Rum-willing, Sea-faring, Beard-bearing Sociopaths!

Will it be politically incorrect, I wonder, to dress up like a pirate this year for Halloween?  Not that it's ever been popular to go as a Nazi or a member of the Taliban, but still - I would hate to see another staple of my youth trampled by current events.  It's bad enough kids these days have to trick or treat at 3:30 in the afternoon.  

Okay... it's hard not to poke fun at the headlines when "PIRATES!" are splashed all over them.  Nobody is fooled:  the discrepancy between Captain Hook and these neo-pirate jerks is wider than the one between Gandalf and Chris Angel.  I'm surprised the media doesn't call them "ocean terrorists", but then I remember that the media loves to sensationalize anything (soulless bastards) and suddenly I'm not surprised at all.  After the giggles are over and you actually get to reading the newsfeed though, there's very little funny about any of this.  

Most disturbing are the vows of revenge.  These are distinctly different than the revenge vows coming out of villagers in Afghanistan, coming from innocents in Iraq.  When family members are collateral damage, it's not surprising you'd see otherwise peaceful people become militant, and it's a shitty cycle that bums me out every time I look at the paper.  But this is different.  Listen to this guy: 

"Every country will be treated the way it treats us.  In the future, America will be the one mourning and crying...We will retaliate (for) the killings of our men," says a pirate named Abdullahi Lami.*  

First of all, since when can you interview a fucking pirate?  Secondly, and more importantly, does this guy not get it?  He's a pirate!  Did he not realize that capturing boats, taking hostages, and demanding ransoms is potentially dangerous?  The US will be the ones mourning and crying, he says. Weren't we already, when pirates took our loved ones hostages?  

It's too bad they don't have eyepatches and peglegs, but what's worse is that these semi-organized criminals come from a socio-economic situation so bad they don't realize piracy isn't a legitimate career option.  Haven't they seen those shitty PSA's with the bad electronic music played before the title screen on DVD's? Oh yeah - they're probably not on the pirated copies.  

Abdullahi Lami sounds like a sociopath to me, and my instinct is to say the hell with him - but it's never that simple.  The Darwinian struggle takes on a different meaning in Somalia, and blasting pirates out of the water won't stop other hungry folks taking to the seas.  They've got to compete for resources somehow.   I just hope we don't rely on snipers to solve this problem as much as the Lost Boys relied on Peter Pan, because it'll take more than force.  

*quoted from the article Saved by SEALS, by Todd Pitman and Pauline Jelinik, retrieved from the AP on April 13th 2009,

I was just reading Bukowski, and...

(Disclaimer: this blog is about sex and porn.  It acknowledges that I have had sex, and have watched porn.  If someday you don't give me a job because of this blog,  you're a hypocrite,  Or a Mormon.  If these subjects make you uncomfortable, please do not continue reading, unless you like feeling uncomfortable, in which case, read on) 

I wonder what Freud would think of the porn industry.  Would he snort a line, light a cuban, and say "I told you so"?  Would he be disgusted, or vindicated?  

A little of both probably.  Truth is, the porn industry fries my circuits a little.  I'm no prude, but there is a Grand-Fucking-Canyon dividing sex as I know it, and sex as it has evolved through pornography.  

I've watched porno.  Obviously.  But I am almost always left unfulfilled - partially because porno dulls the imagination, but also because it's so rare to find people having good sex on tape.  All the freaky fetish shit on the internet doesn't thrill me in the slightest.  If I'm going to watch people have sex, I want to see people who:

A.  Know one another.

B.  Are attracted to one another, and most importantly,

C.  Want to have sex with one another.

Understandably, this is rare; porn is a business.  Making love is not efficient, nor is it profitable for an industry.  Porn is commercial.  It's mainstream, and as long as sex is filmed for money, it won't be great sex, and it won't really be worth watching.  

The whole reason I got thinking about this subject by the way, are a couple little websites I was directed to by word of mouth. 

 Compare and contrast:  

Green Porno, a pet project of Isabella Rossellini's creation, produced by the Sundance Channel, in which Rossellini describes the mating habits of animals (the ones you'd least expect) in a weird and, sometimes, sexy way.  Nature is beautiful, and all that. 

 

Compare this with Porn for the Blind, a non-profit website designed to give the visually-impaired audio descriptions of short internet porn clips.  Not a completely outlandish concept when you think about it, until you actually listen to one: these files are about as erotic as castrated IRS agents.   It's funny until you imagine some poor blind guy trying to spice up an evening with this joke of a social service, his only other option being break-the-bank phone sex.  I mean, come on people, where's the feeling?  

  Isabella Rossellini somehow makes a hermaphrodite earthworm erotic, and yet these people make sex sound like a Drivers Ed. Manual.  It just goes to prove, it's not about the limits of what people are willing to do on camera, it's about a connection between two people.  That's what sex always boils down to right?  A human connection.  

The bed is adequately made, the piles of useless papers I don't feel comfortable throwing away yet are neatly stacked, the dishes are drying, and the shades are drawn to equal heights, and a sneaking suspicion  that I may be what some call "anal retentive" is growing like a late afternoon shadow.

Recently I was discussing my peculiar eating schedule with my friend, Ted.  I related to him the necessary times at which I take meals, in order to prevent weakness or bad moods, when I noticed a disgusted expression of utmost admiration on his face.  Soon it wasn't just dinnertime we touched upon, but the naps I  find time for every Monday/Wednesday (being rather tuckered after dance class), and my habit of waiting until at least 9:30 on Weekend evenings before heading to the bar for (rather specifically, I'm afraid) a shot of Clan McGreggor and a pint of Pabst Bluest Ribbon, except on Thursdays when I sometimes indulge in one or two Vodka tonics.  

"Has it always been like this?" Ted asked, and I felt as though he was being polite  not saying, "Have you always been like this," which rings of freakdom, an accusation of weirdness.  

"No," I replied, and since that moment I've been thinking... Have I?

Not clean, or responsible, certainly not.  Even now, by many standards I am neither - but have I always been a creature of habit,  a slave to routine?  Maybe.

What terrible phrases.  Do they not imply that I am nothing better than a feral beast, host of urges and lacking will, lacking freedom?  Do they not imply that joy is bursting into flames, a paper airplane riding wildly a sudden stream of rain?  

The mountains of Kauai: these are beautiful mountains.  So lush and primeval, the imagination itself has no greater wilderness.  Jurassic Park, TV's Lost, a hundred movies and programs seek to capture these unknown forests for "slaves of routine" to marvel at, and I saw these mountains with my own two eyeballs, lucky me.  They were beautiful.

Spring Break Vacation Blog Dos!

After five carefree nights, the first stab of apprehension hit me today as I blew off plans to do homework, and then blew off homework for new plans.  I guess the joy of vacation begins to wear off exactly at the half-point - when the majority is behind you, the fear you have not made good use of it produces mild anxiety (though I've done a damn of rocking out thus far, and have no intention of quitting now).

Spring Break Vacation Blog Uno!

Day 1 and feelin' good.  Maybe I'll have a strawberry daquari.  But remember: vacations are like weekends;  the dread of going back to school/work/responsibility can ruin a Sunday.   

Question:  How long before the inevitable weight returns?  Three days?  Four? 

I'll let you know.

The Epic Struggle Between Art and Science Continues!

I wrote a short poem about one of many potentially disturbing problems to come out of the information age.  

Doctor Do-it-Yourself

The online medical

Diagnosis website

Offers worst-case scenerios:

Hermits and witches

With no common sense-

They chose not to seek

Help

Until they were rare specimens,

Wonderful abominations, spectacles

For the Journal Circus.

I’m looking for examples

Of skin cancer (it’s not in my family)

But a mole behind my ear is alive in my mind,

And my urologist father says, “Get it checked.”

I compare it to these fists of steaming pustules on

The necks and noses of the anonymous (dead), contributers

To a growing community of hypochondriacs, 

a new type of Mildew to research online.

 

 

 

6 Months to Live

"If you were told you had six months to live, what would you do?"    

"Wait, in six months I suddenly drop dead, or do I have cancer, of what?  Am I sick?"

Professor Welkowitz rolls his eyes, explains the parameters.  Six months feeling healthy, one week in hospice, then ker-plunk.  Dead as a doornail.  

Everybody is talking about what they would do:  Rob a bank, try heroin, travel. 

"I'd probably be really depressed," I say.     

This scenario, you just can't imagine it.  Especially because nobody just drops dead from a symptomless disease.  That only happens in shitty movies.  In those movies, people do all the cliche things you'd expect them to.  They travel, because travel is associated with wisdom, and everybody wants to have a revelation before they die.  This person, they contact their son or daughter, the one they haven't spoken to in years.  It's a wrap-up.  An ending, so life can better resemble a storybook.  

In class, people are laughing and talking about this and that thing they always wanted to do.  They aren't thinking about what they would do with six months to live.  They're thinking about what they would do if there weren't any consequences.