I'm not attracted to Jeff Goldblum and I'm not sure I'll ever finish quitting smoking

This week I saw the new Thor movie. It was very good, and I enjoyed myself immensely during it. But the time for me to make a statement about Jeff Goldblum is long overdue. 

Growing up, I never felt like I had to do anything about my feelings for Jeff Goldblum. "It seems weird," I thought to myself, "that sometimes I have a friend who seems convinced that Jeff Goldblum was attractive in the movie Jurassic Park, when surely they meant B.D. Wong or Laura Dern or perhaps the teenage boy dinosaur from the TV show Dinosaurs," but I thought – wrongly, I see now – that they were more to be pitied than censured. Either way, I had merely to avert my eyes during the scene where they unnecessarily removed Jeff Goldblum's shirt in order to treat his leg injury during the movie, and all was well. Life was good. Hopes were high. 

How could I have anticipated the groundswell of Jeff Goldblum Attraction that was to come? Now, of course, I can see that I was wrong not to snuff it out when I still had the chance. Now I see where my Neville Chamberlain-like attitude has gotten me. Have you seen this picture of Jeff Goldblum smirking in a turtleneck, the Algorithms ask me. Have you seen this video of him, I don't fucking know, suavely interrogating a turtle while smooth jazz is piped in the background, directly from the jazzy source? I haven't, I tell the Algorithm. Well you fucking will now, the Algorithm says back. It is not merely that we as a society seem to have collectively agreed to become Attracted to Jeff Goldblum all the more as he skims lightly across his sixth mortal decade, but we seem also to have agreed – without speaking, and all at once – fashioned him into some combination of Tilda Swinton, the Dos Equis Man, and Bill Murray circa 2011, and I was not prepared for his sudden ascendence. 

The problem, I am sure, is mine. How often I have stood helplessly on the shores of I'm Just Not Attracted To Jeff Goldblum Island and watched my noble friends sail away to Attracted to Jeff Goldblum Island, and I have longed to follow them, for I am a creature that can only thrive in communal solidarity and shared experience. They bid me farewell, and I offer a choked salute, and I watch them go. I enjoy his work. He does have an aesthetically pleasing face. He enacts charm well, I think. It may be that someday I will join them, and clasp their hands again, and dwell once more in community with the people I love. But that day is not today. 

Other things I enjoyed about Thor: Watching Cate Blanchett aggressively change her hairstyle whenever she wanted to upset her family, which is Queer Culturetears the soul to pieces as a hunting-dog does a fawn."

The good news is that the progression of quitting seems to get steadily better. I self-correct more quickly, and if it is not always with a vigorous desire to pursue the good, there is at least a steadiness of purpose, and a belief that the will follows the action, not the other way around. 

First it makes the sun appear to slow down or stop, so the day seems to be fifty hours long. 

Then it forces the monk to keep looking out the window and rush from his cell to observe the sun in order to see how much longer it is to the ninth hour, and to look about in every direction in case any of his brothers are there. 

Then it assails him with hatred of his place, his way of life and the work of his hands; that love has departed from the brethren and there is no one to console him. 

If anyone has recently caused the monk grief the demon adds this as well to amplify his hatred. It makes him desire other places where he can easily acquire all that he needs and practice an easier, more convenient craft. It joins to this the remembrance of the monk's family and his previous way of life, and suggests to him that he still has a long time to live, raising up before his eyes a vision of how burdensome the life is. 

So it employs, as they say, every possible means to move the monk to abandon his cell and give up the race. No other demon follows on immediately after this one but after its struggle the soul receives in turn a peaceful condition and unspeakable joy. 

I very much enjoyed watching Thor. It was a very funny movie about tearing something up by the roots. I would watch it with any of you, if you asked me to see it again. I have had four pieces of nicotine gum today.