January 21, 2020

Nice graphic design of a NYT headline, and they let you know they think they know which one you're going to pick.



Quitting — just say no! — is an interesting abstraction. (It fits with the best adage I ever wrote: "Better than nothing is a high standard.") But no way am I going to click on all those headings. I'm considering clicking on "Caring" just to see if they quote Melania's jacket ("I really don't care/Do U?"), but like just about anyone else, I'm clicking on "Sex":
I said to everyone, “I want my body to get some rest. I want my body to understand what my body really wants. Maybe my body wants some caresses but nothing more.”

I had the intuition that pleasure could be something very important. What I expected from sex was to trust someone so much that I could be fully there, my soul and my body. Sometimes, physically, I was there, but my mind was in exile. Sometimes, my soul was there, but very far from my body...

Everyone worried about me. My attitude was like a mirror that I put in front of them. Maybe everyone was wondering if their own sex lives weren’t that good....

My time of no sex ended because suddenly, in front of a guy, I was very honest. Instead of pretending, instead of protecting myself, I just said that I didn’t know if I was able to make love again. Maybe I forgot everything. This honesty opened the honesty of the guy in front of me.
This is by Sophie Fontanel, who wrote a book about her experience, so I'm pretty sure I've blogged about this. I search the archive.

Ah,  yes. Here's the post, from 2013, "12 years without sex, or as Sophie Fontanel calls it, 12 years of insubordination." The last line of the post is: "You know my old aphorism: Better than nothing is a high standard."

73 comments:

Mattman26 said...

Is that a condom n the graphic?

stevew said...

I was just about the ask the same question. Looks like one to me. So how do you click any other link but "Sex" after seeing that!

Mattman26 said...

How I quit making balloon animals?

pacwest said...

Quitting, what a great idea! It's the answer to all life's tough problems.

Ralph L said...

The Gray Lady hasn't really closed up shop down there.
Trashy.

Sydney said...

Mommy, what kind of donut is that?

Tom T. said...

No entry for "I quit the Resistance"?

RNB said...

"...the Democratic Party." (What? No link for that?)

Leland said...

I quit reading the NYT because "I had the intuition that pleasure could be something very important."

JZ said...

I don’t understand the “better than nothing/high standard” adage. I’ll give it more thought.

JZ said...

I have my own adage and yours reminds me of mine: I have my standards. They’re not very high, but I have my standards.

Jersey Fled said...

"This honesty opened the honesty of the guy in front of me."

Yuck.

henry said...

I quit a PhD program because all the job openings for professors were affirmative action for women and minorities. I can take a hint.

Big Mike said...

Is that a condom in the graphic?

Appears to be.

AllenS said...

Without a doubt, that is a condom. Thankfully, unused.

tcrosse said...

They coulda had an entry for the British Royal Family.

Kevin said...

Better than nothing is a high standard.

Nancy Pelosi didn't get the memo.

traditionalguy said...

As we grow older, sex seen as a physical act can be replaced and hence is not all that big a deal. But Sex seen as an expression of romance and beautiful intimacy between a man and a woman committed to one another is God's greatest gift to us. Quitting that sex is a semi suicide.

GatorNavy said...

Sad day, when the NY Post is classier by far than The NY Times.

Oso Negro said...

Comments - 1) you knew it was going to be a woman. 2) why celebrate re-cycled Shakerism? We all know how that turned out. 3) of course a man had to pretend to take her seriously in hopes of vaginal access.

JML said...

Is retirement quitting? Because if so, I’m all in, er, out on 31 March.

MD Greene said...

Self-absorption on stilts. TMI, and a theoretically serious newspaper is encouraging it.

daskol said...

She's French, so that is rather remarkable and insubordinate. She's been working that 12 year drought for seven years already.

Fernandinande said...

I guess the NYet couldn't get that guy who just quit his princing job to write an article about it for them, so they quoted Greta Thunberg on their front page.

Birches said...

Congratulations JML!

Francisco D said...

I quit smoking (for the last time) 37 years ago this month.

I don't recall why I ever started. It's a disgusting habit.

Fernandinande said...

but like just about anyone else

I'd probably click "laundry service", never having had one.

Better than nothing is a high standard.

And yet you read the NYeT. It's not better than nothing.

Oso Negro said...

I said this about that back in 2013:

Oso Negro said...
I suppose I missed all this high-minded sex that you are all going on about, but I certainly had a lot of fun with the regular kind. It is my experience that enthusiasm covers gaps in technique. If you lack both moves and passion, best keep the playing field clear for the rest of us.

8/8/13, 3:53 AM


I had no idea what was coming for me in 2014. Last kid moving out of the house, loss of business partner, divorce, loss of personal assistant, prostate cancer scare. By the end of that annus horriblis, I realized I had been living like Boxer in Animal Farm, no matter what happened in my marriage, I grimly resolved to carry more stones for the windmill. But unlike Boxer, a wonder occurred on the way to the glue factory - I looked up and found myself in a field of fillies. Since then, I have lived quite opposite to Sophie Fontanel, raging across far continents. Better than nothing may be a high standard, but human touch plus orgasm is much better than none, whether it's vaguely workmanlike or sublime.

Lucid-Ideas said...

Wasnt' there a cadre of "anti-orgasm" women in 1984? 'Triumph over the orgasm' with forced fertilization or something?

She'll fit right in.

Todd said...

I had the intuition that pleasure could be something very important. What I expected from sex was to trust someone so much that I could be fully there, my soul and my body. Sometimes, physically, I was there, but my mind was in exile. Sometimes, my soul was there, but very far from my body...

So basically one of those "free" women that thought she could act like a man and sex was just fun sex, until it was relieved to be just empty motion like her dad and mom [likely] tried to tell her. Sometimes it takes a while for the light bulb to light...

MadisonMan said...

"This honesty opened the honesty of the guy in front of me."

The guy sounds pretty expert at getting into any woman's pants. Opened up his honesty indeed. What a feeble mind this woman has!

Todd said...

until it was relieved to be just empty motion

revealed...

Rocco said...

So, which one is the piece by Meghan and Harry?

Rocco said...

Or Brandon Straka?

Birkel said...

Is anybody counseling MSM reporters QUIT lying, making up sources, and printing DNC talking points as news stories?

Is anybody counseling citizens not to read and believe MSM lies? Or is that so fully incorporated into thinking Americans' thinking as to be unnecessary?

What other things might this society benefit from a concerted effort to quit?
Drug abuse is an obvious example.

Sebastian said...

"Better than nothing is a high standard."

But when it comes to sex, pretty much anyone can meet that standard.

Churchy LaFemme: said...

"Sex without love is an empty experience, but as empty experiences go it's one of the best."

Sebastian said...

Of course, my response is obvious: I quit the NYT, long ago. Bunch of effing partisan liars and traitors.

It seems my standards are a little higher than Althouse's.

tim in vermont said...

"I looked up and found myself in a field of fillies”

Kind of funny how that goes.

jaydub said...

My go to adage: Everybody has to believe in something, so I believe I'll have a beer.

It's guided me through many tough spots.

Amadeus 48 said...

Winners never quit, and quitters never win.

The NYT wants us all to quit.

But so much winning! I am not tired of winning yet. We have to squash those Dems!

CJinPA said...

Call me cynical, but I don't believe first-person stories told by people with a financial interest in lying. (Boring, true story = No $)

And 'walking away' stories are never as interesting as advertised. Perhaps because the person telling it has an incentive make themselves look good and the people they deserted look bad.

Or maybe they all remind of "Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack. I went out for a ride and I never came back" deadbeat dad tales.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

OT:

Quitting the media. Saying FU to the lair-D hack-D press.

"Almost to the day CNN paid out a notable cash settlement to Nick Sandmann, the Covington High School kid it defamed as a racist pup for grinning at a Native American whilst supporting President Trump, the network was one of a gaggle of MSM outlets out to spin the killing of an Iranian general—into another Orange Man Bad. As with Sandmann, the facts never support the heavy metal screeching, but the facts also matter little. The anti-Trump agenda rules no matter the price.

You remember about a year ago, when Sandmann and his Catholic school classmates traveled to Washington, D.C., to join the annual March for Life rally on Capitol Hill. Sandmann was photographed smiling at a Native American. With one mighty flatulent blast, outlets like CNN imagined Sandmann, wearing his MAGA cap, as the distillation of everything evil, some redneck from Kentucky a-protestin’ them abortions and rubbing his smug grin in the face of a noble Native American supposedly trying to defuse a tense situation. The Native American was also quickly (but wrongly) glorified as a Vietnam vet.

Blue Check Twitter suggested Sandmann be punched in the face, and veiled suggestions of mob action led to threats. Sandmann’s family was temporarily run out of their home. Disciplinary action included coerced apologies. Progressive media gleefully piled on. It was right out of Orwell’s 1984, the Two Minutes Hate.

But not only was everything CNN and the others said absolutely wrong (Sandmann was never an aggressor, and alongside his peers, said nothing in return to those taunting him), it wasn’t even news. Nothing really happened. Students on a field trip. But the media appointed Sandmann their racist oberfuhrer, fashioned the others into props, and had the entire white nationalist anti-Trump agenda in one handy snapshot."

The Covington Kids’ Revenge, One Year Later

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

more...

"Most agenda journalism victims are expected to disappear in shame. But this time it was different. Sandmann sued a range of journalists, including Maggie Haberman, Ana Navarro, and Shaun King, for slurs they threw at him on Twitter. Included in the swath of additional lawsuits by Sandmann were CNN, MSNBC’s parent company, the AP, Gannett, HuffPo, Slate, and The Washington Post. In the words of the suit, they “brought down the full force of corporate power, influence, and wealth on Nicholas by falsely attacking, vilifying, and bullying him despite the fact that he was a minor child.” "

mtrobertslaw said...

Sex as an expression of love? I never learned that in any of my sex education classes.

Levi Starks said...

They left out breathing.

AllenS said...

Yes, breathing is better than sex, or a good meal, or a good cigar, or a good drink.

tcrosse said...

NYT shows where the rubber meets the road.

Dude1394 said...

"legal" consensus is just as useless as "scientist" consensus.

Dude1394 said...

Of course the sex part is written from a female angst perspective. It's as bad as the teenage angst movies out there. A waste of air.

bagoh20 said...

They left out the one that is probably the most newsworthy of all recently: "I quit the Democrats". Said by Gays, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, former liberals, union members, and middle America.

bagoh20 said...

Nobody goes without sex purely by choice. You can't get it. You don't want to do the work, or make the required sacrifice to get it, but nobody just prefers not to have it if they could easily get it and know how to enjoy it.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

"I quit!" sounds so immature and overly emotional. I'm all for letting go of things that don't work, constant editing, curation of life experiences, but, adults should be able to release, calmly, anything that isn't working to make room for other things. No need for drama and hysterics.

J. Farmer said...

Ah, sex. I wish I knew how to quit you!

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

In other news, I have now lost 28.8 pounds and have another 13.9 to go to my maintenance weight. I'm 5'3" so it's a pretty noticeable loss. I let go of eating in ways that did not serve my higher purposes. It wasn't easy, but if you keep your vision of how you want to live in mind and remember that it takes time and practice to overwrite old habits, you can rewire your brain for anything.

I love how I look and feel now. My wrists are graceful and delicate in a way I haven't seen in years. Mr. Pants gave me an infinity cuff bracelet from Tiffany for my birthday this week and looking at it on my wrist makes me feel great.

Bay Area Guy said...

I enjoyed walking away from the NYT!

n.n said...

Sexual insubordination denies Mother Gaia, ecology, polar bears, and granny, too.

Oso Negro said...

@ Pants - good job! Between you, me and Shouting Thomas we have lost a whole person

tcrosse said...

"I fucking quit" is not the same as "I quit fucking".

hstad said...

Again with the NY Times, AA? Did you miss the heyday of this paper and are now trying to catch up. Geez, at least use another source!

Bill Peschel said...

Pants: Congratulations! When I've gained weight, I can feel it. Even 10 pounds is enough to increase my sleep apnea and I can feel it getting harder to stand up and walk around. To lose that much must be thrilling!

tcrosse said...

The London Times online subscription for US customers is £5 a month, or about $6.50. The Telegraph runs to £100 a year, or $130. Myself, I prefer the Telegraph. De gustibus....

Rosalyn C. said...

In the past in India it was common that men would be householders, i.e., raise families, do their jobs; then as seniors withdraw from the world to focus on spiritual practices. The Gita discusses the various differences between householders and recluses. Recluses quit the worldly life but they have other activities on which to focus their attention. Doing nothing is the highest standard.

Apparently now a lot of people are becoming recluses at a much younger age, especially in Japan, for some unknown reason.

Narr said...

All you losers . . . of weight, keep it up. Down. I've got about 1.5 stone to go before I'm back in fighting trim. My wife thinks my ursine nature makes me bulk up and snooze through the winter.

Narr
Gregarious recluse

tim in vermont said...

I like counting weight lost in stone. You can’t really feel losing a pound, but losing 14 pounds, unless you are really obese, feels really good.

tim in vermont said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ralph L said...

I have now lost 28.8 pounds

Now posting as "I Have Replaced My Pants."

Narr said...

28.8 pds. is about two stone.

Narr
"Doctor, how can I get rid of 18 stone of unsightly fat?"


bagoh20 said...

"I have now lost 28.8 pounds"

It's not lost. I have it right here. Would you like me to send it back? I can see why you dumped it. It's not at all helpful, and it mocks me.

JML said...

Thanks Birches!

n.n said...

Marketing through empathetic appeals. We're not children anymore. Rational. Reasonable. Reconcile.

Le Stain du Poop said...

12-year loser huh? Must be one ugly broad......

Tina Trent said...

First sentence of first entry bitches and slanders the author's purported ex-boss, calling her "a cowardly white woman" and accusing her of racism that is simply not credible.

So no thanks to the rest.