Sunday Sound-Off: Installment One

Welcome to our first installment of Sunday Sound-Off…where we will openly, peaceably discuss something of interest to, well, whichever one of us posts! 

This week we bring you the following:

(Please read, and then we shall discuss below, m’kay?)

TAMPA - Mom thinks her boy is a catch, so much so she shells out 500 bucks for an ad in The Tampa Tribune.

“ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS … a WIFE for my SON,” it begins.

Signed Christmas Mother-in Law, the plea continues: “I’m sad that he’s alone, a 37 year old handsome Tampa professional …

“Help me find him a wife!”

Claudia swears there’s nothing wrong with her son.

“He’s such a good boy,” she says. “He’s so good-hearted, so good-looking. He’s got a good job.”

So far, so good, but she is his mother. Seeing is believing.

With visions of a daughter-in-law dancing in her head, Claudia agrees to get her son to contact the newspaper for a story. Surely, that will help.

Jason sounds nice and normal over the phone. No criminal record, either. Time to meet. He says to look for the guy with the goatee. Hair color?

“What hair?” he deadpans.

It turns out he’s OK with his mother’s meddling.

“I figured it was worth a shot,” he says.

Jason has been looking for Mrs. Right since 2003, when he got divorced from Mrs. Wrong. There have been a few girlfriends, but “nothing that has panned out.”

A Leo, he considers himself outgoing and passionate. He loves the outdoors, beach and mountains.

And Mom’s right, he’s good-hearted. He volunteers with a group that works with teens with Down syndrome, taking them to the movies and showing them how to make change at the store.

“I don’t have kids,” he explains. “And that’s something I would like in the near future.”

He’s a graduate of Bloomingdale High and the University of South Florida. He likes ’80s music and the occasional Captain Morgan with Diet Coke.

So far, he says, his mother has received only three responses to her ad. Two came from other mothers; one with a daughter, who sounds promising; the other, a son. She wants the names of the women Jason decides not to date.

Jason is not deterred. But for Claudia, it’s a sign that there aren’t many single women in Tampa. Or that they just aren’t adventurous.

“I feel like sometimes you just need to put yourself out there, regardless of the chance you’re taking,” Claudia says in an e-mail. “You will never know what you might have missed if you don’t.”

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/dec/14/all-she-wants-christmas-wife-her-son/news-metro/

Okay, my friends…what do you think of mommy dearest up there…

Is this woman taking her motherly duty a smidge too far, or is she well within her motherly rights?

Would you go this far to “find true love” for your (37 year old) child?

What about if you were her child…would you want this kind of help from your parent?

SOUND-OFF, kids!

The Babymakers

With Christmas a few short days away, you may have come close to hitting your boiling point on holiday cheer and good will to men. It’s this final stretch that leaves most of us tearing our hair out and questioning the meaning of it all. Luckily, just when you were beginning to lose sight of the reasons for the season, a blessed miracle has taken place…move over baby Jesus! Michelle Duggar has given birth to her 18^th child.

Yes, that’s right! Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar of Tontitown, Arkansas welcomed little Jordyn-Grace Makiya at the Mercy Medical Center just shy of her January 1^st due date. Born at a healthy 7 pounds, 3 ounces via C-section due to the fact Jordyn-Grace was turned on her side in the womb. One might think after the 17 babies before her, the C-section wouldn’t have been necessary and they could have just slid her out like a turkey.  I, however, am no doctor.

“Which one are you again?”

Jordyn-Grace joins the rest of her 10 brothers and 7 sisters, alliteratively named Joshua, John-David, Jana, Jill, Jessa, Jinger, Joseph, Josiah, Joy-Anna, Jeremiah, Jedidiah, Jason, James, Justin, Jackson, Johannah and Jennifer.  Apparently Jim Bob makes it his job to jam his junk into Michelle like a juggernaut. Sorry…I got a little stuck in the moment there.

You might recognize the Duggar Clan from their weekly network show on The Learning Channel called 17 Kids & Counting. They are conservative Baptists who believe it is God’s will that they fruitfully multiply, and until they get word otherwise they’d “love to have more.”  Endorsing the Quiverfull method, the Duggars regard every child’s birth as a blessing. Even if after they’re born they are filed in like Evangelical cattle, until they can be home schooled on all things holier than holy.

Quiverfull Christians or Q.F. Christians generally do not support any methods of contraception, including natural family planning or sterilization.  As a result, Michelle Duggar has happily given birth to a child approximately every 18 months since the birth of her oldest, Jason, now 20.  Jason has recently married and has been quoted to saying he also cannot wait to begin receiving the blessings from God that are children. My condolences to the misses.

While fruitful sex within your marriage under the rule of God should be celebrated, note that Barrenness and the inability to conceive should also be revered as part of the master plan. You may pray for God’s almighty intervention, but to take your fertility in to your own hands is simply a usurpation of the movement itself.

Too.Many.Questions! Let us forget for a moment that the Duggars have every right in the world to their belief system. The children don’t seem to be in any physical danger.  They are clothed, schooled and ‘well’ cared for - by each other in a trickling down of the ages;  it’s a household structured by ‘jurisdictions’ and everyone knows their responsibility and what is expected of them. All that being said…what the fuck are they thinking?

How long can this go on, exactly?  Michelle Duggar has been pregnant approximately 154 months of her life, with two sets of twins in the mix.  She’s successfully carried 15 pregnancies and doesn’t seem to think there is any reason to slow down.  It is for God to open and close her womb. Forget finding her clit, a higher power installed a zipper!

What of the millions of God’s children on this overpopulated planet with no family?  Children that need a home, and they’d be happy to take one not partially paid for by The Discovery Network. I suppose we should let the barren stay in charge of the others, they’ll need something to do while they wait for God to graciously intervene and make Myrtle fertile like Johnny Appleseed of the heavens?

Can I get an Amen?! How about another ‘J’…

Alright, alright…you MUST have an opinion on this family!  Do you watch the show? Agree with their practices? What about the social development of the older children while Michelle Duggar focuses her time on being a baby factory?  Isn’t their some level of selfishness and cruelty here that takes away from all the good Christianity? Discuss!

With thoughts of the competition dancing in his head…

After nearly two years together, I hadn’t seen her in four months.  But here she was, my little angel, sun-kissed and ripe from walks on the shorelines and cobbled walkways of some faraway place.  All summer I waited.  And finally, the moment had arrived.  I took her by the hand and led her into the bedroom.  She smelled like something yummy and exotic that I still cannot pronounce; I was unshaven and woodsy, having hurried eagerly from work without a stop to change clothes, or even a piece of gum to hide the late lunch on my breath.  I kissed her sweetly. We rolled onto the bed and began to intently remove one another’s clothing.  As I kissed her on the collar bone and up the length of her neck, my voice fell upon her ear and asked, so very softly: “What was his name?”

I am pretty sure that I am not the only guy in the world who gets off on his girlfriend being naughty with other guys.  This fixation has become something of a motif in almost all of my romantic relationships to date, whether it has involved the mere disclosure of her prior experiences with other men unknown to me, or (in a small handful of instances) the act of me (literally) guiding a man’s penis into her body, and then overseeing the coitus as a sort of director.  “Get on top of him.”  “Hold still while she does it with her hand.”  And so forth.  (OK, I am kind of a freak.)

Having never been part of any sort of fetish community, my mileage has been limited mostly to intimate arrangements between myself and my partner only; arrangements, which have consisted primarily of spoken disclosure during play (dirty-talk) and, to a far lesser extent, the sort of perverse ménage a trois scenario illustrated above.

Prior to embarking upon this writing project, I had never given my dark persuasions much in the way of historical consideration.  But in this case I will confess to having done an hour or two of journalistic research.  The only thing I was able to turn up was some interesting facts on a sinful old European practice called cuckoldry.

Cuckoldry: archaic slang for a wife’s intent infidelity to her unwitting husband, presumably to the favor of a more virile and desirable man.  Or, similarly, the practice (for a man) of making cuckolds: sexual conquests of married women.

In several historical accounts, it is suggested that the husband, or cuckold, in the scenario was often the last (and by last, I mean last in the village) to know of his wife’s meanderings, adding a dimension of pointed social disgrace to the affair, from what I gather.

A short list of odd figures and artists are implicated in various mentions of this practice throughout history, the most note-worthy being Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the man for whom modern sadomasochism is named!  Ironically, it is told that Masoch’s repeated requests to his wife to make a cuckold of him were never fulfilled, and thus, she remained true in spite of his dark desire to enjoy the pain, suffering, and humiliation of her permitted infidelity.

My earliest exploration consisted of many probing questions about a girlfriend’s prior relationship with another young man.  It started with innocent question about her relationship with him - what she ‘liked’ about him, where they would hang out - but a hunger inside me craved more and more.  One day, after inquiring as to how many times they had slept together, I asked her how big his cock was.  She seemed shocked at first, but not completely repulsed (perhaps even morbidly curious).  As things progressed, graphic descriptions of the shape of his cock, the taste of his semen, the sexual positions he employed would litter the dialog of our sexual play.

Several years later, with another girlfriend, I began making assignments for her, begging her to allow things to escalate just such, having her text message me with real-time updates as her encounters would escalate - “I am about to get in the shower.  We just went at it for several hours.  I think he wants to fuck me again though.” Her sexual activities with other men became the primary component of our sexual relationship.  Then, even after our relationship ended I would solicit her for details of her subsequent encounters.

The aforementioned relationships were improbably unique, and preceded other more brazen, orgiastic encounters involving actual participation in the act (as mentioned earlier), none of which were nearly so satisfying to me.  It seems that in order for this dynamic to work, there must be a pre-existing emotional bond; it is the violation of this bond that excites my masochistic urges.  It is almost as though certain threads of anger and jealousy can be re-spun into this rush of sexual titillation.  But without the emotional bond, this jealous fascination cannot occur.  And without this jealous fascination, no fetish can be stroked.

The problem with this persuasion is that it involves the disruption of an actual relationship between two people.  And even if certain kinds of behavior are permitted in certain situations, there is still a great potential for misunderstanding and heartache.  This sort of play is probably best advised for mature couples who understand boundaries and are able to bury the hatchet quickly if things do get ever out of hand.

We thank Evan-Exempt for his…colorful guest post.  Be sure to tell him what you think about it, and the subject matter in general, in the comments below.

Protecting His Precious Commodity

Morals… they’re so quaint in LA.  I’ve only been living here a couple years, but the “will sell soul for cash!” vibe is everywhere.  I want to start pretending I’m a big producer so that I can have wild and deviant sex with some girl aching to be a star.

And her friend.

Actually, I’ll settle for telling some “war stories” in order to get into any chick’s pants.  I’m so hard up that I’d even “chat up” one of those wenches from The View.  It doesn’t help that my MBA class has a surprising number of women.  It’s only one in three, but that’s still about eight times better odds than I ever had in the military.

I hope my daughter never has to deal with a guy who’s as big of an ass as me.  I am a real sweetheart most of the time, but occasionally the hormones kick in and my inner asshole comes out.  She’s six now, and loves to wear dresses; but like any young girl, hasn’t quite mastered the ability to wear a dress without showing the world what color her panties are.  Hell, sometimes she just likes to show them off to prove to people that she’s a big girl and doesn’t need diapers.  I often have to tell her, “Honey, sit like a good girl, not like a popular girl.”  She doesn’t get it.  I can’t even begin to explain the lengths that most guys will go to in order to see up a girl’s skirt.  Even when there’s no hope of actually seeing the holiest of holies- the chance of glimpsing some upper thigh will cause a guy to damn near break his neck if he senses some leg adjustment.

Well, at least I will.

I can’t help it.  It’s not like I’ve never seen it before.  I can definitely see more skin at the beach.  I’ll even do it to see up the skirt of a girl I’ve been dating for months.  There’s just something uncontrollably tantalizing about seeing some skin that you weren’t supposed to see.  It’s not quite human nature, but it is definitely perverted male nature.  Which is pretty much the best possible description of my, and most every other guys’, personality.  And that is what scares me the most.  I don’t worry about my daughter getting run over, catching ebola, or dying in some freak industrial accident I worry about her getting treated like shit by some douchebag who just wants to get his rocks off.  I’d like to say this is the reason why I am such a great guy and so noble to women; but I’m far from perfect.  Men hate guys who date their daughter because we know what the little bastard is thinking.

I hold my daughter’s hand whenever we cross the street, she knows to turn and grab my hand before stepping off the curb, but one day she’ll see some cute Fall Out Boy wannabe and become dazzled by his hair or whatever, and the little prick is going to cop a feel.  Every little heartbreak will change the way she looks at the world.  Will change her.  And let’s be honest, I don’t want to go to jail for killing some would be suitor.  That’s why I know how to dispose of bodies, and live by the coast.  I never thought I’d feel this way, I never thought I’d be good at loving a child, especially a daughter.  I always thought I’d be able to handle a son because I could throw him around and teach him fart jokes.  Instead I have this little girl who makes me want to stab every guy who looks at her right in the eye.  Morals in LA might be passé, but having a daughter has sure lent focus to my life.

What puts you into defense mode and makes you over-protective? Do you think single Dads are as capable of raising a daughter as single Moms? What lessons can a Father teach his Daughter to prevent her from getting her heart broken?

Eve would like to give a very special Thank You to our friend Jeremy for sharing his thoughts and insight with us. Now, give him some love because he seems to need it!

I seem to have misplaced my holiday cheer…

Will you love me in December as you do in May,
Will you love me in the good old fashioned way?
When my hair has all turned gray,
Will you kiss me then and say,
That you love me in December as you do in May?
~James J. Walker

Winter gets me down…

First, I get all mentally exhausted by the stress of finals. And then I get sick juuuuuuust in time to take said finals. Then I have to resort to taking medicine which makes me feel like I am on very poor quality uppers. Lastly you add in the fact that cold weather and Trista is a baaaaad combo, because it makes me mopey and moody and altogether unpleasant.

In short, I am a grumpy, sneezy-weezy, zippity without any doodah Tristasicle.

I do have one happy thought though:

These are on there way to my house…to be delivered by a hunky man in brown….mmmmm.

Zappos and UPS = my happy thoughts.  But I digress.  Lets get back to my not-so-happy-thoughts.

My main problem with this most wonderful time of the year? I never can get into the whole holiday bliss thing…because it seems so contrived to me.  I think I have issues with holidays in general…if you love me all year why can you only show it when the calendar tells you so, hmmm? And to me, Christmas is the biggest perpetrator of phony goodwill.

First the stores start blasting their “Christmas cheer” the day after Thanksgiving.  We-wish-you-a-rudolph-the-red nosed-little-drummer-boy-jingle-bells all up in my face, everywhere I go.  I suppose it is to remind all you good capitalists to SPEND SPEND SPEND your hard earned paycheck on their over priced goods .

Spend, cattle!!!

Next my mailbox begins to be flooded by Christmas cards and letter from people that couldn’t be bothered to talk to me all year long, but now they just HAAAAVE to tell me about little Johnny’s winning baseball season or their record-breaking year at Mary Kay.  This is something I will NEVER understand.  Is it a contest??  He who has the most people in the address book to send Christmas cards out to wins?  Where were you people when it was warm and I was in a good mood, hmm??

Bah to the Christmas Card Army, I say!  Baaaaaah!

Then there is all the damn food everywhere.  Just what a moody girl needs to give her a manic sugar rush and then a big ol’ comatose crash afterward. Cookies!  Fudge!  Banana bread!  Chocolates!  It’s a fatty foods extravaganza and I am an easy mark.

Just what I wanted for Christmas…cellulite!

And then…there’s shopping.
Now don’t get me wrong…normally I love shopping.  What I don’t love?  Pressure.  See, I am a ridiculous perfectionist, and I refuse, REFUSE to get people just any old present.  I want it be personal, heartfelt, and also something this person would want or need.  Simple, right?  Uh huh.  So I usually end up spending those last 10 days between finals and Christmas out at the retail torture chambers aka malls, on my impossible task for the Christmas present equivalents of the holy grail. And my reward for my hard work?

And now the entire family knows thinks I am a feminazi…greeeeat.

It’s not that I do not appreciate the book, it does actually qualify under the personal, usable criterion I set above.  I even WANTED the book. …but it probably wasn’t wise to let me open it in front of grandma.  I’m pretty sure I am out of the will for bringing the c-word into my grandparent’s realm of thought.

But seriously folks, maybe the problem is that we live in a society that drives us to consume until we are overstuffed, both literally and figuratively.  Perhaps with all this technology we are losing all of our personal bonds and we are just too disconnected from each other to know any better.  Or it could be that we are morally lost…and have become cold and selfish and out of touch with what really matters in life…and our love and spirituality have been crowded out by materialism and greed.  Ah, humanity!

But I am going to go make an amazon.com wish list…you know, just in case.

Bah Humbug, lovers.

How do you fare during the holiday season?  Tis the season to be jolly, or would you rather curl up in your bath tub with your mattress on top, waiting for January second to arrive?

And have you done all your shopping yet??!

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