What's He Pointing At?

There is not crap on TV on Saturday nights. Well, there is crap on TV. Lots of it. But there isn't any crap worth watching (for the most part) on Saturday nights. Sometimes you can hope for a good movie, but for the most part, it's crap. And last night I ended up settling on watching Back to the Future III. Not crap by any means. I did notice something a little weird, though.

At the end, when Doc and Clara come back to 1985 with their two boys, Jules and Verne, they're talking with Marty and Jennifer. And as Doc is yammering on about how no one's future is set in stone just yet (unless you're Lindsay Lohan and in that case, you're pretty much screwed) and it is what you make it, one of the boys makes this odd hand gesture toward his penis. That's right. Toward his penis. It was sort of like a 'come hither' gesture followed by very distinctive pointing. And if you've ever seen Back to the Future III then you know that it has absolutely nothing to do with a penis whatsoever! The video of it is below. I'm open to suggestions as to what the what was going on there.

A Penis With Personality

You know what will happen when a bunch of city supervisors over at your local City Hall enact a law which completely takes away your freedom of choice under the apparent guise of them knowing better than you? That's right. People near and far are going to want to enact another one which limits your freedom to choose even more. I'm not talking things like abortion and guns here, but that's only because I'm talking about San Francisco. No, when you factor San Francisco into the mix, you have to include wacky things like Happy Meals and the male foreskin. Wait. What now?

Yeah, there's a sentence that I never thought I'd type. At least, I never thought that I'd have the opportunity to include both 'Happy Meal' and 'foreskin' in the same sentence and have them both be relevant. But thanks to San Francisco, such a sentence AND such a concept is now possible. Try not to hang yourself until you finish reading. (I know how tough that will be. I had to resist the urge to hang myself until I finished typing.)

As you may or may blissfully not be aware, last week, San Francisco passed a law that forbids fast food outlets from giving out a toy with a meal that is not deemed "healthy". Personally, I think the easiest way around that law, rather than succumb to what San Francisco thinks that you should do and/or eat, would be to sell the toy and include the meal for free. There's no law against that. Yet. But I digress. Now, there might be a measure on the ballot next year "...that would make it a “misdemeanor to circumcise, excise, cut or mutilate the…genitals” of a person under 18." So sayeth CBS San Francisco. Good Lord, people.

I'm all for the not being able to mutilate genitals. Don't get me wrong, as that sounds like a fairly reasonable provision. However, to need a separate law for it would be, you guessed it, completely ridiculous. That's because you typically don't define a medical procedure as 'mutilation'. But back to the foreskin. (Again, a sentence I never thought I'd type.) The author of this asinine bill is a one Lloyd Schofield who claims that the circumcision IS genital mutilation. Uh-huh. OK, then. What else?

He seems to be going on the belief that circumcision is a religious practice. And yes, it has been for many years and still is in some instances I would assume. But I would be surprised if the majority of circumcisions that are being performed today are being done so because of a religious belief. I would also be surprised if the majority of people thought of circumcision as a religious rite as opposed to seeing it as a medical procedure. I checked with the CDC (at their website) and they don't have any guidelines on whether or not a circumcision should be performed for health reasons. According to the CBS article "Scientists with the Centers for Disease Control are still studying whether circumcisions are healthier, and have promised recommendations to the public." Oh, good. A foreskin promise. That's something to look forward to.

Haven't we always been told (or taught) that circumcision cuts down (pun probably not intended, but completely inevitable) on diseases and is just cleaner or easier to clean? I don't know the specifics, not ever having had a foreskin, I'm just going on what I've learned in various health/anatomy classes. I'm also going to go with what was on Seinfeld when Elaine asked Jerry if he had ever seen one that wasn't circumcised. He said he hadn't and she went on to tell him that it wasn't good. "No, had no face, no personality, very dull. It was like a martian. But hey, that's me." Do you want a weenie with no personality ? I don't think you do.

The point here (surprisingly enough) isn't about the penis. It isn't even about the foreskin. It's about the government trying to ooch its way into every aspect of the life of a private citizen and the decision that they should be making ON THEIR OWN. You don't need to the government to tell you what kind of food you can buy for your child. You're supposed to be responsible enough to make that decision on your own. Yes, yes. I realize that we are surrounded by morons. And I also realize that we are surrounded by morons with children. But we can't let the freedoms of the capable be taken away by the moronic. Technically, the moronic are supposed to suffer as a result of their poor choices. I realize that consequences are practically non-existent in a socialist society, but we're not totally there yet, so there's still hope.

I'm semi-interested in whether or not the author of this bill has had his snipped off. I don't know why I'm semi-interested in that, but I just am. Regardless, it doesn't mean that he gets to try to dictate (again, no pun intended, but pretty funny none the less) what others do with theirs. Why are people not up in arms about the very thought of this happening? I'm not exactly sure, but that alone frightens me more than the possible ban on circumcision does.

Another Sort Of Pop-Up

Look, all I'm saying is that if you're reading your kid a pop-up book and you happen upon an image like the one of the elephant below, maybe you just turn the page real quick and move on before your kid starts asking too many questions about the elephant's...um....trunk. Yeah. That's it. His trunk.

The Fiery Unit

Sure, you're going to be a little bit upset when you find out that your husband is having an affair. You might even contemplate some sort of revenge upon him and, perhaps, his straying unit. But if that's going to be the case, you're really going to need to think about what you're ultimately hoping to accomplish, here. Because while you might only set out to simply burn your husband's penis out of rage, should you end up burning down the entire house and killing him in the process, you're going to have a lot of explaining to do.

Let's go to the land down under to a suburb of Adelaide, South Australia called Unley. There we'll find a one 46-year old Rajini Narayan. We'll find her to find her husband has been having an affair. According to news.com.au, for some reason, in December of 2008, Ms. Narayan's husband was lying in the couple's bed and gave Ms. Narayan "...his email password and she found emails detailing the affair." Well. That's one way to do it. Needless to say, his wife was less than thrilled.

After learning of his affair, she allegedly said to him, "You say you loved her. I'm going to burn your penis. I'm going to tell your family what you have done." Shouldn't she have just chosen one? Tell his family OR burn the penis? And did she really say it like that? I mean, that seems rather matter-of-fact. Why would she say that? It really ruins the surprise of all of the penis burning that would take place later if you're asking me.

Now, her attorney claims that "...the words were "spoken from Narayan's heart" because of a "genuine, if wildly misguided" belief she would keep her husband." Hmm. Do you really want a husband with a burned penis? I don't know that you do. I certainly don't know why you would. Granted, it would probably stop him from having affairs, but that doesn't mean that Ms. Narayan, as the one doing all of the burning, is going to be benefiting sexually from such a deed either. But Mr. Narayan apparently didn't seem to care about his wife's plans/threats, as he allegedly "...rolled away from her, turning his back on her. He said: `No you won't, you fat, dumb bitch'." And she wants this guy...why? Burn his weenie off. That's how I feel about the situation right about now.

And that's apparently how Ms. Narayan felt as well, as she doused her husband in petrol and proceeded to have herself quite the weenie roast. However, her act of revenge wasn't just limited to the man's unit. No, she managed to burn him over 75 percent of his body at the same time she burned down the family home. The crispy cheater died a few days later. Whoops.

Ms. Narayan is, of course, on trial for killing her husband. She doesn't appear to be denying that she acted the way that she did. And while one can sympathize with someone who finds out that their spouse is cheating on them, can they really sympathize to the point where they're OK with them burning them to death? Perhaps. Perhaps if, like the prosecutor says, "Ms. Narayan had told a tarot card reader, who she had visited just days before the attack on her husband, that her husband would not let her reduce her working hours because she was paying for the other woman." No pun intended here, but what a dick.

I'm not so sure why Ms. Narayan couldn't just up and leave. There's no way in hell I'm staying with some guy who tells me that my paycheck is helping pay for some other woman that he's having an affair with. Yeah, I know that burning his penis off sounds really great and all. But the thing about fire is that it's pretty hard to contain to just one bodily organ, especially when the whole body is doused in fuel. I can't imagine that she won't be found guilty. Then again, I couldn't imagine that Lorena Bobbitt was going to get off either. Stay tuned!

Wash Your Willie!

We don't hear a lot about how all of that stimulus money is being spent, do we? We don't even hear whether it worked or not. Some folks say it did, some folks say it didn't. Since I guess that opinion depends on how your current situation is, it's really hard to say. But if I had to guess, I would say that the stimulus money hasn't done all that it could have done because it has been spent on dumbass things that have absolutely nothing to do with stimulating the economy over here. Hmm. Perhaps 'dumbass' is a bit harsh. I don't know. You tell me. Is it 'dumbass' to spend almost a million dollars "...on a study by a UCLA research team to teach uncircumcised African men how to wash their genitals after having sex." Wait. What was the question?

The question was just what you read that it was. According to something called CNS News, "The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), spent $823,200 of economic stimulus funds in 2009" on just such a study. The care and feeding of one's grundle in Africa. Paid for with stimulus funds that were paid for by your tax dollars. Why is this an important study? Well, from what I can tell, it's not. It's not even close to being an important study. It's certainly far from being worth almost a million bucks of dough that was supposed to be injected into the American economy, that is pretty clear to me.

But I could be wrong. Let's go over some specifics. First of all, this is a multi-tiered study and it's only the penis washing part that received stimulus money. (There's a sentence I never thought I'd type.) Second, they decided upon the genitalia cleansing goal because they "...have been unsuccessful in convincing most adult African men to undergo circumcision" so they're going to attempt "...to determine whether researchers can develop an after-sex genitalia-washing regimen that they can then convince uncircumcised African men to follow."

Now, one of the first things that I thought (that was printable) when I heard this was, "Why does anyone give a fat rat's ass whether or not African men can keep their unit clean after all of the sex?" That question is a little hard to answer, as it wasn't made real clear (shocking, I know). The closest that I could find to an answer was in the part of this grant that said: "If we find that men are able to practice consistent washing practices after sex, we will plan to test whether this might protect men from becoming HIV infected in a later study." Wait. What?

Um, don't we know how HIV is spread? Does bathing one's grundle prevent HIV? I'm not so sure that it does. I'm pretty sure that it won't. It sounds kind of like a fairly simple solution to not get HIV. Just wash off the ol' unit after the inadvisable coitus that you just engaged in and go about your way! That's not what we've been taught. Is it? I don't think that it is. But maybe they know something I don't. I, personally, don't own a penis, so I don't know how this might possibly translate into the real world. Do you have a penis? Do you wash it? Do you have HIV? I guess if you answered yes to the first two questions and no to the third, then I can deduce that the practice does work? Good Lord, I hope that's not the conclusion that I come to.

You know what part of this makes me think that this is just a complete waste of time? All of it, that is correct. But do you want to know specifically which part? It's where they explain "If most of the men in the study wash their genitals after sex, are willing to do so after the study ends, and report that their partners accept the regimen, the researchers will develop another study to see if the “penile cleansing procedure” actually works to prevent HIV infections." These are the kind of folks who just do not see the benefit in washing the wang after doing the ol' horizontal watusi. These are the kind of folks whose partners might be unaccepting of a dried-off dingus. What possible benefit were they offering these folks to participate in this study?

What is the water situation over there, anyway? I'm guessing that indoor plumbing is out for most of the folks that would be involved in this sort of practice, yes? How feasible is this anyway? I'm guessing not very. How feasible is it that the stimulus money that was spent on penis polishing practices did not stimulate the US economy? Again, I'm guessing not very. And how feasible is it that this could be justified by the weasel that got the money for this study? Judging from the fact that he did not answer the question (posed by CNS News), "The Census Bureau says the median household income in the United States is $52,000. How would you explain to the average American mom and dad -- who make $52,000 per year -- that taxing them to pay for this grant was justified?” I'm going to stick with my answer of 'not very'.

Too bad they couldn't have used this money to teach some of the People of Wal-Mart how to wash themselves. Or, at the very least, dress themselves. Now that would have been justifiable!

That's Not What It Is

Over there at Live Science, we learn that there was a little bit of excavating going on the other day in Sweden. I don't usually think of Sweden as a place that needs to be excavated, but I guess it does. Anyway, all of their excavating "...turned up an object that bears the unmistakable look of a penis carved out of antler bone." Of course. No, wait. What now?

Sometimes, I think of scientists as just like you and I (we would be the non-scientists). But when I read that sentence and learn that there IS an unmistakable look to an antler bone carved like a schlong that I realize that scientists see things in a whole different way than you and I. What was that? Oh, the bone? Heh-heh. (Pun totally intended.) Sure. Behold!

Well, they have a point. That's definitely penile look, I'll give them that. And according to a one Gšran Gruber (you pronounce that any way you want to), a archaeologist of the National Heritage Board in Sweden, "Your mind and my mind wanders away to make this interpretation about what it looks like – for you and me, it signals this erected-penis-like shape...But if that's the way the Stone Age people thought about it, I can't say." Oh, please.

Look, if there's one thing that has been an unfortunate constant through time and all eternity, it has been the penis. We all know what it looks like and we all laugh when we see it. (Seriously, I do not know how you guys walk around with those things down there.) And I'm sure the Stone Age people did the same thing. Either way, that's not a very scientific way of explaining this thing. Anyone could do that. ("Uh, it kind of looks like this, but I dunno.")

Contributing to quotes without a lot of scientific mojo to them would be a one Swedish archaeologist Martin Rundkvist, who says that "Without doubt anyone alive at the time of its making would have seen the penile similarities just as easily as we do today." You don't say. So, people thousands of years ago would have recognized a penis if they saw one? Really? Fascinating. Or not.

They don't know whether it was a dildo or not. It doesn't take a scientist with a fancy Swedish name to figure that out. That Gruber guy said, "Perhaps instead of, or in addition to, its sexual purpose, the object may have been used as a tool, such as to chip flakes of flint". What? I understand the part about "instead of", but I became a bit confused with the infusion of "in addition to". Are they saying that ancient dildos also doubled as some sort of a chisel? That doesn't seem like a very good idea at all. (First of all, you really need to hold that chisel steady to get the most effective cut. It can't be slipping and sliding all over the place, you know.)

They also don't know what it was for even if it was a dildo, as the article states, "It's not immediately clear whether the tool would have been one most likely to be used by men or women or both." Now, when they say "tool", are they referring to a tool like a hammer or are they referring to a tool like something that gets the job done? Hard to say. Not sure I want to know, either. Wait a minute. It says that the thing "...is about 4 inches (10.5 cm) long and 0.8 inches (2 cm) in diameter." Four inches long? Not even an inch in diameter? It's not a dildo. Trust me. It's not a dildo.

Men Love Their Penis

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Men are awfully fond of their penises. I mean that collectively, not like any one guy has plural penises (penii?). I hope.

The clip below is from a newscast out of New Orleans. It's hard to tell exactly what the topic was, but I'm guessing it had something to do with with women receiving some form of enjoyable sexual fulfillment. Regardless, the male newscaster couldn't help but take this opportunity to be extremely proud that some woman out there received some pleasure in some form from some other man's penis. Penis.

Penis.

P.S. Yeah, it was a really slow news day. But you can always find a story about a penis! At least it's good for something!