All who question or doubt, feast your eyes.

H/T: Gerard.

And just like that, a solution presents itself. I’ll give it some thought.

What are Batman and Robin doing? Probably something you can’t even print up nowadays.

Hurry up and click on the graphic, pronto, lest you come under the delusion that these titles might somehow make some sense. You’re welcome.

By the time of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” (1981) [Douglas] Slocombe was a veteran cinematographer, with a rich and varied filmmography in both the United States and in England, and both in black and white and color. He was nominated for three Academy Awards (including “Raiders”), and for ten British Academy Awards (winning three, for “The Servant” in black and white, and for “The Great Gatsby” and “Julia” in color).

His photography gave “Raiders” a classic feel, visually paying homage to the matinee thrillers of the 1930’s, while also raising the level of quality and aesthetics of 1980’s blockbuster filmmaking. The collaboration between director Steven Spielberg and Slocombe is the reason why “Raiders” remains, to this day, one of the best looking action movies of all time.

Well, don’t we all, sometimes.

Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t rule out a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling “Bravo!” in the cinema. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. If you want the infrastructure in place for a family, settling is the way to go. Based on my observations, in fact, settling will probably make you happier in the long run, because many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year.

I can’t be too tough on her here, because my observations have been pretty much exactly the same. In fact, I notice divorce is an inevitability for all married couples, save for the ones that die quickly — or — the rare couplings that somehow obtain that elusive Holy Grail of genuine mutual respect.

“Settle” for a fella, after being torn for weeks on end about whether or not he’d make you “happy”? Good heavens, for his sake I hope not.

But perhaps she has something else in mind. Perhaps what she has in mind is…that Holy Grail. True compromise, with another human being, as an equal.

Obviously, I wasn’t always an advocate of settling. In fact, it took not settling to make me realize that settling is the better option. Whenever I make the case for settling, people look at me with creased brows of disapproval or frowns of disappointment. Not only is it politically incorrect to get behind settling, it is downright unacceptable. Our culture tells us to keep our eyes on the prize, and the theme of holding out for true love permeates our collective mentality.

Women do not suffer from any special handicap in decision-making here…at least, no handicap beyond what society has thrust upon them. How often do you hear a lecture that you should respect a “woman’s choice” about something? About as often as you demonstrate less than complete obeisance to whatever that choice is…even in matters where her choice directly impacts yourself, or others. And how often do you hear of a blunt and honest assessment of how well a woman has decided such a “choice”? In polite company, never, or as close to never as real life can summon any behavioral pattern. It is anathema to proper manners.

And so the female is someone we allow to decide things completely, without compromise, and once she has so chosen we do not criticize. Women aren’t goddesses, and they aren’t fools either. They’re people — no better, no lesser.

Why do women reject some men and accept others? Because of something called “true love”? As the subject of such approving and snubbing “choices” I have a great deal of trouble accepting that; and, it seems to me, as a somewhat-old guy who’s spent more of a lifetime outside of marriage than most of the fellas, it seems I might know a thing or two about this. The women who accepted me, that was out of “true love”?

Well, with the latest one — of course!

Perhaps with some of the previous ones as well. But all of the previous ones failed. And I can’t help but think, looking back on it, that one common thread in all the failures was in definition. They “loved” me…”settled” for me…why?

This gets into an unpleasant article in the set of female compulsions that, under the best of circumstances, might be discussed in private between mothers and their daughters — it is not explored in open company. The “love” a woman has for a puppy that was once abused…a no-talent twenty-something rocker dreaming of “getting the band back together”…a beautiful teacup in need of some glue for the handle that has broken away. The love for the “project house.” The fixer-upper.

The man who is only ninety-nine percent complete, has the woman wrapped tightly around his finger. He can’t get along without her help, and for that reason, her imagination runs away with fantasies about nursing him back to health. Her vision is not that he is complete and whole…her vision is that she will make him that way. It’s a vital ingredient — the most important ingredient, is the one that is missing. Waiting for her to toss it in and make it all better.

Her search for this seems to be a product of evolution. It is certainly wired into her psychological makeup, as a feminine being capable of this “love.” One wonders how survival of the fittest culminates in this. But it must. Perhaps the children conceived from such a union, a quid-pro-quo between mama and papa, end up being stronger and more capable of perpetuating the species? It must be so, for that is how we have been built. A lady comes into the age of marriageability, and develops an eye for misfit boys who are as misfit toys.

There is very little “survival of the fittest” here, or whatever there is, is tempered by something that is exactly opposite. Visualizing the boys as toys, the maiden seems unerringly attracted to the ones that, once wound up, march around in a circle — getting nowhere until her therapeutic treatments straighten out the legs and associated workings again, calibrating them, tuning, synchronizing. The ones that already march in a straight line, she might be looking right at ‘em, but she can’t see ‘em.

It is the timeless father-in-law’s lament.

So my verdict on this thesis is: Partial agreement. I don’t think single women, by-and-large, need to decide more quickly or take more time to reach the decision. How long she takes, is not the issue. The issue is the factors involved in who she chooses. Based on what I have seen in an unusually long and complicated career as a single guy, single women should pay closer attention to what, exactly, is closing the deal in whatever way she feels it should be closed. She should pay attention to what’s going into her decision, because nobody else is.

Yes, it seems like her girlfriends care. But they don’t. Not so much about her long-term welfare, anyway. For that, you need a coupling…a true, genuine coupling. Two people who see each other as real people, each of whom is cared for by the other, deeply, while forsaking all others. Take as much time or as little time to stumble across it as you need, but that’s the prize, and there is no substitute.

The Change You Deserve.

Four words, huh?

I nominate some replacements:

10. Think Like An Adult
9. Action Over Empty Talk
8. Keep America Socialism-Free
7. Introduce Them To Allah
6. It’s Not 1992 Anymore
5. The Victory America Deserves
4. They’re Still Out There
3. Because Americans Aren’t Subjects
2. Fix The Intellectual Climate

And my #1 nominee for a four-word campaign slogan, for the Republican party I know…

1. Balls Have A Place

Update 5/15/08: Rick appreciates our list and echoes our sentiments.

Alan has another four-word alternative that I think is pretty darn good:

Don’t Fear The Future.

The dirty little secret is, though, that on May 1 Saddam Hussein’s regime had been overthrown. The mission had been accomplished; that’s just a fact.

Furthermore, a lot of the folks who make a point of flashing this graphic around, or making their petty, bickering references to it, I notice are oftentimes the very same folks who point to strange “accomplishments” in foreign policy — usually with regard to former President Jimmy Carter. And, almost always, with regard to some signature on a document Carter has acquired from those whose signatures don’t really seem to be worth very much. On treaties that have since been broken outright, had unforeseen ancillary consequences in direct contradiction to the benefits they were supposed to bring, or failed entirely. The U.S.-North Korean Pact of 1994. The Oslo accords of 1993. The Camp David accords of 1978.

The propaganda in which we are awash, therefore, is supposed to inform us that actions don’t “accomplish” anything and talking is supposed to “accomplish” everything. For the propaganda to work, we have to believe it over our lyin’ eyes. North Korea is making weapons. And Saddam Hussein is dead and cold in the ground.

The same people are moving the goalposts around in both directions.

Thomas Sowell takes on those who use the “complex” argument on our thorny economic issue of gas prices. H/T: Boortz.