I left the office early this afternoon and walked home. I stopped in at the little red-painted corner grocery and bought a slice of key lime pie. I sat at one of their outdoor tables and looked at the two bound commonplace book volumes I'd had bound. I read through two more volumes of things I'd found on the web and heard a lost song in my head. I think I wanted to hear Hole's "Doll Parts". What I got was a long-ago song called "Wooden Ships". I know that Jefferson Airplane did it, back forty years ago, and I know that it was covered by some Detroit blues-rock band called Ides of March, who added a brass section. (Crosby, Stills & Nash covered it, too) It's one of those sci-fi influenced songs Jefferson Airplane did as they transitioned to being Jefferson Starship (see their "Blows Against the Empire"). It's a long-forgotten song. Maybe--- maybe ---Sumi37 at Diaryland knows it. And it's possible that Caitlin at kissmecaitlin has heard of it. I have no idea why I remembered it. I think I heard it on late-night radio when I was in high school and tracked it down just because it was about after-the-end-of-the-world. So I did hear it in my head, though for no reason I can really offer.

Ms. Chang wrote this morning to say that she and her husband had made an impromptu trip to the East Coast last night. I wasn't clear from the e-mail whether that was the east coast of Florida or east coast as in NYC. So I don't know whether they were driving from, say, Sarasota to Daytona or heading to the airport. Ms. Chang isn't a good flier; she and I have that in common. Though she has access to prescription drugs and I don't.

I really don't like Sixties music. I'm no fan of hippies or the hippie era. Miniskirts and the Warhol/Pop Art Sixties--- the pre-hippie Sixties. I do like reading about that era. Just not hippies and Sixties Rock. Now I'll make a couple of exceptions for Sixties music. The Jefferson Airplane's "After Bathing At Baxter's" album is an interesting find. And I'll even admit to a tiny handful of Grateful Dead things that are worth listening to--- the album "Blues for Allah" and the "Terrapin Station" suite (those both those were released in the Seventies, I think).

I'm always conflicted about the Sixties--- Warhol's Factory good, Haight-Ashbury bad. Co-eds in tiny skirts and drug-bright eyes, sex and a sense of possibility--- those things are good. But the whole hippie thing, with all its childish leftista politics and "spirituality" and disregard for hygiene and social form--- that always leaves me appalled. When I saw "The Dreamers", I just threw up my hands and wanted to strangle the cast. The set-up was perfectly good--- American innocent meets Euro decadence in Paris. That's a good standard set-up. And the girl who played the sister was vur' fuckable indeed. Old Paris family, dark old houses, sibling incest and family secrets and decadence and sexual depravity--- all that was perfect for a better story. All lovely things. But then...the spirit of Sixty-Eight! The Events of May! Dear God.

As much as I disdain leftism and Marxists, I really do have to sympathise with the anger and incomprehension the French Communists and unions felt for the students in May '68. The PCF and the CGT were grovelling Stalinists, but at least they wanted something tangible--- political power and more money. The students and street kids and radical-art types wanted...well...what, exactly? A new heaven and a new earth? Transformation of human nature? A transvaluation of value? All that Sixty-Eight stuff--- endless nights of political debate, endless scrutiny of one's politics and personal life, a fevered belief in a reborn world ---is something that's been heard before. Paris 1789, St.-Petersburg 1917, maybe Tehran 1979--- and we know how that ended up.

I was a New Romantic, and a Person In Black. I was never a hippie, and never wanted to be. When I once found a copy of Callenbach's "Ecotopia" in a campus library I read through it and just shuddered. How was this not as terrifying as "1984" or "Swastika Night"? I always wanted to live inside "Blade Runner" or in one of Wm. Gibson's cities. The most-pettable little K-dot at citydress always says that I'm a creature of suburbia. She does have a point. But I'm a creature of university towns and campuses and late-night streets off-campus. Hippie or Green Edens just aren't places where I can feel happy.

I can't say that I hate the outdoors altogether. I like seacoasts and high deserts. I like places that are...empty. I don't like fecundity. I like landscapes in stark colours. I live with too much green around me, too much swampiness and humidity and oozing fertility. I need open water and a rock-bound coast. Or the high desert.

I did watch Wong Kar Wai's "My Blueberry Nights" last night--- a wonderful small film, and one I vur' much want to talk about with Ginny at ginny_mccoo (her recommendation) and Lissy at emigree and the K-dot at citydress. I might ask Emily at iminhell about it, too.

The vur' intriguing ninjastyle recommended that I see two porn films from the mid-1990s--- "Shock" and "Latex". I had to look them up, and I found that they'd been done by Michael Ninn. Now there's a name to conjure with... Michael Ninn fiteen years ago was supposed to be the great artistic hope of porn. His "Sex" was a sudden supernova inside the porn world--- people said that he was darker and more sexual and even more of a stylist than Andrew Blake. I know that I wanted vur' much to see "Sex" and its sequel. I can't recall if I did--- whether I watched "Sex" or just read about it. But I'll trust ninjastyle on this and look for "Shock" and "Latex"...and watch "Sex", too.

Reading through sex blogs today at work, I ran across a new term. Apparently the latest group of Bad People out there belong to what one sex blog called "the pickup community". One or two writers did question the hatred out there for the "pickup community" and note that there is a lot of absolute disdain for both single males and male sexuality in the sex blog world. Well, that's a fact. Single males aren't usually welcome anywhere. And expressions of male sexuality are regarded as some combination of pathetic, creepy, and contemptible. One girl's blog was succinct enough: pickup lines, she wrote, are a kind of date rape. I'm not sure where to begin there. I remember a feminista columnist in the campus paper at New Haven straightforwardly saying that all seduction is rape, so the basic idea isn't new. Stupid and grotesque, but not new.

There was a time when seduction was a kind of art, a ritualised performance. I do admire that--- a game with rules, a nuanced and formalised thing. Okay, yes: there were Ecstasy-fueled nights in my clubland days when I'd introduce myself to leggy girls at dance clubs by saying, "Good evening. My name is Eduardo de Guzman. Are you wearing underwear?" (Still--- no one ever slapped me or threw a drink on me. That must mean something-- even if it only means that MDMA helps.) But I do love the whole idea of a seduction, of a measured dance with an end in view. I like the formality of it. I like it that seductions have rules.

I like formal things, of course. I like having clear rules in place. Remember--- I did law school in a Civilian jurisdiction, where we look back to Roman law for hermeneutics and interlocking codes.

Rules matter to me. They always have. And clear rules make any kind of social interaction, any kind of social life, so much easier. Clear, precise rules really are key to any kind of bearable or civilised life.

I can't be a member of the "pickup community". I lack the ability or the visible value to try some variation on "Hey, baby". But I miss the whole idea of striking a late-Georgian pose and doing seductions. I like the idea of sexual encounters as formalised and mannered as a gavotte.

I still find myself depressed when I read Stella's description at stelladellasera of stroking her gay younger brother's "big handsome cock". It's all well and good to imagine someone calling Jack Aubrey a "big handsome cock"--- "Fie, Captain Aubrey! A big handsome cock like you and the buttons half off your coat, and not polished neither! For shame!" That's easy enough. But even though I'm uncomfortable with physical compliments--- not that I ever get them, or that I wouldn't think they were lies anyway ---I suppose there is that sense of failure in realising that no girl is ever likely to apply "big handsome cock" to me. I suppose it means something that no girl has ever bothered trying that line with me, even on the phone.

Of course--- I always respond to physical compliments about anything except my eyes by becoming withdrawn and suspicious. I think I'd always assume that any physical compliment would be designed to put me off my guard for something dreadful about to happen.

A girl not long ago (maybe the lovely Annette at kirstys_girl ) wrote that she'd read me and think back to episodes of "Northern Exposure", to Chris doing his radio monologues there in the tiny storefront station in the little Alaska town. I like that. I really did like the first two seasons of "Northern Exposure". The Evil Dana Lynn and I used to watch them together in her apartment in Montevallo or in hotel beds. I still see myself in the high desert, though, in some kind of little Art Bell studio broadcasting out into a clear, chill night. I might do a phone interview or two at some point. But there'd be no call-in feature.

When I used to post at WorldCrossing, I'd always love being part of discussions. But if I did ever have a political blog or a sex blog there'd be no comments space at all--- or at most, one controlled by password. I want to tell Stories--- I'm good at that. That's why I taught History once upon a time. (Well, that, and to meet co-eds) But I'd talk into the night on the radio. I'd write for a black screen if I did an actual blog. No comments space at an actual blog--- or comments only from voices I know and trust.

Ginny at ginny_mccoo is up in eastern Canuckia. But she does love the idea of the American West, of cross-country drives. I want to talk with her about "My Blueberry Nights", about the richness of the colours, whether in the NYC or Nevada sequences, and about the film's vision of the American landscape.

I must ask people--- the vur' skilled little K-dot at citydress, say ---about how to load films onto the Tare Panda Laptop. Is it as simple as putting DVDs in and uploading them to watch and delete later? I must get an iPod soon. It's time to do that. Get an iPod, download iTunes, and start loading my CDs onto it. Lissy at emigree is getting herself an 80gb iPod, since she says she has thousands upon thousands of songs saved up. Even if I loaded in all my favourite CDs and random single tracks, I'm not sure I'd have thousands of things... But perhaps I should get excess capacity just in case I need to load videos. My problem there, of course, is screen size. I wear reading glasses anyway--- would an iPod screen be large enough to actually be visible? Anyway--- I do need advice on such things. I'm always vur' tech-challenged.

I think I really do like last night's idea of tracing a fingertip vur', vur' delicately across a girl's lips and vur' softly whispering, "Take it, bitch..." Lacey would've slowly smiled and caught my finger between her teeth. Or she might have closed her eyes and whispered, "Hurt me..." But she'd have known what to do, how to respond to "Take it, bitch..." said in the gentlest of whispers. I suspect that Ms. Chang would know what to do as well--- if only to find a way to provoke an Older Lover into ravaging her. Stella at stelladellasera, I think, would laugh and grin. I can't quite think what Lissy at emigree would do.

The vur' charming Provocateuse writes to say that she's a fan of little Archibald Ormsby-Gore, Sir John Betjeman's lifelong stuffling friend. Yay, little Archibald Ormsby-Gore! He was a most loyal and faithful and kind little friend to Sir John, and Sir John was holding Archie when he passed away. Little Archie is safe at Oxford now, and treasured. And I discovered today that in a child's book he did about Archie once upon a time, Betjeman described how little Archibald Ormsby-Gore was vur' fond of hedgehogs. It seems he first met hedgehog friends when exploring their burrows--- which he at first thought were the graves of baby Druids. I like Provocateuse's writing, and I like her tastes in cultural things as well.

Janet Hobhouse, "Dancing in the Dark"... It's a lovely novel. A vur' clever early-1980s novel of manners. I'm not sure if it's still in print at all, but I will recommend it. Like Fernanda Eberstadt's "Low Tide", it's worth hunting for in libraries.

The porch light has been on all day at Nr. 937 across the street. The blonde girl's car is there, so it seems that she's...doing a long weekend with a client/keeper? That porch light does raise one issue: is it still the Walk o' Shame if a girl comes home at, say, 1600 hours in last night's cocktail gown? That is something to consider...