The Super Bowl for me means the trails and museums are less crowded, a great time to run errands, etc., and then I recently read an article revealing the spike in human trafficking in host cities to meet the demand for our other “national past times”…so my sense of superiority is now paired with disgust. What else am I missing that might fuel this sense of superiority and disgust? (p.s. I don’t give shit about concussions)
Each person on the list should provide you with a lovely little jolt of disgust. It consists almost entirely of grotesque old white male billionaires, and on the rare occasion when owners are neither white nor male, they are inevitably corrupt oligarchs or heiresses.
Green Bay is the only franchise that is in any way owned by what might be considered “the people.” It is the exception that proves the rule.
Football is the national pastime of a magnificent and horrifying plutocracy. Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.
You’ve been writing a bunch lately. I’m certainly not complaining. It’s been great. I’m curious if it has to do with your move? Did you change your profession? Do you have more free time because you’re still adjusting to your new surroundings, meeting new people, etc? Or is wherever you moved less busy and fast paced compared to LA? Or are you simply more invested in your blog than before? You are my favorite part of the internet, hands down.
All of those things. Every last one. (And thank you.)
Also, and this is particularly interesting, the number of submissions lately has exploded. I’m not sure why, but based on the quality and content of the questions, I think a whole new post-Tumblr audience may have stumbled onto Dear Coquette. So yeah, If you’re new, thanks for reading. I’m really glad you’re here.
Getting pumped up for HOC Season four. I’m re-watching all the episodes up to now, and I’m CONVINCED at this point that Frank is a homosexual who only has sexual relationships with women he can exploit for power. I also think he and Claire have (had) an unspoken understanding about the matter, which is why they’ve both been so cool about each other’s extramarital affairs.
Here’s where I’m probably reaching a bit, but I’m also fairly sure that Claire planned the whole Meechum 3-way business FOR Frank. Notice how she looks over her shoulder at Frank before leaving them together in the living room just before. They clearly love each other very much, but I’m pretty sure their marriage is more of a Will & Grace kind of arrangement than a sexual one. Thoughts?
No, no, no. Do not erase President Underwood’s bisexuality. (If Claire slept with the occasional woman, you wouldn’t call her a closeted lesbian. You’d call her bisexual. The same goes for Frank.) Claire Underwood is no beard. Trust me. If you’d ever been in an open relationship with a bisexual person, you would understand.
Frank and Claire are two highly intelligent, highly differentiated characters. Nothing about their relationship is unspoken. They share everything. Claire knows all the secrets, including every last detail about Frank’s bisexuality (which, honestly, is pretty low on the list of secrets when you consider all the conspiracy and murder.) They’re cool with each other’s extramarital affairs because their marriage is open to a certain degree. Other than the fact that they are both sociopaths, they have an incredibly healthy relationship. (In fact, it’s probably because they are both sociopaths that they have such a healthy relationship.)
I know it seems counterintuitive, but even the way Claire leaves Frank in the last episode is evidence of the strength of their marriage. Frank violated the terms of their relationship when he became consumed by the Office of the Presidency, and Claire was strong enough to enforce her boundaries.
That’s actually quite healthy of her, and I have no doubt that Frank will either see the error of his ways and capitulate, or he will implode. Either way, the key to remember is that nothing about their relationship is unspoken.
Can you explain this elusive concept of the “1%” and the better method for distributing wealth in the US? Or point me to literature that would help demystify it? My dad was saying that wealth is “infinite” and it isn’t correct to say people own “1% of the wealth.” Is it ok to buy into Bernie’s shtick and be filled with anger towards the wealthy in this country? I think I’m just bummed I can’t afford SF. Help!
First, watch this video:
It’s the quickest, most powerful education about wealth inequality in America you’re gonna get.
Also, your dad is an idiot. Wealth is not infinite. Wealth is a fluid concept, but until we no longer live on a planet with limited resources, not only is wealth limited, but it will inevitably be concentrated amongst a powerful few. Like a relentless gravitational force, wealth coalesces and flow back into itself, creating grotesque power systems ranging from the Catholic Church during the medieval period to the financial services sector in contemporary late-stage capitalism.
While the concept of wealth may be increasingly abstract, within a given monetary system, the wealth of individuals can be accurately measured by their net worth. (A person’s net worth is all their assets minus all their liabilities.) When it comes to high net worth individuals, it’s not about how much money they have in the bank. It’s about how much they own (businesses, real estate, stocks, bonds, etc.) versus how little debt they have.
It’s all about ownership, and your father is wrong, because the 1% really do own an outrageous percentage of everything that there is to possibly own, and the rest of us don’t own dollar store dick. What’s worse, is most of us (especially Millennials) have a negative net worth because of crippling student loans and consumer debt.
Now, there’s no general reason to be filled with anger towards wealthy individuals in this country, (except for the Rich Kids of Instagram — those fuckers should all die in a fire.) What we should be angry about is the rigged system that perpetuates wealth inequality in America, and the simplest way to fix that inequality would be to close all the sheltering loopholes and ratchet up estate taxes to previously unheard of rates. Rich people get to stay rich as long as they’re alive, but when they die, the American people get most of that money back instead of it going to the next generation of spoiled rotten heirs and heiresses. All we’d have to do is sit back and wait a few decades as all the hoarded wealth steadily flows back into the treasury where a progressive government uses those funds to rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure, schools, and eventually the middle class itself.
That’s all it would take. It would be a renaissance of the American dream. Unfortunately, that kind of thing could never ever happen. Even a guy like Bernie Sanders couldn’t pull that shit off as President of the United States without getting totally JFK’d.
To quote the anarchist philosopher Lucy Parsons, “Never be deceived that the rich will permit you to vote away their wealth,” and boy, was she ever right.
The concept of soulmates is metaphysical poetry that holds biblical mythology sacred. It explores the idea of transcendent love in terms of dualistic religiosity. The idea of a shared soul in two bodies still separates the soul from the body, and it still requires a god concept to create the transcendence.
The concept of starmates is metaphysical poetry that holds the mysteries of the universe sacred. It explores the idea of transcendent love in terms of monistic philosophy. There is no soul. None is needed. We are all the same accidental alignment of stardust, and the only thing required to create transcendence is a more intensified alignment.
Every last poet, every last writer, every last human with the gift of language has tried to find words to express the concept of transcendent love and our painfully innate desire for it. We all come up short, but it was my turn to write about it, and those just happened to be the words I found.
It’s all metaphor, of course. I don’t believe in starmates any more than I believe in soulmates, but the belief system underlying the poetry is what’s important. It reflects what I choose to hold sacred. That’s the difference between the two, and the difference is everything.
If most people are destined for mediocrity, what makes a person extraordinary to you?
Mediocrity is meaningless, and knowing a person is all it takes to make them extraordinary to me.
There are 7,000,000,000 human beings alive on this planet right now. Another 100,000,000,000 have already lived their lives and died. Every last one us is a staggering 1 in 107,000,000,000, which makes every single person I get the opportunity to know absolutely and utterly extraordinary.
Could you ever just walk away from it all? Not just a daydream you keep in your back pocket, but honestly drop everything and walk away.
I did.
A number of weeks ago, I dropped everything and walked away.
This past year, I fell in love with another city, which for the moment shall remain nameless. I spent some time there visiting friends over the summer, and on a whim, I found an adorable little apartment and put down a deposit.
When I got back to Los Angeles, I packed up my shit, tied up my loose ends, kissed everyone goodbye, and hit the fucking road.
It wasn’t difficult. I thought I might be emotional as I drove away, but I wasn’t. Not a bit. Los Angeles isn’t a sentimental town, and the wild and shimmering version that belonged to me, it ended years ago. I’ve had plenty of time to let go. I still love Los Angeles, but I’m over it. This was the perfect time to leave.
I’m still getting used to my new surroundings. This place that I’ve found is beautiful and mysterious and deeply satisfying. I’m happy here, but this city doesn’t belong to me yet. It probably never will. For now I’m the one who belongs to it, and I’m content to yield to all the raw and uncertain adventure.
Lady-Coke: Speaking of your twitter, I just wanted to say that you are really good at letting people’s hateful comments just roll off like it’s no big deal. People say some pretty fucked-up shit to you. How do you do it? How did you get to that point? I experience maybe 1/10th of the hate sent your way and I always get flustered and come back with some garbage response.
It rolls off like it’s no big deal because it isn’t a big deal. It’s silly. All of it. Especially on twitter, and I know better than to take any of it personally.
That’s the trick, really — never taking any of it personally. Whenever someone sends me some hateful comment, I know it’s not about me. It can’t be, because they don’t even know who I am.
Whatever shit they talk, they’re just telling me about themselves. It’s always about them. They’re inevitably defending their own identity, so I automatically have the upper hand. They’ve shown me their weakness by reacting, so if I feel like it, I know exactly where to pinch.
Besides, I love my haters. I always have. They’re readers too, after all, and I appreciate anyone who takes the time to read my stuff.
