Molly and Dollop: Conversations with the Master

St. George the Abstainer

MOLLY:  Somebody told me it would be easier to abstain if I drank the Kool-Aid.  Do you have any?

DOLLOP:

George W. Bush the 43rd (President of the USA) was just knighted St. George the Abstainer by the Ancient Royal Order for Eleventh Century Papal Reforms.  (The AROECPR wanted to celebrate the introduction of celibate priests in the Roman Catholic Church.  The Reforms gave us 10 centuries of a pure priesthood.  Sort of.)

George is glad.  He likes to dress up for grand Eleventh Century Papal ceremonies and you can just imagine the costume!   It was about time somebody said something good!  After he looked Putin in the eye, Bush spent three trillion dollars to invade and trash a small country, leaving it dependent on U.S. support for the next 100 years.  He brought the country to a recession while securing the life styles of the very wealthy.  Oil profits are phenomenal.  Our deficit is phenomenal. America is now known for torture and secret prisons.  Kooks are back on the judicial bench.  We have established that poor people are on their own and they can move to China or Russia if they don’t like it.  All this was done in a few days between visits to the ranch in Texas!  Abstinence.  It’s all he’s got as a good mark in history.

St. George launched a national campaign – “Abstaining – It’s Not Just for Youth.”  As part of the campaign, a national network of special camps – Abstainers For Life – are to be established by faith-based organizations.  Part of the campaign is to highlight role models. One group of recruits features members of Congress and government leaders -- Larry Craig, Henry Hyde, Mark Foley, Gary Condit, Newt Gingrich and Eliot Spitzer will demonstrate Learning the Force of Abstinence.  Another group – “Show Me The Way” – will recruit Catholic celibates, who have lived abstinence since the Eleventh Century.  (Anybody who has been assigned to perform community service, due to certain complaints, should shut up.)    Others are, for example, a Mayor of Spokane who insists that “he is a conservative Republican already” and he is active with the Boy Scouts. 

The Camp will use a 12-step program to relieve “cognitive dissonance.” 

1. Clear brush
2. Clear brush again
3. Ride mountain bike
4. Pray
5. Don’t read newspapers, watch TV, internet
6. Don’t think about fun times in the ol’ frat house
7. Go jogging
8. Attend workshops on critical issues: “Total Abstinence – A Path to National Security,” “Treating the Side-effects of Cognitive-Dissonance in Abstention Participants,” “Home Treatments for Managing Your Libido, with Emphasis on Yoghurt/Oatmeal”
9. Cold shower
10. Take the brush that you cleared, bind it into a sheaf of long thorny sticks, strike self

Nancy Reagan is coming out of retirement to help recite the inspiring motto “Just Say No, Boys.”

Two additional steps are very advanced and modeled on yogic techniques.  Something called “inverting the chakras” by getting into painful upside-down positions.  Licensed chiropractors must be present for those.  People with a wide stance are known to experience dissection of the soul when they attempt these – and it is not curable.

In spite of the work that conservatives have done to promote abstinence, there is disturbing evidence that it is not working.  In spite of investing $1.5 billion to get teens to stop it – JUST STOP IT -- more than half have had oral sex.   Many are technically virgins!    Whew, is that creative, or what?   America is known for innovation, and we offer one of the best educations in the world.  Teens are saying “It is no big deal.”  No big deal!!  Do they realize what $1.5 billion could have bought?

Hello, papal, Talmudic, and Taliban smart guys:  we know there is “technical virginity.”  Can you give us hope for the possibility of “technical celibacy?”

Thanks to the success of the Great Cultural Revolution in Stamping Out Sex, America’s rates of early death and disability ** due to sexual behavior ** is three times the rate of other developed nations.  Wait!!?  Is that good?

Meanwhile, the FCC is doing its part for abstinence.  It has come down hard on rap artists who use the word “thighs.”   Albertsons grocery store did its part too.  Albertsons pulled a magazine from their shelves for printing the V. word, and the c. word and words for l.m., h. and a. parts of the body.   

Everything is better when you drink Kool-Aid.   Recommended flavors are:  Scary Black Cherry, Penguin Paradise From Paris, Sunshine Punch, Oh-Yeah Orange-Pineapple, and Kickin’ Kiwi Lime.  You will find that your restless soul will swoon with good feeling, everybody will seem nice, your cravings will go away, and your mouth will be smudged a cheerful red or purple.   Thanks, St. George!

Three Times a Week

MOLLY:

A nice old man saw me in the park and he said he wanted to marry me.  But I can’t even cook, let alone buy groceries!

DOLLOP:

Be careful.   It was only recently discovered that old people in America have sex.  It could be true, if you believe science.  Some of the folks are not even married.  Someone should tell them that they will die die die!

The sad part is, older men are faced with a terrible situation.  They are going to die sooner than the women.  Their libido, however, is still twice more lively.  Appropriate libido-bait their age has joined a book or a knitting club. The men have lost their looks.  Younger women cannot help but see the fleshy bits, falling hair, yellow teeth, pot belly.  Daylight is harsh, unless they are billionaires.

It is too bad that Viagra was invented to enable older men.  It is the older women who need it!  The tremendous sympathetic support from health plans for solving the problem of lift leaves the liftee whistling in the wind. The women are satisfied eating pie and reading a good book.

That’s why that man is in the park. 

The French have less of a problem.  They have a long tradition of lusting for older women and somehow the women keep their heat.

All the attention has been on the abstinence of the young.  Meanwhile, the elders have retreated to reservations where a raging bacchanal is disguised behind well-tended lawns, muzak playing in large lobbies, huge easy chairs, tame water aerobics, and putter golf.  Has anyone gone into their “recreation and entertainment centers” to see what is really going on!??  Are the rules of allowed sexual orientation being obeyed?  Karaoke, my foot.  Perhaps we should rethink the idea of keeping old people out of sight.  They should be watched!

And take away their pills.  We don’t give pills to the young; we take away pills and protection from the young, especially the girls.  And here we give pills to old men.  Who then lust after unprotected girls.

One solution is to put the pills in control of the women.  This actually happened.  A Brazilian town found that giving away free Viagra to the elderly was very popular idea all around, until the men began to stray.  The city decided to give out the pills to the women, who could decide when to have a nice hot bath or a grope in the dark.

The drug companies are going for a daily dose.  In the name of spontaneity.  Not to mention 50% profits.  Ever-Ready Man.  They say that the typical four to six times a month takes too much planning and makes for awkward timing.  The price per pill exceeds the cost of a condom, but health plans, and, in general, everybody, is behind erections.  That 30-minute window from lust to ability is just too darn much.  Especially if you used to be a 1-minute popper. (Hummm.  How to pass the time with a willing lady??)   Ever-Ready Man may have to find multiple partners, however, since three times a week is the usual limit.  Quick FDA approval is expected.  There are people who do not, no! no! no! do not, want to think of themselves as impotent.  They are ready to embrace the idea of a daily pill for “high blood pressure” that gives good buzz in the nethers.

Unlike RU-486 or Plan B, viagra is freely available.  Erections are an important national resource.  Apparently the pills work even when men are in an altered mental state (alcohol, ecstasy, power), when they are less likely to make wise choices.  Who cares about wise choices?    Medicaid even reimbursed the cost of Viagra for 198 convicted rapists and high-risk sex offenders in New York.  OK -- all erections are NOT good.

The drug companies are concerned that sales are falling off, in spite of over $400 million in advertising in 2004.  Rumors of blindness, not so much hairy palms.  Could we be reaching an erection plateau?  Are people not getting the ads?  Did Mr. Rogers ever explain “erectile dysfunction” to the children watching?

Unhand That Beast!

MOLLY:

I went to the zoo the other day and a monkey was very friendly, making sign language to me.  I gave him some cookies.  Was that all right?

DOLLOP:

It is a very good thing to be kind to other species, especially as we are destroying so many of them in order to support our lavish lifestyles.  We have taken away their land, soiled their water, sonic-blasted their brains, bull-dozed their nesting areas, shot their mothers, put their babies in little cages to amuse our babies, and harvested their body parts.  A little kindness is warranted.  Even respect.  Love would be all right too.  And just hope to earn some back.

If it were not for the love, God knows where our genes would be right now.  It is not very well known that inter-species love is not unknown.  Probably as likely as love with aliens, and look how I turned out!

A zillion years ago before man built concrete and steel barriers between himself and natural life, and found himself barefoot in the forests much more often than once a year on vacation, there were fruitful unions that shaped our gene pool.  The early explorers were most likely Desperate Housewives, who had to walk hours away from home in order to fetch jugs of water and got a little fed up about it.

We can only imagine which side made the first overtures, about six million years ago.   It is common, of course, for creatures seeking “to make sexual selection” to present their assets in a good light.  This was hard to do before wonder-bras, thong underwear, and speedos.  We can assume that both sides assumed the cross-species come-hither posture of sticking the chest out and flapping arms.

We hope the species involved showed some good taste.  Not like those shameless Bonobos.  We imagine that the species mutually recognized where the other’s organs were located.  Indeed, early humans could have looked like chimps and could have seemed quite attractive if you were an ape.  Neanderthals of Europe – stocky, large-browed, with sharp teeth and jutting jaws – might have hooked up with modern humans from Africa.  We think they were equally smart.  There is evidence that more than a few felt they were soul mates, in spite of being dirty and smelly at the time.    

There is a researcher seeking to explain why Ecuadoran male manakin birds, using their wings, can pop like firecrackers and make wooshing noises while courting.  After filming them in action, and locating exact feathers and muscles involved, she is planning to clip certain wings to prove her hypothesis.  “I should be able to completely silence the bird,” she said.  The manakins are planning to capture her on her next visit, and test which bodily clippings will render her dateless. 

Contemporary female chimps have been observed “mating furtively outside their social set.”  It could well be that our proto-Desperate Housewives were corrupted watching them.  Thanks to DNA analysis, we the people can tell when the chimp babies come from baby-daddies who are not the boys at home.  Meanwhile, the male chimps go through a lot of vicious fights and humiliations to become the alpha-male and chief procreator.  Good thing they don’t know about DNA.  A respectable female researcher has questioned the benefits of becoming an alpha male, but her speaking tour has not reached the male chimps yet. 

Thanks to bird studies, we know that it is the low- or mid-level males who are doing the siring.  The flashy, powerful alphas are being snookered.  Mission Accomplished, indeed.

Serengeti cheetahs (the name is such a give-away!) have more than one father per litter 43% of the time.  And then, the very next year, the “mobile” females move on to a new set of fathers.  The frightening conclusion that females are the ones in control comes from a close look at lizards.  Those hussies will go for the larger males who have the best territories of nice shady rocks.  If you give a scrawny lizard some nice digs, they will consort with him, but sneak a visit to the big guy on the side. 

A research project trying to bring diversity to a wolf colony found that introducing strange-boy wolves into a new neighborhood did not work because they could not compete with the established alpha- and high-ranking guys, and they would end up joining the rest of the males who got no action at the bar.  The way to go was to introduce strange-females, and boy, was that a successful diversity program!

Apparently the smell of a woman’s armpit gives away her fertile time.  At the same time, the woman feels pretty lusty for new genes, and tends to dress better.  Don’t fetch water from long distances at this time!  Or, if you go, take Inflatable-Man with you.

We know the trysting didn’t last.  DNA evidence points to only 1.2 million years of fooling around before the species went their separate ways.  That is a lot of Desperate Housewives, nevertheless.  Scientists say that the number of species that deviate in this way are very small, and it is only a few that would engage this jungle adventure.  The scientific observation concurs with the Virginian map of “orientations.”  The esteemed Virginia legislation recognizes 8 different sexual orientations.  I think they must be:  hetero, homo, bisexual, transgender-gynephilia, transgender-androphilia, pedophilia, bestiality, and Virginian hypocracy-philia.  In the latter case, respectable citizens claim “hetero” and impose it on others, but practice all the other ways in secret.  They might have overlooked the orientation found in an actual living crab, which was actually biologically bisexual, and is suspected of having had sex with itself (at least once…).    Most of the orientations are, of course, forbidden.

By the way, this means the Virginia legislature gets to spend a lot of time arguing the distinctions among sexual orientations, with details.  In the great religious traditions of debate such as those of Tibetan monks and Jewish Talmud scholars, VA legislators must explore whether anything “not-hetero” is the same as “bestial.”  If Kinsey were still alive, I am sure he would be busy helping them regarding degrees of deviation.

We imagine the ancestral chimp to be a brash opportunist.  Maybe one of those middle-level bad-boys tired of hanging out in the bar and ready to advance humanity.

With the advancement of civilization, the problem of inter-species and regular promiscuity has been addressed.  Especially by people who are very much into family values, and more particularly, family honor.   For example, Molly, your elders could drive a big nail into your head.  I am not speaking figuratively.  (Really, look up “lobotomy.”)   A famous case is the fate of one misbehaving daughter belonging to an elite American family.   It is a form of “honor maiming.”  Honor killing is done a world away, where an incident of errant kissing can get you stoned to death, and by your own family.  Everyone, let’s keep perspective!

By the way, in that same family of the misbehaving daughter, the misbehaving famous sons carried on a multi-generation family tradition of promiscuity because that was an expression of power and privilege, and an entitlement.  Same libido, wrong gender…

For a period of nearly 40 years, the Swedes (and Swiss, and Austrians, and Belgians, and Germans, and Danes, and Norwegians) sterilized their young, rebellious, promiscuous females, especially those of “mixed blood” and alleged feeble minds.  Little did they know then, that there were chimps in our forest, long ago.  Besides, sex reduces stress – lower blood pressure, more bonding hormones – up to a week.  Those mellow Desperate Housewives possibly carried a lot more water and lived longer.

Don't You Wish Your Girlfriend Was Fat Like Me?

MOLLY:

I am travelling to Mauritania and I hear that a girl must be fat to fit in.  Do you think I need to go to fat camp?

DOLLOP:

I agree that you are at a disadvantage.  Here in America, you only have regular supersized fast food to fatten you up, whereas in Mauritania they have cows that can provide rich creamy milk – up to 5 gallons a day.   To speed up the fattening process in modern times, they discovered steroid hormones which can cause rapid weight gain. Also, women will take drugs that make them lethargic so they won’t burn calories.  In this country, of course, no one would take steroids because they might give you whiskers and hair on your chest.  I think.

A “Mauritanian make-over” can take 40 days.  The goal is to get up to more than 300 pounds or a BMI of at least 40.  You want to look ready for a wheel barrow.  The symbol for success is a “golden goose” plaque on the front door, bringing honor to the family.  It is no joke filling out a billowing sheet called a mulafas.  Men really love the look of “the blob.”  They don’t want to marry a girl who still needs to be fed 10,000 calories a day because who knows, she may not be motivated and need a trainer and so on.  Also, you know that if a girl resisted having her feet squeezed, her ears pulled, pinching on her inner thigh (out of sight), and bending her fingers backward, she is probably willful anyway.  Who needs that in a bride?

The current success rate for “looking good” is only one in five, unfortunately.  The younger generation – you can expect this from rebellious teenagers – is secretly doing isometric exercises under their flowing robes, or sneaking out to run in place in the back of the garden.  A few ragged teen magazines left by American tourists taught them the techniques of bulimia and anoxeria.

However, thanks to a national pride movement, news of Mauritania has reached the world.  The Mauritanians have introduced an exchange program with America.  They will send their daughters to America for at least 40 days to live with a middle-class family and enjoy fried chicken, pizza, donuts, French fries, jumbo sodas, and double-hamburgers with cheese, bacon, and mayo.  This will be cheaper than giving the girls all the camel’s milk to drink.  Plus, the program guarantees results.

In exchange, Mauritania welcomes fat American girls as tourists to Mauritania, where the girls can parade the beach with pride (as long as they wear a mulafa).  Guys will hit on them, lust for them, and offer to “play” at carting them around in a wheelbarrow.  They will call them “my little goose,” and teach them the French word “gavage” for gorging and force-feeding.  They will help them climb up stairs and get onto camels, gleefully pushing their palms on scrumptious bottoms, thighs, and gigantic arms.  This is sure to be a relief from being surrounded by fitness freaks in America who wear skimpy shorts and eat salad with dressing on the side. And insults from dating services who want to know your size.  Plus there is the temptation and indulgence of binging on a couple of gallons of camel’s milk.

Mauritania is one country that has managed to reduce the longevity gap between women and men.  A short life in the name of beauty – corpulent and sexy – is worth it.   

A Good Look at a Future

MOLLY:

My friend Sally is pregnant and she was made to watch an ultrasound of her fetus.  Are they going to make me do an ultrasound, and make me watch?

DOLLOP:

The Virginia House of Delegates are worried that women will not want to be pregnant, and they want to shock them into having a baby.

The state of Virginia has a lot of problems.  Rural poverty, the worst traffic jams in the country, the influx of illegal immigrants, a lack of affordable housing, a low minimum wage, pollution, guns in the hands of maniacs, and so on.  One of the Delegates said, “It is hard.  It is hard work.  Hard problems.  It is so hard.  Let’s go beat up on poor pregnant girls instead.”  And they did.

After hours and hours of discussion, deliberation, voting and voting, getting bills to the floor, rereading the Virginia Constitution, rereading the law of the land, looking at Washington Post polls on abortion, and having spirited debates, they managed get to the bottom line.  “Some girls and women regret getting pregnant.  Let’s not allow that.  Those girls have sinned many times:  They had sex.  They had unprotected sex.  They got pregnant.  They told somebody.  They are not married to a nice, clean, affluent Virginia Delegate like me.”

Since some of the Delegates went to school in a True-Christian madrasa, they knew all about abstinence vows but were not too sure how babies got made.  And a few other things.  Plus, they were forbidden to think about it. 

The opposition, darn it, prevailed with a ruling.  Before the Delegates could vote on poor pregnant girls, they had to learn where babies came from.  They were locked in a room and forced to watch videos.  Now, you might think, can you talk about human eggs getting fertilized and avoid talking about the Delivery of Sperm?  No, you cannot.  Some mischievous staffer downloaded some clips from porn movies which he recast as “Human Reproduction Mechanics.”  The Delegates had a predictable reaction:  “Whaaaaaaaaaat!!!!”  But they really came unhinged during the segment on swimming sperm.   Basically, a million little sperm compete and crowd each other – like the running bulls of Pamploma – stepping on little sperm, jabbing elbows, poking eyes, cutting each other off to get to the Queen, a very fickle egg.  “Nascar race” is an understatement.

The Delegates concluded, pushing aside “hard” concerns about the regional distribution of transportation funding, the numbers of people with no health insurance, beach access versus the rights of mansion owners, and so on – that The Root Cause of Pregnancy is Semen.  If you want to reduce pregnancy, and unwanted pregnancy, you had to go after the Semen.  That means the men, if the Mechanics movie was right about Delivery.

They decided that a video “intervention” was a pretty good thing.  Why not a video that men would be made to watch before they delivered semen?  Sure, you could get poor pregnant girls to watch a video about babies, and make them cry.  But what about getting the men to think about their choices in The Act of Deliverance?

They hired Michael Moore, a nice man with a weight problem, who promised not to make it too funny, because extreme laughter is known to interfere with Human Reproduction Mechanics, according to people in the know.  The Delegates themselves had to go on faith, here.  Mr. Moore was to get men to “think about it” before they delivered any semen.  For example, there could be segments of a screaming baby keeping you up all night, poop and throw-up all over the house, incoherent little people who want something and cannot tell you what it is, many trips to Target and Wal Mart for strange devices with nipples or a dozen different sizes of “nappies.”  A segment would show the man writing a check 200 times for an amount of money that would easily pay for a hunting cabin, a powerboat, a GPS, a satellite-driven TV, an all-terrain vehicle, thousands of cases of beer, AND a few years off. 

Mr. Moore overstepped his bounds, however, and produced a video for the Delegates too.  It showed babies crying in emergency rooms, homeless people, victims of domestic violence, kids sleeping on rags in hovels, people with bad teeth, bad hair, bad clothes, bad health, and bad knees who could not afford medicine, and families without food.  Silly kids who dreamed of chicken nuggets instead of iPods.  Especially, he showed poor pregnant girls who became hostile, drunk single mothers, or abusive mothers, or drug-heads who left their kids with the grandparents.  Foster kids who wanted a “real” family.

When they saw the second video, the Delegates were overwhelmed.  Those who were single immediately vowed to marry the girls and give them a better life.  The others offered to adopt the babies, as they were True-Christians, and pro-life.  They offered to share their more-than-spacious houses, hire the girls as live-in nannies for a generous salary, send them to college, and pay for summer camp for the kids.  They vowed to never engage in the nasty Mechanics thing.  Not without protection, anyway, about which they knew nothing, however, because the madrasa was funded by the U.S. government and abstinence was all they were supposed to know.

A group of poor pregnant girls got together, took up a collection, and promised to send the Delegates copies of their ultrasounds so that they could have at least six months to prepare to help out and start writing checks.