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|
 The
Idea: Author
Laura Kipnis argues that monogamy is unnatural and unhealthy, and
possibly complicit in our emotional detachment from political life and
our ecosystem as well.Laura Kipnis, despite the title of of her 200-page "polemic", is not Against Love. Rather, she's against the trappings, the rules, the rituals that our culture imposes on love relationships. She goes even further -- she sees marriage, the institution, as every bit as repressive, suffocating and unnatural as our mind-numbing employment in modern hierarchical organizations, and draws strong parallels between the slavery of the workplace and the slavery of the matrimonial home. These two canons of civilization: our need and responsibility to devote our daytime hours to meaningless subordinate labour, and our need and responsibility to devote the rest of our hours to boring, stifling and unsatisfying monogamy, work together diabolically to keep us suppressed, and in our 'place' in society. Small wonder, she says, that one of our most enduring conventional wisdoms is that "a good marriage takes work". If this protestation against the rigours of monogamy, fidelity and marriage-slavery as the complement to wage-slavery sounds familiar, it's because it's very similar to the argument that Glenn Parton made in his essay posted first on these pages last year entitled "Love Politics". Glenn's argument is that we have become so emotionally numbed by our twin bondage to job and marriage that it has made our hearts cold and hard, uncaring of the plight of our planet and of others, and that this is a direct cause of the destruction of our world. "If I'm miserable, why should I care about anyone else?" Dare to love more than one person, he suggests, and the shackles of this self-imposed imprisonment are broken, and the inrush of emotion will shock us into awareness of, and eagerness to heal, the massive emotional and physical illness of our entire planet. Why should we, why do we subject ourselves to this one-love-partner-slavery as easily and as passively as we do to wage-slavery? This is the subject of much of Ms. Kipnis' book. Her prose is so adept and so powerful I won't attempt to paraphrase her arguments. Here are a few teasers: Is it the persistence of the
work
ethic that ties us to the compassionate couple and its workaday
regimes, or is it the ethos of compassionate coupledom that ties us to
sould-deadening work regimes...Resenting the boss? Feeling bored or
overworked or dissatisfied? Getting complaints about your attitude?
Whether it's "on the relationship" or "on the job" get yourself right
to the therapist's office, pronto. There are only two possible
diagnoses for all such modern ailments: it's going to be either
"intimacy issues" or "authority issues". You'll soon discover that the
disease doubles as the prescription at this clinic: You're just going
to have to "work harder on yourself"...
Take the modern consumer. Clearly, routing desire into consumption would be necessary to sustain a consumer society -- a citizenry who fucked in lieu of shopping would soon bring the entire economy grinding to a standstill. Or better still, take the modern depressive. What a boon to both the modern pharmaceutical and the social-harmony industries that such a social type would be. These are merely hypotheticals of course, since it's not as if we live in a society of consumers and depressives, or as if the best strategy for the latter weren't widely held to be strategically indulging in the former -- "retail therapy"...Love's proper denouement, matrimony, is also of course the social form regulated by the state, which refashions itself as a benevolent pharmacist, doling out the addictive substance in licensed doses...What about re-envisioning [marriage] or... insisting that social resources and privileges not be allocated on the basis of marital status? No. let's demand regulation! Not that it's easy to re-envision anything when these intersections of love and acquiescence are the very backbone of the modern self, when every iota of self-worth and identity hinge on them...Domestic coupledom is the boot camp for compliant citizenship, a training ground for gluey resignation and immobility... Ms. Kipnis suggests the same lack of innovation that permeates the workplace in the 21st century also permeates domestic institutions: Different social norms could
entail something entirely different: yearly renewable contracts for
example. And if we weren't so emotionally yoked to the social forms
we've inherited that trying to envision different ways of having a
love
life seems intellectually impossible and even absurd, who knows what
other options might present themselves?...It behooves [our] society to
convince its citizenry that wanting change means personal failure,
starting over is shameful, and wanting more satisfaction than you have
is illegitimate...As love has increasingly become the center of all
emotional expression in the modern imagination -- the quantity without
which life seems forlorn -- anxiety about obtaining it in sufficient
quantities and for sufficient duration has increased to the point that
that anxiety suffuses the population, and most of our cultural
forms...Uncoupling [then] can only be experienced as ego-crushing
crisis and inadequacy...[and] the grief of failed love is exacerbated
by inevitable feelings of personal failure...
Much of the latter part of the book is focused on the psychological
gymnastics of all three (or more) parties in the polygon of adultery,
from the rationalization that hiding the affair is to protect the
feelings of the cuckold, to the feelings of self-hatred and
self-flagellation of the 'sinner(s)'. She also discusses the awkward
mechanics of the ultimate break-up of either the marriage or the
affair
(or both), and the degree to which children of the relationship become
hostages, or excuses for deception, or excuses for the boredom that
gave rise to the deception. Of course the book also talks about famous
infidelities in high political circles, and the twisted hypocrisy of
conservatives' opposition to same-sex marriage, as well as the
equal-opportunity-for-misery desire of lesbians and gays to gain
access
to the sad and repressive regulation of 'official' marriage rather
than
'settling for' merely the legal and resource rights that come with
equivalent-to-married status. And there's also a discussion of the
pragmatic phenomenon of "serial monogamy" -- the fall-back that
there's
nothing wrong with marriage per
se, it's just that we were all married to the wrong person. All of this is complicated (even more) by the emergence of the Two-Income Trap, which imposes a financial prison on top of the emotional one in marriage. We have to stay together because we can't afford to live apart. I am convinced that this one factor is overwhelmingly responsible for keeping the rate of divorce from reaching astronomical levels. It is also probably helpful in keeping birth rates in the West below replacement levels -- Not only can we not afford children, we certainly don't want any (or any more) with the spouse we're economically shackled to. And having one with the secret love is just too messy. In my recent article predicting a baby boom, perhaps I underestimated the sheer perverseness of a socioeconomic system that not only makes parenthood financially reckless, it also suppresses fertility rates by its expressed moral repugnance for having a child by someone other than your boring spouse. A lot of people, some of their own free will, and many more who have been pushed, have recently broken free of wage slavery and are now working, mostly for much less income, for themselves. That's probably a good thing in many ways -- it reduces the supply of the remaining wage slaves, which might actually, in time, allow them to bargain from a position of at least a bit of power. It increases self-sufficiency. It reduces excessive consumption. What if there were a similar revolution against marriage slavery? What if a whole generation just refused to define themselves (in more ways than one) as married, or to live with the constraints of monogamy, and instead opted for a polyamory life-style? Paternity 'rights' and responsibilities would both probably suffer, as the new family unit would be a woman (or possibly, and more logically, a group of women, in self-selected community) and their children. They would have the power, and could strike whatever contract they chose with males who wanted the responsibilities and privileges of fatherhood. The nuclear family and the 'single-family dwelling' would disappear. Conjugal relations would not attach to parental responsibility, and could be negotiated between any two people as individuals on a one-shot basis, with no responsibility other than the responsibility to prevent unwanted pregnancy and disease. This would probably be bad for the oldest profession, as the supply/demand ratio for quick couplings would soar. Jealousy and the consequent domestic violence that is the scourge of our nuclear spouse-as-property society would, slowly (old habits die hard), disappear. I think the vast majority of men, driven by million-year-old biological imperatives, once they reached a certain age, would choose to attach themselves to one of the matriarchal communities (if so invited), and would do their share to provide for its well-being, in return for the company and sense of purpose that would bring. We are told it takes a village, a community, to raise a child. Perhaps the community is necessary, and sufficient, for far more: To break us all free from both the emotionally numbing subjugation of wage-slavery and the misery and boredom of marriage-slavery. The community would then become truly self-sufficient in every respect, and we would be happier and freer than we can, or dare, imagine. Cartoon: By Peter Steiner from The New Yorker, in the Cartoon Bank |
It's fun to use google and see what it returns when searching for 'sticky buns' as, well, the imagination is a poor substitute for reality. When food and skin porn collide it gets fairly ugly pretty quickly. Sticky buns are likely the source of inspiration for the Finnish bostonkakku which are served like a pie rather than the individual buns. One of the guys at work quipped that it is served this way because you can feed 20 instead of 8 people.
I figured that since I was making dallaspulla that I'd make the inspiration for texaspulla and bostonkakku so that my test subjects would know just what they had been missing all these years. :) The dough is a snap to make even without a mixer and is much easier to work with than the pulla dough. The only drawback is the time spent waiting for the dough to rise. With a four-day weekend approaching where absolutely nothing will be open and we'll likely have crappy weather given that it's a holiday, what could be better than making a pan of sticky buns and eating them instead of chocolate eggs? These are, by far, the best cinnamon rolls I've ever made and my test subjects consumed them in a shark chum feeding frenzy. Two guys even asked me for the recipe.
Sticky Buns, a.k.a. caramel rolls or cinnamon rolls
Makes: 12 sticky buns
Time: ~30 minutes prep, 3 hours for dough rising
Source: Cook's IllustratedThis recipe has four components: the dough that is shaped into buns, the filling that creates the swirl in the shaped buns, the caramel glaze that bakes in the bottom of the baking dish along with the buns, and the pecan topping that garnishes the buns once baked. Although the ingredient list may look long, note that many ingredients are repeated. Leftover sticky buns can be wrapped in foil or plastic wrap and refrigerated for up to 3 days, but they should be warmed through before serving. They reheat quickly in a microwave oven (for 2 buns, about 2 minutes at 50 percent power works well); they can also be put into a 325F/175C-degree oven for about 8 minutes.
Dough
- 3 large eggs at room temperature
- 3/4 cup buttermilk (2 dl piima) at room temperature
- 1/4 cup (.5 dl) granulated sugar
- 1 1/4 teaspoons table salt
- 2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast (1 packet sunnuntai dry yeast)
- 4 1/4 cups (10,5 dl) unbleached all-purpose flour, plus additional for dusting work surface
- 6 tablespoons (85g) unsalted butter, melted and cooled until warm
- In bowl of standing mixer, whisk eggs; add buttermilk and whisk to combine.
- Whisk in sugar, salt, and yeast.
- Add about 2 cups (5 dl) flour and butter; stir with wooden spoon or rubber spatula until evenly moistened and combined.
- Add all but about 1/4 cup (1/2 dl) remaining flour and knead with dough hook at low speed 5 minutes.
- Check consistency of dough (dough should feel soft and moist but should not be wet and sticky; add more flour, if necessary); knead at low speed 5 minutes longer (dough should clear sides of bowl but stick to bottom).
- Turn dough out onto lightly floured work surface; knead by hand about 1 minute to ensure that dough is uniform (dough should not stick to work surface during hand kneading; if it does stick, knead in additional flour 1 tablespoon at a time).
- Lightly spray large bowl or plastic container with nonstick cooking spray. Transfer dough to bowl, spray dough lightly with cooking spray, then cover bowl tightly with plastic wrap.
- Set in warm, draftfree spot until doubled in volume, 2 to 2 1/2 hours.
Caramel Glaze
- 6 tablespoons or 85g unsalted butter
- 3/4 cup (1,75 dl) light brown sugar, packed
- 3 tablespoons corn syrup, light or dark
- 2 tablespoons heavy cream
- 1 pinch table salt
- Meanwhile, combine all ingredients for glaze in small saucepan.
- Cook over medium heat, whisking occasionally, until butter is melted and mixture is thoroughly combined.
- Pour mixture into nonstick metal 13- by 9-inch (33cm x 23cm) baking dish.
- Using rubber spatula, spread mixture to cover surface of baking dish.
- Set baking dish aside.
Cinnamon-Sugar Filling
- 3/4 cup (1,75 dl) light brown sugar, packed
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1 pinch table salt
- 1 tablespoon or 15g unsalted butter, melted
- Raisins (optional)
- Combine brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and salt in small bowl.
- Mix with a fork until thoroughly combined, using fingers to break up sugar lumps.
- Set aside.
To assemble and bake buns:
- Turn dough out onto lightly floured work surface.
- Gently shape dough into rough rectangle with long side nearest you.
- Lightly flour dough and roll to 16-inch x 12-inch (40cm x 30cm) rectangle.
- Brush dough with 1 tablespoon melted butter, leaving 1/2-inch border along top edge; with butter remaining on brush, brush sides of baking dish.
- Sprinkle filling mixture over dough, leaving 3/4-inch border along top edge; smooth filling in even layer with your hand, then gently press mixture into dough to adhere. Add rasins if you desire.
- Beginning with long edge nearest you, roll dough into taut cylinder.
- Firmly pinch seam to seal and roll cylinder seam-side down.
- Very gently stretch to cylinder of even diameter and 18-inch (45 cm) length; push ends in to create even thickness.
- Using a serrated knife and gentle sawing motion, slice cylinder in half, then slice each half in half again to create evenly sized quarters.
- Slice each quarter evenly into thirds, yielding 12 ~1.5 inch (3,75 cm) buns (end pieces may be slightly smaller).
- Arrange buns cut-side down in prepared baking dish.
- Cover tightly with plastic wrap and set in warm, draft-free spot until puffy and pressed against one another, about 1 hour.
- Meanwhile, adjust oven rack to lowest position, place pizza stone (if using) on rack, and heat oven to 350F/175C degrees.
- Place baking pan on pizza stone; bake until golden brown and center of dough registers about 180F/82C degrees on instant-read thermometer, 25 to 30 minutes.
- Cool on wire rack 10 minutes; invert onto rimmed baking sheet, large rectangular platter, or cutting board.
- With rubber spatula, scrape any glaze remaining in baking pan onto buns; let cool while making pecan topping.
Pecan Topping
- 3 tablespoons or 50g unsalted butter
- 1/4 cup (.5 dl) light brown sugar, packed
- 3 tablespoons corn syrup, light or dark
- 1 pinch table salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or vanilla sugar
- 3/4 cup (1,75 dl) pecans or walnuts, toasted in a skillet over medium heat until fragrant and browned, about 5 minutes, then cooled and coarsely chopped
- Combine butter, brown sugar, corn syrup, and salt in small saucepan and bring to simmer over medium heat, whisking occasionally to thoroughly combine.
- Off heat, stir in vanilla and pecans until pecans are evenly coated.
- Using soup spoon, pour heaping tablespoon of nuts and topping over center of each sticky bun.
- Continue to cool until sticky buns are warm, 15 to 20 minutes.
- Pull apart or use knife to cut apart sticky buns; serve.
teen-boys-fuck-paysite.com
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I almost called Anil last night to find an all-night Internet access place. Sure sure - Bryant Park, Union Sq. Battery Park all have free Wifi - but they don't have power.
So I'm currently ensconced at a Starbucks at 66th & 3rd - enjoying the summer hotties, the international place that NYC is - and prepping for tonight's micro-content dinner.
It's at the Grand Sichuan on 9th Ave. between 50-51 at 6:30.
My friend Kenny asked: "What the hell is Micro-content?" and I started to tell him the history of what Jakob Nielson called it, how I define it and some examples of how it's used (I pointed Kenny to Jason Kottke's site.)
We were contacted by the Wikipedia folks yesterday to work on the OpenMedia project. JD's been kicking ass - getting that going.
The FOAF confab programme was finally announced (notice the EU spelling.....) Plaxo is sending somebody and there are a couple of other entities saying they're using FOAF en masse. Can't wait to find out what's up wit dat.
And I'm working on an OpenListings proposal that is gonna rock the house.
Hopefully some peeps can make it tonight. The food is supposedly really spicey hot. Good.
We need that to match the ideas being proselytized.
(1) the
things we do for loveyouyesyou.com/welove/index.html
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