What follows is a potpourri of random thoughts hurriedly scribbled between trips to the garden where I deeply inhale the smell of earth, the only known cure for WBD.
· A collective "thank you" to those readers who take time to write. I try to answer everyone, but some of my responses may end up as spam, since my reply originates from a Yahoo! address, not the one above.
Since I don't check my e-mail daily (the horror!), you stand a better chance of publication--if that's what you want--by writing directly to the editor.
I appreciate those readers who point out errors and suggest corrections. Years ago, I belonged to a poetry group brutal in its critiques. We were so outrageous, we often criticized the criticism. Though that kind of no-holds-barred exchange is verboten in this day of pussyfooting around, I welcome it.
If you've written and I haven't answered, it doesn't necessarily mean you're being ignored. I could be thinking about what you wrote, researching the topic or planning on following up at a later date. Sometimes readers' e-mails mysteriously disappear, so drop another note if you think too much time's elapsed.
I am particularly appreciative of those readers who take the trouble to send real mail, the kind that takes pen, paper and a stamp. Resisting what poses as the electronic imperative is never futile.
· Until the entire country hit the pause button to carry on about the "tragic" life and death of Anna Nicole Smith, I had no idea she existed. There is something seriously wrong when a nation's cultural icons are plasticized females whose every inhale is a waste of precious oxygen and whose only claim to fame is a resemblance to early Barbie dolls.
· The stealth trend to lowercase God (note how many times you see it spelled god) while the Internet is capitalized is a chilling testament to how removed we are from the ideas linking us to eons of human evolution. We are abandoning the mystery for the machine.
If I believed in the devil, I'd say electronic technology is his work. Much of the junk we deem necessities are joyless toys. And what we call globalization is really 21st-century empire building enabled by computer chips.
Without those nasty bits of silicon, we might be lucky enough to be cell-phone-free. No more persons talking on the phone while driving, walking in public spaces or, arguably the rudest, most obnoxious example of cell-phone abuse yet: standing at a checkout counter while a clerk is forced to endure a customer's yammering.
· There's a theory monogamy is less "natural" for men than for women because in the evolutionary scheme of things, men want to reproduce more than the next fellow. They accomplish this by scattering their "seed" among as many women as possible.
A feminist perspective presents a different possibility: Imagine nubile young women frolicking in a forest and welcoming a host of virile young men over the course of several hours or days in a spring fling of intense and exhaustive boffing leading to impregnation. Even a limited understanding of biology tells us the patient female egg, waiting for the sea of swimming semen to make it through the birth canal, will be pierced by the fastest and strongest of the bunch.
Conclusion: If you adhere to the first theory, you end up with an overpopulated planet (surely not an evolutionary advantage); if you accept the second one, you end up with fewer people, though all are natural-born swimmers and excel at running marathons.
· We know we are in relationship hell when heteros are accepting advice from Dan Savage, a homo who has made a career out of his sexual orientation while pandering to twits coming in all varieties. Said twits apparently enjoy the game of who can outdo whom in a crude, crass and tasteless game in order to earn some phantom merit badge of "hipness." And that's not the worst of it.
There is no room for tenderness in Savage's world (maybe he's a pussycat capitalizing on his name). Fellatio, a lovely word rolling off the lips in frothy onomatopoeia, is reduced to a "blowjob." Oh, I get it; Savage is talking sex, not lovemaking, a distinction evidently unknown to his fans.
A distinction, no doubt, that would make a unicorn laugh.
