Archive for June, 2010

June 7, 2010

What Is That In Your Junk Drawer?

(Thanks for stopping by to check out my censored post. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think – could I have ruined someone’s life/career/family with this piece?)
I’m going to break some kind of land-speed record for how many times I use the word penis in this post. Just so you are prepared. Those too virginal or squeamish should turn away now. And so we’re all on the same page, junk is the term used for the whole package – the male genitalia as it were.

I am always somewhat shocked when a man displays his junk – who can ever forget Michael Douglas on Leno or Derek Hough on Dancing with the Stars? When it’s on TV you can just snigger into your gin and tonic, but when it’s in person I don’t know where to look or whether or not he wants the world to see it or just had an unfortunate case of pant size confusion. Especially fascinating are Italian men who wear their clothing to deliberately advertise their junk. From what I’ve heard, Brazilians and Argentinians are happy to stuff their junk in a package that’s meant to display their wares like cellophane-wrapped ham hocks around New Years. Then you have entire regions of American men who wear pants baggy enough to be skirts and you have to wonder . . .

What was that you said? It’s like cleavage on a woman? Oh no. It’s not. Boobs are universal. Junk is not. And junk is an illusion anyway – it’s not like the package on display is really telling the whole story. Of course, then you have the picture above – now if men with their junk all out and about looked like THAT perhaps junk exposure would be more appealing?

I grew up with only a sister so until I started my foray into womanhood the male junk was sort of a mystery. Then I had husbands, and a son, and it became just one more thing around the house to maintain. So, here is my practical guide to the junk drawer.

Five Penis Facts from, I swear this is true, CBS News:

1. A penis does have a mind of its own. Men in fact have less control over their penis than they do their arms or legs. It’s tied to the nervous system. The arms and legs, however, should remain under the man’s control, which should allow him to walk away and put his hands in his pockets. Tiger Woods and Jesse James may not have known that this is how it works.
2. As far as size, there are two varieties: Growers and Showers. A penis can grow anywhere from the width of a paperclip to the length of a Blackberry. Hey, I’m sitting at my desk and that’s all I had on hand. So, that penis that looks puny may be a grower and the one that looks temptingly like a good nudge might yield results may be a shower and it’s already given all it can give.
3. The Penis Is Shaped Like a Boomerang. The root of the penis is tucked way up in the pelvis and when actually detailed on an MRI it’s, yes, a boomerang. Which explains why it’s always getting itself stuck in the same old spots, doesn’t it? And you can totally picture how that MRI session started. The copier was broken and the techs had to do something besides photocopy their asses . . .
4. A Penis Can Be Broken. Contrary to the whole “boner” thing there’s no bone, but a penis can be fractured. Those of us with husbands over 30 ought to be really thankful because a broken penis tends to be a young man’s problem. Now, if anyone is going to take up Courgaring be warned, the younger the guy the more rigid the penis, which can lead to great joy and happiness, but also a chance of accidental breakage.
5. Most Penises in the World Are Uncut. Only 6% of Australian men are circumcised. 20% of Brits and 30% of Canadians. Who’s up for a field trip to do “research?”

Beyond the basic facts and junk exposure – there’s that question most women have pondered at least once. Why are men always adjusting their junk? Is it to get our attention? They don’t quite understand the female mind if that’s the case because when I see junk-adjustment going on the first thing I think of is: infection. I don’t adjust my boobs in public and I’d like to ask men to refrain from adjusting their junk. Although I’d have to guess frequent boob-adjustment would earn me a fan club.

Five Reasons Men Adjust Their Junk:

1. They have junk pinchage
2. Their junk is sticking to their leg
3. Their pants are too tight, causing junk compression
4. Their junk ventilation is insufficient causing suffocating junk
5. A woman is within a mile and she might like to be reminded that they have junk to share

I’m sure previous generations of men would have scoffed at this, but the current crop of men (none among the men I know – I did an informal survey) seem to be more sensitive to junk-aroma. Did you know they have begun making toiletry products aimed specifically at junk? Don’t believe me? Go to www.manjunk.com and see for yourself. I think this is great payback for the past fifty years of Summer’s Eve commercials.

If you’d like to see the worst instance of Man Junk ever on record, here’s a You Tube video for you:

And people wonder why I live intown! So, who has a good junk story? What are your feelings about junk exposure and adjustment?

June 4, 2010

The Freedom to Read. The Freedom to Write.

My daughter recently went on a trip to the Midwest with my mother and encountered some pretty narrow thinking. She came home and said, “Mommy, I’m glad you’re raising us in a place where I know all kinds of people and how good they are.” She has friends who are of every racial group. She has friends who have two mommies and friends who have two daddies. One of her best buddies is Jewish, another is Presbyterian. We attend a Methodist church and I sometimes read her tarot cards for her. She reads voraciously, yet I do manage a little what she reads by allowing her to read controversial stuff and then talking with her about what she’s read. If a book is questionable, we read it together and then discuss it. I’m against censorship. I don’t understand how someone’s moral core can cause them to think that they have the right to say what can or can’t be put into the world. Censorship hurts artists and it kills the artistic process. Is everything ever composed, written, painted, or photographed appropriate for every audience? No, of course not. But no one has the right to say that something should not exist or not be allowed to come to fruition because it rubs the wrong way against a morality belonging to a select group.

Neil Gaiman has a great letter from a librarian on his blog and it’s worth reading.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2007/02/last-last-word.html

Some books you may not have realized were censored:

Aesop. Fables.
Anonymous. Go Ask Alice.
Boccacio. The Decameron
Boston Women’s Health Collective. Our Bodies, Ourselves.
Brothers Grimm. The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales
Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Carroll, Lewis. Through the Looking-Glass
Chaucer, Geoffrey. Canterbury Tales
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness
Cervantes. Don Quixote.
Cinderella
Dante. The Divine Comedy.
Defoe, Daniel. Moll Flanders.
Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe.
Eliot, George. Silas Marner.
Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist.
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Eliot, George. Adam Bede.
Eliot, George. Silas Marner.
Fielding, Henry. Tom Jones.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby.
Frank, Anne. Diary of Anne Frank.
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. Love in the Time of Cholera.
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Sorrows of Young Werther.
Hanford, Martin. Where’s Waldo?
Hardy, Thomas. Jude the Obscure.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter
Homer. The Odyssey.
Hugo, Victor. Les Miserables.
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World.
Keyes, Daniel. Flowers for Algernon.
King, Stephen. Carrie.
L’Engle, Madeleine. A Wrinkle in Time.
Lawrence, Margaret. A Jest of God.
Lawrence, Margaret. The Diviners.
Lawrence, Margaret. The Stone Angel.
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird.
Lewis, C.S. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.
Little Red Riding Hood.
Malory, Sir Thomas. Le Morte D’Arthur.
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman.
Miller, Jim, ed. The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll.
Molière. Tartuffe.
Munro, Alice. Lives of Girls and Women.
Orwell, George. 1984.
Orwell, George. Animal Farm.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Rumpelstiltskin.
Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye.
Sanders, Lawrence. The Seduction of Peter S.
Sewell, Anna. Black Beauty.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet.
Shakespeare, William. King Lear.
Shakespeare, William. Othello.
Shakespeare, William. Richard II.
Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice.
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night.
Speare, Elizabeth George. The Witch of Blackbird Pond.
Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men.
Suzuki, D. T. Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings.
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels.
Thoreau, Henry James. Civil Disobedience.
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Hobbit.
Tolkien, J. R. R. Lord of the Rings.
Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina.
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Voltaire. Candide.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five.
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House In the Big Woods.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House On The Prairie.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. On The Banks of Plum Creek.
Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie.

As an English major I’ve actually read every single book on this list. And I’m proud of that.

If you care about censorship and want to take a stand, please visit:

http://www.internationalpen.org.uk/

Why am I writing about censorship today? Because until today I was part of a blog group of romance writers. I’ve just tendered my resignation because a post I wrote was read in draft form and found to conflict with the moral sensibilities of some of the other writers. The blog group had everyone from writers of erotica to inspirational writers. For those unfamiliar with what “inspirational” means – that refers to books that are in the romance genre, but that are sweeter, more innocent, and of a bent to be more acceptable to those of a religious nature. I support the rights of those writers to speak about religious topics, but apparently the support of divergent view points is not a two-way street.

My post – the one that was questioned by the group and suggested had the possibility to do one or all of the following:
A) Ruin careers
B) Keep people from being published
C) Be used as ammunition should one of the other blog members ever be sued for sexual harassment
D) Cause us to be labeled as man-haters
E) Lose the religious audience
F) Shame other members in front of their families

Well, it will appear in this space next Monday. I would welcome you to see for yourself if my post had the power to do any of the above.