Mid-2011 survey: Are you afraid of Pornography?

Pick only one answer from the following questions.


1. Pornography ____________.


a. Demeans women.


b. Demeans the rest of us men.


2. The Puritan’s attitude toward sex was _________________.


a. About right.


b. Too kinky, they wore funny hats to bed.


3. About watching pornography, men always lie.


a. True


b. False, sometimes they sit, practice Yoga, etc.


4. When I was a kid, we often talked about sex at the dinning room table,


a. NEVER!


b. Not sure. I was always “excused” when I asked.


5. As men grow older, their sexual habits become fouler.


a. Yes!


b. No. No poultry of any kind for me.


6. Pornography has no redeeming social merit.


a. True


b. Good


7. After getting married, men should waste no time in watching pornography.


a. True


b. True


9. America is being inundated with pornography because _____________.


a. lax standards and corrupt government officials.


b. Global warming?


10. There seems to be evidence that pornography is an Indian plot to take over the American film industry. The Karma Sutra, after all, was a first attempt at pornography, and now a congressional panel claims that some of the dialog in porn films translated into Hindi is ominous in meaning. For instance, “Oh baby, baby. Do it, do it,” clearly means “Soon, your films will have no plots, either,” in the Hindu tongue.


If this proves to be the case, what would you do?


a. Sever all ties with the subcontinent.


b. Get Mapquest directions to Ball-e-wood.






Conclusion:


Like the fat woman who said, “The food there was awful and the portions so small,” pornography seems to occupy an ironic place in our society. If we mention it at all it is only to condemn it or as the subject of a double entendre by the late night comics (or, of course, survey takers). This, I guess, makes us feel grown-ups, but in fact, I think, makes us more puerile. At a time when America is seriously considering decriminalizing the use of recreational drugs, I wonder why we remain still edgy about the subject of pornography. Our attitude is a measure of something, I’m just not sure what.

Feel free to comment.

What I Have Learned

Goffstown, NH Class of '63 Proudly Presents:

What I Have Learned

First a message from our President:

When I was in my twenties, The Saturday Evening Post, I think, put out a book called What I Have Learned. They asked twenty or so successful, older people to simply write the things they had learned in life.


The only essay I remember was a man complaining that having to learn to spell was a complete waste of time. Being a poor speller – I regret to say to this day I am a poor speller – I thought this essay made a lot of sense. I always thought if I spelled a word close enough for someone to tell me I had spelled it wrong – well? Well?


Now that most of us write using a software program that spells, corrects (on the fly), hyphenates and even justifies paragraphs, I say again well? Well?


It seems to me that it would be fun, even useful for the class to create a list of what they have learned. I will put this on http://www.mydoomsdaybook.blogspot.com/ You can simply hit the comment button at the end of the post. Be funny, be serious, list your medications, whatever.  A short bio would be nice, too.


Here is my list:


1. Beer is good. I know a lot of people will get in my face about this, but at this late date, no one is going to change my mind. For me, sipping a cold beer is a communion with the vey best things in life. (choke dee – good luck – toast in Thai)


2. Travel no longer broadens the mind. People are people (although admittedly they must be carefully taught) everywhere. I am just as likely to say, “You’ve got to be kidding,” in America nowadays as I am in Thailand or any other country. No country, ancient or modern, has the high ground in the cultural wars anymore.


3. The Internet is no substitute for travel. There is a mystery of place upon seeing the Grand Canyon or the Pyramids in person, which registers, not with the mind, but with the heart.


4. The extended family in the Middle East and Asia, although radically different from America, seems to work as well as the American nuclear family – better in some cases.


5, Like Vegas, everything I learned in kindergarten stayed in kindergarten. Be serious.


6. Money comes from people. I know how banal this sounds but many people think they are getting paid by a corporation in much the same way as kids think meat comes from the grocery store. This basic misunderstanding is the source of a lot of the hubris in the world.

Forrest info

I worked as a teacher (ugh!) in Saudi Arabia for 14 years and now live in Ayutthaya, Thailand.  I write poetry (see: http://www.forrestgeenwood.blogspot.com/) and I am currently working on another novella.

Could Shakespeare Be Shakespeare If All He Had Was The Internet?

My guess is no.


We don’t know who Shakespeare was, but of all the possibilities the one that has Bill as the itinerant actor is probably the least likely. More likely, it seems to me, is that Shakespeare was a member of the noble class and probably well heeled. So he’d probably take one look at the web and say what a colossal waste.


The Internet is for marketers, not for creators like Shakespeare. Fortunes are made on the Internet by being conduits, portals, and “connecting” people (FB seems more and more to me like the party line my folks when I was a kid: You pick up, listen in, but you don’t have to say anything, so I put connecting in quotes.)


Was the Big BS interested in “connecting” people? Doubt it. He was more interested in disconnecting people from their wretched lives, for a couple of hours. He was more interested in looking at the human condition (in portraying treason, treachery, and love) so that we might better see the pitfalls and possibilities in being human. Where does this happen on the Internet? “I’ve had the shits all day. Thank God for Blackberry and texting.” We might be able to monetize texting, but not the crap Bill wrote.


Bill’s talent was a verbal one, not a visual one. Even a play-goer had to create the play in his mind through words rather than simply perceive special effects and explicit images. If you don’t believe this explain how the use of men to play female parts was explicit.


I suppose he might have been a rapper, if rap was iambic pentameter, but vulgarity was really not his bag.


Shakespeare, being an upstart crow, could not make a living being a poet. I say that, not because I am in his class as a poet, but because no poet can make a living with poetry.


Shakespeare could not make a living as a playwright unless he was willing to be his own angel. Money has ruined the theater, so we now get recycled material that made money before, so maybe it will make money again. And where on the Internet do you see new plays, anyway?


Given that actors no longer speak in verse, I doubt he would be in show business at all. He might be a director, but I don’t think there is much evidence he was into directing.


I don’t know what he might be doing if he had to earn a living today. Maybe he might own a small circus or have a country and western band spinning stories in song behind a chicken wire stage to protect from thrown beer bottles in a small bar.


I suspect that this question is put to aspiring high school guidance counselors at the end of their six year education training course. The smug answer, pleasing to all (wink, wink), is, “Why he be a guidance counselor, of course!” What a crock.

And if William Shakespeare wasn’t able to do what he did, if he had to take up another line of work, odds are in America (at least) he’d be unemployed.

So if you’re feeling down abut being out of work for the past three years, just look beside you to the scruffy looking hippy in an Elizabethan ruff collar and wearing a codpiece to keep his johnson from flopping out. The dude’s been out of work for the past four hundred years – with no prospects in sight.