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Brian Sorgatz
(rhymes with “cats”)
Arcata, California, United States
What sort of man blogs about Playboy? I flatter myself to think that Kendra Wilkinson might call this blog intellectual pimping.
“Composer Artisan” ISFP. Socially and economically libertarian for reasons having nothing to do with Ayn Rand. Current fields of study: Playboy, A Course in Miracles, building a new life in Humboldt County.
Hollywood, California, is my spiritual hometown. I actually grew up in three other communities in California, but it hardly seems to matter which three. How could my heart take root anywhere under the tyranny of American public schooling?
I don’t have to work for a living. After my father died in December 1997, my family and I won a legal settlement.
If you’re a heterosexual man and you don’t know how to admire small breasts, you need to get a clue already, you ungrateful philistine. In aesthetic terms, those stacks of fatty tissue are essentially jewel cases for the nipples, anyway. Why not build a repertoire of variety of taste? Pretty adjectives like dainty, svelte, and lithe were made to describe beauty like Bai Ling’s as caught by photographer Stephen Wayda for the June 2005 Playboy.Labels: Celeb, Cintv, ForPo, Lib, OnVi, RS
Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 1:53 PM
This is what I’ve just memoed to my Netflix friends:
Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 1:59 PM
Labels: Cintv, Mus, NPH, OnVi, Rom
Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 9:53 AM
To my dear Friend:I like to think that Franklin’s buddy found himself the colonial equivalent of Shirley Jones as the unforgettable silver fox in Grandma’s Boy (photo credit: MTV.com).
I know of no Medicine fit to diminish the violent Natural Inclinations you mention; and if I did, I think I should not communicate it to you. Marriage is the proper remedy. It is the most natural state of Man, and therefore the State in which you are most likely to find solid Happiness. Your Reasons against entering into it at Present appear to me not well founded. The circumstantial Advantages you have in View by postponing it, are not only uncertain, but they are small in comparison with that of the Thing itself, the being married and settled. It is the Man and Woman united that makes the compleat human being. Separate, she wants his Force of Body and Strength of Reason; he, her softness, Sensibility, and acute Discernment. Together they are more likely to succeed in the World. A single Man has not nearly the Value he would have in the State of Union. He is an incomplete Animal. He resembles the odd Half of a Pair of scissars. If you get a prudent, healthy Wife, your Industry in your Profession, with her good Economy, will be a Fortune sufficient.
But if you will not take this Counsel and persist in thinking a Commerce with the Sex inevitable, then I repeat my former Advice, that in all your Amours you should prefer old Women to young ones. You call this a Paradox and demand my Reasons. They are these:
1. Because they have more Knowledge of the World, and their Minds are better stor’d with Observations, their Conversation is more improving, and more lastingly agreeable.
2. Because when Women cease to be handsome they study to be good. To maintain their Influence over Men, they supply the Diminution of Beauty by an Augmentation of Utility. They learn to do a thousand Services small & great, and are the most tender and useful of Friends when you are sick. Thus they continue amiable. And hence there is hardly such a Thing to be found as an old Woman who is not a good Woman.
3. Because there is no Hazard of Children, which irregularly produc’d may be attended with much Inconvenience.
4. Because through more Experience they are more prudent and discreet in conducting an Intrigue to prevent Suspicion. The Commerce with them is therefore safer with regard to your Reputation. And with regard to theirs, if the Affair should happen to be known, considerate People might be rather inclined to excuse an old Woman, who would kindly take Care of a young Man, form his Manners by her good Counsels, and prevent his ruining his Health & fortune among mercenary Prostitutes.
5. Because in every Animal that walks upright the Deficiency of the Fluids that fill the Muscles appears first in the highest Part. The Face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower Parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: so that covering all above with a Basket, and regarding only what is below the girdle, it is impossible of two Women to tell an old one from a young one. And as in the Dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of Corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior; every Knack being, by Practice, capable of Improvement.
6. Because the Sin is less. The debauching a Virgin may be her Ruin, and make her for Life unhappy.
7. Because the Compunction is less. The having made a young girl miserable may give you frequent bitter Reflection; none of which can attend the making an old Woman happy.
8th and lastly. They are so grateful!!!
Thus much for my Paradox. But still I advise you to marry directly; being sincerely
Your Affectionate Friend,
Benjamin Franklin
Labels: Cintv, Lit, NPH, Rom, VW
Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 8:43 AM
Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 7:16 AM
Labels: Cintv, Femi, NPH, OnVi, PM
Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 9:45 AM
Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 6:50 PM
Without irony or hesitation, I respect the tattoo of the word respect a few inches below the navel of Miss January 2007. It asserts itself gracefully enough to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I wouldn’t dare disrespect it.
Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 4:40 PM
Am I just a Shallow Hal for noticing that Dallas public-affairs specialist Jennah Durant is beautiful as well as intelligent? I was looking forward to the two-day champion’s third game on Tuesday, February 5. Unfortunately, my local TV station aired coverage of the presidential primaries instead. Damn! You can’t tell from the headshot, but she has a lovely physique. (In her third game, she lost the championship by finishing second to Babatope Ogunmola.)
Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 3:51 PM
Liberals and conservatives alike fail to truly reflect his views, McCain writes, because “neither emphasizes the obligations of a free people to the nation.” His main governmental inspiration is Teddy Roosevelt, the “Eastern swell who became a man of the people,” whose great accomplishment was “to summon the American people to greatness.” In Roosevelt’s code, McCain writes approvingly, it was “absolutely required that every loyal citizen take risks for the country’s sake.” This is an essentially militaristic view of citizenship, one that explains many of McCain’s departures from partisan orthodoxy. Unlike traditional Republicans, he will gladly butt into the affairs of private industry if he perceives them to be undermining Americans’ faith in government; unlike Democrats, he thinks the executive branch generally needs more power, not less.McCain is arguably even less libertarian than Hillary Clinton. That’s impressive, but not in a good way.
“Our greatness,” he wrote in Worth the Fighting For, “depends upon our patriotism, and our patriotism is hardly encouraged when we cannot take pride in the highest public institutions.” So, because steroids might be damaging the faith of young baseball fans, drug testing becomes a “transcendent issue,” requiring threats of federal intervention unless pro sports leagues shape up. Hollywood’s voluntary movie-rating system? A “smoke screen to provide cover for immoral and unconscionable business practices.” Ultimate Fighting on Indian reservations? “Barbaric” and worthy of government pressure on cable TV companies. Negative political ads by citizen groups? They “do little to further beneficial debate and healthy political dialogue” and so must be banned for 60 days before an election if they mention a candidate by name.
If his issues line up with yours, and if you’re not overly concerned by an activist federal government, McCain can be a great and sympathetic ally. But chances are he will eventually see a grave national threat in what you consider harmless, or he’ll prescribe a remedy that you consider unconscionable.
Labels: BGC, Cintv, ForPo, He, Lib, OnVi, OthBlo
Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 12:00 PM
FCC indecency investigations begin when the agency receives a viewer or listener complaint about a program and can drag on for months or years. The lightly staffed FCC enforcement bureau must go up against broadcasters, which have more legal and financial resources to battle the proposed fine and have a vested interest in dragging out the proceeding. After the enforcement bureau makes a finding, it must be voted on by the FCC’s five commissioners, who were occupied with cable television and wireless spectrum issues through much of 2007.Never mind that the FCC is violating ABC’s First Amendment rights under a crypto-Marxist rationale of “public ownership of the airwaves.” Never mind that the government is acting on behalf of a tiny number of Church Ladies to punish a television network for placing adult content in a characteristically adult—and very popular—evening drama. Never mind that the authority of the FCC to impose the fine at all depends shamelessly on a time zone technicality (only ABC affiliates in the Central and Mountain zones are being fined, because that’s where the show ran at 9 p.m. instead of 10). In spite of all this, the public-morality bureaucrats are the underdogs in this fight.
Labels: BGC, Cintv, Lib, MorPa, Mus, NPH, OnVi, OthBlo
Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 10:48 AM
Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 3:22 PM
At least once on That ’70s Show, Donna scolds Eric about his habit of making gratuitous Star Wars analogies. I refuse to take the hint. Sorry. Those analogies are too useful and too much fun. The photography team, the model, and the caption writer generate a mood of such noble, tranquil, dreamy solitude that, despite the anachronism, it’s easier for me to believe that the shiny cylinder at the Bunny’s hip is a lightsaber than a coin dispenser. As enticingly beautiful as Emily Brown is, a man who disturbed her fairy-tale reverie by making a crude pass would be as doomed as Actaeon after his transgression against Artemis.Emily Brown, at the Club’s Living Room buffet above, is a stay-at-home who writes fairy tales.
Photography by Pompeo Posar
Labels: CC, Cintv, Lit, RI, RS, TaoGlam, Theme
Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 10:01 AM
Labels: Cintv, DruPo, Lib, MorPa, UCL
Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 6:12 PM
In 2008, may the chicken to everyone’s Peter Griffin be defeated once and for all
If YouTube lies to you and calls this video “no longer available,” simply reload this web page. And come what may, never take a coupon from a six-foot animated rooster.
Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 10:10 AM
Labels: Cintv, ForPo, He, Lib, NPH, OnVi, OthBlo, Ph, RI, Rom, RS, Sc
Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 11:22 AM
On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer—John Keats (1816)
Much have I traveled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez [sic] when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
Labels: ArtEnt, Cintv, Lib, Lit, Mus, OnVi, VW
Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 2:33 PM
If you like Shakespeare in Love, you’ll appreciate this variant on it.Labels: Cintv, Femi, Lib, NPH, OnVi, OthBlo
Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 10:05 AM
Labels: AgeMaj, Cintv, Educ, Fant, Mus, OnVi, Rom, TaoGlam
Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 12:07 AM
It is a common mistake to think reality and fantasy inhabit separate spheres. They don’t. They coexist and intermingle. Reality needs fantasy to render it desirable, just as fantasy needs reality to make it believable. To embrace dreams and make peace with spectacle doesn’t mean you have to abandon your faith in a politics ruled by reason. It means you acknowledge that it’s only a faith. Perhaps people can, and probably should, study the reality of the world, make reasoned political judgments and act accordingly. But this way of seeing and being doesn’t have any taken-for-granted epistemological foundation. It is, to use academic jargon, a system of discourse that must be (re)created, imagined, operationalized and dramatized to appeal to the public’s imagination.—Stephen Duncombe, “Why Don’t Liberals Dream?”, Playboy, November 2007, p. 43-44
HILLMAN: Look. Our assumption, our fantasy, in psychoanalysis has been that we’re going to process, we’re going to grow, and we’re going to level things out so that we don’t have these very strong, disturbing emotions and events.Of course, Hillman’s line of thinking won’t lead inevitably to better democracy. It could, for instance, potentially replace “government by minority and conspiracy” with majoritarian tyranny—always a serious threat in a society where almost everyone belongs to a lifestyle minority of one kind or another. Nonetheless, Hillman’s wary eye on the political uses and abuses of psychotherapy is a model for every American.
VENTURA: Which is probably not a human possibility.
HILLMAN: But could analysis have new fantasies of itself, so that the consulting room is a cell in which revolution is prepared?
VENTURA: What?
HILLMAN: Could—
VENTURA: —could the consulting room be a cell in which revolution is prepared? Jesus. Could it?
HILLMAN: By revolution I mean turning over. Not development or unfolding, but turning over the system that has made you go to analysis to begin with—the system being government by minority and conspiracy, official secrets, national security, corporate power, et cetera. Therapy might imagine itself investigating the immediate social causes, even while keeping its vocabulary of abuse and victimization—that we are abused and victimized less by our personal lives of the past than by a present system.
It’s like, you want your father to love you. The desire to be loved by your father is enormously important. But you can’t get that love fulfilled by your father. You don’t want to get rid of the desire to be loved, but you want to stop asking your father; he’s the wrong object. So we don’t want to get rid of the feeling of being abused—maybe that’s very important, the feeling of being abused, the feeling of being without power. But maybe we shouldn’t imagine that we are abused by the past as much as we are by the actual situation of “my job,” “my finances,” “my government”—all the things that we live with. [A personal example of my own.—B.S.] Then the consulting room becomes a cell of revolution, because we would be talking also about, “What is actually abusing me right now?” That would be a great venture, for therapy to talk that way.
VENTURA: Let’s double back a second. You said, “Could analysis have new fantasies about itself?” What do you mean by fantasy? For most people that word’s associated with “unreal.”
HILLMAN: Oh, no, no. Fantasy is the natural activity of the mind. Jung says, “The primary activity of psychic life is the creation of fantasy.” Fantasy is how you perceive something, how you think about it, react to it.
VENTURA: So any perception, in that sense, is fantasy.
HILLMAN: Is there a reality that is not framed or formed? No. Reality is always coming through a pair of glasses, a point of view, a language—a fantasy.
VENTURA: But if therapy is to take this new direction, have this new perception or fantasy about itself, it seems we need some basic redefinition of some basic concepts. [p. 38-39]
Labels: ArtPic, Cintv, Lib, Lit, UCL
Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 3:31 PM
Labels: BGC, Cintv, DruPo, Educ, Lib, MorPa, OnVi, OthBlo, Ph, UCL
Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 11:34 AM
Labels: Cintv, He, Mansi, NPH, OnVi, PM, Rom, RS, Sp
Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 12:43 PM
think of pornography’s lies. the pornographer would have you believe that the come-hither smile of the naked model is real, that she truly values your mysteries and your minerals, that she will comfort you in times of agonizing club-defeat and will radiafy your health with devotion and sunshine care. in reality, since the pornographer and the stripper aim for silver, she employs her sparklo-smile solely your dollars to gain, your emotions nil, your dreams mute and will then move on to the next lust-sloth once your cash has been taken. another lie that the soft-core pornographer propagates is that the photograph of the naked femme stares only at you, that her bliss-treasures are only for you to enjoy, that she is your prize, your moon, your ocean and your lighthouse, that you have worked hard, purified yourself of metallic habits, have rendered yourself clean and fit for responsibility. is it healthy to engage any entertainment that builds its foundation on the lie? does it truly have your interests at heart? or is it much more likely that it wants only your capital, your finance and your silver?You’re absolutely right, Kyle. We need a zero-tolerance policy towards illusion in entertainment. I’m suing a local movie theater because its “motion picture” was actually a rapid succession of still pictures. How did they get away with defrauding us for so long?
Labels: AesthEth, ArtEnt, BlaSla, Cintv, MorPa, OthBlo, Rom, VW
Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 10:11 AM