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!

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.

Family Values. Big. Ouch.

MOLLY:

Why is Mr. Foley’s concern for the private night life of a boy a big deal?

DOLLOP:

Gosh, we are about to enter the intersection of politics, theology, and lust.  You might want to cover your ears and hum while I explain.

Ex-Representative Mark Foley (R-Fla.) now says that the priests made him do it.  Not exactly, but he shares this thought with us now:  “I was but a child, when…”  He is just informing us that he was subjected to the following teachings from the church, through certain unnamed incidents:

- Priests are celibate; they do not get married
- Priests are supposed to tend to the spiritual development of children
- Sex out of wedlock is a sin
- Gay sex is a sin
- Priests may from time to time engage in sex (sin)
- They may from time to time engage in gay sex (sin)
- Early sex exploitation harms children (sin)
- From time to time, there were bloopers:  celibate priests engaging in gay sex-out-of-wedlock with children
- Nevertheless marriage which might sanctify sex for priests is unthinkable
- Especially God forbid gay marriage
- The punishment for getting caught for this blooper was for many years secret re-assignment, swearing everyone in authority to secrecy and denying it happened (after all, nobody believes children and what do they know?)

Now, as a conservative Republican, Mr. Foley is advancing certain other teachings under the rubric of “family values,” by his own example:

- To be gay is not what God intended
- Premarital sex is not what God intended
- Sex out of wedlock is not what God intended
- Gays should get help because they can be “saved”
- Pedophiles are not good for children
- People who are kept ignorant about sex will fear it, avoid it, and behave
- We don’t believe scientific studies that show that people who are kept ignorant about sex will have it anyway, and get pregnant or get AIDS and other STD’s
- We don’t believe research evidence that gays are a natural phenomenon, not a disorder
- Sex education especially about contraception is “against the family” because it encourages sex without serious consequences (death, disease, pregnancy)
- America should shove ABSTINENCE down the throats of everyone, including the whole world, even though scientific studies show that it is not an effective strategy for keeping people from having sex and they will get more likely have unprotected sex and get AIDS or get pregnant out of ignorance
- America should hold international financial aid hostage to the ABSTINENCE agenda, in spite of the die-off at home and abroad due to AIDS
- If a former President has an “incident” with an adult woman, impeach the heck out of him, immediately, and AT GREAT COST TO THE NATION
- Congress should tie up THE WHOLE COUNTRY in a campaign against gay marriage, because God forbid there may be a few people who want to go there
- Meanwhile, back in the closet, a certain gay Congressman MUST HAVE SOME SEX and cannot help himself
- Gay pedophiles in highly authoritative positions (especially Republicans) should be forgiven because “the priests made him do it”

To take his mind off this conundrum, Mr. Foley introduced a bill in Congress (on September 26th) congratulating the Professional Golfers Association of America on its 90th anniversary.  (No joke.) To make him seem more human, his peers in Congress said he was quite affable, like a nice guy at the country club.  “He signed up for lavish recess getaways with lobbyists and donors,” including signing up his special steady male friend.  “He’d wake up in the morning and look for an event to attend.”

For this really public display of self-hate and anguish, not to mention the absence of guilt about wasting valuable Congressional time-attention-billions-of-tax-dollars on things that are GOOD FOR EVERYBODY ELSE and a decoy for our real-secret-sinful-lives, we recommend 4 martinis for everyone.  And Mark, please give that cell phone a rest!!

Purity Goggles (TM)

MOLLY:

Is it true that when men see a woman, they have uncontrollable impure thoughts?

DOLLOP:

Yes.  Impure thoughts have posed a problem for men since the beginning of time.  That is why the clothing of women is often really more than they need in order to shield them from the elements.  Do you think a fear of sunburn causes women to dress in a tent?  Or that pilgrim women found it convenient to work on a farm, carrying buckets, picking up children, washing pots and pans under a pump, outside in the mud, while wearing long skirts and petticoats, and vests, and jackets over the vests?  Women in India wear 8 feet of sari cloth, over a long petticoat, and all of it nearly touching a ground covered with holy cow manure, chicken droppings, human waste, and puddles mixed with open sewage.

If not for this problem of revealing too much skin, women might choose short skirts and loose blouses for most of the work day, and dress up in a tight red bra, thong underpants, a lace slip (or not), a tight body-hugging top, and a mini skirt or a long clingy skirt when they want to strut their stuff.  They might put on some strapless 4 inch heels too, unless they are dancing, and then they might add a strap.

Since men have made most of the rules in traditional societies, they decided to cover the women up, all day, and punish them if they didn’t cover up.    When a working man takes off his shirt, for example, they don’t call him a “slut.”  When a plumber crawls under a sink and his pants show a crack, people don’t jump him and rape him.  They don’t stone a Muslim man for showing his arms or face.

The Institute for Public Filth and Purity Initiatives, however, has invented a solution.  The Purity Goggles ™ will be issued especially to those populations that are worried about the uncontrollable impure thoughts of men.  In fact, the Institute has gotten significant funding to promote the product in order to alleviate the tensions and agitations among “strict” religious groups such as the Taliban, conservative sects, and religious institutions (for example, Catholic seminaries).  The Goggles filter out female flesh and substitute an androgynous Manga character for any woman in sight. 

I have a photograph of Peter without the glasses, looking at women and having impure thoughts, and a photograph of Peter with the glasses, calm and unperturbed.

Of course there are people who don’t feel that their urges are uncontrollable and depraved, and successfully avoid jumping or stoning women all the time.  They tend to like spicy food too.

Plan V - Viagra to be Rationed

MOLLY:

Why do we have pills for old men to help them have sex, but we take away pills for girls?  Isn’t sex good for everyone?

DOLLOP:

Actually, I just got a bulletin from Pierre, South Dakota, from the future (2015):

The FDA announced new rationing guidelines covering prescriptions for viagra.  Encouraged by the success of other programs constraining sexual activity particularly in the youth, the FDA felt it was time to address the baby boomers’ wanton sex-without-purpose. 

“We are proud particularly that people in South Dakota are abstaining.  We have removed any sex education curriculum from our schools.  Unmarried people are not allowed to get any form of birth control, we don’t know the word ‘abortion’ here, and married adults are responsibly celibate except to procreate,” said the governor.   In fact, the state has become a role model nationally, getting the 2006 “Cleanest State” award from the Council on Abstinence.”

The rampant availability of the Viagra pill over the internet and general availability in pharmacies has led to a situation where the largest group having sex are those who claim dysfunction to justify a prescription.  That group now represents 90% of boomer men and 30% of boomer women (who are cheating – it isn’t made for them).

“The ‘dysfunction’ that justifies Viagra is mostly lust,” according to a researcher affiliated with the Council.  The Council heavily lobbied the FDA for the new regulations but found a favorable reception and many allies among the so-called “red” states.

South Dakota has gotten international attention for its abstinence.  Representatives from Pierre’s sister cities of Kabul and Tehran consulted on policy and implementation.  Finding a rare common ground on values, the SD state administrators rejected some extreme enforcement measures such as public stoning.  They did find a few insightful “best practices” for public sex education, however.  For example, exposing teenagers to videos of beheadings had a high correlation with a reduction in public touching.

Christian conservatives nationally have rallied to this success story.  The flood of contributions to the Council on Abstinence will sponsor a state-wide tour by Mel Gibson, the director of the movie “Passion of Christ.”  He said he would go to any town in South Dakota that had a bar, per his personal philosophy that extreme faith in combination with lots of alcohol will stem the ability, if not the inclination, to have purposeless sex.

South Dakota’s success is not without a touch of scandal.  An audit revealed that no small number of officials had billed travel to Cancun during spring break, even though no abstinence conference was scheduled there at that time.  Strangely, the representatives from Kabul and Tehran were eager to conduct the joint meetings at the same location.

Part of implementing the new regulations involves the re-education of pharmacists.  The program will be modeled on China’s “reeducation through labor” program: 

“…Reeducation through labor (laodong jiaoyang or laojiao) …  is compulsory education designed to change offenders into people who ‘obey law, respect public virtue, love their country, love hard work, and possess certain standards …’ .. a system of detention and punishment … imposed on those who are deemed to have committed minor offenses …not to be confused with reform though labor (laodong gaizao or laogai), the complex of prisons, labor camps, and labor farms ….”  (see Human Rights Watch, http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/china-98/laojiao.htm )

Pharmacists will learn to “just say no” to boomers who insist on amounts of Viagra exceeding the ration.  In their new role as arbiters of public virtue, they will need new negotiation skills and particularly familiarity with the prevailing dogma.

The fact that SD has experienced a severe net decline in population in recent years is not a great concern.  The move of the FDA headquarters to the state in 2010 was prompted by a hostile environment in Washington, D.C., as sex-crazed ravers, swingers, rebellious teens, and single divorcees united and organized continuous demonstrations along the security buffer around the agency.  “It is a dysfunctional minority that caused all the trouble,” said the Director of the FDA at the time.  “Sex is not normal.”

Don't Be Wonton

MOLLY:

Lacy says that we should not be “wanton.”  Can we help it if we are?

DOLLOP:

Every human in the world is born with a great urge to have wanton Soup.  It is called “wantonness.”  Controlling our hunger for wanton Soup is a challenge of every religion and every civilization.  Even our beliefs about whether the urge is “natural” are not in agreement.  Some people think the deep urge to have wanton Soup is the work of the devil, and if you have ANY Soup, you will be depraved and no longer do your chores.  You will want MORE and MORE and MORE and will not stop until you Explode.

The Catholics have classes in how to tell if someone is slipping you some Soup, and prayers that you can say to keep your mind off of wanting it.  And if you have some, depending on where and how much, they have a system of penances which is like an “un-do” button.   In fact, they have a concept of “original sin” which is explained in a story about the first time humans got a taste for it.  They think we are all sinners, so the purpose of life is to repent and to pray, and to be really really careful near anything like Soup.  In fact, the less you know the better.  They do NOT allow recipes in their religious lessons.  They do NOT want you to THINK about where Soup comes from and how it is handled, or who gets it, and what happens when they do.

The Muslims put a big black burka over women’s heads so you will not think of Soup, and, so men will not see women thinking about Soup.  They especially fear that people, left on their own without religion will just go to a sidewalk café, sit down, and have Soup right out in public, with no shame.  They are very interested in shame, and how you need to feel a LOT of shame just in anticipation of the possibility of getting anywhere near Soup.  Also, it is just hard to go through life thinking that some people are Exploding from excessive Soup eating, so they tend to get very harsh about it, and cut men’s hands off and stuff like that. 

The whole world seems to think that girls have a greater craving for wanton Soup than boys.  Maybe it is the wonderful and fulfilling experience of bleeding every month that reminds girls that they have certain unique body parts.

Speaking of Soup, it has been established that female chimps will be very nice to the lead male chimps in their chimp group.  They will volunteer to be mothers of babies for the alpha males and give them Soup.  But when the alpha male is tired or goes off with his cronies to watch football, the female chimps will recruit some other fathers on the side, and give them some Soup out the back door.

And of course, we know that many many societies let the boys sample wanton Soup freely, and even brag about it among themselves in locker rooms.  They have a policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” publicly, so everyone will not get upset and worry about how the society might Explode. 

Now I think a little Soup now and then is a good thing.  Moderation.  Enjoy a sip, a bite, the heat on a cold day, an appetizer for the rest of your day or dessert at the end.  You and Lacy should just keep in mind that other people are very sensitive on the subject.  They would rather go without, all their lives, than go out of control.