and the Middle East don’t provide it) which collapses the house of cards.

Why so gloomy on a sunny if brisk Saturday the day before spring? I’m not. Just ruminatin’. Fulminatin’. Exhortatin’? And enjoying every minute of spring coming and the life we have, just in case it is as fragile and flammable as today’s headlines make it appear.

Love the imagery on lc but love this more- brilliant!

(via theladycheeky)

Pripublic Private Equity Republic

See Also- Butocracy Benevolent Plutocracy

Del Monte was bought this week for $4 billion by KKR and other private equity firms. J Crew was sold last week for $3 billion to Leonard Green & Partners and TPG. Over the past several years, just a random sampling of private equity acquisitions of iconic business names includes TXU ($43.8 billion), Equity Office Properties ($38.9 billion), HCA ($32.7 billion, 2006), RJR Nabisco ($31.1 billion), Harrah’s Entertainment ($27.4 billion), Clear Channel Communications ($25.7 billion), Kinder Morgan ($21.6 billion), Albertson’s ($17.4 billion) and Hertz ($15 billion). Experts are predicting much more of the same, given the paradoxical availability of cut-rate financing courtesy of the sputtering economy- sputtering for those who live outside the Wall Street microclimate, that is.

Time was when I thought of these megadeals as just that, deals which made fun reading in the business pages. But now I think of them as the signal of a potentially ominous and quickening trend.

The hoovering up by small bands of individuals, companies, hedge funds- referred to here loosely as private equity, of huge brand names, vast tracts of real estate, tons (and I mean tons) of gold and silver, and just loads of cash is not in itself worthy of public outrage. Our freedoms come in part from our Darwinian economic system. Private Equity having the ways and means to buy up vast swaths of American assets is arguably a natural outgrowth of our free-wheeling economy.

So- what do you do when that process combines with an increasing concentration of wealth in our country and the increasing conservatism of our politics- to wit lower taxes on the rich, no estate taxes to speak of, virtually infinite political spending on behalf of moneyed interests courtesy of the Citizens United case?

What do we do when we in the great middle and below find ourselves out in the economic cold, relegated to watching- through the wavy looking glass allotted us by the lifestyles of the rich and famous department of the media- the wealthy party like it’s 1899?

Well, what have we always done? In other words, why am I Chicken Littling this now, when control of the political bully pulpit by moneyed interests is as old as the plains owned by Ted Turner? (Ted’s holdings b.t.w.- 2,000,000 acres, in other words Ted basically owns a state!) Because- like the risks posed by geo-political conflict and terrorism, the ever-increasing sophistication of weapons of mass destruction, global warming, kids seemingly drowning in multi-media virtual lives- like pretty much everything these days, the rate of change seems to be quickening to a danger point.

Let’s hypothesize that the onrush of money toward a few hands in our country-a few hundred people let’s say- coincides with the ability of private individuals, through corporate vehicles permitted by the Supreme Court, to basically buy elections. And let’s say that the 98% that don’t control the economy are increasingly dependant on the trickle-down patronage of the Fortune 500 at the top. And say, ultimately, if the 98% get desperate enough from having gradually, without even noticing it, gone from middle class to no class, let’s say our nation teeters on the brink of a second civil war but this time, not a grographical one. Like fighting terrorism, in this hypothetical state of affairs, we are fighting a chimera, an enemy we can’t see because they are so few and so hidden behind the walls of privilege.

But- we don’t get there. Because as in any well run banana republic, the government, by the time of this unfortunate juncture, has a choke hold on the means of revolution. And now it becomes official, we have become- the United States of Private Equity!

If that is not a happy state of national affairs- what do we do to avert it? Damned if I know. Maybe it’s indicative that our democratic and capitalist system is the worst ever made- except, as I think Churchill said, for every other system ever invented. Maybe like the pundits so repetitively say, we are Rome, and our presidents are Neros fiddling with the levers of power held by others. Maybe political and wealth concentration will grow and grow like Pinochio’s nose until our country topples by our own weight.

In the meantime perhaps the best we can do is nudge our kids toward MBAs and hope for their largesse when our political fate arrives.

Griving    Greedy Thanksgiving

See also- Sarity: selfish charity

We live in a time when, despite everything seeming like it’s teetering on the brink, many of us have a ridiculous amount to be thankful for.  Even if my mortgage exceeds the value of my house, even if our jobs hang by a thread- we are most of us charter members of the lucky sperm club!

Sometimes I think about reincarnation, which I intend to start believing in fervently a week before I die.  Why?  Because I don’t like the idea of a void, or nothing but dirt.  So I think about what we will come back as, and whether that would be based on predestination we have no control over like the capricious whims of the Greek gods, or instead on the life we lived.  

On the latter tip, if we live a particularly abhorrent life, we come back as a cockroach, reincarnation Kafka-style.  Conversely if we live a particularly exemplary life, we come back as- I like to think a rock star, Mick Jagger Tom Petty, Thom Yorke, Lady Gaga? And then- we go and live a very un-exemplary life so that we come back around yet again as a cicada or a toll booth attendant. And the cycle goes on.

If there is karmic payback in our coming back- I would say to a whole bunch of us myself included, reincarnation is coming and man is it pissed!  And there are a lot of turkeys fixing to come back as presidents and investment bankers.

Today on Thanksgiving, in order to give thanks for the bounty given once by the Indians to the Pilgrims, we will engage in turkeycide once again, a method of thanks-giving which has to recommend it not only eating ridiculous amounts of my favorite food, but how consistent it is with our method of giving thanks to the Indians.  Which was- after the feast- basically raping and co-opting their land and dumping the ragtag remainder of their noble race in casinos. 

No I’m not a complete party-deflating pompous ass.  I love Thanksgiving.  But it seems like a weird feedback loop.  In order to give thanks, we give ourselves a huge pigout, which in turn we should be thankful for…  Ultimately, it seems to me that by celebrating Thanksgiving as we do, we don’t really GIVE thanks, we TAKE thanks.

There’s a Jethro Tull song which- as often happens lately- is apropos:

Well the lush separation unfolds you –
and the products of wealth
push you along on the bow wave
of the spiritless undying selves.
And you press on God’s waiter your last dime –
as he hands you the bill.

Why is that relevant or what does it even mean?  My takeaway is- if there is a God he, she or it may hand you a bill at the end, and you may hand God’s waiter your last dime and- here’s where I interpolate- it’s not going to be enough to make up for living as most of us do.  It’s OK that the top 1% having like 40% of the wealth and still decry having to pay tax.  It’s acceptable that we eat and drink to excess not only on this holiday, but as a habit, while people huddle on subway grates and people are born every minute in the slums of Bombay (maybe that’s the next life?) never to make it out.  And yet we complain ad infinitem on therapists’ couches about our mortgage-stressed yet luxury-laden lives. 

We embrace or at least accept all that stuff, the banana republic inequality of our ever-more beleaguered economy, the hypocrisy of our fundamentally parsimonious and selfish charity (see sarity, selfish charity, coming soon?) and as thanks for it all we give ourselves a lovely annual party.   

Yet- it really and truly is a great and upbeat holiday; for one thing no shopping except food!   So enough pontificating, maybe just do this: instead of waiting til December 31, send out ONE check on T-day, to something that helps people, and buy off your conscience for another year!

Rockistocracy    Rock aristocracy

I blame what follows on watching Conan’s final Tonight Show ages ago and then watching the new show last night which flashed me back to that final show, and in particular Neil Young performing his bittersweet send-off that night. Most Neil Young music is bittersweet to me even when it rocks hard.  For some reason, flashing back to that quasi epic event took my addled brain zooming into the future to look back on today through the arguably distorting lens of fame.  (Convoluted enough?)

Maybe it’s connotations of the distant barbarian past in Conan’s name itself that got me into time travel mode?  Or maybe it’s the consigning of Conan’s Tonight Show reign to history that got my brain thinking historically.  Or maybe I was really bored.  Anyway where I went was away from television and toward the age of rock:

Someday legends may be told of the days when the great nobles, Sir Elton, Sir Paul, Sir Mick, and the other members of the Order of the Rock, filled large amphitheatres with thousands of their subjects to witness spectacles of light, sound and magic.  For this they were favored and showered with treasure by the gods of their time.  And perhaps foremost among those capricious gods was the god known as Fame. 

It’s not terribly original to look back at the present through the lens of the future. (Back to the Future anyone?)  But it can be clarifying.  If we or our descendents try to look back at now from then- what will be seen as the hallmarks of our age?  Will it perhaps distill down to fame and what it brings?  Will the onrush of science and technology in the 20^th and 21^st centuries perhaps be seen as mere servants of the magic wrought by rock stars, billionaires and actors? 

One of the risks of making up new words and, in a way, breaking free from the constraints of the dictionary is the above obtuse, abstract type of rumination.   I recently read a quote from Lincoln early in his career that says something a little more to the point:  He lamented to a friend early in his political career that he had “done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived, and that to connect his name with the events transpiring in his day and generation and so impress himself upon them as to link his name with something that would redound to the interest of his fellow man was what he desired to live for.” 

Janis Ian- anyone remember Janis Ian?- also sang about fame in the song “Stars”: “People lust for fame/ like athletes in a game/ we break our collarbones and come up swinging…” I used to listen to that when I could tolerate really self-pitying music.  OK I admit it, I still can and do.  

Looked at through the glass of history darkly, our age may thus be determined to have been ruled by the capricious god of Fame.  And if Fame is deemed to have been a god (I hesitate to say Idol) of our age, then the rockistocracy, along perhaps with the telestocracy, filmocracy and financial lights like the Oracle of Omaha (bankistocracy?), may well be remembered as our form of nobility.

sailure   successful failure

See also dailure (dazzling failure), cictory (catastrophic victory), wosing (winning and losing).

I try to be topical here. But I don’t always succeed. I guess I’m being topical in the sense that some newords have kind of amorphous application, to various points in life and/or history. Yes I’m that delusional and self-aggrandizing. No I don’t really think that. ;)

Maybe the political root canal just past- or possibly just begun? - which we call an election is an example. If you’re of my political persuasion, we snatched defeat in 2010 from the jaws of resounding victory in 2008. And yet, in the mud of defeat potentially sprout the seeds of victory, if the tea party is actually held to some accountability and their emperor’s clothes are exposed for the tattered red white and blue fakery they really are? 

That’s about as topical as I can get right now. On a more personal level I speak as someone who has had two marriages end, and whose love from college has begun anew, right here in midlife. Also I speak as someone who believes in the chrysalis concept of human life, that the chrysalis in which we develop can last through adolescence and beyond, perhaps through even a generation or two of one life. 

It all depends. There are no rules. Was it a failure not to stay married? Was it a failure not to have stayed from college til now with the person I have reunited with?  Or is it that it’s success to transition from a relationship that isn’t working to one that wasn’t ready to work all those years ago? What is success and what is failure? And is my asking this just another manifestation of the unmooring effect of midlife?

Successful failure. Knowing when to end a marriage, change a career, be willing to embarrass yourself on the ski slope. 

To go with the drift of things, to yield with a grace to reason.  To bow and accept the end- of a love or a season.  (Frost)

You often need to lose to win.  Wosing anyone?  Talk to a successful entrepreneur. If they are not Mark Zuckerberg they probably had false starts. Talk to a gold prospector, one of the non-superbowl ‘niners. How long did they pan and dig in them there hills before striking it rich? Til their beards were gray and long, that’s how long. Talk to BP- how much nature did they have to destroy to get that oil into your tank and all that money in their coffers? Or a stock trader. We are told that the best traders lose much more often than they win, the wins pay for all the losses and then some.

What I’m also saying is- it is part of success to be able to go through and acknowledge failure.  Coming back to failed relationships and turning it on its head a little, is it failure to acknowledge that a relationship that was right and passionate and productive for some part, maybe a large part, of your life is no longer so?  Is it success to throw oneself on the funeral pyre of a relationship which is no longer alive and vibrant, at least the way a marriage or love partnership should (ideally, naively?) be?  Can you instead flip that “failed” love relationship into a friendship as I did (I hope) with my first ex and maybe even my second?  After all we had kids to raise, beloved to us both.

Life just isn’t one size fits all.  That especially applies to our key decisions and experiences over time, be it career, love, where we live, friends…

Kids- that’s the one blissfully irrevocable decision you make, to have kids.  Even at the worst of that, you are committed and you remain so.  But even then, they evolve and you have to let that relationship breathe so you can welcome in- or should I say confront and deal with- the cantankerous 6 foot creature you used to carry in a snugglypack?  Is it success to bend your progeny to your ideas, or is it success to admit some of those ideas were wrong, were failures, and success is in the eye of the beholder (your 6 foot monster)? 

You can win by losing, especially by questioning now and then what really is success and what is failure.  Don’t expect to be able to do it at 20.  But it’s worth trying hard to do it at say 50 or as early as you can, so you can maybe embrace a couple of sailures by the time you start drawing down on your 401k!  

Miends   Midlife Friends

When you hit 50, you tend to look around and assess a bit.  Like, where is this thing going?  The “thing” could be your marriage, could be money, could be the novel you have never written, or- your friends.  Or the lack thereof.

Let’s say you’re 50 and the kids have or about to fly the coop for college.  Or- let’s say you get divorced and lose at least half or more of your friends.  You decide to try and ramp up your social life, which you have to admit had kind of coasted through your kids’ childhood. 

You find, when reaching out to old friends, that mutual neglect of those friendships while you were all engrossed in kid-rearing, getting divorced, getting remarried, moving, pushing on the career front- has caused those friendships to wither like unwatered plants and now, you can count on one hand the friends you can really hang out with.  And they are very busy.

So what do you do?  I need to flag, first, a sex role difference in friendship.  Men suck at later in life friendship.  Women excel at it.  Why?  IDK.  Maybe for women it’s an extension of the nesting instinct, having good friends is protective and comforting in the same way as do having a great house and a reliable provider as a husband?  Maybe women are more capable of sharing emotional intimacy hence having deeper more enduring friendships? 

Recognition of the problem is always a good first step.  Recognition of the hurdles to solving it, like sex-role differences, geographic and demographic challenges, etc. is a good second step and may lead to actionable conclusions. 

If you need more friends, first you have to make it a goal and as with your job, find ways to pursue it.  After you have admitted, holy sh*%#, I have no fwiends  This is where it gets really twicky.   Why?  (1) you’re set in your ways, it’s not like a dorm where you are kind of mushed together and are all idealistic and flexible and playful like a bunch of kittens in a cage.  You are now kind of hidebound, you have your habits, your likes and dislikes fairly well mapped out, you don’t tolerate fools as well as you did, all that.

And- (2) you don’t have the natural bonds you did previously every step of the way.  In school, well, you had school.  Upon graduation, you had the people you were starting your career with, colleagues.  When you had kids, you had relationship superglue right there, playdates leading to combined family dinners leading to some very enduring friendships.  And then- the long war of attrition to where you are now.

Should there be personals?  “Be my friend?”  “Great friend, A+ relationships, looking for same.”    “Couple seeking same for no sex and lots of talk and drinking!”   ??

Seriously, how do you make midlife friends? 

Taking classes seems so hokey and likely to tip way older than you are looking for, i.e. toward the retired end of the spectrum.  Same for community involvement.  Not to denigrate it, if you have a passion for that God bless!  The utility of that kind of thing depends whether you are a joiner.  If you are, the friends issue probably isn’t rearing its ugly head so much.  If not, you’re probably not going to start now. 

Having friendships the way I envision them (naively I’m sure) is actually an intimate thing, people you connect with in a way where you can share things, things that matter, whether artistic, emotional, drinking…  But really, making friends at this age is a bit like making them in kindergarten, it’s like a muscle you haven’t used yet or in a long time and you move into it in an awkward, coltish way. 

And no- Facebook friends and Linked-In connections don’t count! 

 You can tell I have more questions than answers, would love to hear yours! 

Cictory- Catastrophic Victory

Peggy Noonan wrote in the Jan. 8 Wall Street Journal that passage of health care legislation would be a “catastrophic victory” for the Obama administration.  Setting aside the merits- this is an interesting new slant on Pyrrhic victory. Would you know off the top of your head how to spell “Pyrrhic” b.t.w.?  Took Google for me to get it right.  And in case you’re wondering why I am quoting from the Jan. 8 Wall Street Journal on election eve (or All Sorrows Eve as it was called in ancient times, in my vivid fantasy world…)?  Because I started this neword back then, that’s why!

Synonym newords: Wose (win lose).  Goss (gain loss). 

Life is replete with victories that cost more than they are worth or leave you behind square one.  Ask a divorce litigant.  Or in fact any litigant.  

On the flipside, you can win by losing.  Ask someone who was fired and founded- Bloomberg LLP! 

Some (not so) random examples from my random synapses:

• Gay marriage (garriage if you need another new word):  Again I will steer clear of the merits!  But where this battle is won, many gay divorce battles will subsequently be lost and won.  Be careful what you wish for?
• THE ELECTIONS COMING TOMORROW!   Res Ipsa Loquitur  

There are more, infinitely more,  but really, THE ELECTIONS COMING TOMORROW!  There is a silver lining though.  The stock market usually likes gridlock.  So if QE2 doesn’t sink it, we all might see some further resuscitation of the 401Ks. 

And- Republicans- take note of the cictory you may enjoy by having the Tea Party come to the fore of national politics and test the patience of the public for its supposedly patriotic vitriol!  Welcome to accountability!  Personally I’m gonna predict a little lemonade coming from these lemons for our President when the a mirror can be held to the pointed finger of responsibility constantly coming from the red side.  So yes, the red tide may lift some blue boats after all.  But I rationalize…