Comfortably Numb: Sex and The Departed -- An Academy Award Special

I hadn't seen The Departed and went and rented it after the Academy Awards last night. Besides being numbingly violent, the violence was syncopated with a sex motif. The sex in the show is as callous and unfeeling as the ease with which the characters pull out guns and shoot each other.

During a climactic scene one of the characters says to the other, "Is that what this is all about --all that murderin' and fuckin' and no sons." The movie never lets us know what happened to the one son that is conceived -- or even who the father of that son is or if the child is yet another victim, another of the departed.

The sex is sterile.

The one sex scene in the show is serenaded by Van Morrison covering Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb. Being a child of the 70's I knew Comfortably Numb was a drug song, but I always loved the lyrics because numbness was and is an emotion I have aspired to. Life can be painful enough that if death isn't a consummation to be devoutly wished for, numbness is. Until tonight, I'd never tied that song's melancholy emotion to sex. Maybe for that insight alone, The Departed deserved the Oscar.

Hello.Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me.Is there anyone home?
Come on, now.I hear youre feeling down.
Well I can ease your pain,Get you on your feet again.
Relax.I need some information first.Just the basic facts:
Can you show me where it hurts?

There is no pain, you are receding.
A distant ships smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I cant hear what youre sayin.

When I was a child I had a fever.
My hands felt just like two balloons.
Now I got that feeling once again.
I cant explain, you would not understand.
This is not how I am.I have become comfortably numb.

Ok.Just a little pinprick. [ping]Therell be no more --aaaaaahhhhh!
But you may feel a little sick.Can you stand up?
I do believe its working. good.
Thatll keep you going for the show.
Come on its time to go.

There is no pain, you are receding.
A distant ships smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I cant hear what youre sayin.
When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse,
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone.
I cannot put my finger on it now.
The child is grown, the dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb.

My inner child is grown and gone. Sex more often than not becomes an escape from the twelve hour work days, the pressures of life. For a moment there is no pain. The dream may be gone, but for awhile, hard and inside her, I'm at last pleasantly and comfortably numb. Numb is good, because it hurts pretty much every fucking where.

WTF Friday Poetry: She -- Oral Sex and the Crucifixion

This week's poem addresses muses that crucifixion and oral sex are not necessarily antithetical. The lead photo is one that I purchased at the Salt Lake City Arts Festival many years ago. The side bar pictures came from here, don't think they'll mind my borrowing a few with a link.

Crown of thoughts
Pricking and drawing blood
From the brow
Furrowed in thought.

Daughter of God
The juice of life flows
From her lips
Suckling the universe --

She is of the flesh.
She is of the body.
She is spirit made.
She is to be sacrificed.

Making martyrs
Out of my women
Impaled on the cross
Of my desire

Blood drains out
Nailed and crucified
Phallic incisions
Crossways –

Sword enters her
Drawing water --
Euphrates, Tigris
Wellsprings of life
Kneeling at her feet

Head buried in worship
Searching for the spark
Of life.
The flesh twitches
In her death throes
The tongue tastes
Her baptismal water.

Born of the fire
Of passion
Reborn in the moisture
Slaking my praying tongue.
My voice hums
Out Hosanna
I kneel, I pray --
At birth’s door.

An Experiment In Internet Linkage Or My Blogs are Fucking

Today's post is a hyperlink footnote.

Taking the Stage: To Strip Or Not To Strip

This weekend I'm going to be taking the stage for a poetry performance, so if any of you are on the Wasatch Front and want to come and meet me in person, send me an email at tropicofutah@gmail.com and I'll send you the performance information. Sorry the performance is PG -- PG13 at the best, but you all know how Utah community standards can limit things, so I won't be taking off any of my clothes. Of course the picture above isn't me, since I'm blogging in quasi-pseudonym anonymity.

This isn't to say that I haven't ever performed and stripped in a more R-rated or NC-17 stage performance -- I have. As I reflect on getting up on stage again, of course it takes me back to 1999 when my ex-wife and I made a trek to San Francisco.

A slight word of explanation is probably in order here, since one of the purposes of this blog is to explore sexual topics in light of my cultural and religious upbringing in the Mormon church. When the magical switch flips and you discover that the Church may not be as capital "T", True, as fast and testimony meeting made it out to be, not only Joseph Smith, the Three Nephites and the Prophet become questioned, but the inhibitors that restricted behavior are also up for grabs and exploration. With the possible exception of the Word of Wisdom, nothing is as restricted and constricted in the Church as sexuality. This narrowness of behavior covers the polygamy undercurrent running deep underneath with its paradox of religiously connected hedonism as a potential promised reward for a puritanical present.

So basically, you get all pent up and when you can let loose you go sow some wild oats (not to be confused with the Health Food Store). Freed of the bonds of religious prohibition, I had frequented several stripping establishments. Now, if I had been normal, these would have probably all been out of my system by the time I was 22 or so, but I'd been such a Boy Scout, I'd never seen a live stripper until I was nearly 30. I'll have to save some of those ruminations for another post, because I wanted to get to my one experience as a stripper, in part because it dovetails into something that I think the Feminist Sisters of the APA completely failed to recognize.

Now, going to see female strippers is one thing, but finding decent male strippers in Utah at the turn of the century was another. Being equal opportunity hedonists, my wife at the time and I had gone together to the strip clubs and even went to a Deer Hunter widow's strip show one October, but none of the men got really naked. (Back in the 1990s, South Salt Lake still allowed its female strippers to get buck naked in non-drinking establishments.) So on a trip to San Francisco, we decided that Sodom of the West should be a good place to find completely naked men.

We were right of course. We got in one of the weekly entertainment newspapers and started looking for something that would suggest a totally nude male review. Right there in big letters was an ad that said amazingly: STRIP: A Totally Nude Male Review. Being a young, fresh off the Stake Farm Mormon couple, this seemed a ready made solution to balance out the sexual inequalities of our past strip club excursions -- she would get to see lots and lots of completely naked men.

The show was performed cabaret style, with each table of four having their own waiter and a glorious and over the top drag queen acted as the MC for the evening. My companion for the evening, being only one of two women in attendance was given a front seat for the festivities. I, on the other hand, had the unsettling feeling that I was being ogled -- by a room full of men.

Our waiter was monikered "Precious", possibly for "precious little dick" because he had the smallest penis I have ever seen -- less than an inch in length and less than a half inch in circumference. Nice naked guy, but what a small dick.

The evening proceeded with various strip acts as one guy after another got naked for the crowd of mesmerized men. An ongoing gag was some guy dressed as a blue collar worker (an obvious plant) who consistently was asking the MC if he had seen his girlfriend, who was supposed to meet him for the show. As the show wound down, the MC announced that there would be an amateur strip show for those who wanted to participate -- sort of a friendly competition. The waiters were sent out into the audience to drum up volunteers.

Precious immediately asked if I wanted to go up. Somewhat reluctantly I agreed, partially at my partner's prodding and partly because I was amazed at the attention I was receiving. Of course, the plant was also chosen as a volunteer, so four or five of us ended up on stage for a strip off. The first three contestants muddled through amateurish, self-conscious strip teases for the crowd.

Now you need to understand something about me -- I can't dance. I suck at dancing. A lithe strip tease is most assuredly not in my repertoire. Despite this I gyrated, I bumped, I grinded and unbuckled my belt, undid the top button. I've done a little performing in my life and there are moments when you know that you have captured the crowd. I've never felt a crowd in the palm of my hands (or the crotch of my pants) like this one. I had them. I had them, not because I was good, not because I was overly well endowed (although that didn't hurt), but because I was a straight male willing to get naked for a room full of homosexual men. I was touting sexual power and man, it felt great. Not arousing at all, just powerful and controlling. I had no fear, no anxiety, my sexuality controlled their gaze, until I felt worshipped. I think Precious was worried I would chicken out, so he urged my spouse out of her seat and on to the stage where she yanked down my unbuckled and unbuttoned pants and I stood there bare assed and flapping cock in front of the whole crowd. ( I had no underwear, having rebelled against all underwear after having to wear too much underwear for so long ). I sucked in the cheers, took a bare ass bow, pulled my pants up and resumed my spot in line.

Objectively speaking, the professional dancer/pretend straight guy plant kicked my ass as far as performing a strip tease. I remember thinking he was really good. I also realized that I had somehow altered the show off its intended course when the MC in all her regalia had the crowd cheer for each contestant and I won with raucous and riotous yelling from the crowd. At that point I gave them one last flash of my cock in triumph.

Apparently a real straight guy stripping was better than a pretend straight guy, no matter how well the pretend guy danced. I was the belle of the ball. It seemed like I talked to everyone in the room that night after the show. This was the rush of being a celebrity, fifteen minutes of fame. I even got a free T-shirt.

The attempt to balance out stripping experiences with my partner didn't turn out like I had expected. Instead of giving her a chance to sit in the objectifying male role, I got to feel what it was like to be the female. Damn, you girls have it good. The power I possessed was incredible, the power of the Peter priesthood (circumcised of course). Being objectified by a room full of men, while I remained in full capacity of my cognitive functions, didn't diminish me, didn't make me feel less of a man, but rather opened up a vision of the power that women can lord over men everyday if they are simply savvy and intelligent.

I look at pictures like the one below and yes, I'm arrested by the naked flesh. I've heard many people say they see God in a sunset, well I see the Goddess in a naked breast, a curve of the hip, or the dimple in the small of the back. Women in all of their forms of beauty are easy for me to worship and as I pray to these Goddesses, I remember that night in San Francisco, where for a moment, I got to feel what it is like to be a God in other men's eyes.

APA and the Sexualization of Psychologists

This morning I logged on to my computer at work to find this headline: Sexed-up images in media hurt young girls: study . The above picture was the picture for the article. The caption of the picture was "Playboy Playmates line up on the runway at the Playboy Fashion Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, 2003. Inescapable media images of sexed-up girls and women posing as adolescents can cause psychological and even physical harm to adolescents and young women, a study in the US has warned."

So let me get this straight -- a new psychological study (why I'm pissed off at the news report language) was issued by the American Psychological Association about media images of grown women playing adolescents harming adolescents and AP chooses to show a picture of Playboy Playmates at a Playboy Fashion Show? Butt none of them look remotely adolescent to me. I guess the media just does pictures to get men to ogle and not read what nonsense is being published, because of course men are such drooling, testosterone laden heathens that throwing up a picture of Playboy Playmates will disconnect our brain and prevent us from any logical thought or critique of what is being said.

Fortunately, my synapses that would otherwise prevent me from maintaining logical thought are still intact because I eroded completely any arousal from a Playboy Playmate by constant guilt ridden masturbation sessions as an adolescent, from which of course I dutifully repented and have been forgiven, thus leaving my intellectual capabilities in tact.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for those poor unfortunate girls who try to take math tests in swimsuits. As set forth in the article, college age women were given a swimsuit to try on and hang out in for ten minutes while they were given a math test. Another group of women were given sweaters to wear. The swimsuit wearing women did worse on the math test. The same test was replicated with guys and we did equally well with swim suits and sweaters, although there was no indication that the test was tried with guys taking a math test in a room full of women in swim suits -- although I can predict the results of that one. The study went on to say (Page 26 of the .pdf) that this test proved that the reason women performed so poorly in math is because they were too worried about how they looked: "Chronic attention to physical appearance leaves fewer cognitive resources available for other mental and physical activities." So here in great psychological language is the prototype of the dumb hot blonde -- it isn't that she is dumb, it is that she has just applied all of her cognitive resources into looking hot.

I just have to ask -- do these people read what they write? Do they understand the underlying implications? If I called someone a dumb blonde, I'd be execrated as a sexist bastard, but they can tell women all over the planet that if you care too much about how you look it makes you dumb. All I need to be a sexist asshole is a PhD in psychology and be female.

Of course, this isn't really a scientific study as the news article (and the new release) suggests, but a report by a cabal of women with an agenda. Like my blog (with the exception of yours truly), not a heterosexual male in sight (or homosexual guy for that matter). Unlike my blog, which would welcome contrasting points of view, the "report" is a one sided recounting of research projects that had, at least peripherally, been favorable to the writer's viewpoints. I'm no psychologist, but I know that the views in the report itself conflict and don't make sense.

Prime Example:

The Report's Premise is summarized as follows: The proliferation of sexualized images of girls and young women in advertising, merchandising, and media is harming girls' self-image and healthy development.

Support:

Page 7: It is evident that the lyrics of some recent popular songs sexualize women or refer to them in highly degrading ways, or both. Several songs are listed -- most are rap songs.

Page 28: Black female stars in the film, music and fashion industry are now as thin as their White Counterparts.

Page 31: Black adolescent girls exposed to sexualized rap videos expressed greater acceptance of teen dating violence than those not exposed.

Page 36: It appears that exposure to sexually enticing rap videos fostered perceptions of diminished positive traits and stronger negative traits in Black women in general.

Recommendation:

Page 46: We recommend that psychologists conduct research to: . . .Examine the presence or absence of the sexualization of girls and women in all media but especially in . . . music videos, music lyrics.

Conclusion You Might Come To After Reading this Nonsense:

Black girls, immersed in the rap culture are going to be highly traumatized about their sexualization and have poorer body images than their white counterparts.

What the "Report" Actually Says:

Page 41: Several research studies have explored how girls of color are particularly effective in resisting mainstream notions of female sexuality, femininity, and beauty.

Other portions without fail show that young black females as a whole have a better body image, are more aggressive in maintaining their feminine rights and have an overall more healthy attitude about sex. My God -- what hath Rap Culture wrought?

Alternate theories, alternate viewpoints and contrasting and conflicting studies were not included or even explored. The obvious conclusion is that creating a strong sense of feminine sexuality is healthy, not harmful for young girls. The dysfunction comes from a myopic and limited view of sexuality. We are all sexualized -- had to be to get here, have to continue to be to continue our seed.

I guess the only solace I can take is that the anti-sex task force of women who typed up this report have to be appalled by the picture AP used to run with the story.

WTF Friday: Sex and Violence

Photo from the Deseret News

So this week, I've been thinking more about violence than sex. For those of you outside of Zion, you may not completely understand how saturated the news media has been here in Utah on the Trolley Square shootings. Other blogs (1) (2) have talked about the shootings from different aspects, as has the news media. No one -- that I know of -- has talked about the connection with sex.

The personality and nature of the killer was so easily predictable. Immediately, before any information was available, you knew that he was a loner. Lonely teenage boys turn into killers. A total disconnect can occur between the adolescent male and the society that triggers homicidal rage. The rage is a desperate survival attempt to be noticed.

Mark Twain could have been writing for the Salt Lake papers in 2006, but was actually writing in the late 1800s about the assassination of the Empress of Austria by another young, foreign loner when he opined:

One of the commonest forms of madness is the desire to be noticed, the pleasure derived from being noticed. Perhaps it is not merely common, but universal. In its mildest form it doubtless is universal. Every child is pleased at being noticed; many intolerable children put in their whole time in distressing and idiotic effort to attract the attention of visitors; boys are always "showing off"; apparently all men and women are glad and grateful when they find that they have done a thing which has lifted them for a moment out of obscurity and caused wondering talk. This common madness can develop, by nurture, into a hunger for notoriety in one, for fame in another. It is this madness for being noticed and talked about which has invented kingship and the thousand other dignities, and tricked them out with pretty and showy fineries; it has made kings pick one another's pockets, scramble for one another's crowns and estates, slaughter one another's subjects; it has raised up prize-fighters, and poets, and villages mayors, and little and big politicians, and big and little charity-founders, and bicycle champions, and banditti chiefs, [and bloggers, I might add] and frontier desperadoes, and Napoleons. Anything to get notoriety; anything to set the village, or the township, or the city, or the State, or the nation, or the planet shouting, "Look--there he goes--that is the man!" And in five minutes' time, at no cost of brain, or labor, or genius this mangy Italian tramp has beaten them all, transcended them all, outstripped them all, for in time their names will perish; but by the friendly help of the insane newspapers and courts and kings and historians, his is safe and live and thunder in the world all down the ages as long as human speech shall endure! Oh, if it were not so tragic how ludicrous it would be!

Twain got it right. But why such a burning desire to be noticed?

I'm not playing psychologist here, but rather observer of the human condition. I remember being a teenager. I wanted to be noticed -- by girls. The desire to be noticed sexually in my adolescence superseded all other desires. My violent behavior invariably centered around attempts to impress women. For me, sports were the natural outlet. Some primal instinctual urge made me feel like if I could hit someone so hard in a football game that the opposing player had to be carried off the field, then I would impress the girls. These were actual thoughts and even though I knew they weren't quite rational, I can still feel them 25 years later and I know that the emotion is real and attractive. I can feel the exhilaration as I sprinted down the field, got my victim in my sites and hit him so hard that my entire body went numb as I watched him fly back unconscious to the ground. The exhilaration, the adulation of my team mates and the cheer of the crowd let me feel noticed. My difference from the teenage killer was that I did my violence in a socially accepted and controlled environment -- but I still didn't get the girl, so I kept playing and hoping.

It isn't just sports. We lionize the violent. Women go wet for men in uniform. How many women pulled out their vibrators for soft spoken, off-duty officer Ken Hammond, who whipped out his gun on a moment's notice to silence "the threat." Soldiers equal sex symbols. What are all the muscles for in the guys except for beating up other guys? I feel like an ape on a nature show, bustling for position with all of the other guy apes for some kind of pecking order in the mating game. I just have to bide my time until the Alpha Male gets too worn out from fucking, so that I can take him out. From such a Darwinian perspective, the real surprise is that we don't have more teenagers shooting up malls (credit is probably due to ubiquitous violent video games that provide yet another socially acceptable outlet for all that pent up testosterone).

The male energy is set to conquer. The female energy is to capture. The push and pull, the yin and yang, the in and out, the penetrative and the encompassing permeate sexuality. If Sulejman Talovic had a woman (or a man if his preference ran that way) who adored him and wanted him body and soul, no one would have died this week from the firing of his phallus' replacement -- the more potent and powerful shotgun.

Sex by its design is about creation out of opposites. Sex is destructive when it becomes one-sided or when the balance is skewed. Sex when it is working creates empathy out of the opposites interaction (empathy, being an anathema to violence). The battle between male and female energies is about achieving equilibrium. My Friday poem I dug up is all about that hunting male energy and the capturing female energy and the power when the game is played together. To lighten things up, and to show that sex doesn't just destroy, but can tame primal violent energy, I give you this weeks WTF Poetry:

The Hunt
The hunt
Is no fun
If the prey is too easy to catch.
The symbiotic nature
of the hunt is a give and take
Between the hunter and the hunted.
Hunting cultures have always worshiped their prey as their Gods.
I guess that makes you my religion, my Goddess,
To thee my prey,
I pray,
I kneel
And lap at your clear sacramental wine.
To thee my queen
I pledge my sword
To ram it
Into thy heart.
The chase ensues,
And
At some point I will again have you hoisted on my spear –
It will be at that moment when you have me surrounded.

Happy Fucking Valentine's Day: Celebrating Jesus' Whore/Wife

Well, I was thinking of putting a black border around the Valentine's Day post, but I'm not that negative about romance -- or that tech savvy. Last Christmas, I posted on the Mormon adoration of the Virgin Mary as the hot virgin, getting busy with God, so Valentine's Day seemed like the appropriate time to post on the other Mary of Christendom (and Mormondom) -- Mary Magdalene.

If the archetypal women are the mother and the whore, then the Mormon religion has done better (at least in its more entertaining early years) than any other religion to combine the mother and whore into each Mary -- the virgin and the sinner. Mary Magdalene is the concubine of Christ. The church may be the bride to Christ's bridegroom, but for Mormon's Mary M. is the bedded bride, the mother of Christ's offspring (of whom according to Brigham Young, included none other than Joseph Smith).

The Mormon male gods are so adorably horny. Christ according to Orson Hyde was married not only to the sinner Mary M., but to that other Mary and her sister Martha as well. As man now is . . . Mormons have to be the only ones who ever thought Christ had multiple wives.

Mary M. has so much I could write about and probably will in the posts to come. I just have to ask -- Look at Rueben's painting of Christ and Mary M above. I know it isn't just me, but I've seen this same scenario a million times in porn -- woman kneeling with her face in the man's groin and the man about to fall into a state of undress. Christ is risen --- Glory, Hallelujah.

Before you all have me drawn and quartered as a complete and total heathen, I bring you this quote on Mary Magdalene from a Jungian analyst, Nancy Qualls-Corbett:" When the feminine principle of Eros is repressed, there is no connection to one's inner being, to humanity, and to nature. . . . Without the element of divine love mediating sexual experience, gratification is short lived. . . Men [and women] lose the experience of intimacy not only with the "external" woman, but also with their own unconscious feminine nature, the anima." See -- just doing my part to make the world more psychologically whole on this Valentine's Day.

Lyrics to Magdalena by A Perfect Circle
(Oh, I wish I knew how to publish the audio -- but the link does a good job)

overcome by your moving temple
overcome by this holiest of altars
so pure, so rare to witness
such a lovely goddess
i lost my self control

beyond compelled to throw this dollar down
before your holiest of altars
i'll sell my soul, my self esteem
a dollar at a time for one chance, one kiss
one taste of you my magdalena

i've bared witness to this place, this lair, so long forgotten
so pure, so rare, to witness such a lovely goddess
and i'd sell my soul, my self-esteem
a dollar at a time for one chance, one kiss,
one taste of you my black madonna

i'll sell my soul, my self-esteem
a dollar at a time
for one taste, one taste
one taste of you my magdalena

Happy Fucking Valentine's Day and to all a Good Night.

San Diego Peeping Tom

I couldn't handle Utah much longer, so I decided to take a little vacation and arrived this evening in San Diego. Travelling on a budget meant that my brother, who had got me out of my winter inversion funk by convincing me to come to San Diego to watch an International 7s Rugby Tournament, also provided us with free lodging at the home of his future brother and sister-in-law to be. WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS TERMINOLOGY THAT MAY BE INCOMPREHENSIBLE TO THOSE WHO DID NOT GROW UP IN THE MORMON FAITH OR SPEND AN INORDINATE AMOUNT OF TIME SPEAKING TO MORMON MISSIONARIES. For the Mormon impaired, I'm attempting to provide appropriate hyperlink footnotes, although time constraints and Internet connectivity may prevent me from getting them all up tonight, so check back tomorrow.

Walking in I found the modest condo had a glass coffee table with an Ensign noticeably placed front and center. The Families Are Forever plaque hung noticeably over the sink and on the top of the entertainment center was the obligatory temple picture. I was assigned by sleeping quarters, one that has glacially slow wireless Internet and a bookcase.

The book case was what intrigued me. Oh, how I wish I had a digital camera and I would have posted a picture, but the juxtaposition of books was just too much to pass up, so I'm forgoing my WTF Friday post for a Peeping Tom San Diego Special -- what do young, newlywed and seemingly devout Mormon couples have on their bookshelf?

1. Two copies of Stephen Covey's The Seven Habits -- apparently each brought one into the marriage.

2. Two copies of a Mormon Hymnal -- again E-Harmony must have picked them out for their similar libraries.

3. Various Self-help books, with the only book not shelved being Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples

4. Various Church Books starting with The Teachings of GBH and ending with Mormon Doctrine, followed immediately by a biography of Bob Marley and a biography of Peter Tosh, followed by The Miracle of Forgiveness and a whole bunch more church books.

5. More Church Books

6. Diet Books

7. The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

8. Lance Armstrong Autobiography.

9. James E. Talmage's The Great Apostasy and right next to this book was Sex Flashcards, yep, Sex Flashcards. Not being able to resist I pulled out a card, which contained the definition for "revirginize": 1: to reattach the hymen surgically via hymenorraphy or hymenoplasty 2: to temporarily shrink the vaginal opening with chemicals 3: to recommit to abstinence until marriage, despite having previously had sex -- see also BORN-AGAIN VIRGIN, STUPPRATOR (man who prefers virgins), FORESKIN RESTORATION. The card then shows a picture of two women, apparently from the 1940s sipping coffee and using our new vocabulary word in a sentence: "That's when I decided to re-virginize."

Damn, if I'd known it was that easy, I wouldn't have waited until I was married. Oh well, back to the book shelf snooping.

10. Jennifer Weiner's Good in Bed and Rich Dad, Poor Dad were the next two books to copulate on the shelf.

11. Personal journals (Ok, I won't stoop so low as to read the journals), although it might be interesting because one is a guy journal, one is a girl journal and the next book on the shelf is Mars and Venus in the Bedroom.

12. And my favorite juxtaposition of the evening were two of those yearly sayings books: Nerve.com's Position of the Day Playbook: Sex Everyday in Every Way, right next to Stand a Little Taller:Counsel and Inspiration for each day of the Year by GBH. Well, with the Nerve book, we all know what was standing a little taller.

Bottom line, Mormons do love to mix up the sex and spirituality when they are young and horny. I have a feeling that this young couple isn't unlike many newlywed Mormon couples. I remember a few years ago lending my Guide to Getting it On to my soon to be married, former TBM brother-in-law and I never got the damn book back. Probably sitting on his bookshelf next to The Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith.

Life and Death in the Utah Legislature: When Morality Kills

WANTED: HPV

This picture of the Human Papillomavirus is the Wanted Poster for the criminal guilty of most cases of cervical cancer. Being a parent focuses priorities in a way that few things can and being a parent of two lovely teenage daughters brings with it all sorts of terrors, fears and night sweats. I've been following the progress of the HPV vacinne for some time now, because of the promise that the vaccine will effectively eliminate the risk that my daughters will suffer from cervical cancer.

First, the vaccine had to get by the fundamentalists in the Bush Administration running the FDA. Both of my daughters have started the vaccination process, which takes three shots over six months. Fortunatley, my girls have excellent health insurance that is paying for all of the cost. Yet today I read about some action in the Utah State Legislature that killed House Bill 358 that proposed allocating a million dollars for education and immunization of the women in the state. The funds were to be used to allow those women who couldn't afford the vaccine to receive it.

A couple of things you need to understand about the budget here in Utah this year -- we have a big surplus. We aren't operating on a deficit. We have the funds available. I listened to the audio of the committee hearing while I was writing this post and it chilled my blood. Each year in Utah two thousand 11 year old girls from lower income families would become eligible for the subsidized vaccine. The HPV virus has become so prevalent that the U.S. Center for Disease Control estimates that 75% of all women will catch the virus during their lifetime. This means that of the two thousand low-income 11 year olds, 1500 will contract the virus. How many will develop cervical cancer can't be determined. What is known is that in Utah, 17 women die from cervical cancer each year and cervical cancer is the 13th leading type of cancer death in the United States for women -- something that is now completely preventable.

The cost of vaccinating each year, after the back log is caught up, will be about $500,000.00. This seems a small price to pay for saving a guaranteed minimum of 17 lives every year. The Texas governor ordered the HPV vaccine mandatory for school girls, but the Texas Legislature is already making noise to overrule the governor, but then Texas bans dildos.

The allocation of the funds seems like a no brainer, so of course the Utah legislature kills the bill and issues the future death warrants for some unsuspecting eleven year old girls.

Why? From the Salt Lake Tribune Article, Representative D. Gregg Buxton, R-Roy, (dgreggbuxton@comcast.net) said that "he has received many e-mails condemning the vaccine and saying it is unproven." First, I'm sure that the medical qualifications of those people emailing him, where nil, nada, and zip. Second, the thing I would ask every one of these "Representatives" is if you had a female daughter, would you have her vaccinated?

Buxton was skating around the issue, but Rep. John Dougall, R-Highland (jdougall@utah.gov) finally came right out and said the reason the Utah Legislature wants to kill little girls: He asked, "How is HPV contracted?" I'm sure he knew full well that it is contracted by sexual contact and I can almost seeing the knowing nods and grimaces in the hearing room. Fuckers.

My belief was confirmed when Gayle Ruzicka threw her two cents into the mix, saying she was uncomfortable with a campaign that might target girls as young as 9. "Does [the campaign] teach them about abstinence before marriage and fidelity after marriage?" I went to Ruzicka's website and was not surprised to find a whole section opposing the vaccine on the National Eagle Forum website. The opposition to the vaccine because it protects against a sexually transmitted disease is so misguided that it would be silly if it weren't so serious. The Eagle Forum leaders bottom line -- if you are immoral you deserve to die. With morality like that, who needs enemies.

Damn, I'm just really pissed off right now.

News Flash: Horny Female Butterflies

Some news items are just too good to pass up. The article begins: "A germ that kills males triggers a vicious cycle of increasing female promiscuity and male sexual exhaustion in a species of butterfly, scientists report." The theory is that the fewer male butterflies were getting fucked silly by all the females, reducing the size of the male's sperm package, which in turn makes the females more determined. The distinguished scholar went to school for years, just so he could get this quote pasted all over the Internet:

"Greater numbers of female partners leads to fatigue in males. They start producing smaller sperm packages," Charlat said. "Unfortunately, the female butterflies instinctively know that the packages are smaller and that their chances of having been sufficiently impregnated after mating are lower than usual. This just makes them more rampant."

Science has confirmed what all men fear: Women can and will, if necessary, fuck their sperm packages dry. Those butterfly vixens sound like Body of Evidence does the Discovery Channel.

Super Bowl Halftime -- Phallic Images for the Wimpy Guy

Think Prince had a little inferiority complex playing for the Super Bowl halftime? Here let me project my big cock and balls up on a screen to show you that I am more manly than Brian Urlacher. Tears were rolling down my eyes as the TV screen flashed the ankh-guitar cum cock-balls. I couldn't stop laughing and only one other person in the entire Mormon infested room understood why I was in hysterics rolling on the floor. You couldn't even see Janet Jackson's nipple with all the jewelry, even when you blew it up to twenty times the size, but Prince saved us the trouble, he blew his up for us.




So what does it say about the Family Values Football culture that a woman's nipples are enough to signal the downfall of Western Civilization, but a little pipsqueak rocker from Minnesota can project his wannabe cock to millions of Americans and not even a flicker of protest.

Apparently representations of the male genitals are less offensive than the female breast to our society. I'm just going to throw out an idea here and I'd love to hear your comments, but repressing female sexuality is necessary for maintaining conservative religious, political and economic control. The patriarchal control is phallic and in a symbolic and in a practical sense exposing female sexuality challenges the existing authority in a way that male sexuality does not. I realize it is not that simple.

Back twenty years ago or so, I remember a Time magazine article that made a bunch of people hot under the color because it described football in terms of sexuality. Tightly wrapped buttocks and genitals and enlarged head and shoulders battle to penetrate the opponents end zone -- something like that. Even spiking the ball after the touchdown, became yet another violative penetration. The homo-ification of football really seemed to bother a lot of people, yet given the Snickers Ad, I'd say that homo eroticism and football are still intertwined (not to mention Prince's rather androgynous appearance, despite his twelve foot cock with the pointy circumcised tip.)

UPDATE: SNICKERS AD PULLED

It appears that Sideon and I touched on a national topic before it became national news -- the speed of the Internet astounds. Sideon took the GLBT party line that the ad was homophobic. I responded by saying "Take a look at the guys face as he dives in -- pure lust. The entire thing was homoerotic, from phallic Snicker's bar peeled out of its wrapper to the deep kiss. Only the ending was homophobic."

This raises an interesting question, because the idea that two greasy car mechanics could be gay is against the gay sterotype and could be seen as a good thing. Snickers also apparently had alternate endings, which I found and have posted. The chest hair ripping was out of context for the rest of the commercial. The natural conclusion would have been for the two guys to acknowledge their mutual affection for each other and Snickers. Instead, Snickers played it for laughs and got snookered instead.

Rather than boycotting or asking the commercial to be pulled, the GBLT crowd should be asking for alternate endings. Have the commercial play when the two go off arm in arm munching on Snickers. The demanded apology or the moral outrage isn't nearly as effective as trying to figure out how to sublimate your message without in turn offending the very people you want to have understand. Go check out the Mormon Laban and Nephi rap video on The Shelf is Breaking for a similar discussion on racism and pop culture. From a sexual context and for further contrast to the Snickers controversy, look at the Britney/Madonna/Christina kisses and that uproar.





LOVE BOAT ALTERNATE ENDING -- Interestingly enough, this one has the highest rating of all the alternate Snickers commercials on YouTube.



MOTOR OIL ALTERNATE ENDING -- This was the most tasteless, I thought.

WTF Friday: Altared States

The poem for this Friday is one I wrote about the happily ever after that is fed to all of those who are descending, have descended, are contemplating a descent or arguing for the right to descend into marriage. The inspiration for the poem was a case of child abuse that I was privy to. In that case the child had been burned with a cigarette lighter tip. The abuser had left the lighter running until all the metal was extremely hot and then had essentially branded the child. The result was a very distinct and disturbing smiley face.

I don't believe that the Mormons have the exclusive jurisdiction of dysfunctional marriages. In fact, some of the problems may be inherent in marriage/humanity itself. I'm not completely down on the concept of marriage. As I say in the poem, marriage is the darkroom of the soul.

As with most of my Friday posts, check back later, because I have some commentary links I want to add.

ALTARED STATES

Kneeling over the altar
Gazing into each others eyes
Smiles interlocked
Mirrors cascading into an ever fading eternity
Off the back of her head.

Cigarette lighters make smiley faces
On flesh
If you heat them up long enough
Long slanted serrated eyes
From the Round nobs spun to
Create sparks with the flint
Running perpendicular
To the metal lips
Around the edge of the lighter.
Smiling anywhere the metal glows.

Sticks and stones
And cigarette lighters burn
But Words -- Words will never hurt you
Except with a daily constant harangue --
The spells of witches and warlocks
Exerting their dominion over another's soul
You need not fear -- For they only take the soul
Of the one they loved --
"You can't do that."
"You are so stupid."
"You are so fat."
"You can't do anything."
"You whore."
"You ass."
"YOU, YOU, YOU, YOu, You, you, you, yo . . ., y. . ."
Until none of "you" is left.

The flesh continues living
Scarred inside or out
Scars of smiley face facades to the outside world
But the burn goes deep.

Inside her
The world melts away
Possessed by him
The world melts away
In the glorious golden copulations
As seeds are sown --
You reap what you sow
And sex sows pain
In the betrayal of a mere glance --
The numbing of the bumping
The grinding of the repetition
The in and out between the souls
Starts out hot, warm and moist
And ends cold, damp and sticky.
Altering consciousness only for a moment
Before the knowledge of good and evil
Returns the now separate souls
Into the cold, cruel world
Yet in all our hearts
We still smile and lust after yet another.

Laundry copulates in the corner
Reproducing at a rabbit rate
And sickness
And hunger
And bills
And empty milk jugs
And sticky cylinders of unknown liquids
And pet shit
And junk mail
And laugh tracks
And pop music divas
And ads
And ads
And more ads
All showing bright smiling, cigarette lighter burn faces.

The photo bulb flash
Captures the smiles
Of those clad in white
Amidst sunsets, flowers and the Granite
Of Temples
Housing the altars
Of our altar-ed state
Altar-ing so young
Teens plunging
Out of Eden
Into Heaven
And then Hell --
The photos go into an album

The look of young love,
Untainted by the sewer of life
Simple, delicate gazes
Emanating joy and fulfillment
In another.
The altar --
The photos –
Not knowing that
Marriage is the dark room
Where
The soul develops.
That Death comes to all living looks
Rigor mortis of the eyes
Pupils stiff and unmoving
Cornea cold on the page,
Retina unreflective of the other soul
Just stagnate --

But the smile
Is burned
Light burned through the air
Leaving on the yellowing photo-paper flesh
An interminable grin