I suppose after all my mention of her, I should explain. "Cookoff Girl," or CG for short, is the pseudonym I use online for my lover. We live together, and have been lovers, off and on, (we went through a rough spot two years ago) for almost five years now.

How can I describe her? She's 5'9", mumbledy-something pounds, (she'd have my cojones if I told you) and absolutely gorgeous, with beautiful blue-green eyes, sandy dark-blonde, bottom of the shoulder blade length hair, and a ten thousand watt smile.

She's a big girl, voluptuous, with an hour and a half glass figure, which is about right for me. She is full of, almost larger than, life - she loves to eat, drink, talk, laugh and fuck enough for two people. (Actually, as respecting the latter, a lot more than two, but I'd have a hard time putting a number on it, so we'll leave it at that.)

She's my people magnet. Folks love her. Once, she went to a "How To Find Your True Love" type seminar for singles, (this was before she met me) and the lady running the show called her up in front of the group and described her as a "Genetic Celebrity." :-) Virtually all of our friends are friends primarily of hers, that I think put up with my grumpy self to be around her.

We live together in a relationship that is difficult to define. It's not monogamous, but the most common antonym of monogamous is polyamorous, and we don't quite qualify as that, at least for the moment.

My friend Spring Dew, who does qualify as polyamorous, and I had a discussion about that a while back, and I decided that I'd have to invent a term for us, so I came up with the term, "polyfilarkos," from two Greek root words meaning "many" and "friends." I translate it, though, as to mean "many fuckbuddies." :-)

We have a small group of intimate friends in our love life, and go to, or host, a party for larger groups every once in a while. I suppose you could say we "date" other people. We almost always are together. I have to say "almost always," because there was one exception to that rule for each of us. Both cases reinforced our decision to only date other folks as a couple.

We meet most of these people through personal ads placed at adult-oriented sites such as alt.com and adultfriendfinder.com. We've even gone to a few of the local "swinger's" clubs and had a wild night or two. It seems the most enjoyable times were those when we've recruited (seduced, maybe) people from "real life." Those relationships seem to be the most fun - I couldn't tell you why that is. Most of the habitual "swingers" we've ever met seem just, I dunno, "off" somehow, like a piece of meat that's starting to go bad.

Having said all that, we're always open to the idea of new intimate friends and lovers in our lives, so if you're a special person, too, and find us attractive and interesting, don't be afraid to drop us a line. We don't bite. Well, maybe just a little, and only in all the best places. :-)

Update 8/01/2003: As of a few months ago, the nature of our relationship has changed. See this entry for the details.

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We seem to have achieved zugzwang.

Zugzwang is a term used in chess. It was taken from the German language.

It's a bit hard to strictly define.

It refers to a position in which a player is in a relatively strong position, so long as he does not need to move. Any possible legal move the player has will weaken his position, and perhaps lose the game. It also, less commonly, refers to any move in which the player has only one legal move, and he is forced to make it.

It is even possible, though rare, for both players to simultaneously find themselves in zugzwang. Then, the player with the initiative loses.

That is the position into which Sharon and Arafat have so inexpertly manuvered themselves. Each must act, though any of their available somethings can only escalate an already untenable situation.

Unfortunately, by their incompetence, they seemed destined to drag much of the West, and all of the Arab world, into this tarpit along with them.

Sharon has little in the way of options. The first responsibilty of any government is to defend the people. No head of state could allow the action of the bombers go unpunished. On a pro rata basis, the forty Israelis killed just last week by suicide bombers woud represent about 2500 US citizens, very nearly the number killed in the WTC attacks. Not surprisingly, the vast majority, over 75%, of the Israeli people support his punitive actions against the Palestinian leaders.

Should he waver in the least from his hard line, Benjamin Netanyahu would have his seat, and where Sharon smites the Palestinians with a fist, Netanyahu would surely smash them with an armored gauntlet.

Yet these very retaliations fuel even greater resentment throughout the entire Arab world, and decrease the odds of a long-term peaceful settement.

Arafat, too, finds himself riding a tiger. Were he to back down, he would find himself marginalized by his people, and lose even the modicum of control he has over the more radical elements of the Palestinian people. This, of course, presupposes that Arafat in fact sees his actions as a unfortunate neccessity, and not a winning tactic.

It has become increasingly clear that Arafat has, while decrying terror attacks as a tactic to the Western press, in fact has continued to encourage these attacks. The disconnect between his remarks to the international community on the issue and those to the Palestinian people, (never in English, of course, so as to discourage their wide dissemination) is so complete so as to lead one to believe that perhaps they are being made by two entirely different Arafats.

Similarly, one can be sure that Arafat's concilatory statements, in English of course, are not seen by the rank and file Palestinian citizens over the broadcast airwaves he controls.

Even more incentive for Arafat is that his strategy seems to be working. By provoking ever more draconian measures by the Israelis, he has been able to generate sympathy for the real suffering imposed upon his people as a result of his actions, like a beggar maiming or mutilating his child to generate more sympathy, as translated into alms in the beggar's bowl.

The Israelis will eventually be forced to either capture or kill Arafat, despite US and international pressure to keep him around, as it will prove to be impossible to negotiate a lasting peace so long as he is in control of the process. The latter option would be much the wiser one, as his exile would accomplish exactly the same result that it did in 1983, that is to say, nothing.

Nor does President Bush have much leeway for action. He may bluster and attempt to pressure Sharon, but in the end, both men must know that due to his own domestic political considerations, Bush cannot in fact punish Israel in any significant manner. Bush cannot cut off financial or military aid to Israel, withdraw diplomats, or impose trade embargos. He cannot, truly, even threaten to do so in public without launching a maelstrom of backlash in the Congress.

Even less likely is the imposition of any military solution involving US troops as a peacekeepers in some buffer or security zones between the warring parties. The odds of the American public supporting putting US troops in harm's way in this conflict are slim indeed.

So, what is left for Bush to use to coerce Sharon into a softer stance? I can't imagine a thing.

Even if Bush could devise some pressure I cannot imagine, his actions are further handcuffed by his dogmatic "with us or against us," black and white doctrine on the war on terrorism. It would be the height of hypocrisy for Bush to castigate Israel for actions designed to root out the perpetrators of terrorists acts, and punish the regime that succors them.

Yet, if he does not, he will certainly lose international support for his greater aim, the overthrow of Saddam, a much more important American strategic aim. Again, zugzwang.

The US is now harnessed to an ally over which we have little control, and who we cannot realistically abandon. Even though there is no vital national interest, there exist political and cultural bonds that will prove unbreakable. This ally is in a position where it has no palatable options, and is in a death struggle with a foe that will continue to use terror tactics so long as they seem to advance the cause.

Zugzwang.

So, how will this all play out? Arafat has seriously underestimated the depth of the US commitment to the Israelis. The Administration may mouth all the horrified platitudes for public consumption, but will in the end stand still for anything the Sharon government choses to do.

The Israel and the Palestinians can never learn to peacefully coexist, at least not for generations to come. The depth of the rancor between the peoples will not allow it. An entire generation of Arab youths have been trained in the religious schools financed by the Saudis to hate the Jews, and this conditioning will not wear off any faster than the racism in the American South did after the Civil War.

The proposed Saudi peace plan will falter. Many Israelis will see any return to the 1967 borders as merely the first step to complete destruction of the state, with just cause. However, the truly insurmountable obstacle will prove to be the issue of the return of Palestinian refugees. The Israelis simply cannot allow this without the complete destruction of their identity as a Jewish nation.

It may prove that some compromise treaty can be signed. However, there is no reason to suspect that terror attacks would not continue after any negotiated settlement that does not give the Palestinians everything they want, particularly the right of return. After all, the precedent will have been set; it will have been proven that one can, at least in this case, advance an agenda through terrorist attacks.

Since they cannot or will not coexist, either the nation of Israel or the Palestinian Authority will lose this fight, and cease to exist. For several reasons, not the least of which is a much superior military, Israel will win this fight. In the process, they will manage to ignite a conflict that will pit much of the Arab world against the West in general as represented by the US in particular. Bin Laden's gambit will have proved to be a successful one.

This conflict will be primarily economic, as the Arab nations will attempt to cut the West of from the oil on which it is dependent. However, this conflict will also consist of more terror attacks on the US, and any of the allies that chose to side with us, both here and abroad, along with conventional military actions in places such as Iraq.

Ultimately, sometime over the next decade or so, this conflict will result in the overthrow by the West, by military and economic means, of the theocratic Arab states, and the establishment of representative democracies in this last bastion of totalitarian rule on the planet. This will reverse the course that the Arab Islamic states began in the 13th century away from modernism.

This rebirth of Islamic culture will not take place without copious bloodshed, and we in the West might as well resign ourselves to that fact. We have been raised to have a fairly optimistic worldview, to think that there can always be a peaceful, negotiated, way out of almost any dilemma, because the other fellow is pretty much just like us, "just folks." We are largely, sometimes willfully, ignorant of the breadth and depth of hatred, racism, and intolerance of all flavors that abound outside our national borders, and what a violent and nasty world it can be.

Sometimes the options available are not the ones we would chose. Some nations, like some people, cannot be reformed, they can only be destroyed.

Zugzwang.

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"The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings."

"Happy Thoughts," from "A Child's Garden of Verses and Underwoods" by Robert Louis Stevenson

I recall reading that couplet as a child, and it has stuck with me through all these years, although I didn't know until just now, after I googled for the closing phrase, who or where it came from.

It's been one of the major themes of my life, the feeling of drowning in information, things to be learned, places to see, people to know, skills to be mastered and then abandoned to make time and room for new ones. Life is just too damn short for all that I'd like to do...

I get tugged and pulled every day over how to spend my time. Stacks of books call to me like sirens, and the net offers hours of new info every day. Just trying to keep up with science and technology, and enough of current affairs to be able to discuss them without seeming a clueless moron could fill a day.

It is the curse of being a generalist, a man of wide interests.

All over the world, bright, interesting, creative folks are putting their thoughts, music, art, discoveries and insights up for public consumption, and I want to know them all.

The agony of decision, the paralysis of analysis, the knowledge that every door I open irrevocably closes hundreds more, for lack of "world enough and time," if nothing else, makes me resent just about every thing in my life that pulls me away from this pursuit of knowing, to include eating, sleep, and the few hours a day I'm now spending trying to turn back the body clock.

I feel an equally agonizing pull to do something with all this stuff in my head, to synthesize the answers to all the Great Questions, to preach, to teach, to organize it all into some Great Final Truth worthy of all the time spent in this impossible pursuit of Life, the Universe, and Everything. :-) (42?)

However, it's near impossible, for me anyway, to decide when the process of education should take lesser precedence to the process of relation, re-formation, or less daintily, regurgitation. :-)

Every book or article I read, every artwork I see, every song I hear, makes me smarter, richer, more well-rounded, and, ultimately, a better writer/teacher/preacher. But to just read all day makes me no more than a net consumer (pun intended) of information, with no real contribution to the global dialogue.

I've lists of story ideas, essays, rants, whatever, sitting on the shelf, while the perfectionist me thinks, well, I need to finish this book or that before I get started, the story will be better. At some point, I have to just quit getting ready to get ready, and start typing.

As if that were not enough, I need only come back to a story I've written a few weeks later, and be faced with near irresistible urge to tweak it somehow, add to it, strike a phrase that now looks awkward, add something pertinent that I only just discovered, whatever.

Add to the mix the tendency I have to spend much time and mental effort with twistifying the actual presentation of the writing as manifested in the HTML code, and it's a stone-cold wonder I've gotten anything done.

No author ever got anywhere this way. So it seems I will have to write things with which I will forever be dissatisfied.

So, you, Dear Reader, stand well warned. Don't you ever think that just because you've read something of mine, that you actually have read the Real Deal, the Release Version, my Final Answer.

It has been ordained by the Powers That Be that anything I write, like my life, is doomed to be forever in Beta.

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