reclining-nude-1917-by-modigliani

Top Five Things I Wish Would Go Back to Normal

05.
Pubic hair.
tumblr_laofhmIlRv1qa95wro1_500Has the whole world gone completely crazy? What’s with the fully shaved situation?   Bring back the bush. Bring back the men who let it all hang out, hair and all. No one should be required to meticulously remove every pubic hair for aesthetic purposes. If we’re talking hair in teeth, I can dig it. Trim it, shave essential areas but to go full bald eagle just to keep up with the times? 11723_Dennis_DarlingThe times, they have to change back.  Now, it’s true that many people equate a furry mound with books like The Joy of Sex. But look at the opening scene of Carrie. Those girls look like fairly normal adult women (playing teenagers). See how they have pubic hair? Imagine that scene with all of their pubes shaved off. It would just look icky. To me anyway. Is it an age thing? Somehow I doubt either Kim Kardashian or Kanye West have pubes. Something tells me they had probably had an operation to remove every wiry strand.

The Natural Man by Jobst, Norbert

At the end of the day, the naked form looks great with a thatch framing it. Within reason, of course. Some of that 70s porn makes you think, wow, really? I’m supposed to stick my face in that? Back then, a shaved woman would fit into that category of porn we don’t like to talk about publicly. It was a fetish, a peculiarity.  Now, it’s become the standard.  In porn and, I’ve found, in real life for those paying attention to the trends.  I always like it, though, when the guy doesn’t pay attention to trends and wouldn’t be caught dead taking a razor to his private parts. Clean toenails? Always a plus. Brushed teeth? Totally. But pubes? Leave them on fellas.  Unless you’re dating Kim Kardashian. I also hear Madonna is a big fan of all shaved.  I was relieved to hear, however, when Gwyneth Paltrow recently confessed to “rocking the 70s vibe,” meaning, she wears pubes proudly. Here’s to hoping she is ahead of a new trend backwards.

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Fumbling Towards Laetoli

Yesterday was one of those days when you really need to get out of the house. It was just one of those days anyway. You know, those days when you aren’t really sure where you stand with yourself or with anyone else? We have them every now and then. I’ve decided that there are two kinds of people, mainly, here in America. I can’t really speak for people anywhere else. I can’t even speak for people here actually. I can’t speak for anyone. What I do know is this: some people live life with their emotions exposed. They are not “normal” by society’s standards and life is uncomfortable most of the time, but especially so when they are trying to conform to some kind of “normal” role. Weird, I know. I am one of the non-normal people. I have never fit in with the “normal” people. I am much more comfortable with people who aren’t “normal,” that’s the truth. I think, in general, we live against our natural inclination as a species, this, I believe, is the cause of our all of our neuroses.

But that isn’t what I’m talking about today. Except to say that one of the reasons I like Marc Maron’s podcast so much is because he isn’t one of those “normal” people either. Moreover, he spends, it seems to me, every second of every day just trying to get through it without losing his mind. That is what makes his podcast so compelling: he struggles with it every second of every day. As do most of us non-normal people.

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Immeasurable Atrocities

1. Appalling or atrocious condition, quality, or behavior; monstrousness.

2. The willingness of our species to put ourselves down somewhere permanently, and the fragile shell so easily crushed when life churns around us. Are we no different from ants hopefully setting up their own population cycle on a pile of dirt that is then washed away by the next day’s rain? Are we no different because we are as hopeful, as unaware, as unbelieving? And how do we absorb it. How do we fix it. How do we prevent it. How do we mourn.

3. The republicans are doing terrible things to our country.

4. Just because we are compassionate and torn apart by the upwards of 10,000 people who have died so far in Japan (that story is yet untold) we don’t get a pass for our lurid unstoppable obsession with Charlie Sheen: yet more reason to hate ourselves. He is falling apart, we’re holding a party.

5. And I aged another year. A friend’s mother died of cancer finally. My uncle caught pneumonia and also died. I guess it comes down to a simple choice: “Get busy living, or get busy dying.” The man said.