I feel heartbroken, absolutely ravaged.
Why?
The Dallas Cowboys lost a football game tonight and probably won’t make the playoffs.
Dennis Prager’s radio psychiatrist Stephen Marmer once described what was wrong with people like me. We don’t like our lives and so we throw inordinate emotional energy into identifying with and rooting for certain sports teams.
I feel pathetic.
I’ve been committed to the Dallas Cowboys for more than 30 years. I have loved them with an open heart. Right now I hate Tony Romo so much.
This all sounds very stupid but I have all the same emotions when I love anyone.
Breaking up with a girlfriend and getting thrown out of a shul or losing a job all feel to me about the same as the Dallas Cowboys failing to make the playoffs. I just feel desolate.
Tony Romo is my quarterback but he plays so badly in December and January. When it counts most, he sucks. He’s my quarterback and yet I hate him. I last felt this way when my girl kissed her ex-boyfriend right in front of me on New Year’s eve.
I hate Tony Romo so much because I care so deeply for him. I wouldn’t get that mad at him if I didn’t care. Yet I hate him. Surely this is not healthy. When people I love disappoint me — which is inevitable in life — I then hate them with a cold fury. I’m quick to anger and slow to forgive.
These Dallas Cowboys break my heart.
I blame Jessica Simpson. Since she came out publicly as Tony Romo’s girlfriend, my life has been miserable. There are certain women, such as Delilah in the Bible, who can just suck the life essence out of you. Many times this is good for the guy, but in Tony’s case it has not been. He missed a wide-open MIles Austin and a wide-open Terrell Owens tonight.
From my chat room: “TonyRomo: Win or lose, I can tap into Jessica Simpson whenever I like.”
Oy ve, let me calm down. I keep telling myself, "This means nothing. Paying your bills and cranking out the blog posts means everything. Work means freedom."
I need to learn tai chi and yoga. I went to a yoga class at LimmudLA last Saturday night but I was too tired to keep my hands over my head for long and to do half of the very easy moves. But when I’m watching the Cowboys, I’m pumping with adrenalin and will be able to do the moves if I know them. I need to harness that energy for something constructive.
palestine4ever: alright Luke
palestine4ever: Arab’s here
palestine4ever: Let it out
palestine4ever: IT’LL BE OKAY
palestine4ever: focus that disappointment and self-loathing for having believed in something that failed you toward your Enemies
palestine4ever: I will try to distract you instead
palestine4ever: Did you know that Madoff victims are attempting to get a government bailout?
palestine4ever: Put that in your Judeo-Libertarian pipe and smoke it.
palestine4ever: And the ADL is warning that Madoff has led to ANTI-SEMITISM in blog comments!
YourMoralLeader: just read NETHERLAND, excellent novel
palestine4ever: Man… I am so out of the contemporary literachoor loop
palestine4ever: I think I just gave up on it, the touchy-feelyness of contemporary lit just brings me down these days
palestine4ever: I had to think I’m reading something good and visceral and it winds up being about a person’s "coming to terms with their mother" or something
YourMoralLeader: THE FOREVER WAR by Dexter Filkins is excellent
palestine4ever: I’ve been reading a lot of brooding Balkan novelists again
palestine4ever: Mesa Selimovic is excellent, he’d go well with your beard
palestine4ever: i’m re-reading some biographies lately
palestine4ever: it’s a lost art, to write a biography of a towering figure
palestine4ever: so many words spent these days writing about the insignificant
YourMoralLeader: yep
palestine4ever: I mean, there are 2 Katherine Graham biographies in the works
palestine4ever: she was a nice lady, it appears to me
YourMoralLeader: her autobiography was so boring
palestine4ever: there’s this great anecdote from Stalin
palestine4ever: apparently some maudlin poet was a huge success with a book of love poems
palestine4ever: so they asked Stalin if they could do another print run of his stuff
palestine4ever: and El Hombre said, "Yes, print two copies. One for her, and one for him. The rest of us don’t give a f**k."
palestine4ever: that’s how I imagine katherine graham’s biographies should be received
palestine4ever: keep that in the family album with ethel’s cookie recipes, the rest of us don’t care
YourMoralLeader: yep
palestine4ever: so i stick with the good ones
palestine4ever: Mussolini
palestine4ever: I could never read enough about Benito f**kin’ Mussolini
palestine4ever: D’Annunzio
palestine4ever: He was a superhero, yet a midget.
palestine4ever: That’s some compelling biography.
palestine4ever: My grandfather read books about Rommel repeatedly
palestine4ever: That’s what a man reads about
YourMoralLeader: want to see valkyrie?
palestine4ever: None of this: "Arthur Sulzberger and A Bunch of Jews Nobody Cares About"
palestine4ever: Eh, I don’t know
palestine4ever: I say this in all seriousness, not as a gag
palestine4ever: the opaqueness of that era is what fascinates me
palestine4ever: scoundrels like Galeazzo Ciano and the like
palestine4ever: worthless human beings that nevertheless could appear to be courageous given the right circumstances
palestine4ever: I don’t really want to see movies about gilded statues, which is what I think a movie about a guy that tries to kill hitler will be about
YourMoralLeader: what do you think of this madoff scam?
palestine4ever: Show Rommel plotting for the massive encirclement and destruction of Montgomery’s army, then crumpling away Hitler’s orders
palestine4ever: i don’t know, have you ever read Liar’s Poker?
palestine4ever: He’s got a great follow-up on Portfolio.com, Michael Lewis
palestine4ever: but that whole "how is this s**t legal?" aspect is what informs my understanding of high finance
palestine4ever: i don’t really get 90% of it
palestine4ever: i do think, though
palestine4ever: that there’s something interesting to it
palestine4ever: there’s not much doubt that he was a predator in this closed world of Jewish country clubs
palestine4ever: and that they weren’t lining up to be his victims
palestine4ever: did you read that Alexandra Penney thing on the daily beast?
YourMoralLeader: no
palestine4ever: zomg
palestine4ever: you must read it!
palestine4ever: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-12-17/the-bag-lady-papers/
palestine4ever: an early retired chick whining about having to take the subway and iron her own shirts now
palestine4ever: since bernie madoff took all her money
palestine4ever: HE RUINED HER SOUFLEE, LUKE
palestine4ever: Unforgiveable.
palestine4ever: I like the part where she ponders suicide over the thought of being without her Hermes bags
palestine4ever: And how she might never be able to take 4 trips abroad in a single year again
palestine4ever: There’s something awesome about class war
palestine4ever: It’s really the same way I feel when I go to a sporting event
palestine4ever: For a brief time you forget how disgusting the rest of humanity is and root for the ritualistic murder of a common enemy
YourMoralLeader: she’s a good writer
palestine4ever: it’s great that she put it to such good use
palestine4ever: "How to make love to a man volume 535"
palestine4ever: Porno for Prudes
YourMoralLeader: how do you like monogamy?
palestine4ever: It’s not bad
guest16: It’s not in fashion this season.
palestine4ever: to be honest, a lot less work
palestine4ever: its cheaper so long as you forget that you’re paying on an installment plan that lasts FOREVER
palestine4ever: to change the subject abruptly
palestine4ever: all of these stories of monied LA Jews you’ve been unwinding are suddenly compelling now that they’re all going broke
palestine4ever: You ever read Nelson Algren, Lukey?
palestine4ever: you’re missing that manly side of literature
palestine4ever: "Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own."
palestine4ever: I haven’t always followed that but dammit my life became like 2309823094823 times better once I did
YourMoralLeader: excellent
YourMoralLeader: which book of his you recommend?
palestine4ever: A Walk on the Wild Side
palestine4ever: Most of them, to be honest, are better almost as aphorisms
palestine4ever: Selimovic is like that as well
palestine4ever: You read something and it means nothing. You pick it up a few years later and meditate for hours on its meaning.
palestine4ever: The great thing about any writer of the past is their pet hates
palestine4ever: Its so hilariously trivial today
palestine4ever: Like Charles Baudelaire hated the Belgians so badly he wanted to revel in their death by cholera
palestine4ever: Algren hated the Polacks of this grimey city
palestine4ever: and the Polacks still hate his guts
