Luxury Brand to use DNA to fight counterfeiters
A company based in the state of New York will apply DNA markers to luxury goods in the hope of counterpunching the counterfeiters.
Applied DNA Sciences has not identified the brand with whom they’ve reached the agreement, however they did reveal that it was a luxury goods company headquartered in Europe and affiliated with several product lines.
They have signed a 5-year contract with the luxury brand and will apply genetic material to their goods for identification purposes. The benefits of using DNA, with its qualities of being distinct and unique to every living organism, seem obvious.
James Hayward, the president and chief executive of Applied DNA said: "Proof of authenticity is a central tenet of brand integrity, and there is no better proof than DNA."
The company will use botanic DNA, which cannot be copied. Essentially, the genetic material will be fused with various fabrics, dyes or glues, thereby creating a unique, verifiable label.
Applied DNA will attract revenue every time they verify the authenticity of an item and for every authentication mark purchased.
It appears science and luxury are in perfect synergy.
---
I don't even know what to say to this just yet... it's an interesting thought though and opens up a myriad of possibilities.
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Obsession
I had a discussion with Erin about a week ago over perfume. She loves her perfumes and has a really nice collection of them. The conversation got turned to me and she asked what I own.
I told her:
That's it.
That's my perfume.
That's all I wear.
That's all I've worn since 1986.
I have no intention of that changing.
I've gone through four perfumes in my lifetime:
When I was little:
It was time. Clearly, it was time - because as a general rule, I try to avoid the perfume counter people like the plague.
I sprayed it into the air and then walked into the mist and...
That.
Was.
That.
From the time I've been out of high school until this afternoon - THAT has been my perfume. That's it. It is, without question, my signature scent.
I'm also certain that if I change it, a whole LOT of people are going to get mad at me. It's associated. There are many times where I've received a phone call after someone coming into contact with this particular scent again and it reminded them. Could be years later. Yes, I've also been yelled at over it as well. When a scent is so ingrained into a persons memory and the memory doesn't match the reality in front of you - it will cause people to call you up and yell at you for not being the person they ran into wearing it.
24 years.
That was done for a reason.
Everything should be done with a reason.
It violates my sense of loyalty to even consider something else.
Don't try to fix what's not broken.
----
and welcome to: Carlow, Ireland - Warsaw, Poland - Pedreguer, Spain and Japan and Jack!
I told her:
That's it.
That's my perfume.
That's all I wear.
That's all I've worn since 1986.
I have no intention of that changing.
I've gone through four perfumes in my lifetime:
When I was little:
- Sweet honesty (Remember that? The days of Bonnibelle lipgloss...)
- Charlie (welcome to high school)
- Trouble (Welcome to 12th grade. I LOVED that perfume and then I think they stopped making it.)
It was time. Clearly, it was time - because as a general rule, I try to avoid the perfume counter people like the plague.
I sprayed it into the air and then walked into the mist and...
That.
Was.
That.
From the time I've been out of high school until this afternoon - THAT has been my perfume. That's it. It is, without question, my signature scent.
I'm also certain that if I change it, a whole LOT of people are going to get mad at me. It's associated. There are many times where I've received a phone call after someone coming into contact with this particular scent again and it reminded them. Could be years later. Yes, I've also been yelled at over it as well. When a scent is so ingrained into a persons memory and the memory doesn't match the reality in front of you - it will cause people to call you up and yell at you for not being the person they ran into wearing it.
24 years.
That was done for a reason.
Everything should be done with a reason.
It violates my sense of loyalty to even consider something else.
Don't try to fix what's not broken.
----
and welcome to: Carlow, Ireland - Warsaw, Poland - Pedreguer, Spain and Japan and Jack!
Friday, September 11, 2009
not in a popularity contest, so...
Here are the two things I was talking about yesterday, since no one took me up on wanting to guess. To start:
Roe v. Wade, case decided in 1973 by the U.S. Supreme Court. Along with Doe v. Bolton, this decision legalized abortionin the first trimester of pregnancy. The decision, written by Justice Harry Blackmun and based on the residual right of privacy, struck down dozens of state antiabortion statutes. The decision was based on two cases, that of an unmarried woman from Texas, where abortion was illegal unless the mother's life was at risk, and that of a poor, married mother of three from Georgia, where state law required permission for an abortion from a panel of doctors and hospital officials. While establishing the right to an abortion, this decision gave states the right to intervene in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy to protect the woman and the "potential" life of the unborn child. Denounced by the National Council of Bishops, the decision gave rise to a vocal antiabortion movement that put pressure on the courts and created an anti-Roe litmus test for the judicial appointments of the Reagan and Bush administrations (1981–93). In a 1989 case, Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, the court, while not striking down Roe, limited its scope, permitting states greater latitude in regulating and restricting abortions. Then in 1992, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the court reaffirmed the abortion rights granted in Roe v. Wade, while permitting further restrictions.---
--
Now, regardless of anyone's personal views on abortion, it is NOT against the law. The SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, a government agency, says it's LEGAL. The HEAD of the Federal Court SYSTEM says it's okay. It's been OKAY for the last 36 YEARS. WHY it's even still on the table for debate is beyond me, but that's a whole other issue.
For those that don't think it should be legal, ask yourselves this: Would you find it reasonable for it to be a felony and would you be willing to put any woman that went for an abortion under arrest and then throw her in prison over it?
No female ever makes this choice lightly and no female that makes this choice is exempt from living with it.
Overwhelmingly, the opposition to this issue seems to be solely moral...and if you've read me at all, you know that I don't think morals should have any part in the making of laws... laws should simply be about the betterment of society in my opinion.
So, explain to me WHY on earth, no Federal health insurance plan will cover abortion.
I want to know.
Because I don't get it.
Again, the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT deems it LEGAL.
THE HIGHEST POWER IN THE LAND WE LIVE IN deems it LEGAL.
Let me further say that... Planned Parenthood, you really piss me off when it comes to this issue.
It does not make sense to me.
I, without question, hold nothing against anyone that doesn't like the idea of abortion. Can I see how it's seen as unsavory? Yes. Would I absolutely support any friend of mine that made the decision to go forth with a pregnancy even under horrendous circumstances like rape? Yes, because that's my job as a friend.
That said, even financially - does the state see it better to pay a couple of hundred dollars for an abortion or possibly have to pay the next 18 years of health care, food stamps, welfare, etc, etc. Not that most abortions are even from lower class economics, but really - getting down to facts and figures, what makes more sense.
With the horrendous rate at which women are raped in this country, should they then have the added bonus of having to go into debt to pay for an abortion on top of it? God Bless the morning after pill (RU486 - which had to be fought for as well for some ridiculous freakin' reason) - but how many cases go unreported?
With the horrendous rate at which women are subjected to verbal, emotional and physical violence at the hands of their partner - only made WORSE and at a HIGHER RISK of DEATH when they become pregnant as seen here, here and here, where it lists that up to 25% of pregnant women are abused and sometimes killed...
Does it make sense to have someone in a domestic violence situation and then not afford them the means to sever the ties with their abuser because their insurance, that they pay thousands of dollars a year for, says no.
Two) Give citizenship to everyone already here. Just do it already for cryin' out loud! Wave your magic wand and make it happen.
If this health care option isn't going to cover undocumented people - make them documented. This country was built on IMMIGRANTS. It's the very fabric of our existence.
Costs are forcing hospitals to close all over the place, especially in Florida and California due to them not being able to handle the charges wracked up by people who can't afford to pay.
If you're going to make it a LAW that EVERY American citizen has to carry Health Insurance, just like you have to carry car insurance - that's fine with me. Got it. Understood. That doesn't answer for the costs incurred by those that are here illegally and are not required to carry health insurance.
You also can NOT have those people dying in the streets either or afraid to go to the hospital and then DIE AT HOME.
Estimated 11.9 million illegal immigrants - that's 11.9+ MILLION illegal immigrants that will what? Be required to stay healthy? Die? What?
Blanket statement!
You're all now citizens!
Prove who you are, get your citizenship certificate.
Welcome to America.
Now go get some health insurance.
I say this for another reason too - I dislike the idea of American companies exploiting illegal immigrants. What the hell is that?! You don't get to do that. Stop it. Right now.
Anyone that you hire has the right to minimum wage - and trust me on this one, no one is getting rich off of minimum wage. I don't even know how most people can even live on minimum wage. That is, however, the LEAST anyone should expect and the least you can legally do. The ONLY people that get around that is the food industry where they STILL have a mandatory minimum.
The LEAST.
"I would pay you far less if I could legally get away with it!"..."Gee, thanks"...
COME ON!
It's a LAW.
Wow...look at that... another law... we don't ignore this one in a wide sweeping blanket though, do we? There is not one company that would come out and say, "Well, you can work here, but we don't like that law and we're going to IGNORE IT. We find it immoral."...or even better... "Fine, we'll allow you minimum wage, but because we find that law immoral, we're not going to offer you workman's comp over it if you work for the government."
Side note: Grant just came over to see what I was typing and said, "You don't really want to put that on your page, do you..."
OF COURSE I DO! When you see something that looks fundamentally wrong, you say something about it.
Grant: "Abortion is a hot topic..."
Me: "I know."
Grant: "Do you REALLY want to throw that out there on your page?"
Me: "YES!"
The day I have to start censoring myself, is the day I stop having a journal...
And really, it's NOT even about abortion. That's been ruled LEGAL. That's not up for debate. What IS, is it's legal. The ISSUE I'm debating is WHY then, isn't it covered by the very same system that MADE it LEGAL.
And that, is my rant, for today.
Roe v. Wade, case decided in 1973 by the U.S. Supreme Court. Along with Doe v. Bolton, this decision legalized abortionin the first trimester of pregnancy. The decision, written by Justice Harry Blackmun and based on the residual right of privacy, struck down dozens of state antiabortion statutes. The decision was based on two cases, that of an unmarried woman from Texas, where abortion was illegal unless the mother's life was at risk, and that of a poor, married mother of three from Georgia, where state law required permission for an abortion from a panel of doctors and hospital officials. While establishing the right to an abortion, this decision gave states the right to intervene in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy to protect the woman and the "potential" life of the unborn child. Denounced by the National Council of Bishops, the decision gave rise to a vocal antiabortion movement that put pressure on the courts and created an anti-Roe litmus test for the judicial appointments of the Reagan and Bush administrations (1981–93). In a 1989 case, Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, the court, while not striking down Roe, limited its scope, permitting states greater latitude in regulating and restricting abortions. Then in 1992, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the court reaffirmed the abortion rights granted in Roe v. Wade, while permitting further restrictions.
See N. McCorvey with A. Meisler, I Am Roe (1994).
(1973) Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that established a woman's right to have an abortion without undue interference from the government. A Texas law prohibiting abortions was challenged by an unmarried pregnant woman (pseudonymously named Jane Roe), and the court ruled in her favour, finding that the state had violated her right to privacy (see rights of privacy). Harry Blackmun, writing for the seven-member majority, argued that the state's legitimate concern for the protection of prenatal life increased as a pregnancy advanced. While allowing that the state might forbid abortions during a pregnancy's third trimester, he held that a woman was entitled to obtain an abortion freely, after medical consultation, during the first trimester and in an authorized clinic during the second trimester. The Roe decision, perhaps the most controversial in the Supreme Court's history, remains at the centre of the issue of abortion rights. Repeated challenges since 1973, such as Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, have narrowed the scope of Roe but have not overturned it.
Now, regardless of anyone's personal views on abortion, it is NOT against the law. The SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, a government agency, says it's LEGAL. The HEAD of the Federal Court SYSTEM says it's okay. It's been OKAY for the last 36 YEARS. WHY it's even still on the table for debate is beyond me, but that's a whole other issue.
For those that don't think it should be legal, ask yourselves this: Would you find it reasonable for it to be a felony and would you be willing to put any woman that went for an abortion under arrest and then throw her in prison over it?
No female ever makes this choice lightly and no female that makes this choice is exempt from living with it.
Overwhelmingly, the opposition to this issue seems to be solely moral...and if you've read me at all, you know that I don't think morals should have any part in the making of laws... laws should simply be about the betterment of society in my opinion.
So, explain to me WHY on earth, no Federal health insurance plan will cover abortion.
I want to know.
Because I don't get it.
Again, the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT deems it LEGAL.
THE HIGHEST POWER IN THE LAND WE LIVE IN deems it LEGAL.
Let me further say that... Planned Parenthood, you really piss me off when it comes to this issue.
It does not make sense to me.
I, without question, hold nothing against anyone that doesn't like the idea of abortion. Can I see how it's seen as unsavory? Yes. Would I absolutely support any friend of mine that made the decision to go forth with a pregnancy even under horrendous circumstances like rape? Yes, because that's my job as a friend.
That said, even financially - does the state see it better to pay a couple of hundred dollars for an abortion or possibly have to pay the next 18 years of health care, food stamps, welfare, etc, etc. Not that most abortions are even from lower class economics, but really - getting down to facts and figures, what makes more sense.
With the horrendous rate at which women are raped in this country, should they then have the added bonus of having to go into debt to pay for an abortion on top of it? God Bless the morning after pill (RU486 - which had to be fought for as well for some ridiculous freakin' reason) - but how many cases go unreported?
With the horrendous rate at which women are subjected to verbal, emotional and physical violence at the hands of their partner - only made WORSE and at a HIGHER RISK of DEATH when they become pregnant as seen here, here and here, where it lists that up to 25% of pregnant women are abused and sometimes killed...
Does it make sense to have someone in a domestic violence situation and then not afford them the means to sever the ties with their abuser because their insurance, that they pay thousands of dollars a year for, says no.
Two) Give citizenship to everyone already here. Just do it already for cryin' out loud! Wave your magic wand and make it happen.
If this health care option isn't going to cover undocumented people - make them documented. This country was built on IMMIGRANTS. It's the very fabric of our existence.
Costs are forcing hospitals to close all over the place, especially in Florida and California due to them not being able to handle the charges wracked up by people who can't afford to pay.
If you're going to make it a LAW that EVERY American citizen has to carry Health Insurance, just like you have to carry car insurance - that's fine with me. Got it. Understood. That doesn't answer for the costs incurred by those that are here illegally and are not required to carry health insurance.
You also can NOT have those people dying in the streets either or afraid to go to the hospital and then DIE AT HOME.
Estimated 11.9 million illegal immigrants - that's 11.9+ MILLION illegal immigrants that will what? Be required to stay healthy? Die? What?
Blanket statement!
You're all now citizens!
Prove who you are, get your citizenship certificate.
Welcome to America.
Now go get some health insurance.
I say this for another reason too - I dislike the idea of American companies exploiting illegal immigrants. What the hell is that?! You don't get to do that. Stop it. Right now.
Anyone that you hire has the right to minimum wage - and trust me on this one, no one is getting rich off of minimum wage. I don't even know how most people can even live on minimum wage. That is, however, the LEAST anyone should expect and the least you can legally do. The ONLY people that get around that is the food industry where they STILL have a mandatory minimum.
The LEAST.
"I would pay you far less if I could legally get away with it!"..."Gee, thanks"...
COME ON!
It's a LAW.
Wow...look at that... another law... we don't ignore this one in a wide sweeping blanket though, do we? There is not one company that would come out and say, "Well, you can work here, but we don't like that law and we're going to IGNORE IT. We find it immoral."...or even better... "Fine, we'll allow you minimum wage, but because we find that law immoral, we're not going to offer you workman's comp over it if you work for the government."
Side note: Grant just came over to see what I was typing and said, "You don't really want to put that on your page, do you..."
OF COURSE I DO! When you see something that looks fundamentally wrong, you say something about it.
Grant: "Abortion is a hot topic..."
Me: "I know."
Grant: "Do you REALLY want to throw that out there on your page?"
Me: "YES!"
The day I have to start censoring myself, is the day I stop having a journal...
And really, it's NOT even about abortion. That's been ruled LEGAL. That's not up for debate. What IS, is it's legal. The ISSUE I'm debating is WHY then, isn't it covered by the very same system that MADE it LEGAL.
And that, is my rant, for today.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
male bathroom etiquette
I made the mistake of writing the words "Urinal Cake" on this site and not following it up. Since I've been called on it, I've been sitting here trying to figure out the most delicate way of addressing the subject.
I've come to the conclusion that there is no subtle way.
So with that conclusion fairly easily drawn, it pretty much leaves me free reign.
Then I moved on to trying to figure out how to make it all coherent.
That was a little tougher.
I gave up altogether on trying to be tactful about it all.
Not one to slack on my research, I found this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnOaMC8KHA4
The words "critical mass" are clearly defined.
"Speech is your enemy; never, ever under any circumstance say a single word in a men's room...not even to Jesus himself" is a motto that is essential for all parties involved to adhere to otherwise it could lead to dire consequences.
...and forget everything you may have ever read about spotting sociopaths. It is defined for you, definitively, in that video.
I was unaware that a pyramid breakdown was part of the critical thinking involved in the male etiquette restroom scenario - I stand educated.
On to Urinal Cakes, which was the main focus, I just got side-tracked.
I ran across this:
Talking urinal cakes warn against drunk driving. Apparently the State of New Mexico is trying out a new program to try to stop drunk driving. They have purchased 500 urinal cakes ($21 apiece) and placed them in the restrooms of various bars.
According to SiliconValley.com the cakes say things like "Hey, big guy. Having a few drinks? Think you had one too many? Then it's time to call a cab or call a sober friend for a ride home."
The females among us are probably going, "What is this mystifying item called the urinal cake?"
It appears, that urinal cakes (sometimes referred to as Urinal Mints for some bizarre reason) are small disinfectant blocks found in male bathrooms. The purpose of these blocks is to disinfect and deodorize washroom urinals.
They are air-activated and slowly evaporate when in contact with the air. Water does not dissolve them. It is rumored that some of them are designed to look like bulls-eyes.
In my quest for the Holy Grail of the Men's room, I ran across this little gem:
The Interactive Urinal Communicator
...to once again reassure us that advertising agencies have no shame and are willing to corner you when you least expect it.
and just so you know, Grant is still watching the video from above and saying things like, "that's just so true"...
There.
Now everyone is on the same page.
Additional Information as of 6:18pm - the urinals that go to the floor? They're for KIDS. As ridiculous as it is, Grant and I just had this conversation because I thought it may have been counterproductive to have to pee a good 3-4' straight down and how in fuck do you keep it from splashing all over your shoes that way. KIDS. I have no idea why that never occurred to me. Kids. Of course. Kids. Sheesh. And then I got the added bonus of a mental picture of how many times Grant has seen dad's holding their kids up to the mid-wall level ones. And then all I could do was laugh. So, there's your update.
I've come to the conclusion that there is no subtle way.
So with that conclusion fairly easily drawn, it pretty much leaves me free reign.
Then I moved on to trying to figure out how to make it all coherent.
That was a little tougher.
I gave up altogether on trying to be tactful about it all.
Not one to slack on my research, I found this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnOaMC8KHA4
The words "critical mass" are clearly defined.
"Speech is your enemy; never, ever under any circumstance say a single word in a men's room...not even to Jesus himself" is a motto that is essential for all parties involved to adhere to otherwise it could lead to dire consequences.
...and forget everything you may have ever read about spotting sociopaths. It is defined for you, definitively, in that video.
I was unaware that a pyramid breakdown was part of the critical thinking involved in the male etiquette restroom scenario - I stand educated.
On to Urinal Cakes, which was the main focus, I just got side-tracked.
I ran across this:
Talking urinal cakes warn against drunk driving. Apparently the State of New Mexico is trying out a new program to try to stop drunk driving. They have purchased 500 urinal cakes ($21 apiece) and placed them in the restrooms of various bars.
According to SiliconValley.com the cakes say things like "Hey, big guy. Having a few drinks? Think you had one too many? Then it's time to call a cab or call a sober friend for a ride home."
The females among us are probably going, "What is this mystifying item called the urinal cake?"
It appears, that urinal cakes (sometimes referred to as Urinal Mints for some bizarre reason) are small disinfectant blocks found in male bathrooms. The purpose of these blocks is to disinfect and deodorize washroom urinals.
They are air-activated and slowly evaporate when in contact with the air. Water does not dissolve them. It is rumored that some of them are designed to look like bulls-eyes.
In my quest for the Holy Grail of the Men's room, I ran across this little gem:
The Interactive Urinal Communicator
...to once again reassure us that advertising agencies have no shame and are willing to corner you when you least expect it.
and just so you know, Grant is still watching the video from above and saying things like, "that's just so true"...
There.
Now everyone is on the same page.
Additional Information as of 6:18pm - the urinals that go to the floor? They're for KIDS. As ridiculous as it is, Grant and I just had this conversation because I thought it may have been counterproductive to have to pee a good 3-4' straight down and how in fuck do you keep it from splashing all over your shoes that way. KIDS. I have no idea why that never occurred to me. Kids. Of course. Kids. Sheesh. And then I got the added bonus of a mental picture of how many times Grant has seen dad's holding their kids up to the mid-wall level ones. And then all I could do was laugh. So, there's your update.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Fear Less
I am a fan of the author Gavin De Becker. Who, in my rarely humble opinion (what's the point of being humble about some conclusion you've come to as long as you're not following someone around trying to shove your opinion down their throat 24/7?) - is a downright genius.
He wrote the book, The Gift of Fear - which again, in my rarely humble opinion, every female alive should read.
Actually, any male that even remotely cares about a female should read it as well just so you can understand how we have to live in a world of potential violence against us. You'd probably be horrified to learn all of the things we have to simultaneously consider just walking out our front door.
If you're female, the information in the book could very well one day literally save your life.
After 9/11, Gavin came out with the book I'm reading right now - aptly called, Fear Less.
It stresses our natural survival system, like his other book. I'm about to totally plagiarize him and write an excerpt from one of his chapters right now because I think he had some really good points when it comes to breaking down emotions, animal instincts and being able to identify and compartmentalize them.
Come to think of it, it's not so much plagiarizing as it is copy right infringement. Don't tell him! I'm going to pawn it off as free advertisement for his books. Buy them!
To give you some background on his credentials: Gavin De Becker is widely considered America's leading expert on predicting and managing violent behavior. He advises such clients as the CIA and the U.S. Supreme Court, and his 70 member firm has protected clients from terrorism in Isreal, southern Africa, Europe, and South America. This three-time presidential appointee designed the assessment systems used to screen threats to all federal judges and the governors of 11 states, and his work has changed the way the U.S. government protects its highest officials. He is also a senior fellow at UCLA's School of Public Policy and Social Research.
Yes, I even violated the copy rights by taking that from the back jacket of the book. Consider me his new personal PR chick.
---
Beginning of Theft
Intuition has many messengers, but the clearest and most urgent is fear. Nothing in life gets attention as reliably as fear -- and that's the way the system is designed to work. Fear does some miraculous things when we perceive that we are in the presence of danger. First, it gets our bodies ready for action with a dose of adrenaline. It heats up the lactic acid in our muscles for running or fighting, and it even gives us a chemical called cortisol that makes our blood clot more quickly in case we're cut in a fight.
It's an amazing system designed to be a brief signal that gets you to listen, address the risk, and move on. The problem is that these chemicals are toxic, and in America, even more so since the tragic events of 9/11, lots of people are living in fear.
Our imaginations can be the fertile soil in which worry about anxiety grow from seeds to weeds, but when we assume an imagined outcome is a sure thing, we are in conflict with what Proust called an inexorable law: "Only that which is absent can be imagined." In other words, what you imagine cannot be happening in your presence right now, for if it were, you would perceive it. Similarly, the very fact that you fear something is solid evidence that it is not happening in your presence right now.
Fear summons powerful predictive resources that tell us what might come next. It is that which might come next that we fear -- what might happen, not what is happening now. A literal example helps demonstrate this: As you stand near the edge of a high cliff, you might fear getting too close. If you stand right at the edge, you no longer fear getting too close, you now fear falling. To carry this all the way, if you fall, you no longer fear falling -- you now fear landing. When compared with landing, falling isn't so bad.
This reminds me of a friend who used to be afraid of flying because of turbulence. After the four simultaneous hijackings, he told me, "Turnulence now makes me grateful. It reminds me that there are much worse things."
People use the word fear to describe so many feelings that are not fear, so I'll define our terms.
FEAR
The challenge in dealing with anxiety caused by terrorist acts is that answers are hard to come by. Uncertainly is a key component of terrorism; we are left to wonder what might happen next, to what degree, and where. The lack of predictability predictably causes anxiety, which, unlike true fear, is always caused by uncertainty.
ANXIETY
Anxiety is caused, ultimately, by predictions in which you have little confidence. Image that you are anxious about being fired. You might have anxiety about the things you can't predict with certainty, such as the ramifications of losing the job.
Prediction in which you have high confidence free you to respond, prepare, adjust, accept, feel sadness, or do whatever is needed. Accordingly, anxiety is reduced by improving the quality of your predictions. Higher quality predictions increase certainty, and certainty is the antidote to anxiety. It's worth doing, because the word anxiety, like the word worry, stems from a root that means "to choke," and that is just what it does to us.
WORRY
Worry is the fear we manufacture -- it is not authentic, and it is not part of our defense systerm. If you look out the window and see lava from the local volcano slowly making its way toward your house, you don't worry, you run.
Unlike true fear, worry is a choice. Most often, people worry because it provides some secondary reward. There are many variations, but here are a few of the most popular reasons people worry:
In Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman concludes that worrying is a sort of "Magical amulet" that some people feel wards off danger. They believe that worrying about something will stop it from happening. He also correctly notes that most of what people worry about has a low probability of occurring, because we tend to take action about those things we feel are likely to occur. This means that very often the mere fact that you are worrying about something is a predicator that it isn't likely to happen.
When you worry yourself into an artificial fear about terrorism, you distract yourself from what is actually happening in favor of what you imagine might happen. Since the human imagination is powerful, you can conjure quite a litany of possibilities. Any time you ask yourself the question "Could this happen?" the answer will be yes -- because anything could happen, but there are better questions, such as "Will this happen?" or "Is this happening?"
Is worry an intuitive signal? In a roundabout way, it can be. That's because what we choose to worry about, however bad, is usually easier to look at than some other, less palatable issue. For this reason, a good exercise when worrying is to ask yourself, "What am I choosing not to see right now?" Worry may well be distracting you from something important. For example, someone might worry about unseen terrorists (What will they do next? Do operatives live nearby? Are they engaged in something dastardly right now?), whiles at the same time choosing not to register that she's seen someone videotaping the nuclear power plant several days in a row.
Worry, wariness, anxiety, and concern all have a purpose, but they are not fear. So any time a feeling isn't a signal in the presence of danger, then it really shouldn't be confused with fear. It may well be something worth trying to understand and manage, but it is not likely to be directly relevant to your present safety.
End of theft
---
I love that breakdown! It's clear and to the point. I love when people accurately call things for what they really are. Love it.
I know the overall theme is on terrorism in his book, but the same formula can be applied to other situations in life. That's why I felt the need to share.
He wrote the book, The Gift of Fear - which again, in my rarely humble opinion, every female alive should read.
Actually, any male that even remotely cares about a female should read it as well just so you can understand how we have to live in a world of potential violence against us. You'd probably be horrified to learn all of the things we have to simultaneously consider just walking out our front door.
If you're female, the information in the book could very well one day literally save your life.
After 9/11, Gavin came out with the book I'm reading right now - aptly called, Fear Less.
It stresses our natural survival system, like his other book. I'm about to totally plagiarize him and write an excerpt from one of his chapters right now because I think he had some really good points when it comes to breaking down emotions, animal instincts and being able to identify and compartmentalize them.
Come to think of it, it's not so much plagiarizing as it is copy right infringement. Don't tell him! I'm going to pawn it off as free advertisement for his books. Buy them!
To give you some background on his credentials: Gavin De Becker is widely considered America's leading expert on predicting and managing violent behavior. He advises such clients as the CIA and the U.S. Supreme Court, and his 70 member firm has protected clients from terrorism in Isreal, southern Africa, Europe, and South America. This three-time presidential appointee designed the assessment systems used to screen threats to all federal judges and the governors of 11 states, and his work has changed the way the U.S. government protects its highest officials. He is also a senior fellow at UCLA's School of Public Policy and Social Research.
Yes, I even violated the copy rights by taking that from the back jacket of the book. Consider me his new personal PR chick.
---
Beginning of Theft
Intuition has many messengers, but the clearest and most urgent is fear. Nothing in life gets attention as reliably as fear -- and that's the way the system is designed to work. Fear does some miraculous things when we perceive that we are in the presence of danger. First, it gets our bodies ready for action with a dose of adrenaline. It heats up the lactic acid in our muscles for running or fighting, and it even gives us a chemical called cortisol that makes our blood clot more quickly in case we're cut in a fight.
It's an amazing system designed to be a brief signal that gets you to listen, address the risk, and move on. The problem is that these chemicals are toxic, and in America, even more so since the tragic events of 9/11, lots of people are living in fear.
Our imaginations can be the fertile soil in which worry about anxiety grow from seeds to weeds, but when we assume an imagined outcome is a sure thing, we are in conflict with what Proust called an inexorable law: "Only that which is absent can be imagined." In other words, what you imagine cannot be happening in your presence right now, for if it were, you would perceive it. Similarly, the very fact that you fear something is solid evidence that it is not happening in your presence right now.
Fear summons powerful predictive resources that tell us what might come next. It is that which might come next that we fear -- what might happen, not what is happening now. A literal example helps demonstrate this: As you stand near the edge of a high cliff, you might fear getting too close. If you stand right at the edge, you no longer fear getting too close, you now fear falling. To carry this all the way, if you fall, you no longer fear falling -- you now fear landing. When compared with landing, falling isn't so bad.
This reminds me of a friend who used to be afraid of flying because of turbulence. After the four simultaneous hijackings, he told me, "Turnulence now makes me grateful. It reminds me that there are much worse things."
People use the word fear to describe so many feelings that are not fear, so I'll define our terms.
FEAR
- True fear is a signal in the presence of danger. It is always based upon something we perceive, something in our environment or our circumstance.
- Unwarranted fear is always based upon our memory or our imagination.
The challenge in dealing with anxiety caused by terrorist acts is that answers are hard to come by. Uncertainly is a key component of terrorism; we are left to wonder what might happen next, to what degree, and where. The lack of predictability predictably causes anxiety, which, unlike true fear, is always caused by uncertainty.
ANXIETY
Anxiety is caused, ultimately, by predictions in which you have little confidence. Image that you are anxious about being fired. You might have anxiety about the things you can't predict with certainty, such as the ramifications of losing the job.
Prediction in which you have high confidence free you to respond, prepare, adjust, accept, feel sadness, or do whatever is needed. Accordingly, anxiety is reduced by improving the quality of your predictions. Higher quality predictions increase certainty, and certainty is the antidote to anxiety. It's worth doing, because the word anxiety, like the word worry, stems from a root that means "to choke," and that is just what it does to us.
WORRY
Worry is the fear we manufacture -- it is not authentic, and it is not part of our defense systerm. If you look out the window and see lava from the local volcano slowly making its way toward your house, you don't worry, you run.
Unlike true fear, worry is a choice. Most often, people worry because it provides some secondary reward. There are many variations, but here are a few of the most popular reasons people worry:
- Worry is a way to avoid change; when we worry, we don't do anything about the matter.
- Excessive worry helps some people deal with matters they cannot influence. Powerlessness is one of the hardest things to admit, and there comes a point with risk where we have to do just that. Worry helps fight off that dreadful feeling that there's nothing we can do, because worrying feels like we are doing something.
- You've likely known someone who worried so much that people stopped telling that people anything. "Don't worry your mother" or "I'm worried half to death" are phrases that serve worriers by offering protection from too much reality.
- Worry can be a cloying way to have connection with others, the idea being that to worry about someone shows love. As many worried-about people will tell you, worry is a poor substitute for love or for taking loving action.
- Worry is a way to rehearse dreaded outcomes so that if they occur, the worrier believes he will be more prepared. Of course, it doesn't work. Worry simply gives people some of the very same consequences they'd get if the dreaded outcome occurred -- while doing nothing constructive to prevent anything bad from happening. Worrying is not the same as planning; it is not an effective security precaution.
In Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman concludes that worrying is a sort of "Magical amulet" that some people feel wards off danger. They believe that worrying about something will stop it from happening. He also correctly notes that most of what people worry about has a low probability of occurring, because we tend to take action about those things we feel are likely to occur. This means that very often the mere fact that you are worrying about something is a predicator that it isn't likely to happen.
When you worry yourself into an artificial fear about terrorism, you distract yourself from what is actually happening in favor of what you imagine might happen. Since the human imagination is powerful, you can conjure quite a litany of possibilities. Any time you ask yourself the question "Could this happen?" the answer will be yes -- because anything could happen, but there are better questions, such as "Will this happen?" or "Is this happening?"
Is worry an intuitive signal? In a roundabout way, it can be. That's because what we choose to worry about, however bad, is usually easier to look at than some other, less palatable issue. For this reason, a good exercise when worrying is to ask yourself, "What am I choosing not to see right now?" Worry may well be distracting you from something important. For example, someone might worry about unseen terrorists (What will they do next? Do operatives live nearby? Are they engaged in something dastardly right now?), whiles at the same time choosing not to register that she's seen someone videotaping the nuclear power plant several days in a row.
Worry, wariness, anxiety, and concern all have a purpose, but they are not fear. So any time a feeling isn't a signal in the presence of danger, then it really shouldn't be confused with fear. It may well be something worth trying to understand and manage, but it is not likely to be directly relevant to your present safety.
End of theft
---
I love that breakdown! It's clear and to the point. I love when people accurately call things for what they really are. Love it.
I know the overall theme is on terrorism in his book, but the same formula can be applied to other situations in life. That's why I felt the need to share.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
women's bathrooms
You can always tell the sign of a good restaurant/party house/hotel by the condition of their women's bathroom(s).
That's just a fun little fact.
If you want to know if you should plan any kind of event at a place, send some random female into their facilities and just observe the look on her face when she walks out.
If she comes out with a look of total disgust - don't even think about eating there.
It's as simple as that.
The look is unmistakable too. It's that clenched jaw, eyes half closed, every muscle in her body is tense and there is usually some subtle, if not full on, sneer on her face - stance.
For the male gender who may not yet be informed, let me explain.
We take our settings very seriously. We expect it to be clean. We expect to be able to see when we look in the mirror. We expect all the locks on the doors to work. We expect there to be plenty of supplies at our disposal.
We expect room to move. We expect there to be somewhere for us to put our purses and whatever other junk we happen to have with us.
We expect hooks on the backs of our doors - even if some of us aren't comfortable throwing our stuff up on said hook because we also know how easy it is for someone to just reach over and yank our stuff up and out.
NOT THE POINT!
We expect to not feel like we need to shower when we leave a public restroom.
Yes, I said it.
We expect this.
I always crinkle my nose whenever a bathroom is a) some one room thrown together with no thought enclosure or b) co-ed. Bite me. I don't want to share a bathroom with a male in my own house, let alone a bunch of strangers.
No offense. You men are wonderful. I just don't need to know *that* much about you. I see no real need to bond with you in that way. Stop peeing in front of me for crying out loud.
Now, a really well run place who cares about it's guest/clients/customers will build a real bathroom for women.
This will include up to three separate rooms. A foyer, a waiting area and the facilities themselves - which is large and has stalls on one wall and across from the stalls will be an entire wall side to side of mirrors and sinks.
The sink dispensers won't have the equivalent of Lava soap in them. It will be something fruity or flowery, usually some Yardley something or other that you wouldn't bother to spend the money on to put in your own house.
There will be lights - everywhere, so you can actually see what you're doing when you go to fix your make-up. There will be a large garbage can with a swinging lid on it so you don't have to actually see the garbage in it (if not two - one on either side of the room).
There will be a hand blow dryer AND a paper towel dispenser. Half of them have a folding changing table for babies attached to the wall that you can pull down and make your life easier. There is usually a machine that you can get tampons and pads from if you pay the quarter charge or whatever it is these days.
Each individual stall has a metal box for tampons and pads to dispose of and there is usually a huge roll of toilet paper (and another one behind it) and most of the time there will be a dispenser for those toilet seat covers which are more trouble than they're worth. It's nice to know it's available anyway.
There is at least one handicap, over-sized stall. This is not like a handicap parking space. The same rules do not apply. It's acceptable for anyone to use provided that no one is wheeling themselves in to the room before you go to use it.
Our sitting areas contain couches and nice chairs and mirrors with elegant frames on them. Some will have tables that contain baskets with items such as: bobby pins, safety pins, hair spray, spritzer, nylons, handiwipes, cotton balls, Q-Tips, pads, tampons and sewing kits in them. There is art on the wall, low lighting lamps on the table (designed to make our jewelry sparkle, no doubt) and either carpeting in these rooms or very nice tiles; usually carpet.
This is the norm.
Our bathrooms aren't just bathrooms.
They're conference rooms.
and yes, we *are* discussing *you*...
Now, let me set the scene now that you have all of that information floating around fresh in your head.
We were driving from Maryland back to New York. We found ourselves in the middle of East Nowhere, Pennsylvania when we decided to stop at a Citgo.
Seems normal enough, right?
Wrong.
My daughter and I go in search of the restroom. It is, of course, a one room hovel that we both squeezed into.
Fine.
We made our comments and then I looked up at the wall thinking that the dispenser was the usual tampon/pad dispenser.
Wrong, again!
I pointed to the dispenser silently until she looked up at it. When it registered what it actually was, she started laughing out loud.
Condoms!
In all my years, I've NEVER seen condoms sold in a women's bathroom.
But wait!
Not just condoms - adult novelty items too.
That was on the left side.
On the right side was - aspirin.
Seriously, aspirin.
All for the low, low price of $0.75 each.
We found the cracker jack mother of all dispensers!
You may get a condom or you may get an adult item - how lucky are you feeling tonight?! The right side was solely aspirin, but the left side - total guesswork!
She is, unmistakably my child. So we did what anyone would expect us to do left in a situation like this -- We wasted $4.50 on crap we wouldn't buy over the counter and laughed our asses off every time we dropped in three quarters and turned the knob. We had the added bonus of the bathroom wall being 5' from the outside cashier counter too and a full line in front of it.
We didn't care. It was too much for our senses as soon as this dropped out...
Tattoos.
The Ultimate in Fun & Fantasy.
Clearly, I have a lot to learn if tattoos are the ultimate in Fun & Fantasy. I've been doing it all wrong then. I'm going to have to rethink everything!
Grant must have given up on waiting for us because we found him outside at the car checking the oil. We maintained our silence on our newly purchased stash of Black Magic condoms, tattoos and massage oil.
That is, until we couldn't take it anymore and started laughing again.
Then he made the distinct mistake of finally asking us what took us so long.
My daughter and I exchanged a bonding smirk and then I casually said, "Oh, we were buying condoms..."
He rolled his eyes.
Like he didn't believe me.
Then he must have taken a second to think about it.
Because he knows that if whatever I say sounds really off - there is a 99.997% chance that it's 100% true...
Grant: "Did you really buy condoms?"
Me: "Yes."
silence...
Grant: "You did not."
Me: "Okay."
silence...
Grant: "Why in God's name would you be in there buying condoms?"
The two of us in stereo, all excited: "Because we've never seen a condom dispenser before in our bathrooms! It wasn't JUST a condom dispenser either!"
more silence.. at this point I can see why he's confused... I've had my tubes tied for the last 14 years and my daughter is waiting until after she graduates high school at least... this is SO NOT THE POINT!
We produced our bounty so he could bask in our excitement with us.
He still wasn't getting it.
Grant: "You know those are the kinds of condoms you get when you want to get someone pregnant or take your chances of getting an STD from the condom itself from a place like this..."
Me: "DON'T RAIN ON OUR PARADE!"
a whole lot of staring at our excited little faces while trying to figure out what in God's name to say to us to get us to stop...
Grant: "I'm not sure what the big deal is - that's standard in our bathrooms."
Me: "Yeah, we went into your bathroom too (WE HAD TO!). You had a two sided dispenser too. One side, regular condoms. Other side, ribbed condoms, "for her" - no aspirin..."
a whole fuckload of silence...
That's when I felt it was time to break open the marital aid package with the massage oil in it, you know, to break the silence. And what did I get for my efforts?
NOTHING!
That's what!
The freakin' box was EMPTY!
Empty, I say!
What the Hell kind of rip off bullshit is that?!
I looked at my daughter and said, "I think we should go back in and complain!" - being my offspring, she was all for the idea of witnessing that.
Grant: "Get in the car..."
Me: "Fine. I'll write them hate mail instead."
If any of you B&I employees are reading this:
Dear Barnett International Corporation,
You suck. We hate you.
Oh, and you owe me $0.75
Signed,
A Disgruntled & Disappointed Dispenser User
And that, is my condom story.
Oh, and by the way - the tattoo box contained a scorpion and a cartoon kitten playing with a green tennis ball...I don't even want to know who thinks that's the ultimate in Fun & Fantasy...
That's just a fun little fact.
If you want to know if you should plan any kind of event at a place, send some random female into their facilities and just observe the look on her face when she walks out.
If she comes out with a look of total disgust - don't even think about eating there.
It's as simple as that.
The look is unmistakable too. It's that clenched jaw, eyes half closed, every muscle in her body is tense and there is usually some subtle, if not full on, sneer on her face - stance.
For the male gender who may not yet be informed, let me explain.
We take our settings very seriously. We expect it to be clean. We expect to be able to see when we look in the mirror. We expect all the locks on the doors to work. We expect there to be plenty of supplies at our disposal.
We expect room to move. We expect there to be somewhere for us to put our purses and whatever other junk we happen to have with us.
We expect hooks on the backs of our doors - even if some of us aren't comfortable throwing our stuff up on said hook because we also know how easy it is for someone to just reach over and yank our stuff up and out.
NOT THE POINT!
We expect to not feel like we need to shower when we leave a public restroom.
Yes, I said it.
We expect this.
I always crinkle my nose whenever a bathroom is a) some one room thrown together with no thought enclosure or b) co-ed. Bite me. I don't want to share a bathroom with a male in my own house, let alone a bunch of strangers.
No offense. You men are wonderful. I just don't need to know *that* much about you. I see no real need to bond with you in that way. Stop peeing in front of me for crying out loud.
Now, a really well run place who cares about it's guest/clients/customers will build a real bathroom for women.
This will include up to three separate rooms. A foyer, a waiting area and the facilities themselves - which is large and has stalls on one wall and across from the stalls will be an entire wall side to side of mirrors and sinks.
The sink dispensers won't have the equivalent of Lava soap in them. It will be something fruity or flowery, usually some Yardley something or other that you wouldn't bother to spend the money on to put in your own house.
There will be lights - everywhere, so you can actually see what you're doing when you go to fix your make-up. There will be a large garbage can with a swinging lid on it so you don't have to actually see the garbage in it (if not two - one on either side of the room).
There will be a hand blow dryer AND a paper towel dispenser. Half of them have a folding changing table for babies attached to the wall that you can pull down and make your life easier. There is usually a machine that you can get tampons and pads from if you pay the quarter charge or whatever it is these days.
Each individual stall has a metal box for tampons and pads to dispose of and there is usually a huge roll of toilet paper (and another one behind it) and most of the time there will be a dispenser for those toilet seat covers which are more trouble than they're worth. It's nice to know it's available anyway.
There is at least one handicap, over-sized stall. This is not like a handicap parking space. The same rules do not apply. It's acceptable for anyone to use provided that no one is wheeling themselves in to the room before you go to use it.
Our sitting areas contain couches and nice chairs and mirrors with elegant frames on them. Some will have tables that contain baskets with items such as: bobby pins, safety pins, hair spray, spritzer, nylons, handiwipes, cotton balls, Q-Tips, pads, tampons and sewing kits in them. There is art on the wall, low lighting lamps on the table (designed to make our jewelry sparkle, no doubt) and either carpeting in these rooms or very nice tiles; usually carpet.
This is the norm.
Our bathrooms aren't just bathrooms.
They're conference rooms.
and yes, we *are* discussing *you*...
Now, let me set the scene now that you have all of that information floating around fresh in your head.
We were driving from Maryland back to New York. We found ourselves in the middle of East Nowhere, Pennsylvania when we decided to stop at a Citgo.
Seems normal enough, right?
Wrong.
My daughter and I go in search of the restroom. It is, of course, a one room hovel that we both squeezed into.
Fine.
We made our comments and then I looked up at the wall thinking that the dispenser was the usual tampon/pad dispenser.
Wrong, again!
I pointed to the dispenser silently until she looked up at it. When it registered what it actually was, she started laughing out loud.
Condoms!
In all my years, I've NEVER seen condoms sold in a women's bathroom.
But wait!
Not just condoms - adult novelty items too.
That was on the left side.
On the right side was - aspirin.
Seriously, aspirin.
All for the low, low price of $0.75 each.
We found the cracker jack mother of all dispensers!
You may get a condom or you may get an adult item - how lucky are you feeling tonight?! The right side was solely aspirin, but the left side - total guesswork!
She is, unmistakably my child. So we did what anyone would expect us to do left in a situation like this -- We wasted $4.50 on crap we wouldn't buy over the counter and laughed our asses off every time we dropped in three quarters and turned the knob. We had the added bonus of the bathroom wall being 5' from the outside cashier counter too and a full line in front of it.We didn't care. It was too much for our senses as soon as this dropped out...
Tattoos.The Ultimate in Fun & Fantasy.
Clearly, I have a lot to learn if tattoos are the ultimate in Fun & Fantasy. I've been doing it all wrong then. I'm going to have to rethink everything!
Grant must have given up on waiting for us because we found him outside at the car checking the oil. We maintained our silence on our newly purchased stash of Black Magic condoms, tattoos and massage oil.
That is, until we couldn't take it anymore and started laughing again.
Then he made the distinct mistake of finally asking us what took us so long.
My daughter and I exchanged a bonding smirk and then I casually said, "Oh, we were buying condoms..."
He rolled his eyes.
Like he didn't believe me.
Then he must have taken a second to think about it.
Because he knows that if whatever I say sounds really off - there is a 99.997% chance that it's 100% true...
Grant: "Did you really buy condoms?"
Me: "Yes."
silence...
Grant: "You did not."
Me: "Okay."
silence...
Grant: "Why in God's name would you be in there buying condoms?"
The two of us in stereo, all excited: "Because we've never seen a condom dispenser before in our bathrooms! It wasn't JUST a condom dispenser either!"
more silence.. at this point I can see why he's confused... I've had my tubes tied for the last 14 years and my daughter is waiting until after she graduates high school at least... this is SO NOT THE POINT!
We produced our bounty so he could bask in our excitement with us.
He still wasn't getting it.
Grant: "You know those are the kinds of condoms you get when you want to get someone pregnant or take your chances of getting an STD from the condom itself from a place like this..."
Me: "DON'T RAIN ON OUR PARADE!"
a whole lot of staring at our excited little faces while trying to figure out what in God's name to say to us to get us to stop...
Grant: "I'm not sure what the big deal is - that's standard in our bathrooms."
Me: "Yeah, we went into your bathroom too (WE HAD TO!). You had a two sided dispenser too. One side, regular condoms. Other side, ribbed condoms, "for her" - no aspirin..."
a whole fuckload of silence...
That's when I felt it was time to break open the marital aid package with the massage oil in it, you know, to break the silence. And what did I get for my efforts?
NOTHING!That's what!
The freakin' box was EMPTY!
Empty, I say!
What the Hell kind of rip off bullshit is that?!
I looked at my daughter and said, "I think we should go back in and complain!" - being my offspring, she was all for the idea of witnessing that.
Grant: "Get in the car..."
Me: "Fine. I'll write them hate mail instead."
If any of you B&I employees are reading this:
You suck. We hate you.
Oh, and you owe me $0.75
Signed,
A Disgruntled & Disappointed Dispenser User
And that, is my condom story.
Oh, and by the way - the tattoo box contained a scorpion and a cartoon kitten playing with a green tennis ball...I don't even want to know who thinks that's the ultimate in Fun & Fantasy...
Friday, August 7, 2009
I don't even know what to say about this...
By Brian Alexander
msnbc.com contributor
updated 8:59 a.m. ET, Thurs., April 23, 2009
Vaginas with teeth — and other sexual myths
A romp through history reveals a host of absurd beliefs once held as truth
Your genitals are connected to your nose. Women are infertile males. Orgasm is necessary to make a baby. Masturbation leads to insanity. Menstrual blood is actually sperm gone bad. At one time or another, medical science believed all these statements. What is it about sex that allows the imagination of doctors and the scientifically-minded to run free?
A walk down the memory lane of misbegotten sex theories reveals that such fanciful “truths” often grow from the fertile soil of bias and prejudice.
Aristotle, for example, believed that “a boy actually resembles a woman anatomically speaking and a woman is, so to speak, an infertile male. She is female because of a kind of inadequacy being unable to concoct semen from nourishment … owing to the coldness of her nature.”
The idea of a woman as an imperfect man was popular in western thought for more than a thousand years because most of the writers were men.
“That’s the most plausible theory we have: fear of female sex," said Rachel Maines, visiting scholar in Cornell University’s Department of Science and Technology Studies and author of “The Technology of Orgasm: Hysteria, Vibrators and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction.” "I mean, the vagina dentata [vagina with teeth]? If there was ever a male paranoid fantasy, that was it.”
The idea of a vagina with teeth dates as far back as Greek mythology and is rooted in the idea that the female body has hidden, dangerous secrets and that a man who has sex with a woman may risk castration. (While largely the stuff of fiction, such as the 2007 movie "Teeth," at least one real-life case has been documented. In 1989, The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology reported a benign embroid tumor containing teeth growing in the wall of a woman's vagina.)
But it's not just women who are the targets of absurd sexual myths. When the female prioress and early medieval medical thinker Hildegard of Bingen wrote “the strength of man in his genital member is turned into poisonous foam,” she wasn’t exactly giving sex with men a big thumbs up.
Myths about sex in the western world waxed and waned depending largely on the state of sexual attitudes. The more restrictive the view of sex, the more prominent medical sex myths became.
Dangerous sex
By the 1800s, fear of one gender or another had turned into fear of sex itself. Doctors promoted the idea of danger.
While advice to the newly-married up until the 1820s and 1830s often included the idea of female pleasure and the importance of clitoral stimulation, things soon began to change, said John S. Haller, professor emeritus of history and medical humanities at Southern Illinois University and author of “The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America.”
After about 1840, Haller said, advice manuals began to focus on the vagina. “You begin to see manuals saying that women should not be experiencing that pleasure, and if they do, they are exposing themselves to harm.”
Much of this anti-sex attitude was rooted in economic class prejudice after the industrial revolution started creating the bourgeoisie. The poor, the uneducated, immigrants from southern climes, were the types to enjoy sex. Proper people didn’t.
“The ‘Irish maid’ is a good example,” Haller said. “Bourgeois people did not want them to nurse their children because of what might be carried through the breast milk; it could bring the bad traits of the Irish into the home of the Anglo-Saxon family.”
Masturbate and you'll get flat breasts
Anti-immigrant attitudes even affected the willingness of women to discuss sexual health complaints. “There was a very Protestant focus,” Haller explained, to distinguish oneself from the more swarthy, and lusty, recent arrivals. So “women were not encouraged to discuss or complain about the problems of menopause because they’d be admitting in a public way that they had abused themselves in their youth” since masturbation was thought to bring on menopause later in life.
Masturbation has a been a bugaboo for thousands of years; the Catholic Church still regards it as a disorder. In the Victorian era, after French physician Francois Lallemand published his “Practical Treatise on the Causes, Symptoms and Treatment of Spermatorrhea,” something of a medical panic ensued. Doctors at a Boston insane asylum reported that inmates there masturbated and soon a flood of anxious young men flowed into clinics fearing insanity, wasting, and even death.
Self-pleasuring, a typical advice manual stated, leaves “the nerves wasted and depleted … the entire nervous system will eventually become shattered and ruined beyond all hope of complete recovery.”
Girls could be affected, too, though to a lesser degree. “Girls who have followed masturbating habits … show usually strong indications of it in the failure of their glandular development,” an advice manual stated. “Such persons are apt to be flat-breasted, or, as we term it, flat-chested."
Joy on the job
When mechanical sewing machines arrived, a few lucky women using a model with two foot pedals found that by rubbing their thighs together, they could reach orgasm, which could certainly make working in a garment factory a little more fun, but it also posed a danger. “Doctors thought all sewing machines were bad for women,” Maines explained. “They thought the women would turn into lesbians.”
Some of the advice was an attempt to apply science to what had been largely superstition or religious stricture. But science often fell flat.
In 1897, for example, German physician Wilhelm Fliess published a treatise called “The Relations Between the Nose and the Female Sexual Organs from the Aspect of Biology.” In it, Fliess expanded on an idea he’d been developing for some time, the “nasogenital reflex.”
Perhaps with the bias of his field — he was what we would now call an ear, nose and throat specialist — Fliess argued that the nose was intimately connected to our genitals and that problems with one could manifest as problems in the other. He identified a region inside the nasal cavity, a bony projection called the nasal inferior turbinate, as being especially influential.
He described a set of symptoms like headaches, aches and pains, breathing difficulties, disordered mood and difficult menstruation in women matching the 28-day female cycle (men had a 23-day cycle, he said), and argued that these symptoms often began in the nose. The result could be a full-on neurosis.
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Best of Sexploration: Where are they now?
Fliess and his friend Sigmund Freud decided that one could treat the neurosis by huffing cocaine. Freud did so and it seemed to work. Voila! You could treat a genital problem — and the mental illness those problems create — by treating the nose. So Freud had Fliess operate on a woman named Emma Eckstein. Fliess removed Emma’s turbinate bone, but left a wad of gauze behind which created an infection. When the gauze was finally removed, she nearly bled to death. The episode left her disfigured for life.
Haller cautions against what he calls “presentism” when we look at such wrongheaded episodes. For example, while much of the Victorian era advice was laughably wrong, it was also progressive. An admonition that women should deny their husbands sex for up to eighteen months after the birth of a child was really a way for women to gain control of their own bodies.
We shouldn’t be too smug about our modern sexual sophistication, he said. Medical science may be getting better at figuring out what makes us tick, but it’s safe to say that some of the dogma we think is true now will later turn out to be false.
Brian Alexander is the author of the book “America Unzipped: In Search of Sex and Satisfaction," now in paperback.
© 2009 msnbc.com
----------
Seriously, for once, I don't even know where to start.......................
msnbc.com contributor
updated 8:59 a.m. ET, Thurs., April 23, 2009
Vaginas with teeth — and other sexual myths
A romp through history reveals a host of absurd beliefs once held as truth
Your genitals are connected to your nose. Women are infertile males. Orgasm is necessary to make a baby. Masturbation leads to insanity. Menstrual blood is actually sperm gone bad. At one time or another, medical science believed all these statements. What is it about sex that allows the imagination of doctors and the scientifically-minded to run free?
A walk down the memory lane of misbegotten sex theories reveals that such fanciful “truths” often grow from the fertile soil of bias and prejudice.
Aristotle, for example, believed that “a boy actually resembles a woman anatomically speaking and a woman is, so to speak, an infertile male. She is female because of a kind of inadequacy being unable to concoct semen from nourishment … owing to the coldness of her nature.”
The idea of a woman as an imperfect man was popular in western thought for more than a thousand years because most of the writers were men.
“That’s the most plausible theory we have: fear of female sex," said Rachel Maines, visiting scholar in Cornell University’s Department of Science and Technology Studies and author of “The Technology of Orgasm: Hysteria, Vibrators and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction.” "I mean, the vagina dentata [vagina with teeth]? If there was ever a male paranoid fantasy, that was it.”
The idea of a vagina with teeth dates as far back as Greek mythology and is rooted in the idea that the female body has hidden, dangerous secrets and that a man who has sex with a woman may risk castration. (While largely the stuff of fiction, such as the 2007 movie "Teeth," at least one real-life case has been documented. In 1989, The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology reported a benign embroid tumor containing teeth growing in the wall of a woman's vagina.)
But it's not just women who are the targets of absurd sexual myths. When the female prioress and early medieval medical thinker Hildegard of Bingen wrote “the strength of man in his genital member is turned into poisonous foam,” she wasn’t exactly giving sex with men a big thumbs up.
Myths about sex in the western world waxed and waned depending largely on the state of sexual attitudes. The more restrictive the view of sex, the more prominent medical sex myths became.
Dangerous sex
By the 1800s, fear of one gender or another had turned into fear of sex itself. Doctors promoted the idea of danger.
While advice to the newly-married up until the 1820s and 1830s often included the idea of female pleasure and the importance of clitoral stimulation, things soon began to change, said John S. Haller, professor emeritus of history and medical humanities at Southern Illinois University and author of “The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America.”
After about 1840, Haller said, advice manuals began to focus on the vagina. “You begin to see manuals saying that women should not be experiencing that pleasure, and if they do, they are exposing themselves to harm.”
Much of this anti-sex attitude was rooted in economic class prejudice after the industrial revolution started creating the bourgeoisie. The poor, the uneducated, immigrants from southern climes, were the types to enjoy sex. Proper people didn’t.
“The ‘Irish maid’ is a good example,” Haller said. “Bourgeois people did not want them to nurse their children because of what might be carried through the breast milk; it could bring the bad traits of the Irish into the home of the Anglo-Saxon family.”
Masturbate and you'll get flat breasts
Anti-immigrant attitudes even affected the willingness of women to discuss sexual health complaints. “There was a very Protestant focus,” Haller explained, to distinguish oneself from the more swarthy, and lusty, recent arrivals. So “women were not encouraged to discuss or complain about the problems of menopause because they’d be admitting in a public way that they had abused themselves in their youth” since masturbation was thought to bring on menopause later in life.
Masturbation has a been a bugaboo for thousands of years; the Catholic Church still regards it as a disorder. In the Victorian era, after French physician Francois Lallemand published his “Practical Treatise on the Causes, Symptoms and Treatment of Spermatorrhea,” something of a medical panic ensued. Doctors at a Boston insane asylum reported that inmates there masturbated and soon a flood of anxious young men flowed into clinics fearing insanity, wasting, and even death.
Self-pleasuring, a typical advice manual stated, leaves “the nerves wasted and depleted … the entire nervous system will eventually become shattered and ruined beyond all hope of complete recovery.”
Girls could be affected, too, though to a lesser degree. “Girls who have followed masturbating habits … show usually strong indications of it in the failure of their glandular development,” an advice manual stated. “Such persons are apt to be flat-breasted, or, as we term it, flat-chested."
Joy on the job
When mechanical sewing machines arrived, a few lucky women using a model with two foot pedals found that by rubbing their thighs together, they could reach orgasm, which could certainly make working in a garment factory a little more fun, but it also posed a danger. “Doctors thought all sewing machines were bad for women,” Maines explained. “They thought the women would turn into lesbians.”
Some of the advice was an attempt to apply science to what had been largely superstition or religious stricture. But science often fell flat.
In 1897, for example, German physician Wilhelm Fliess published a treatise called “The Relations Between the Nose and the Female Sexual Organs from the Aspect of Biology.” In it, Fliess expanded on an idea he’d been developing for some time, the “nasogenital reflex.”
Perhaps with the bias of his field — he was what we would now call an ear, nose and throat specialist — Fliess argued that the nose was intimately connected to our genitals and that problems with one could manifest as problems in the other. He identified a region inside the nasal cavity, a bony projection called the nasal inferior turbinate, as being especially influential.
He described a set of symptoms like headaches, aches and pains, breathing difficulties, disordered mood and difficult menstruation in women matching the 28-day female cycle (men had a 23-day cycle, he said), and argued that these symptoms often began in the nose. The result could be a full-on neurosis.
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Best of Sexploration: Where are they now?
Fliess and his friend Sigmund Freud decided that one could treat the neurosis by huffing cocaine. Freud did so and it seemed to work. Voila! You could treat a genital problem — and the mental illness those problems create — by treating the nose. So Freud had Fliess operate on a woman named Emma Eckstein. Fliess removed Emma’s turbinate bone, but left a wad of gauze behind which created an infection. When the gauze was finally removed, she nearly bled to death. The episode left her disfigured for life.
Haller cautions against what he calls “presentism” when we look at such wrongheaded episodes. For example, while much of the Victorian era advice was laughably wrong, it was also progressive. An admonition that women should deny their husbands sex for up to eighteen months after the birth of a child was really a way for women to gain control of their own bodies.
We shouldn’t be too smug about our modern sexual sophistication, he said. Medical science may be getting better at figuring out what makes us tick, but it’s safe to say that some of the dogma we think is true now will later turn out to be false.
Brian Alexander is the author of the book “America Unzipped: In Search of Sex and Satisfaction," now in paperback.
© 2009 msnbc.com
Seriously, for once, I don't even know where to start.......................
Friday, April 17, 2009
barbie is a tramp
Today was actually a fairly decent day. It got up to around 60 degrees. Grant raked the yard and bagged the leaves and put the garbage service in his name. He did a good job.
My yard is a disaster area though - having nothing to do with him.
At some point, the previous owner of this house felt it necessary to plant wild flowers. Wild flowers...are like the plague. When it got out of hand for her, she decided to dig up the 10'x8' patch of land and lay down black plastic to try to kill it all.
Didn't work out so well.
So, I have wild flowers in random spots all over the place.
I also have onion in random spots, also all over the place. The backyard smells like an Italian Restaurant when you mow it.
It's all unorganized.
There is no sun on one side of the house either.
It's all sort of a nightmare.
I've spent the last hour debating if I should just get it all cemented and paint it green.
...and no, I'm NOT above that either
I only own .25 of an acre. Pathetically, my lot is the second biggest on this entire street. The other guy has me beat by an 1/8th of an acre.
Fortunately, it seems that Grant is almost as interested as I am in turning the backyard into Eden.
I should take some pictures.
Before and after shots.
Is it wrong that every one of my favorite plants - is poisonous?
...not that I really care if it is or isn't, I'm just curious
I'm hoping the weather stays somewhat even from here on out. That will help my back. Because quite frankly, I'm already sick of this spine issue.
This is sort of a pointless post, isn't it.
I think I'm boring myself.
Grant's mother leaves tomorrow morning. I wish she could have stayed longer. I offered to call her in sick at work on Monday if she would stay, but she insists on being responsible.
I'm going to miss her.
She's a good woman.
She genuinely cares too.
I've got a web site to work on and once I'm done with that, I'm spending three full days on the couch like a real person. Like I should have done weeks ago. I need to stop moving so the stupid inflammation will finally go down in my back.
For the next week, it's just Grant and I in the house, so I'm not really needed for anything anyway.
Oh my God, this really is a dull post.
...I just yawned....AT MYSELF!
That's not right.
Let me end with some fun little fact at least, so you won't abandon me due to this poor excuse of a post.
Barbie is based on a German Sex Doll
The world's most famous doll - that twentieth century icon, Barbie - didn't just appear full-blown from the mind of her creator, Ruth Handler. Barbie's inspiration, her immediate predecessor, is an overtly sexual hottie named Lilli.
Lilli started out as a cartoon character dawn by Reinhard Beuthien for the Hamburg tabloid newspaper Bild-Zeitung. This blonde, curvy bombshell who pursued rich men first appeared in ink in 1952. Three years later, she became a plastic doll in Germany. The definitive history Forever Barbi reveals: "The doll, sold principally in tobacco shops, was marketed as a sort of three-dimensional pinup ... Lilli was never intended for children: She was a pornographic caricature, a gag gift for men..." Mattel engineer Jack Ryan once called Lilli a "hooker or an actress between performances."
Ruth Handler - she and her husband were co-founders of Mattel - wanted to create a three-dimensional, plastic, grown-up doll for girls, but the company's all-male board nixed the idea. While in Europe, she happened upon the vixenish Lilli and knew that she had discovered the literal prototype for her unrealized doll. The original Barbies were deliberately based on the German mantrap (Barb's head, in fact, was cast from Lille's with a few minor tweaks).
When the first Barbi appeared in 1959, it was as if Lilli had been cloned. They had the same puckered, fire-engine red lips, same arched eyebrows, same almond-shaped eyes glancing sidelong, same golden hair pulled into a ponytail, same height (11.5 inches), same pencil-thin legs, same wasp waist with pneumatic breasts above and child-bearing hips below.
Barbi's similarity to her slutty forerunner didn't go unnoticed. During pre-release market testing, mothers complained about Barbie's sex vibe, saying things like, "I don't like that influence on my little girl" and, "They could be a cute decoration for a man's bar," Sears - purveyors of the almighty Christmas "Wishbook" - refused to carry her at first. Nonetheless, Barbie instantly became a huge hit with girls, and Mattel spent the early years making her less of a tart. Now, every second of the day, two Barbies are sold. Lilli must be green with envy.
- taken from the book, "100 things you're not supposed to know" by Russ Kick
My yard is a disaster area though - having nothing to do with him.
At some point, the previous owner of this house felt it necessary to plant wild flowers. Wild flowers...are like the plague. When it got out of hand for her, she decided to dig up the 10'x8' patch of land and lay down black plastic to try to kill it all.
Didn't work out so well.
So, I have wild flowers in random spots all over the place.
I also have onion in random spots, also all over the place. The backyard smells like an Italian Restaurant when you mow it.
It's all unorganized.
There is no sun on one side of the house either.
It's all sort of a nightmare.
I've spent the last hour debating if I should just get it all cemented and paint it green.
...and no, I'm NOT above that either
I only own .25 of an acre. Pathetically, my lot is the second biggest on this entire street. The other guy has me beat by an 1/8th of an acre.
Fortunately, it seems that Grant is almost as interested as I am in turning the backyard into Eden.
I should take some pictures.
Before and after shots.
Is it wrong that every one of my favorite plants - is poisonous?
...not that I really care if it is or isn't, I'm just curious
I'm hoping the weather stays somewhat even from here on out. That will help my back. Because quite frankly, I'm already sick of this spine issue.
This is sort of a pointless post, isn't it.
I think I'm boring myself.
Grant's mother leaves tomorrow morning. I wish she could have stayed longer. I offered to call her in sick at work on Monday if she would stay, but she insists on being responsible.
I'm going to miss her.
She's a good woman.
She genuinely cares too.
I've got a web site to work on and once I'm done with that, I'm spending three full days on the couch like a real person. Like I should have done weeks ago. I need to stop moving so the stupid inflammation will finally go down in my back.
For the next week, it's just Grant and I in the house, so I'm not really needed for anything anyway.
Oh my God, this really is a dull post.
...I just yawned....AT MYSELF!
That's not right.
Let me end with some fun little fact at least, so you won't abandon me due to this poor excuse of a post.
Barbie is based on a German Sex Doll
The world's most famous doll - that twentieth century icon, Barbie - didn't just appear full-blown from the mind of her creator, Ruth Handler. Barbie's inspiration, her immediate predecessor, is an overtly sexual hottie named Lilli.
Lilli started out as a cartoon character dawn by Reinhard Beuthien for the Hamburg tabloid newspaper Bild-Zeitung. This blonde, curvy bombshell who pursued rich men first appeared in ink in 1952. Three years later, she became a plastic doll in Germany. The definitive history Forever Barbi reveals: "The doll, sold principally in tobacco shops, was marketed as a sort of three-dimensional pinup ... Lilli was never intended for children: She was a pornographic caricature, a gag gift for men..." Mattel engineer Jack Ryan once called Lilli a "hooker or an actress between performances."
Ruth Handler - she and her husband were co-founders of Mattel - wanted to create a three-dimensional, plastic, grown-up doll for girls, but the company's all-male board nixed the idea. While in Europe, she happened upon the vixenish Lilli and knew that she had discovered the literal prototype for her unrealized doll. The original Barbies were deliberately based on the German mantrap (Barb's head, in fact, was cast from Lille's with a few minor tweaks).
When the first Barbi appeared in 1959, it was as if Lilli had been cloned. They had the same puckered, fire-engine red lips, same arched eyebrows, same almond-shaped eyes glancing sidelong, same golden hair pulled into a ponytail, same height (11.5 inches), same pencil-thin legs, same wasp waist with pneumatic breasts above and child-bearing hips below.
Barbi's similarity to her slutty forerunner didn't go unnoticed. During pre-release market testing, mothers complained about Barbie's sex vibe, saying things like, "I don't like that influence on my little girl" and, "They could be a cute decoration for a man's bar," Sears - purveyors of the almighty Christmas "Wishbook" - refused to carry her at first. Nonetheless, Barbie instantly became a huge hit with girls, and Mattel spent the early years making her less of a tart. Now, every second of the day, two Barbies are sold. Lilli must be green with envy.
- taken from the book, "100 things you're not supposed to know" by Russ Kick
Saturday, April 11, 2009
survival of the fittest
A male friend and I found ourselves in the parking lot of my old townhouse after dinner, just hanging out and talking to each other in the car. The townhouse in front of where we were parked was having a party. There were drunk morons a plenty.
Someone suggested playing darts.
My interest was peaked. I started straining to hear the conversation, so turned off the radio. Thankfully they had a stockade fence around their backyard so they couldn't see me leaning out the window. It was dark anyway.
Prior to this new form of entertainment in front of our eyes, we had been talking about the strength difference between men and women and the term 'survival of the fittest' got thrown around a couple of times.
The conversation got to me, I admit.
I'm a little tired of hearing about how the men were the hunters and women are the gatherers. I have yet to see any documented cases of them finding meat in the stomach content of any corpse. Where's the hunting? Hunting what? The wheat for the bread? The berries off the trees?
Anyway...
I said to my male friend that it was a matter of time before some drunk idiot put the eye out of one of their friends.
My male friend scoffed at the idea and called them pansies. He said that if they really wanted to make a sport of it, one of them would grab the target and run around the yard while the other tried to score a bull's eye that way.
That's when the Heavens parted and I had a moment of clarity. I think there may have even been trumpets. Don't quote me on that though.
I looked at him and formulated the words, "I get it now!"
Then I went on to explain at about a million words per second how it's SURVIVAL of the FITTEST. Fit. FITTEST! Why did I NOT see that before?! Fittest! Men HAVE to be fit!
Why?
Because stupid shit like that makes total sense to them!
...and only the fittest of the bunch can heal and live to carry out some other act that doesn't make any sense another day!
Hey, you - let me put this apple on top of your head, okay? Then I'm going to stand back here and shoot this arrow at you. I bet I can spear the apple! What? No, I don't have my glasses on. Whatever, Dude. Stop being a wimp.
See how that works?
The term is not survival of the smartest for a reason.
I feel much better about it now.
Mystery solved.
Someone suggested playing darts.
My interest was peaked. I started straining to hear the conversation, so turned off the radio. Thankfully they had a stockade fence around their backyard so they couldn't see me leaning out the window. It was dark anyway.
Prior to this new form of entertainment in front of our eyes, we had been talking about the strength difference between men and women and the term 'survival of the fittest' got thrown around a couple of times.
The conversation got to me, I admit.
I'm a little tired of hearing about how the men were the hunters and women are the gatherers. I have yet to see any documented cases of them finding meat in the stomach content of any corpse. Where's the hunting? Hunting what? The wheat for the bread? The berries off the trees?
Anyway...
I said to my male friend that it was a matter of time before some drunk idiot put the eye out of one of their friends.
My male friend scoffed at the idea and called them pansies. He said that if they really wanted to make a sport of it, one of them would grab the target and run around the yard while the other tried to score a bull's eye that way.
That's when the Heavens parted and I had a moment of clarity. I think there may have even been trumpets. Don't quote me on that though.
I looked at him and formulated the words, "I get it now!"
Then I went on to explain at about a million words per second how it's SURVIVAL of the FITTEST. Fit. FITTEST! Why did I NOT see that before?! Fittest! Men HAVE to be fit!
Why?
Because stupid shit like that makes total sense to them!
...and only the fittest of the bunch can heal and live to carry out some other act that doesn't make any sense another day!
Hey, you - let me put this apple on top of your head, okay? Then I'm going to stand back here and shoot this arrow at you. I bet I can spear the apple! What? No, I don't have my glasses on. Whatever, Dude. Stop being a wimp.
See how that works?
The term is not survival of the smartest for a reason.
I feel much better about it now.
Mystery solved.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
marco venier and veronica franco
Marco Venier to Veronica Franco
Capitolo 1
If I love you as much as my own life,
cruel lady, why do you offer no relief
for my suffering in such great love?
And if I ask in vain for grace and pity,
why do not you at least end with death
this pain I endure for love of you?
I know you are not right to reward
my faithfulness in this way; but a wrong
that rights a greater wrong is well received;
my suffering is more bitter than any death,
and to die by your hand in this condition
would be a boon I long for and cherished.
But how ever can it be, in the tenderest part
of your body, that your fair, fine white breast
can enclose a heart so hard and pitiless?
How can it be that such a gay appearance
conceals desires and thoughts so cruel
that they disdain my humble devotion?
To use the great beauty given you by heaven
for the death and grief of a man who loves you-
what deed worse than this could you commit?
Let your natural desire be freed from all this
and let compassion fitting to your beauty
make its way into your mind instead.......
Veronica Franco to Marco Venier
Franco's response to Capitolo 1
Certain qualities concealed within me,
I will reveal to you, infinitely sweetly,
which prose or verse has never shown another,
on this condition: that you prove your love to me
by other means than compliments, for I
take care not to be fooled by them;
please me more with deeds and praise me less,
and where your courtesy overflows into praise,
distribute it in some other way.
Does what I say seem right to you,
or do you instead perhaps think I am wrong,
lacking experience to choose the right path?
Sir, being mocked is a most painful thing,
especially in love; and let whoever
does not believe this show his reason why.
I am ready to walk in step with you,
and I will love you beyond any doubt,
just as your merit requires I should.
If in your breast you have love's burning fire
I'll feel it by your side, for it will have
the power to set my heart aflame, too;
it's not possible to escape its blows,
and whoever feels truly loved
is bound to love the lover in return;
but attempting to make white pass for black
is something that everybody dislikes,
even those whose judgment is weak.
So show me the fruits of your love for me,
for only foolish folk are deceived
by the lure of empty words.......
Capitolo 1
If I love you as much as my own life,
cruel lady, why do you offer no relief
for my suffering in such great love?
And if I ask in vain for grace and pity,
why do not you at least end with death
this pain I endure for love of you?
I know you are not right to reward
my faithfulness in this way; but a wrong
that rights a greater wrong is well received;
my suffering is more bitter than any death,
and to die by your hand in this condition
would be a boon I long for and cherished.
But how ever can it be, in the tenderest part
of your body, that your fair, fine white breast
can enclose a heart so hard and pitiless?
How can it be that such a gay appearance
conceals desires and thoughts so cruel
that they disdain my humble devotion?
To use the great beauty given you by heaven
for the death and grief of a man who loves you-
what deed worse than this could you commit?
Let your natural desire be freed from all this
and let compassion fitting to your beauty
make its way into your mind instead.......
Veronica Franco to Marco Venier
Franco's response to Capitolo 1
Certain qualities concealed within me,
I will reveal to you, infinitely sweetly,
which prose or verse has never shown another,
on this condition: that you prove your love to me
by other means than compliments, for I
take care not to be fooled by them;
please me more with deeds and praise me less,
and where your courtesy overflows into praise,
distribute it in some other way.
Does what I say seem right to you,
or do you instead perhaps think I am wrong,
lacking experience to choose the right path?
Sir, being mocked is a most painful thing,
especially in love; and let whoever
does not believe this show his reason why.
I am ready to walk in step with you,
and I will love you beyond any doubt,
just as your merit requires I should.
If in your breast you have love's burning fire
I'll feel it by your side, for it will have
the power to set my heart aflame, too;
it's not possible to escape its blows,
and whoever feels truly loved
is bound to love the lover in return;
but attempting to make white pass for black
is something that everybody dislikes,
even those whose judgment is weak.
So show me the fruits of your love for me,
for only foolish folk are deceived
by the lure of empty words.......
Friday, March 27, 2009
venus in furs
and hath delivered him into
the hands of a woman."
-The Vulgate, Judith, xvi.7
"You have taught me what love is. Your serene form of worship let me forget two thousand years."
"And my faithfulness to you was without equal!"
"Well, as far as faithfulness goes--"
"Ungrateful!"
"I will not reproach you with anything. You are a divine woman, but nevertheless a woman, and like every woman cruel in love."
"What you call cruel," the goddess of love replied eagerly, "is simply the element of passion and of natural love, which is woman's nature and makes her give herself where she loves, and makes her love everything that pleases her."
"Can there be any greater cruelty for a lover than the unfaithfulness of the woman he loves?"
"Indeed!," she replied. "We are faithful as long as we love, but you demand faithfulness of a woman without love, and the giving of herself without enjoyment. Who is cruel there -- woman or man? You of the North in general take love too soberly and seriously. You talk of duties where there should be only a question of pleasure."
"This is why our emotions are honorable and virtuous, and our relations permanent."
"And yet a restless, always-unsatisfied craving for the nudity of paganism," she interrupted.
"But that love, which is the highest job, which is divine simplicity itself, is not for you moderns, you children of reflection. It works only evil in you. As soon as you wish to be natural, you become common. To you nature seems something hostile; you have made devils out of the smiling gods of Greece, and out of me a demon. You can only exorcise and curse me, or slay yourselves in bacchantic madness before my altar. And if ever one of you has had the courage to kiss my red mouth, he makes a barefoot pilgrimate to Rome in penitential robes and expects flowers to grow from his withered staff, while under my feet roses, violets, and myrtles spring up every hour; but their fragrance does not agree with you. Stay among your nothern fogs and Christian incense; let us pagans remain under the debris, beneath the lava; do not disinter us. Pompeii was not built for you, nor our villas, our baths, our temples. You do not require gods. We are chilled in your world."
"Much obliged for the classical lesson," I replied, "But you cannot deny that man and woman are mortal enemies, in your serene sunlit world as well as in our foggy one. In love there is union into a single being for a short time only, capable of only one thought, one sensation, one will, in order to be then further disunited. And you know this better than I; whichever of the two fails to subjugate will soon feel the feet of the other on his neck --"
"And as a rule the man that of the woman, " cried Madame Venus with proud mockery, "Which you know better than I."
"Of course, and that is why I don't have any illusions."
"You mean you are now my slave without illusions, and for that reason you shall feel the weight of my foot without mercy."
"Madame!"
"Don't you know me yet? Yes, I am cruel -- since you take so much delight in that word -- and am I not entitled to be so? Man is the one who desires, woman the one who is desired. This is woman's entire but decisive advantage. Through man's passion, nature has given man into woman's hands, and the woman who does not know how to make him her subject, her slave, her toy, and how to betray him with a smile in the end is not wise."
"Exactly your principles," I interrupted angrily.
"They are based on the experience of thousands of years," she replied ironically, while her white fingers played over the dark fur. "The more devoted a woman shows herself to be, the sooner the man sobers down and becomes domineering. The more cruelly she treats him and the more faithless she is, the worse she uses him, the more wantonly she plays with him, the less pity she shows him, by so much the more will she increase his desire, be loved, be worshipped by him. So it has always been, since the time of Helen and Delilah, down to Catherine the Second and Lola Montez."
"I cannot deny," I said, "That nothing will attract a man more than the picture of a beautiful, passionate, cruel, and despotic woman who wantonly changes her favorites without scruple in accordance with her whim --"
-Venus in Furs
Everyone should read Venus in Furs at least once in their lifetime...
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