But it's striking that the things that therapeutic, God Within religion doesn't seem to have delivered to Americans are the very things that it claims to be best suited to provide--contentment, happiness, well-being, and, above all, the ability to forge successful relationships with fellow human beings. ...Therapeutic religion promises contentment, but in many cases it seems to deliver a sort of isolation that's at once comfortable and terrible--leaving us alone with the universe, alone with the God Within.
--Ross Douthat, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics

Paulina was surprised. "Why, but you too are clinging to a straw! A couple of weeks ago, you explained to me at great length that you were absolutely sure to win at roulette, and then you rushed away because I stared at you as if you were insane. Or perhaps you were joking then? No, I remember very clearly that you were absolutely serious, and it didn't sound like a joke at all."

"That's true," I said dreamily. "Even now, I am still convinced I'll win. ..." --Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Gambler, tr. Andrew R. MacAndrew

[T]here is no progress in love. It will always be a surprise.
--from Pascal Bruckner's new book, The Paradox of Love, reviewed here; want to pay me to review this?

"The Slav is never subject, not even to himself."

and "Queen Natalija was chaster than snow, she was as chaste as sleet."
--both via TKB and from Rebecca West, Black Lamb, Grey Falcon

I've got an infinite number of places to go, the problem is where to stay.
--Johnny, Mike Leigh, "Naked"

I CAN TIE A KNOT IN A CHERRY STEM: Comics review. So everyone who knows me knows I couldn't resist the paperback copy of Iron Man: Demon in a Bottle. This is the early '80s story arc in which our hero, Iron Man, gained an origin and an addiction. I loved it with a deeply stupid love.

The covers are so bad. The front cover is basically, "John Romita, Jr. Presents: THE HUMAN THIGH!", and then the back cover is AA Werewolf.

And... I don't know a good way to put this. All Iron Man origin stories are racist. Iron Man is a white guy who experienced an epiphany in a country full of brown people, and then he came home to be important and have his own comic book title, and sometimes his black sidekick got to tag along. Honestly, there's no defending it. There are a lot of things I like about the Iron Man mythos, but I don't recommend it, for exactly the same reason that I don't say everybody should read Gone with the Wind.

So okay, that said... I thought this book was surprisingly clever and fun and (on a scale of negative-1000 to negative-100) subtle. I really enjoyed this. The art was action-comics standard, but the pacing worked, and the dialogue was what you wanted '80s comics to be, rather than what you just kind of accepted as the '80s comics norm.

I can't recommend this in good conscience. But if you are pretty sure you want the first Tony Stark alcoholism arc, I can tell you this version of it is a lot better than it had to be. It really isn't lugubrious or pro-forma the way future Tony-drunk comics can seem. And if you liked the movie, I can say that this comic is similar, for good and for ill.

It was not just that the Edwardians tended to project futures where every restraint would still hold true except the one they planned to abolish, and the decencies they took for granted would continue to operate, insulating and domesticating their wildest notions. They were also sure that they viewed the present with clear eyes. They were already persuaded that they understood the uncomfortable truths; how much more likely the world was to be harsh rather than kind, how the balance of nature favoured the strong and condemned the weak.
--I May Be Some Time

A NEW HAVEN AND A NEW EARTH. So in a conversation about how 1) how it's a total cop-out to praise loyalties only insofar as they're chosen and unzippable, and 2) "vocation" complicates the concept of "choice" anyway--you don't choose what you hear even when you choose how you answer, I mangled Ingmar Bergman to get what I think is my new right-wing bumper sticker:

WE MAKE AN IDOL OF OUR FEAR AND CALL IT CHOICE.

HOW THE "IRON MAN" DVD SET COULD'VE BEEN MORE AWESOME: A VERY SHORT LIST.

1. Put the scenes from RDJ's screen test in the film

2. Include that "No Handlebars" fanvid (I feel weird about including a link, but if you're having a hard time finding it, email me)

3. DVD commentary by Samir Khader

4. Force Marvel to re-release "Armor Wars" at all, and "Demon in a Bottle" in a paperback version; also re-start The Order (more on this soon)

...Yeah, I think that's it. I think I'm going to watch it again now.