Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Return of the jubblies
One year ago, the executives of Playboy magazine announced to the world that they would no longer be publishing pictures of naked women. The new era of on-line porn had made nudity passé, they told us. Now they have admitted it was all a terrible mistake. Here are the words of Playboy’s 25-year-old Chief Creative Officer, Cooper bin Hefner (aka son of Hef):
“Nudity was never a problem because nudity isn’t a problem. Today we’re taking our identity back and reclaiming who we were.”
Reading between the lines, I think we can infer that the absence of nudie pics provoked howls of anguish and despair from the magazine’s loyal readers. What the Playboy bigwigs didn’t appreciate was the big difference between jahoobies on a computer screen and jahoobies on smooth, glossy paper. The latter can be rubbed against the face and licked, heightening the sensual pleasure. Only crazy people lick computer screens. I once saw a baboon lick one and the static electricity gave its tongue a shock.
It is said that there is nothing new under the sun and nothing surprising under the moon. Do you remember when Coca Cola brought back Classic Coke after New Coke bombed? The whole episode ended up boosting their sales, which led some to suspect it was all a clever marketing ploy. The CEO of Coca Cola had to issue a formal denial:
“We’re not that clever and we’re not that stupid,” he said.
It remains to be seen whether Playboy will experience a similar revival in its fortunes. A new era of naked flesh might attract new readers, but what about the old readers who have migrated to Penthouse or Hustler? Winning them back might be next to impossible. Their only hope is to innovate. A lot of men must be bored of staring at dumb blondes in passive positions. How about a nude kickboxing lady or a nude schoolmistress giving lessons on a blackboard? If you think about it, there are very few activities done by fully-clothed women that cannot also be done by naked women. The possibilities are endless.
None of this would persuade me to take out a subscription, of course. A gorilla has no interest in human flesh. The only reason for me to pick up a copy of Playboy would be to swat flies. That might change, however, if the magazine acquired a reputation for high-quality journalism. As a student of humanity, I would read any periodical that kept me informed of the latest fads and perversions.
“Who could they hire?” I hear you ask. Top of my list would be a feminist writer like Gloria Steinem. Obviously, she’s a huge enemy of Hef and everything he stands for, but enemies can often collaborate for the greater good. Remember the US-Soviet alliance during World War 2? To read her trenchant prose amid all the boobies and booties would be the purest delight. Now where can I find the email address of the Hefner boy?
Labels: Hugh Hefner, jahoobies, nudity, Playboy
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Dogging episode
An incident of fornication in a public place has been reported in Somerset, a county in southern England. The unfortunate eyewitness was a 19-year-old mother of two, who gave the following description of the event:
“They were there for ten or 15 minutes,” said Ms Lara Shoemaker. “At first they just stopped underneath the bridge as it was really badly raining. Then they started kissing and then after a while he put his hands up her skirt and she put her hands down his trousers. You could see she was messing around. After that he lifted her leg up and then they started having sex. It’s very disrespectful. I have got two kids and if they were tall enough to see out of the window I’d have been really angry.”
Ms Shoemaker took pictures of the incident and posted them online, but I don’t think they’ll be helpful in identifying the culprits. The faces are not visible and the bodies are fully clothed, so they could have been anyone. I don’t blame her for being worried about what her children might have seen. As well as asking embarrassing questions, they might have copied the behaviour on display. The human infant will imitate anything that looks like a party game.
Should it be illegal for humans to have sex in public places? Criminalising such behaviour is an easy solution, but what if it just pushes couples into toilet cubicles? There is literally nowhere to run if you’re having a dump and you hear a lot of huffing and puffing next door. This is why many learned scholars oppose legal restrictions on outdoor humping. Curing such social ills, they say, requires soft touch policing combined with better public amenities. Allocate land for dedicated dogging zones where people can copulate in tents. Have a loudspeaker play ‘She’ll be Coming Round the Mountain’ to drown out lewd noises and encourage a speedy consummation. Provide free Batman and Batgirl masks, so people don’t have to worry about being photographed as they enter and leave the camp.
Speaking as one who’s watched countless baboons mate in the open air, I have a lot of sympathy for the social reform approach. If anyone tried to arrest baboons having sex, pandemonium would break out. The baboons would treat it as an act of unprovoked aggression and make war on the enforcer. Their ears would be deaf to legal or moral arguments. “If you don’t like the sight of it, look in another direction,” they would say.
I’m not saying humans are like baboons, of course. They have places to go to when they want to have sex. If they do it in public, it’s probably because they like being watched. Exhibitionists are brazen rogues who seek to shock and embarrass. The best way of making them change their ways is to laugh at them when they’re doing it, to give them a sense of shame. You’ll never have law and order if no one is ashamed of anything.
Labels: baboons, dogging, exhibitionism, shame
Wednesday, February 08, 2017
Unnatural birth
A woman from Ontario has made a name for herself by giving birth while wearing a Chewbacca mask. A You Tube video of her braying while in labour has won near-universal acclaim:
“She’s the kind of woman I aspire to be,” tweeted one of her adoring fans.
Chewbacca mom, who’s real name is Katie Stricker Curtis, explained the philosophy behind her masquerade:
“Just because I’m about to be a mom doesn’t mean I have to grow up! Never take life too seriously!”
She must be the first woman in history to turn childbirth into a comedy routine. I wonder what gave her such an outlandish idea. Did she think that making people laugh would give meaning to her labour pains? Most women feel that the baby itself is sufficient reward for their suffering. You have to give her credit for being such a devoted slave to comedy.
Having said all that, I confess I’m in two minds about Mrs Curtis and her wookie show. As a former circus ape, I’m all in favour of innovations in slapstick entertainment. On the other hand, you can’t turn everything into a joke. Giving birth may be an important life event for the mother, but it’s the biggest life event of all for the baby. Taking your first breath is a solemn occasion. You don’t want people laughing at you when you’re struggling to squeeze your bulbous head through an overstretched coochie. If the aged are entitled to a dignified death, babies should be entitled to a dignified birth.
When I told the manager of the safari camp about this story, he said:
“The baby must have been thinking ‘What the fuck?’ when it saw its mother’s face! If I’d been in its place, I would have asked for a mirror to see if I took after her!”
“My dear manager,” I replied. “If you’d been in its place, everyone in the room would have been saying ‘What the fuck?’”
Of course, a newborn baby has no idea what its mother is supposed to look like and will bond with anything that nurtures it. Remember Tarzan? He was nursed by a chimpanzee and grew up thinking he was an ape, even thought his arms weren’t long enough to perform all the feats. When he reached adulthood he was a strange, hybrid creature who swung on jungle creepers and made eerie yodelling noises. If a human thinks it belongs to another species, it ends up neither fish nor fowl.
One hopes Mrs Curtis took off the mask before she started suckling the infant. Living for comedy is all very well, but you can’t expect a newborn baby to laugh at your jokes. What will the child think when it’s old enough to see the You Tube video? Will it be proud of its zany mother who inspired so much merriment? Or will it think the woman who carried it in her womb is a bit of a prat? Time will tell.
Labels: Chewbacca, comedy, giving birth, Tarzan
Wednesday, February 01, 2017
A new love drug?
Many moons ago, I asked the manager of the safari camp if he used Viagra.
“You cheeky ape!” he squealed. “Why would a man like me, in the prime of my life, need Viagra?”
“Even men in the prime of their lives can suffer from flaccidity at the point of coital engagement,” I replied. “I read about this in an issue of Cosmopolitan I borrowed from your good lady wife.”
“Is that so?” said the dagger-eyed manager. “Well let me tell you, my hairy friend, that at the point of coital engagement I’m as flaccid as a flagpole made of granite. And don’t ever quote stuff from Cosmopolitan to me, it’s a highly overrated magazine that encourages women to be judgemental and dissatisfied.”
I thought of this tetchy exchange after hearing about a new wonder drug that stimulates the erotic impulse. It’s called “kisspeptin” and a trendy young journalist called Mirandi Larbi wrote this about it:
Researchers from Imperial College London injected 29 guys with kisspeptin and found that it boosted the brain’s response to pictures of couples in sexual or romantic situations.
This seems to suggest it’s a drug for the voyeur rather than the lover, but perhaps the two are closely related. I remember watching a horrifying film called American Psycho in which a narcissistic young banker watches himself on TV while cavorting with a pair of strumpets. And what about couples who have a mirror on their bedroom ceiling? You wouldn’t endure the embarrassment of hiring a workman to install one of those things unless you got a big kick out it.
It wouldn’t surprise me if this new drug becomes more popular than Viagra. I read somewhere that the blue pills give men the granite flagpole without increasing their desire to use it. That’s more like a bicycle pump than an aphrodisiac. Kisspeptin, by contrast, sounds more like one of the love potions you read about in medieval fairy tales. It ought to work for women as well as men. Although it may not be powerful enough to make a fairy queen enamoured of an ass, it might well give women the soft and gooey sensations they need to get in the mood for it. Who could possibly complain about that?
Of course, there are teething problems that will have to be sorted out, the most obvious one being the use of injections. I can’t believe humans will be desirous of hanky panky after being pierced by a sharp piece of metal. A woman doesn’t want to be thinking of needles when she’s about to be penetrated by a broader, if blunter, instrument. Creating kisspeptin pills would put the drug on a level playing field with Viagra, but I would advocate a nasal spray as the optimal solution. My old circus buddy, Smacker Ramrod, always stressed the role of his olfactory organ in whetting his carnal appetite. I would go so far to say that he thought of the nose as a secondary sexual organ.
Labels: kisspeptin, love potion, nasal spray, Viagra
