Category: Love

The Sweet Science of Boxers

Beck is puppy-sitting his sister’s boxer. I laughed right out loud reading his first morning:

Let me only say that I am far from accustomed to waking up to a three year-old eighty-pound Boxer jumping-ass up in my bed and whining in my face. The horrible beast.

Hilarious.

Look; I really have nothing against this animal. She’s really not bad at heart, at all. I just don’t understand why she has to be so… enthusiastic about everydamned thing. She hasn’t been taught how to be cool yet.

(emphasis his)

I have bad news for Uncle Billy. Boxers aren’t cool. They love life with unbridled passion. When you walk out to get the mail and come back, you will be greeted as if you were a long-lost brother. Every moment for them is TOTALLY FUCKING AWESOME!

I try to live that way, to make every moment TFA. Fortunately, for the sake of productivity, I’m still not flexible enough to lick my own balls.

Missing The Big Love Boat

The HBO series Big Love is of course provoking considerable debate on polygamy. I expect most libertarians to miss the boat on this by focusing on polygamy as a matter of public policy.

I see something far more interesting here: Polygamists simply don’t recognize that government has legitimate authority over their marriages. Whereas many gays complain that they can’t marry the spouse of their choice because the government won’t permit it, polygamists simply defy the law and marry however they please.

Forget policy, polygamists are demonstrating that individuals can and do take their marriages private. As well they should:

The Sovereign Individual argues instead, that one must simply evict the state from one’s own marriage. Your marriage is not properly a matter of public debate so don’t treat it as one. Take and keep private what ought to be private. And all of your life is your private affair.

Leave the institution of marriage to the Institutional Man.

Sovereign Individuals are the Makers of Manners:

You and I cannot be confined
within the weak list of a country’s fashion
we are the makers of manners,
and the liberty that follows our places
stops the mouth of all find-faults

In other Gonzo news

Artist Ed ‘Gonzo’ Stross, with whom my family has had some dealings, has gotten into some trouble recently. Apparently Roseville finds bare breasts and the word love objectionable. It just strikes me as odd that artists enjoyed more freedom five centuries ago in Papal Rome than today in the U.S. Of course, then there was a similar reaction, but nowhere near as outrageous. In the Creation of Adam, there is a lot more than just breasts. Even if I could understand the breasts, what is wrong with love? I guess that’s just what you get.

Time Preferences and Strip Hearts

(From the infernal, terrestrial and heavenly Party Report:

I turn away, but Edward’s ravaging of party protocol and dance decorum had led some of us to a set of slopes getting more slippery by the minute. All sense of body space gone, [XXXXX] and [XXXXX] grew more insistent, while [XXXXX] grew more provocative, peeling off clothing, biting, and sharing alcohol-soaked kisses (one takes a shot, then locks lips with another, a practice called ’shotgunning’). Under cover of photography, I increase exposure time (“Hold that pose!”) and apply peer pressure where needed.

Edward and his staff (DJ, etc.) exhausted, we are thrown out close to daylight and retire to [XXXXX]’s apartment. The food of the gods is purchased. More drinking. More smoking. Bailey’s bar-code tattoo is determined to just be a computer joke, “MAC DADDY”. Impassioned confessions between [XXXXX] and [XXXXX]. More drinking. Everyone else decides to force [XXXXX] into joining a game of strip…poker? Some don’t know poker. Aha! Strip Hearts! No one can understand the rules. Doesn’t matter. More drinking. More smoking. The game begins, a salacious tetrahedron of a girl who likes girls who likes a girl who likes girls who like boys who likes a girl who likes a boy who likes girls who likes a girl who girls like who likes boys.

Frank And Ruthie

Good news on the home front:

PORTLAND, ORE. – A man and his 12-year-old daughter spent the last four years living in a remote hillside in Portland’s Forest Park, police said.

…

The man and girl told police they had lived in the park for four years. The pair appeared clean, well-fed and healthy, [Police Officer] Barkley said, and the girl was well-spoken beyond her years.

Why good news? Because the above cop acted like in a very un-coplike manner:

Police persuaded them to leave the camp, promising help them find food and shelter. The pair spent two nights at a homeless shelter. Barkley found the man a job and a place for the two to live on a friend’s horse farm in Yamhill County.

…

“The amazing part of this was the fact that Sergeant Barkley really evaluated what was best for these people,” North Precinct Cmdr. Scott Anderson said. “Sometimes police would be a little quicker to hand things off to state workers. But instead … he saw this through to the end.”

You’ll note that the police brass called this “amazing”.

More:

In fact, the girl received a very good education from her father while living among the trees. Officials said the girl, who would be normally in 7th grade, is at a 12th grade equivalency.

“When we interviewed this little girl, she was very impressive. She really was very responsible, and she really looked as though she was way advanced in her years,” said Portland Police Cmdr. Scott Anderson said.

That is, a twelve year old girl who was homeschooled from thrift-store books in a survivialist’s shanty in the forest by a single parent is the equivalent of a public high school graduate.

What does it add up to? The Endarkenment’s engulfing us like a tide of rotten honey, but there are still decent folks out there in the world. I’m very glad that just this once, things went right. Good for Frank and Ruthie, and good for Officer Barkley.

The Economics Of Love

Bob Murphy concludes his recent post on economic efficiency with a gratuitous swipe at me:

For example, just because Joe would spend $1000 on a plasma screen TV but wouldn’t spend $1000 on favors from his girlfriend, it doesn’t necessarily follow that he values the former good more than the latter service. It could just be that the act of spending money on such things is distasteful per se (or tasteful to preverts like JTK).

imageJonathan Wilde of Catallarchy comments:

Aren’t these ‘moral’ considerations already taken into account by his actions? If Joe spends $1000 on a plasma screen TV instead of favors from his girlfriend, then he has demonstrated that at the time of purchase, the marginal utility of the plasma screen TV was greater than the marginal utility of that unit (no pun intended) of sexual favors from his girlfriend, the marginal utility of the $1000, and the marginal utility of any other good he could have exchanged for that $1000.

Well.

While possibly destroying any chance he had of a rewarding love life in the near future, Wilde has brought up an interesting economic matter. Think of economics as the study of how individuals trade values. There is a very broad range of values for which people use money as a medium of exchange. But there are values, very important to individuals, which are not traded for money. Yes, of course there is a market where you can trade money for sex. But can you trade money for respect? Can money buy you love?

The love I value can’t be purchased for cash. My love is not offered in trade. My love is a deep appreciation of my beloved’s character, an appreciation of who she has chosen and persevered to be. It might appear as though we trade values, but I wonder if that’s true. Being who she has chosen to be she cannot deny me my appreciation of her virtues. And being who I have chosen to be I cannot deny her my love.

image

My beloved suggests that perhaps girls on TV…
image
…would be most efficient for Wilde and Murphy…