Is it disgusting? That depends on whose it is.

I have a confession. 

If the general consensus is that I should never do this again, I will seriously consider stopping (not that I had ever done this before–see below). I know that the story I am about to relate will disgust and confound some readers. Beware that I am thin-skinned, but don’t hold back.

Here’s the short version.  While in Chicago, my family and I (my wife and I have two daughters, aged six and eight) went to a trendy chocolatier (a store that sells high-priced chocolate).  While at said store, I ate some of the high-priced chocolate left by a customer who had left the store just as we were sitting down.

As I relate this, I am haunted by the Seinfeld episode where George Costanza is caught rummaging through the trash can in the kitchen of a house eating a pastry that someone had thrown away.  My adventure also brings to mind an idea put forth by “Tim,” a friend of mine, who has long argued that all morality starts with what one puts into one’s mouth.

Here’s what happened.  We went to a chocolatier, where my wife ordered a high-priced cup of hot chocolate.  The chocolatier was located on the first floor of an upscale mall that sells lots and lots of things that nobody really needs.  It just so happened that the Lego store was on the second floor of that mall.  That was our true destination when we were distracted by chocolatier’s prominent location.…

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semantics, schemantics

I have a friend that is sometimes frustrating to converse with, because he always wants me to define the terms I use.  Our conversation is filled with his requests to explain just what I mean.  He says, with justification, that people may use the same word but often have different…

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SEX

I know, a catchy title.  A little unfair maybe, since there’s nothing particularly titillating in what follows.  Or maybe there is, depending on what–what’s the saying?–“pumps yer nads!”   But in view of Erich’s post about our newly appointed head of Family Planning, I thought this might be the time to indulge more than a little in a topic rather close to my heart (depending on where one locates said metaphorical organ).

Did you know that the last week of October is national Protection From Pornography Week?  Yes, indeed, signed into law by our illustrious president, Mr. Bush back in 2003.  I for one had no idea I needed to be protected from it.  How reassuring to know that we are being defended from dangers both real and imagined by the ever watchful gaze of our very own homegrown clerics.

We’ve spent tax dollars on this.  Here is the link to the official White House proclamation.

Seems innocuous enough, even homey.  All that stuff about the destructive effects of porn on children, who can argue?

Has it occurred to anyone throughout the last two decades (beginning, in my opinion, with Ed Meese–anyone remember him?) of the war on pornography that–like alcohol and tobacco–pornography is simply not for children?  It seems a ludicrously simple idea to me–it was never intended for them.  We manage to have reasonable laws about things not intended for children.  We don’t let them drive cars (except at amusement parks, in specially constructed rides), we don’t let …

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Heavenly Bodies

For a short time, I watched a few of the “forensic science” shows like CSI, mostly for a laugh at the junk science.  I was particularly amused at the tool used to analyze metal.  The actor put a hub cap in a plexiglass box, the box was filled with smoke or mist, and the printer spewed out paper.  On that paper were the exact components of the metal, so much of this, so much of that.  Then the formulation was compared to their list of hub cap manufacturers, and lo and behold, there were two retail distributors of that brand hub cap in the city.  It was hilarious, like Lucy stuffing her shirt with chocolates from the speeding assembly line and about as likely.

I’ve stopped watching those shows, partly because they can only create so many magic plexiglass boxes, and because they’re so gory (regurgitated by a large snake was the end for me).  I also read a (true) story of a lawsuit involving lost ashes of a loved one (cremains) and the two got me thinking about our funeral customs.

There are really some odd customs, and chief among them for me, since I have to face them repeatedly (one bad thing about getting old is that your friends and family are old, too, and you lose a lot of them), is our ‘dress up’ custom.  That is where we take a body, dress it up in special clothes (sometimes bought new for the occasion, sometimes picked out …

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Moral Bias

I’ve been thinking about this since the initial post on our biases and all the responses.  In the course of trying to come up with an “appropriate” response to the world, we often find ourselves caught up in endless exception-making, fudging, attempts to shoehorn certain proclivities and habits into convenient moulds so we don’t go through our days constantly flinching at our inadvertant insensitivities. 

Does it do any good?  The flinching?  I mean, after the Sixties, one had to have been living on Mars for half a century not to be aware that there had been a Big Shift away from what might be called Gross Cultural Reliance to a more nuanced approach which has been (often derisively) termed Political Correctness.  The former is a condition wherein one “borrows” wholesale from the culture to make associational choices.  It doesn’t occur in this instance to question the wisdom of the culture–it’s what it is, and we are part of it, ergo…

But we realized that the Culture At Large was in many ways an Idiot.  It stepped on people.  It made too little room for variation.  It tried to be all things to all people, but it was necessary that all people somehow be The Same in order for that to work.  Those with a vested interest in keeping everything the same mightily resisted movement to change the rules.

We never did come up with a solid formulation that allows for prejudice.

You have to, you know.  What we ended up …

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