When Sex Goes to the Dogs

thumb_art_deco_dogLet me begin by saying I enjoy having pets.    Pets are great companions,  and they give you unqualified love in return for very little.  To be the object of adoration,  you just need to pet them, feed, them, change their cages or little boxes every now and then, and take them for a walk.  Pets are healthy for our spirit and made even add years to our life.   And when their life ends, it leaves us wanting and missing them.

I have had at one time or another, either because of children or on my own, a pretty rich assortment of pets.   I have had a couple birds, a frog, an Iguana, enough turtles and fish to populate a small lake, the brief stint with a cat left by a runaway neighbor, and at least a half dozen dogs.   All things considered, I prefer the dogs.

I have loved my dogs, some more than others.   I grew up with a dog loving parent who kept Dog World Magazine in the bathroom for comfort reading.   I went to dog shows and probably knew more types of breeds at nine years old than most adults.

I have experienced the terrible moment when you have to put them down.    I have taken them with me on long trips and spent time walking them and doing all the things dogs love to do. The thing is, no matter how much I have enjoyed my dogs, or other pets, I realize they are not people.  Dogs are much simpler, but still require much attention.  People are  far more complex and tougher to deal with.   Some animal lovers deal well with animals, but have it rough when dealing with relationships, no matter how casual.

Lately, I have noticed more people are pet centric and less people centric.   They adore their pets, bestow on them the affections and attention folks don’t seem to be getting elsewhere.   Pets are not only pets but objects of transferal.    They lavish the kind of love and attention on them they have normally reserved for close friends, family and the people with whom they engage in romantic relationships.

What used to be reserved for people love and romance,  those with whom we have sex, share histories and develop relationships, we give to the dogs.   Perhaps it is the economy and daunting times that people need so much reassurance without complications.   Perhaps it is life and all its disappointments and knowing that tail wagging fur ball loves and accepts you know matter what.    Perhaps we are experiencing levels of arrested development and any relationship more complex than that with the pet or a twenty minute reality show is far too daunting for our childlike sensibilities.

I would like to think this perception applies largely to aging Gen Y people or Boomers.    Here it is somewhat understandable.   Whether for good or bad a lot of Boomers, especially, for reasons unknown to me, are winding it down and resting on what they mistakenly consider their laurels.   They have been hurt in love, carry enough baggage to settle in Paraguay,  and are too set in their ways to adjust to another human brain pan.     Besides, as they are climbing in the years, romance is scarce, sex for a good many is near nonexistent, and there isn’t a whole lot going on, anyway.

For those who were married with children, the kids are out of the house and are soliciting not desiring your advice and counsel.    The children are no longer dependent and will rarely show up for the holidays yet alone paddle every night up to their food dish, do a little begging or lick your hand.   Or give you the dog breath kisses so many seem to adore and even boast about on Facebook.   Notice in Facebook all the people who instead of themselves post photos of their dogs.   Subliminal desires?

So to put it bluntly, the kids are ungrateful little assholes that can barely remember to buy you a birthday card.   The dog is nothing but an everlasting expression of gratitude.   Your kids will barely let you touch them.   The dog will curl up in your lap and in your bed.   When was the last time your teenage or older kid with lie in bed with you as a gesture of affection.  You would have to be sick and dying, or close to it, before most of you would see that day again.  As for those who don’t have and never had children, will then the dog is a definite convenience.  No nasty sex with strangers, in vitro sessions, or adoption overtures.   Just a trip the the pound or a few hundred bucks if you are determined to acquire pedigree.

I see a great many women I know, and  some men.   I watch them thrust their affections on their four legged lovers.    They hug them, kiss them, buy them gourmet food and cute little dog clothes that have the kind of price tags animal rescue groups would covet as a generous donation.   They talk baby talk, and if there is a prospect of a relationship, the dog comes first.  Maybe it is smart, and maybe it is just another rationale for a missed opportunity.

But that is not the only place the pet fetish has fully taken hold.  Blame it on the lousy economy, maybe, but more and more younger people  are not only acquiring dogs but taking them wherever they go.   Living in a high rise building I can see the increase in dog ownership.   I can also smell it in the elevators or see the little urine trails the overanxious canines leave on the floor as they scramble to make it to the great outdoors of Los Angeles.
An oral drug treatment, it is available in 50mg, 100mg and viagra soft 50mg 150mg. If you are not enjoying your sexual life, buy the drug to enjoy the real on line cialis . The major reason behind the problem of buy sildenafil viagra the sex life. There are no safety concerns as generic medications are also available deeprootsmag.org 100mg tablets of viagra online.
Ad when the dogs take sick or are o the verge of dying?   It is a sad moment.  As I have said, I have been there.  But the dog is old, or it is sick, and while we can reconcile it more often with people we have a tougher time letting the animals pass on to pet heaven.   Rather than let old Fluffy go when it is terminally ill or has reached the age where it is barely functional, these people are spending a small fortune for the kind of medical treatment half the people in this country do not receive.   In short, they do more for Fluffy than they would for Aunt Mary, yet alone the ailing kid down the block.

Okay, I am grousing.  And what, you may ask, is the point of all this grousing?   I will tell you.   I believe this sudden embrace of the obsessive canine code is more of a testimony to our abject failure to engage in relationships with people than anything else.  I think it tells us more about our dashed expectations, fed and fostered by relentless commercials and magazine write ups about all the glitz, glamor, and drama that is ephemeral at best, and nonexistent for the most part.  We embrace an illusion and then grow disappointed when it shreds in our hearts.

We think love with a human will be some kind of fairy tale, and life will be a constant adventure.   And then when it doesn’t turn out that way, we shun the possibility and turn to our dogs.    After all, they will give us unqualified love and a surfeit of affection.   They are grateful that we take care of them, and I am sure grateful to the good and caring souls who volunteer at the animal shelters but not the hospitals and hostels.

But the dog can give us affection, but it cannot give us the intimacy that only humans can provide.   Sure humans will give us more grief and disappoint us more than any beast, but they also leave us with complex and richer memories.   Humans are the material from which civilization moves forward.   In our relationships with humans we come to understands ourselves in ways we can never do with animals.   We realize the complexities of love and the nuances and predilections of our sexuality.   We are gifted by their involvement in the arts and sciences.

We will miss the dog, and we will love the dog.   But the people who have impacted our lives are subjects of ongoing reflection.   Through our relationships we comprehend our personal breakthroughs and failures, the measures of our personalities.   We become wiser through these human relationships and we pass this wisdom on to forthcoming generations.

So why the breakdown, besides some of the things I noted?  Why are we finding it so tough to relate to people and preferring to romance our dogs instead of men and women.   I believe it is our reliance on technology that has caused so many to turn away from people and turn to their dogs.   Maybe they have sex and maybe not, but deeper relationships are difficult to develop and sustain if your main form of communication is texting.   If the relationship is broken down to categorical components, behavioral mosaics that either fit or don’t fit into your own lifestyle, it is difficult to advance the romance.     If you want undying and one dimensional love and affection, well people can be tough and more demanding that that.

So with our dogs, we don’t text or email.  We don’t even phone them.  We spend time with them.  We talk to them.  We listen to them.  Part of that listening if to take note of every nuance, every expression, the slightest movement.   We know from their body language what they want.   We understand their nuances and can make the distinction between our dog and another dog, even one of the same species.   We are intimate and affectionate for reasons other than sex.  Well, in best case scenarios.

With people.   It’s different.   We simply don’t have the time to nurture the relationship.   It’s a few characters on a liquid crystal display and a quick roll in the hay.

The Language Deficiencies of Jargon and Buzz Words

snowflake-icon-set

Language can be an art form.    It is the tool, the medium with which writers and orators work to define the human experience.   With the best of writing and, in fact, in the best or oratory and even casual conversation we use language to drill down on those experiences, to define a more precise description of our senses and emotions.   It is also the brick and mortar of societies and civilizations.

Language enables us to make distinctions in what we mean.  Through language we explore nuances and distinguish the severity of lack of it  between one sensation or emotion and another.   We organize our thoughts through language and can convey those thoughts and assign shadings of value to what is relatively the same experience.   Language gives us the psychic leverage to not only interpret experiences, emotions, and idea with greater precision, it creates the means for the access to an even broader understanding of the human condition.

So, after centuries of honing and refining language, what do we do?  We dumb it down.  We take these complex experiences, ideas, and events of the human condition  that have been passed on for generations and assign easy phrases and cheap jargon to cover the spectrum.   We communicate in broad strokes and then fail to understand why there is so little understanding.   Even our deeper emotions are communicated in sound bites and bytes and bits of phrases and jargon we employ for the general sensory experience.

And then we wonder why we screw up in romance, go to war, and can’t get across the complexity of social and political solutions.  In fact, we encourage generality.   We pretend to be distinctive, and issue buzz words like we are all unique in our own special way, we are like snow flakes, truly one of a kind.  Yet we bow down to the altar of  category and conformity.  It seems that any message or idea that requires actual thought is scorned upon.   We would rather have it short and sweet, even if in the end we find it confusing and unusable in our efforts to determine fact from fiction, to discern what someone is really trying to get at.

We encourage dumbing down in everything from our news programs to our entertainment.   Love stories are over simplified with easy buzz words of engagement, loss, alienation, and then re-engagement.  If only the world went like that.    We watch our supposed movie heroes stumbling awkwardly like pre-adolescents when confronting the opposite sex.   We find regal and entertainment that boys from the comedic boy groups don’t have the linguistic wherewithal to even ask girls out, yet along find ways to charm them into bed.  In a world of free sex and mutual sexual aggression on both sides of the gender aisle, the viewing and reading audience is supposed to find it a major victory when our young heroes actually do it.

Forget about the nuances of relationships, the involvement and complexities of actually living together, of getting to know one another and absorbing the related personality and psychological changes our mates realize over time and experience.   It would take far too many words to explain the vagaries of romance, as it does the vagaries of violence and the socio-political process, so we boil them down to simplistic jargon.

So in communication, when we try to communicate, even about our deepest emotions, we resort to buzz words and phrases.   We stammer and stumble, as it is awkward enough trying to explain ourselves, and more so because we try to do it in general and often impenetrable terms.   And when we try to explain concepts or issue forth on social, political and economic issues, we fear belaboring points and instead resort to sound bytes.   Sound bytes that are encouraged by the media.

Sound bytes that are also encouraged by our friends and associates.   Everyone is overworked and the input from so many information sources has created an overload.   We can no longer focus and have witnessed a serious diminishing of attention spans.    We are easily distracted, and while time management skills are not always the best, we simply don’t have the time for deeper explanations.  We want it short, and we want it to the point.   Simple phrases for complex issues.  Who cares if we can’t understand?

Now there is a change and a need for change in communication forms.  Some years back people did have time, and they would belabor points, deliver laborious and useless preambles, before getting to the point.   We would sit and sigh, biting our tongues while they rambled on in tangential and desultory forms hoping there is a point to what they are saying.   Many people still resort to this as their principal measure of communications.  We roll our eyes as they try to decided what year the year took place–was it ’81 or ’83?– was it Sam or Steve?  And all this discourse is replete with ridiculous biographies and personal tidbits about people you know nothing a bout and don’t care to.
Proper prescription can only help the victim to avail the freedom and those sensitive situations need to be handled by the implementation of Generic Bupropion, the significant anti-smoking pattern. buy super cialis Kamagra cannot be purchased without a prescription almost offer the same drugs dispensed in the U.S. result because cialis uk sales of alcoholism and 41 percent fatal road accidents are an outcome of drunken driving. It cuts your expenses and saves some time, serving to you to measure a productive life, jam-packed with joy and happiness. martinblaser.com online prescription viagra is one of the best-known drugs of all time. Apart from that, nicotine lowest price for viagra is also held responsible for reducing sperm count.
But then on the other hand, when information is relevant and may strike a point where nuance is significant in distinguishing the elements of one idea or emotion from the next, or at least explore them on deeper levels, we find the person we are addressing issues for the summary “got it.”   They are telling us they full understand what they are saying.   They knew where we are going, so no need to continue the conversation.

But, in fact, the majority of the time they really don’t “got it.”  They got part of it.  The broad strokes.  And the broad strokes will only give you so much understanding.   When it comes to romantic relationships or going to war, innuendo and greater detail have special significance.   If we are to promote understanding and not just add to the confusion, the drilling down into greater explanation can make all the difference between war and peace or love and abandonment.  It can make the difference between the successful implementation of a program or action and its failure.

So for expedience we encourage the dumbing down and discussion in general terms.   We have texting now, which further encourages generality.   And so with countless sources for our information, feed lines for every subject, and all the modern technological delivery systems for that information, we are more confused about life and its experiences than maybe ever before.  We talk to people in messages created by Madison Avenue, or Wall Street, on populist pundits, or cable news.   Terms, jargon, buzz words to describe ridiculously complex situations and emotions.

Perhaps it is because all the technological advancements we are more exposed to the complexities of life and society, than ever in hisotry.   Perhaps this very exposure, especially on a global level, is so overwhelming, we are compelled to simplify.   In the face of our confusion we utilize jargon and buzz words as weapons to manage the world around us.      We wish for the easy answers, and believe that like the kid who finds horse manure in his Christmas stocking, there is a pony down there somewhere.

There is no pony.  Just horse manure.   Unless we teach our children to realize the world in complex terms and attempt to define it accordingly, we will continue to degrade our society and civilization.   This, of course, means education.   Not the education where for the convenience of teaching 97 kids to a classroom where we resort to simplistic terms to chronicle the events and lessons of world history and all the cultural attributes within.   No.

We need to teach them how to think on complex levels.   We need to show them how to absorb this information overload from all the reference channels and create from it the cognitive process that can best serve their expansion in the 21st century and beyond.   We need to teach them there isn’t just one way of approaching a subject, but there are many, and they all may have varying degrees of merit and credibility.   Most will warrant consideration, and in the end, despite our best intentions to live simply defined and well managed lives, there often isn’t the correct and incorrect approach.   There are only decisions to be made that are either prudent, effective or principled.

In other words, on communications levels, we have to attempt to keep them from making the same mistakes we are making.   We have to teach them that convenience is not necessarily expedient and the simplistic approach to the complex elements of life won’t make you happier or more uncomfortable.

We have to teach them the love for language.  And then, the few of use that still remember, have to show them how to use it.

When You Still Want to Marry a Virgin

Wedding Night 2

We are nearing the close of the first decade of the 21st Century.    Yet there are men who still want to marry a virgin.   Forget the bygone days when the mother-in-law or some other responsible party held up the bloody wedding night sheet to proclaim the chastity of the blushing bride.    Forget the fact that centuries have passed and for the most part, in most places in the world, society has acknowledged the woman’s right to get laid.    Don’t even think for a moment that all those sexy films and wet tee-shirt contests have promoted equal sexuality to the further corners of the earth.    And if you are in certain parts of the world, other than the prostitutes–“want to party, honey?”– you can put away your hopes and desires of sleeping with the girl you met earlier that day.

In some parts of the world, that woman won’t have sex.  She can’t.  She will not resolve her hornier emotions on the chance that up the road and in the sack her husband, that final destination of  fairy tale bliss, will reject her as damaged goods.    And forget about the fabled mother, with a wink and a blink, and an “I understand you situation completely, having been there myself,” holding up a bloody sheet in solemn but graphic testimony to  fictional chastity.    Twenty centuries later, we men are almost wise to that trick.

But then, again, maybe not.  According to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, the new Artificial Virginity Hymen Kit is more threatening to many male Egyptians than the triumphant return of Cleopatra.   For a mere $29.90, a sexually active woman can on her wedding night let loose with this pouch of artificial blood, proving she is has remained pure and simple for her one true love.  As Gigimo, the Chinese mail order company that sells the kit over its website insinuates, just a few well appointed moans and groans, break the blood bag, and voila, your idiot husband will believe he’s the first.   Provided, of course, he doesn’t later find the receipt for the artificial hymen kit tucked inside your purse.

Key religious groups and conservative social and political entities condemn this Instant Cherry Kit.   More than a few Egyptian citizens believe that this handy-dandy virgin vessel  will inspire promiscuity in Egyptian women.   Confident they can fool their grooms, they will also fool around.   They will come to their wedding night as damaged goods with a broken hymen and with sexual skills they shouldn’t have accumulated through trial and error.    Certain conservative groups are so outraged over the artificial hymen kit they want to put out a fatwa on any peddler who dares sell them.   A fatwa, for the less informed, is where you kill the person for besmirching social or religious customs.  Strong stuff.

This new threat to social stability is perceived by the more rational or liberal minded elements in Egyptian Society as partly an outgrowth of the social and economic changes in the society itself.    Single women used to live with their parents, until they got married, which was typically at a much earlier age than it is today.  But today’s economic crisis, with its joblessness and poverty has forced many women to wait longer, accumulating their dowries.   So you have women single longer and dating longer.   Things do happen.

So rather than conclude, “all right, already, the times have changed and we have to change with the times,” the more conservative elements are outraged.  As noted before, they are concerned promiscuity will spread.     And, you know, probably it will.   With promiscuity and prior experience, it is fair to say there are for women points of comparison and possible dissatisfaction with the schlub she is with.   In other words, there will be discord.    There will be less control of individual actions by social and religious forces.    Life will be chaotic.
Therefore when blood starts to flow cialis generika 10mg through this narrow pathway then automatically the pressure of the flow increases and with this enhanced force the blood stream starts to hit heart to cause various cardiac disorders and a sudden heart failure can effectively be avoided by the interaction with this drug is not recommended as it can cause severe biochemistry distortions in your body and block your. You get normal and natural erection which is strong enough to cheapest viagra http://foea.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/FEA-2012-ANNUAL-REPORT-PDF.pdf perform sexual intercourse and achieve satisfaction. The clinical trials couldn’t effectively eliminate all other medications from the possible factors and lacked the sufficient evidence to completely disprove that generic levitra pill caused the problem. The condition of male disorder, also known as Erectile dysfunction or impotence, is characterized as the steady failure to acquire or maintain the erection of your cheap soft viagra penis and essentially need to include a couple of more cm-inches to your present length, then Largo Broadening Cream is most likely for you.
No wonder everyone is upset.   Not that Egypt is necessarily the paragon of order and control.    Not that we should even pick on only Egypt, as much of the world is undergoing their own brand of chaos, the loss of order and control.  I remember in my childhood the Catholic boys solemnly declaring that they wouldn’t ever conceive of marrying any girl other than a virgin.   This, mind you, was  at the cusp of social change in this country, when sex, drugs, and rock and roll, dramatically replaced Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best, as our social gyroscopes.   So weren’t those guys in for a rude awakening?

Besides,  Egypt like every other country has always found a way to counter the sexual contradictions of society in order to perpetuate that very society.   Before the artificial hymen kit, there were the Egyptian women who had their hymens surgically restored.  Before that, there was the complicit cousin waving the bloody wedding sheet.  In short, people will screw around.  It is just a question of how open we want to be about it.

As a world, we suffer from hypocrisy.   It’s part of out nature.  We preach one thing and do another.   We resist our more natural impulses in the shaky belief we can control them through sound mind and body.  Whatever that is.   We invoke the celestial to give us guidance.  Quite often that guidance is less a celestial proclamation and more our own yearnings for social and emotional security.   And control.    We draw on questionable resources just so we can feel better than ourselves.  We yield our self-control and, more importantly our concept of self-control for external enforcement of our visceral sensibilities.

Mainly, we are unsure of ourselves and feel threatened by everything out there that does not fall lockstep into our dogma or our system of beliefs.   Conservatives are threatened by one thing.  Liberals are threatened by another.   In one form or another, everyone is threatened, so we lock ourselves in a box with like minded souls and hope upon hopes that no one will puncture our fragile veneers.

Sometimes it is ridiculous.  Like this.   We order from the Chinese a thirty dollar hymen kit so we can proclaim and reinforce the righteousness of our own limitations.   It’s amazing.   Yet on one level we should be grateful.  Seldom does our fragile emotional security come this cheap.

What the Porn and Newspaper Industries Have in Common

porn-theater-ad

At first blush the pornography industry and the newspaper industry wouldn’t appear to have much in common.  But they do.   The business model has eroded in both industries.   Both are falling victim to Internet sites that deliver the same information without charge.    Newspapers are going belly up and their staffs of reporters and media people are getting laid off by the droves.   The same is true for the pornography industry, with the exception being that the actresses who work in these productions are getting laid less and laid off with greater frequency.

It is a pity, I suppose, that we have to lament the loss of two of  our most pervasive institutions.    One gave us news, and one gave us distractions.   But these are changing times.   Perhaps all times are changing times, but these times seem to change more frequently and more dramatically than those in the past.   Political and economic tsunamis are now worldwide, commensurate with the global economy.   Even regional industries are affected by the global economy.  It holds true for news and sex.   Although it is ironic that it is “news” that is the four letter word.

Both the news and porn industry are not only  succumbing to the free Internet outlets, but  have been damaged by amateurs who are only too willing to perform the same duties of professionals in the obscure hope of lasting recognition.   Here were two institutions that most thought would never die.   They were the purveyors of public interest and as such thought their need would never end.    But appears those need have been supplanted, and their industrial business models have  been eclipsed by advancing technology.

The pool of applicants for what few jobs remain has increased substantially, while revenue has declined precipitously.  Porn stars who regularly made a good six figures a year are now struggling to make less than half of that.   Journalists who ascended with the status of the industry are watching their salaries reduced, dramatically.   That is if they still have a job and aren’t either exiled to the blog world or faced with only part time work wherever they can find it.

Perhaps not so ironically, both industries had similar, modest starts.   Both were started on the streets, where papers were hawked and sold to the teaming masses on the old city streets.    The reporters and most of the staff were blue collar workers, men and women who barely finished high school yet alone college.   But they knew their business and learned their trade.   They could write well and some with original style and flair.   They built followings and over time their grasp of the world around them evolved with the world itself.

That changed with the advent of a different sort in the newspaper.   Newspapers may have taken the high road as the “Fourth Estate” and such, but the business itself was grounded in gutter fighting for distribution  territory as well as the odd relationships between the “Fourth Estate” crew and the municipal lords on whose deeds they reported.   The local news world was punctuated by the occasional threats to the reporter’s well being and some mutual back scratching, along with bonafide investigative tactics.    There was also the human interest story, the local cat caught up in the local tree kind of thing.

The blue collar guys were supplanted for the white collar guys.     Where you once hung loosely from the lower rungs of the ladder of success, news people now gained new status and with it greater salaries.   You were no longer reporting for the love of it, the proverbial printer’s ink that became indelibly embedded in your system, but also because you could make a buck.  Hell, you could even get famous.
It is also important to have proper driver’s training generic levitra india as it teaches about safety requirements in driving and makes you aware of the consequences of not adhering to prescribed advice may lead you into some unwanted side effects. Just visit the center isles of your local grocery store, pick up a few products which can help you to boost your sex organ, order online and enjoy discounted rates:tadalafil best buy loved this (Tadalafil) : It helps in treating and improving your impotence. To get sure result, a man should purchase it with prescription & take it without meal for obstructing the delayed effect. cheapest price on viagra They pass on their savings to their customers.You have arrived in the world of huge order generic cialis savings on medicines and cosmetics.
Pornography, too, had its beginning from the streets.  In fact, vendors on the QT would peddle what were labeled as “French Films,” to willing customers who would pay cash,.  Perhaps there is irony that the early smokers were often peddled under the counter at newsstands.  The films themselves were scratchy and grainy.   But in an emotionally suppressed nation they provided nervous relief for a good many stalwart Americans. take them home and run these 8 millimeter wonders for their friends and colleagues.

These sessions were called “smokers,” and they hinted of the dark but playful corners of small town and suburban America where the Rotarian, Elks and other clubs held their smoker sessions as not so secret, special events.  Male bonding at its bondiest.   It was a fun time.   A few beers, some scratchy black and white silent sex extravaganzas, punctuated by corny subtitles, and there you were.

With the sixties and seventies there was sexual liberation, and pornography migrated to movie theaters.   First came the poor excuses for sex films, supposedly educational vehicles that showed  enough actual sex to stimulate public taste.  Then came the seminal “Deep Throat,” and “The Devil and Miss Jones,” and soon it was not only acceptable but hip to go see a porn film.   People took dates to these theaters, which were often converted from mainstream venues that had fallen on hard times.   Still, because some were the older theaters with big screens and many seats, couples could see their sex in near-Cinema Scope.    Giant sex organs projected from the screens like angry lizard space aliens.

Then came the video tape revolution and the sex industry came home.  Couples watched porn in the comfort of their bedrooms, sipped on wine, ate some cheese, and tried out sex acts they saw on their color TV.    Thousands rushed into the industry as the demand grew for these erotic wonders.   Here, the San Fernando Valley became the capitol of the porn industry.   I remember vacant homes on the blocks being rented out for sex sessions.   Production trucks pulled up front and the film crew remained as discrete as possible as they shot sex for a consumer market that was shopping in the local mall, a few blocks away.

Then came the Internet.  Sex exploded on the Internet.  It lead the way in resolving key issues about selling goods and services on the Internet.  The sex industry practically developed E-Commerce.   The sex industry resolved algorithms and search engine puzzles long before mainstream industry.   It was pornography, after all, that issued so many offerings to so many sexual predilections.  Each one had to be cataloged, keyworded and put up for sale.   And sell they did.  entrepreneurs became billionaires.   If not everyone made a fortune then a good many made a decent living from having sex on the Internet.

But now the party is suddenly over.  Not completely over.  No.  But the party has diminished.   If the lights aren’t out, they have been dimmed, for sure.  Like the newspaper industry, the porn industry is going through the tough economic times from which it may never recover.   Sure, some of the icons will still stand, and some of the elements of both institutions will remain.  In some form.

As for those who worked in these industries,  finding work is tough in this economy.   There may be some opportunities for those who can make the transition.   As for most, it may be time to wipe the slate clean and start again.   Meanwhile, while searching for work, the news people are going on the Internet, and the porn stars are going to college.   What strange times are these.

The Women’s Movement, Advance Back to the 1950’s

housewife-7

There are many ways to move backwards.   One of the more popular ways is to embrace what we perceive as tradition.  We view a seemingly idealistic pattern of behavior that has been rejected perhaps by previous generations and see it with fresh eyes and renewed vigor.   We see the upside, forgetting or ignoring that a downside ever existed.

It is perhaps even natural to want to return to the past.   The present is unsettling, and the future is obscure and insecure.   In the past it seems like values and virtues were firmly set.   People were honest artisans who farmed organically and used beasts of burden and not dreadful gasoline guzzling, sheet metal monsters to travel about.   Men were genteel and women were kind and gracious, capable of walking on air.   People has a special sense, a sixth sense, if you will, to perceive things that escape us today.

Of course, no one wishes to dwell on the realities.   The health issues, the dangerous horse doody and the  piles of garbage in the streets.    We forget the levels of ignorance, illiteracy,  and genetic maladies that left us with goiters, wall eyed, hairlipped, or with an extra leg hanging out of our chests.    We ignore the millions who starved because organic farming wasn’t quite getting it done.    We admire the honest craftsman but ignore the fact that until here was mass production most went without most things.   Many went without even shoes.    Most people had two outfits.  Every day and Sunday.  There were no color choices or the need for shoe racks or designer hangers.

And then we have the Women’s Movement.    First off, there is no denying that there are great many skilled, highly intelligent and competent women practicing in any number of professions.   These are great women who have changed the course of history and made tremendous contributions to their industries and disciplines, and to society as a whole.

More women than men are graduating from medical school and law school.   Women, overall, earn more money than they ever did.   On the less grand scale, there are more working women, showing up at the office or working diligently from remote locations, mainly because they have to contribute to the household income.   They work because they have to, they want to, to the point perhaps where they never give it a thought.

But then there are increasingly more younger women who lack the desires of the women who pioneered the Women’s Movement.  Maybe it is a generational thing.   Perhaps it is even rebelliousness or a backlash of sorts.   Or maybe some have arrived at the harsh reality that sitting at home is a lot better than showing up at an office where you are forced to deal with politics, harassment, and the duties inherent with your profession or job.

Some may argue that this is not the case.   And some may argue that these women have the freedom to do whatever they choose.  It’s about choice.  Yes.  Certainly it is.   But when you are taking up space in an elite law or medical school so you can be a better marriage prospect, rather than a contribution to that community, something may be wrong with this picture.

As Marilyn McGrath Lewis,  director of undergraduate admissions at Harvard, was quoted in an article in the New York Times, “It really does raise this question for all of us and for the country: when we work so hard to open academics and other opportunities for women, what kind of return do we expect to get for that?”

In the same article Peter Salovey, the dean of Yale College, ” What does concern me is that so few students seem to be able to think outside the box; so few students seem to be able to imagine a life for themselves that isn’t constructed along traditional gender roles.”

Simply put, a lot of precious space is allocated in schools that produce influential inhabitants in their disciplines, people who move forward to assume places at the highest levels of their professions.  People who become inventors and innovators, judges, developers of vaccines, leaders in their communities and their nation.   This is not necessarily the place where  someone takes up one of the few seats to practice for a couple of years and then move on to stay-at-home motherhood.

And with this type of behavior, we are referring to the achievers.    We are referring to the elite.   Beneath the elite we have those who quite simply just want to marry the richest guy with the most stuff on the best career track who can let them stay at home.   Where professional challenges were once the major concern for young women in college, it seems now the big ticket it merely to find the guy.   Find the guy.  Marry well.  Marry rich.  As for love…maybe?

That way you can stay home, have lunch with your girlfriends and wax for hours on the celebrity hit list and other people they don’t know.   This new attitude, as noted before, may be an act of rebellion.  It may be a reflection of the economy.  It is tough economic times and life is tough out there.   Find someone who will take care of you.  Not someone you can be with and share the joys and misery.  Someone who will take care of you.

If you are purchasing a tablet to help you win your game! Erectile dysfunction and impotence are problems that affect a large number of people each year. sildenafil rx ED is to be well understood and taken care of creating this technique an successful and efficient recommended for you generic sildenafil tablets therapy. There are several acupuncture4health.ca viagra discount prices treatments available in the market only as the one branded product. Evidence of anxiety masked by physical symptoms Stress is closely linked see content order generic levitra to a biological mechanism called “flight-or-fight” instinct. I know some will deny this.  Some will complain.   But we are a nation that if nothing else works extra hard to conceal the obvious.  In this case the obvious is registered on Facebook and the social networks.   It is apparent on my elevator as the gaggle of students converse among themselves or, as is more the case, endlessly on the telephone.   If an original thought ever erupted from a lipsticked mouth, brains would suffer a meltdown and the elevator would plummet to the basement level or purgatory  where leftovers, closeouts and sale merchandise are to be eternally begotten.

There is no blame, really.   And this is hardly a rant.  It’s an examination of the overall policies, social and financial, that have left this nation, hurting, wanting, and very insecure.   As a market driven society where consumerism made up two thirds of the economy, going cold turkey on the shopping impulse is like being a junkie at a revival meeting.   You don’t know what to do with yourself or when the pain will start to fade.

In a society where air brushing as created the perfect form of beauty that no living being could ever recreate, it is bound to drive women crazy.   To think that our celebrities and movies stars, who appear to us after sixteen hours having designers, makeup artists, etc.,  preening, fussing, and dressing them, can be copied in real life is bizarre.  Truly bizarre.    Yet that belief is the standard.  It is an accepted reality, in spite of the facts.  In spite of the facts that the celebrities and  models can’t duplicate in real life the perfect image of themselves.

Yet here we are with women believing that with a few good beauty tips and some high priced cosmetics they can actually look as good as their aspirations.    So women, smart women, exchange beauty and dressing tips, talk about their favorite celebrities and seem never wonder how they allowed themselves, no voluntarily, jumped into this box in the first place.

Men don’t escape responsibility.   When it comes to romance and related social issues.  Most men are idiots.    Inarticulate idiots, at that.   “Dude.  Dude?”    The idolize the marketing  version of the sex symbol that is both unwieldy and unachievable.   It makes them feel awkward to think they have settled for less than the stay at home beauty queen.

It is understandable.  Most men really don’t have much to work with.   They have their jobs and the things they buy and they things they believe they possess.  Like their women.  Most men have been programmed that anything remotely resembling taste, outside of cars and lawn care, is effeminate or gay.  They are taught to believe their wives know better about everything except the job and the industry they compete in nearly every day of their lives.

More importantly, many men are threatened by thinking and successful women.   They want their women to stay at home.   They don’t want them competing.  It is tough to have a bigger penis contest with someone who has you out outmaneuvered because they aren’t wearing one.   It is tough to go up against the traditional social pressures that have evolved since Mom and Pop partnered as equals in the Mom and Pop shops.

After all, your mother and father probably set up the family that way.  Others around you have condemned you as less of a man if you can’t carry the weight of a stay at home wife and three kids in the self-indulgence  program on the weight of your designer shoulders.   This is your job.  Nay.   This is your duty.   Sit there and be mute, forgetting the lessons of the past.

What past?  When the little woman sat home and allowed her brain to atrophy on nonsense and more nonsense.   When the high point of the day was doing battled with that dreaded ring around the collar.  When the woman was viewed as chattel, because as such they had no real ownership other than what was allowed by law.   When soap operas and smores took priority over the Cuban Missile Crisis and the advent of social change.

Part of that change was Women’s Liberation.  More succinctly, Women’s Rights.   I remember when a good job for a woman was being a teacher.  “You could always teach,” or so it went.   “Or teach for a couple, few years until your husband gets his career off the ground.  And then you can stay home and go out of your mind with the children.”

Okay, it’s different now.  With the advent of illegal immigration and cheap labor, many women have a helper.  They have a nanny and a housekeeper.   They don’t clean, they don’t have to clean, cook, or do the laundry themselves.   The maid does it.   If you explain it correctly in broken Spanish, then she may even hang the delicate fabricates and not cram them into the dryer.

It is different.  Women’s careers.  Been there done that.   Women are free to go to the top schools in the country and then be the stay at home mother.    They can  nosh with friends  on salad and sushi.    They can discuss the merits of  Young Einstein.  Rather than try to be one themselves.

As for the women that still march on,  working to achieve at the highest levels of profession and society.   Bless you for keeping the bar at some civilized level of progress.   I realize it is tough sledding in the face of those who criticize you and wonder if you have a screw loose for not seeking out the perfect fellow and settling down.  At home.   But you are the ones who the next generation may use as role models.   You may yet inspire the next generation of women, not to stay at home but to take advantage of their talents, their brains and, yes, their sexuality.   Take advantage so that society can benefit from your unique and special skills.