Opinion

CUSSING FOR FUN AND PLEASURE

/ Ken Finton / 2 Comments

Unknown“Oh, fuck. What the fuck are you doing here, you fucker,” said George Clooney to a dead man in BURN AFTER READING.

Who among us do not know someone who over uses cuss words? A well-sprinkled obscenity now and then adds a little spice to the mush of everyday conversation.

Most of us make good use of them.

Clooney’s line above is a first class example of a sentence than means nothing because of too many cuss words.

According to Stephen Pinker there are five social uses for swearing:

  • Abusive swearing
  • Cathartic swearing
  • Dysphemistic swearing: the substitution of a disagreeable, offensive, or disparaging expression for an agreeable or inoffensive one; also: an expression so substituted.
  • Emphatic swearing

[See Idiomatic swearing The Stuff of Thought: Language As a Window Into Human Nature, Steven Pinker 2007]

Cuss words are about the syllables. 

Who says: “Fornicate you” these days? Good cuss words only have one syllable. No writer when looking at a bad review says that this is a piece of ‘defecation’.

Without a doubt, profanity has its place. It is truly useful when you smack your thumb with a hammer or stub your bare toe on the foot of the bed.

Keele University researchers Stephens, Atkins, and Kingston found that swearing relieves the effects of physical pain. Stephens said, “I would advise people, if they hurt themselves, to swear”.

However, the overuse of swear words tends to diminish this effect. The team earned themselves the Ig Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 for the research.

Profane language is not a recent thing. The Bible is full of references and mentions men who “eat their own dung” and “drink their own piss.” [2 Kings 18:27.]  William Shakespeare’s works are full of profanity, but most of those words are no longer in use.

A team of neurologists and psychologists at the UCLA Easton Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research suggested that swearing may help differentiate Alzheimer’s disease from frontotemporal dementia.

The overuse of cuss words take away their power. That’s why I do not use them much. Any overused expression detracts from the thought it takes to create an original response, which is remembered for much longer.

There are a few sex words I do not like–pussy and cock–for example. I use the proper names when possible. I do find it strange that the one thing we ought to celebrate–sex–is the source of the most overused and offensive retorts. What bothers me about this is that procreation and the urge to mate is the primary driving force in most of our emotional lives. To treat it like an evil secret is so profane in itself.

But that is just me. Others feel differently about spicing their vocabulary with low-level English. People often flip the middle finger as a sign of ‘up yours’. Personally, I have a habit of gesturing with the middle finger which sometimes upsets those around me, until they realize I do not have a clue that I am doing it.

1914Only once did I get my mouth washed with soap when I was a child. Unfortunately, I liked the taste. It was Lifebouy, no longer available in the United States. I am not certain what I said any longer and neither of my parents are alive to remind me of this discretion, but it had to be something I learned from a sailor.

The term “profane” originates from classical Latin “profanus”, meaning “before (outside) the temple”. It carried the meaning of either “desecrating what is holy” or “with a secular purpose” as early as the 1450s CE.

  •  Oxford English Dictionary Online, “profane”, retrieved 2012-02-14

 

 

Crusaders against verbal profanity go to the extremes of delaying broadcasts slightly so that censors can review and cut the profanity before it reaches the ears of the most sensitive souls who just watched forty gunfights, two executions, and three horrific and bloody battles in the two movies that ran just before the news was broadcast.

Yes, beauty and obscenity is surely in the eye of the beholder.

BOB DYLAN’S SPEECH FOR THE GRAMMY’S 2015

/ Ken Finton / 1 Comment

UnknownI’m glad for my songs to be honored like this. But you know, they didn’t get here by themselves. It’s been a long road and it’s taken a lot of doing. These songs of mine, they’re like mystery stories, the kind that Shakespeare saw when he was growing up. I think you could trace what I do back that far. They were on the fringes then, and I think they’re on the fringes now. And they sound like they’ve been on the hard ground.

I should mention a few people along the way who brought this about. I know I should mention John Hammond, great talent scout for Columbia Records. He signed me to that label when I was nobody. It took a lot of faith to do that, and he took a lot of ridicule, but he was his own man and he was courageous. And for that, I’m eternally grateful. The last person he discovered before me was Aretha Franklin, and before that Count Basie, Billie Holiday and a whole lot of other artists. All noncommercial artists.

Trends did not interest John, and I was very noncommercial but he stayed with me. He believed in my talent and that’s all that mattered. I can’t thank him enough for that. Lou Levy runs Leeds Music, and they published my earliest songs, but I didn’t stay there too long.

Levy himself, he went back a long ways. He signed me to that company and recorded my songs and I sang them into a tape recorder. He told me outright, there was no precedent for what I was doing, that I was either before my time or behind it. And if I brought him a song like “Stardust,” he’d turn it down because it would be too late.

He told me that if I was before my time — and he didn’t really know that for sure — but if it was happening and if it was true, the public would usually take three to five years to catch up — so be prepared. And that did happen. The trouble was, when the public did catch up I was already three to five years beyond that, so it kind of complicated it. But he was encouraging, and he didn’t judge me, and I’ll always remember him for that.

Artie Mogull at Witmark Music signed me next to his company, and he told me to just keep writing songs no matter what, that I might be on to something. Well, he too stood behind me, and he could never wait to see what I’d give him next. I didn’t even think of myself as a songwriter before then. I’ll always be grateful for him also for that attitude.

I also have to mention some of the early artists who recorded my songs very, very early, without having to be asked. Just something they felt about them that was right for them. I’ve got to say thank you to Peter, Paul and Mary, who I knew all separately before they ever became a group. I didn’t even think of myself as writing songs for others to sing but it was starting to happen and it couldn’t have happened to, or with, a better group.

They took a song of mine that had been recorded before that was buried on one of my records and turned it into a hit song. Not the way I would have done it — they straightened it out. But since then hundreds of people have recorded it and I don’t think that would have happened if it wasn’t for them. They definitely started something for me.

The Byrds, the Turtles, Sonny & Cher — they made some of my songs Top 10 hits but I wasn’t a pop songwriter and I really didn’t want to be that, but it was good that it happened. Their versions of songs were like commercials, but I didn’t really mind that because 50 years later my songs were being used in the commercials. So that was good too. I was glad it happened, and I was glad they’d done it.

Purvis Staples and the Staple Singers — long before they were on Stax they were on Epic and they were one of my favorite groups of all time. I met them all in ’62 or ’63. They heard my songs live and Purvis wanted to record three or four of them and he did with the Staples Singers. They were the type of artists that I wanted recording my songs.

Nina Simone. I used to cross paths with her in New York City in the Village Gate nightclub. These were the artists I looked up to. She recorded some of my songs that she [inaudible] to me. She was an overwhelming artist, piano player and singer. Very strong woman, very outspoken. That she was recording my songs validated everything that I was about.

Oh, and can’t forget Jimi Hendrix. I actually saw Jimi Hendrix perform when he was in a band called Jimmy James and the Blue Flames — something like that. And Jimi didn’t even sing. He was just the guitar player. He took some small songs of mine that nobody paid any attention to and pumped them up into the outer limits of the stratosphere and turned them all into classics. I have to thank Jimi, too. I wish he was here.

Johnny Cash recorded some of my songs early on, too, up in about ’63, when he was all skin and bones. He traveled long, he traveled hard, but he was a hero of mine. I heard many of his songs growing up. I knew them better than I knew my own. “Big River,” “I Walk the Line.”

“How high’s the water, Mama?” I wrote “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” with that song reverberating inside my head. I still ask, “How high is the water, mama?” Johnny was an intense character. And he saw that people were putting me down playing electric music, and he posted letters to magazines scolding people, telling them to shut up and let him sing.

In Johnny Cash’s world — hardcore Southern drama — that kind of thing didn’t exist. Nobody told anybody what to sing or what not to sing. They just didn’t do that kind of thing. I’m always going to thank him for that. Johnny Cash was a giant of a man, the man in black. And I’ll always cherish the friendship we had until the day there is no more days.

Oh, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Joan Baez. She was the queen of folk music then and now. She took a liking to my songs and brought me with her to play concerts, where she had crowds of thousands of people enthralled with her beauty and voice.

People would say, “What are you doing with that ragtag scrubby little waif?” And she’d tell everybody in no uncertain terms, “Now you better be quiet and listen to the songs.” We even played a few of them together. Joan Baez is as tough-minded as they come. Love. And she’s a free, independent spirit. Nobody can tell her what to do if she doesn’t want to do it. I learned a lot of things from her. A woman with devastating honesty. And for her kind of love and devotion, I could never pay that back.

These songs didn’t come out of thin air. I didn’t just make them up out of whole cloth. Contrary to what Lou Levy said, there was a precedent. It all came out of traditional music: traditional folk music, traditional rock ‘n’ roll and traditional big-band swing orchestra music.

I learned lyrics and how to write them from listening to folk songs. And I played them, and I met other people that played them back when nobody was doing it. Sang nothing but these folk songs, and they gave me the code for everything that’s fair game, that everything belongs to everyone.

For three or four years all I listened to were folk standards. I went to sleep singing folk songs. I sang them everywhere, clubs, parties, bars, coffeehouses, fields, festivals. And I met other singers along the way who did the same thing and we just learned songs from each other. I could learn one song and sing it next in an hour if I’d heard it just once.

If you sang “John Henry” as many times as me — “John Henry was a steel-driving man / Died with a hammer in his hand / John Henry said a man ain’t nothin’ but a man / Before I let that steam drill drive me down / I’ll die with that hammer in my hand.”

If you had sung that song as many times as I did, you’d have written “How many roads must a man walk down?” too.

Big Bill Broonzy had a song called “Key to the Highway.” “I’ve got a key to the highway / I’m booked and I’m bound to go / Gonna leave here runnin’ because walking is most too slow.” I sang that a lot. If you sing that a lot, you just might write,

Georgia Sam he had a bloody nose Welfare Department they wouldn’t give him no clothes He asked poor Howard where can I go Howard said there’s only one place I know Sam said tell me quick man I got to run Howard just pointed with his gun And said that way down on Highway 61

You’d have written that too if you’d sang “Key to the Highway” as much as me.

“Ain’t no use sit ‘n cry / You’ll be an angel by and by / Sail away, ladies, sail away.” “I’m sailing away my own true love.” “Boots of Spanish Leather” — Sheryl Crow just sung that.

“Roll the cotton down, aw, yeah, roll the cotton down / Ten dollars a day is a white man’s pay / A dollar a day is the black man’s pay / Roll the cotton down.” If you sang that song as many times as me, you’d be writing “I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more,” too.

I sang a lot of “come all you” songs. There’s plenty of them. There’s way too many to be counted. “Come along boys and listen to my tale / Tell you of my trouble on the old Chisholm Trail.” Or, “Come all ye good people, listen while I tell / the fate of Floyd Collins a lad we all know well / The fate of Floyd Collins, a lad we all know well.”

“Come all ye fair and tender ladies / Take warning how you court your men / They’re like a star on a summer morning / They first appear and then they’re gone again.” “If you’ll gather ’round, people / A story I will tell / ‘Bout Pretty Boy Floyd, an outlaw / Oklahoma knew him well.”

If you sung all these “come all ye” songs all the time, you’d be writing, “Come gather ’round people where ever you roam, admit that the waters around you have grown / Accept that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone / If your time to you is worth saving / And you better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone / The times they are a-changing.”

You’d have written them too. There’s nothing secret about it. You just do it subliminally and unconsciously, because that’s all enough, and that’s all I sang. That was all that was dear to me. They were the only kinds of songs that made sense.

“When you go down to Deep Ellum keep your money in your socks / Women in Deep Ellum put you on the rocks.” Sing that song for a while and you just might come up with, “When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez and it’s Easter time too / And your gravity fails and negativity don’t pull you through / Don’t put on any airs / When you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue / They got some hungry women there / And they really make a mess outta you.”

All these songs are connected. Don’t be fooled. I just opened up a different door in a different kind of way. It’s just different, saying the same thing. I didn’t think it was anything out of the ordinary.

Well you know, I just thought I was doing something natural, but right from the start, my songs were divisive for some reason. They divided people. I never knew why. Some got angered, others loved them. Didn’t know why my songs had detractors and supporters. A strange environment to have to throw your songs into, but I did it anyway.

Last thing I thought of was who cared about what song I was writing. I was just writing them. I didn’t think I was doing anything different. I thought I was just extending the line. Maybe a little bit unruly, but I was just elaborating on situations. Maybe hard to pin down, but so what? A lot of people are hard to pin down. You’ve just got to bear it. I didn’t really care what Lieber and Stoller thought of my songs.

They didn’t like ‘em, but Doc Pomus did. That was all right that they didn’t like ‘em, because I never liked their songs either. “Yakety yak, don’t talk back.” “Charlie Brown is a clown,” “Baby I’m a hog for you.” Novelty songs. They weren’t saying anything serious. Doc’s songs, they were better. “This Magic Moment.” “Lonely Avenue.” Save the Last Dance for Me.

Those songs broke my heart. I figured I’d rather have his blessings any day than theirs.

Ahmet Ertegun didn’t think much of my songs, but Sam Phillips did. Ahmet founded Atlantic Records. He produced some great records: Ray Charles, Ray Brown, just to name a few.

There were some great records in there, no question about it. But Sam Phillips, he recorded Elvis and Jerry Lee, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash. Radical eyes that shook the very essence of humanity. Revolution in style and scope. Heavy shape and color. Radical to the bone. Songs that cut you to the bone. Renegades in all degrees, doing songs that would never decay, and still resound to this day. Oh, yeah, I’d rather have Sam Phillips’ blessing any day.

Merle Haggard didn’t even think much of my songs. I know he didn’t. He didn’t say that to me, but I know [inaudible]. Buck Owens did, and he recorded some of my early songs. Merle Haggard — “Mama Tried,” “The Bottle Let Me Down,” “I’m a Lonesome Fugitive.” I can’t imagine Waylon Jennings singing “The Bottle Let Me Down.”

“Together Again”? That’s Buck Owens, and that trumps anything coming out of Bakersfield. Buck Owens and Merle Haggard? If you have to have somebody’s blessing — you figure it out.

Oh, yeah. Critics have been giving me a hard time since Day One. Critics say I can’t sing. I croak. Sound like a frog. Why don’t critics say that same thing about Tom Waits? Critics say my voice is shot. That I have no voice. What don’t they say those things about Leonard Cohen? Why do I get special treatment? Critics say I can’t carry a tune and I talk my way through a song. Really? I’ve never heard that said about Lou Reed. Why does he get to go scot-free?

What have I done to deserve this special attention? No vocal range? When’s the last time you heard Dr. John? Why don’t you say that about him? Slur my words, got no diction. Have you people ever listened to Charley Patton or Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters. Talk about slurred words and no diction. [Inaudible] doesn’t even matter.

“Why me, Lord?” I would say that to myself.

Critics say I mangle my melodies, render my songs unrecognizable. Oh, really? Let me tell you something. I was at a boxing match a few years ago seeing Floyd Mayweather fight a Puerto Rican guy. And the Puerto Rican national anthem, somebody sang it and it was beautiful. It was heartfelt and it was moving.

After that it was time for our national anthem. And a very popular soul-singing sister was chosen to sing. She sang every note — that exists, and some that don’t exist. Talk about mangling a melody. You take a one-syllable word and make it last for 15 minutes? She was doing vocal gymnastics like she was on a trapeze act. But to me it was not funny.

Where were the critics? Mangling lyrics? Mangling a melody? Mangling a treasured song? No, I get the blame. But I don’t really think I do that. I just think critics say I do.

Sam Cooke said this when told he had a beautiful voice: He said, “Well that’s very kind of you, but voices ought not to be measured by how pretty they are. Instead they matter only if they convince you that they are telling the truth.” Think about that the next time you [inaudible].

Times always change. They really do. And you have to always be ready for something that’s coming along and you never expected it. Way back when, I was in Nashville making some records and I read this article, a Tom T. Hall interview. Tom T. Hall, he was bitching about some kind of new song, and he couldn’t understand what these new kinds of songs that were coming in were about.

Now Tom, he was one of the most preeminent songwriters of the time in Nashville. A lot of people were recording his songs and he himself even did it. But he was all in a fuss about James Taylor, a song James had called “Country Road.” Tom was going off in this interview — “But James don’t say nothing about a country road. He’s just says how you can feel it on the country road. I don’t understand that.”

Now some might say Tom is a great songwriter. I’m not going to doubt that. At the time he was doing this interview I was actually listening to a song of his on the radio.

It was called “I Love.” I was listening to it in a recording studio, and he was talking about all the things he loves, an everyman kind of song, trying to connect with people. Trying to make you think that he’s just like you and you’re just like him. We all love the same things, and we’re all in this together. Tom loves little baby ducks, slow- moving trains and rain. He loves old pickup trucks and little country streams. Sleeping without dreams. Bourbon in a glass. Coffee in a cup. Tomatoes on the vine, and onions.

Now listen, I’m not ever going to disparage another songwriter. I’m not going to do that. I’m not saying it’s a bad song. I’m just saying it might be a little overcooked. But, you know, it was in the top 10 anyway. Tom and a few other writers had the whole Nashville scene sewed up in a box. If you wanted to record a song and get it in the top 10 you had to go to them, and Tom was one of the top guys. They were all very comfortable, doing their thing.

This was about the time that Willie Nelson picked up and moved to Texas. About the same time. He’s still in Texas. Everything was very copacetic. Everything was all right until — until — Kristofferson came to town. Oh, they ain’t seen anybody like him. He came into town like a wildcat, flew his helicopter into Johnny Cash’s backyard like a typical songwriter. And he went for the throat. “Sunday Morning Coming Down.”

Well, I woke up Sunday morning With no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt. And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad So I had one more for dessert Then I fumbled through my closet Found my cleanest dirty shirt Then I washed my face and combed my hair And stumbled down the stairs to meet the day.

You can look at Nashville pre-Kris and post-Kris, because he changed everything. That one song ruined Tom T. Hall’s poker parties. It might have sent him to the crazy house. God forbid he ever heard any of my songs.

You walk into the room With your pencil in your hand You see somebody naked You say, “Who is that man?” You try so hard But you don’t understand Just what you’re gonna say When you get home You know something is happening here But you don’t know what it is Do you, Mister Jones?

If “Sunday Morning Coming Down” rattled Tom’s cage, sent him into the looney bin, my song surely would have made him blow his brains out, right there in the minivan. Hopefully he didn’t hear it.

I just released an album of standards, all the songs usually done by Michael Buble, Harry Connick Jr., maybe Brian Wilson’s done a couple, Linda Ronstadt done ‘em. But the reviews of their records are different than the reviews of my record.

In their reviews no one says anything. In my reviews, [inaudible] they’ve got to look under every stone when it comes to me. They’ve got to mention all the songwriters’ names. Well that’s OK with me. After all, they’re great songwriters and these are standards. I’ve seen the reviews come in, and they’ll mention all the songwriters in half the review, as if everybody knows them. Nobody’s heard of them, not in this time, anyway. Buddy Kaye, Cy Coleman, Carolyn Leigh, to name a few.

But, you know, I’m glad they mention their names, and you know what? I’m glad they got their names in the press. It might have taken some time to do it, but they’re finally there. I can only wonder why it took so long. My only regret is that they’re not here to see it.

Traditional rock ‘n’ roll, we’re talking about that. It’s all about rhythm. Johnny Cash said it best: “Get rhythm. Get rhythm when you get the blues.” Very few rock ‘n’ roll bands today play with rhythm. They don’t know what it is. Rock ‘n’ roll is a combination of blues, and it’s a strange thing made up of two parts. A lot of people don’t know this, but the blues, which is an American music, is not what you think it is. It’s a combination of Arabic violins and Strauss waltzes working it out. But it’s true.

The other half of rock ‘n’ roll has got to be hillbilly. And that’s a derogatory term, but it ought not to be. That’s a term that includes the Delmore Bros., Stanley Bros., Roscoe Holcomb, Clarence Ashley … groups like that. Moonshiners gone berserk. Fast cars on dirt roads. That’s the kind of combination that makes up rock ‘n’ roll, and it can’t be cooked up in a science laboratory or a studio.

You have to have the right kind of rhythm to play this kind of music. If you can’t hardly play the blues, how do you [inaudible] those other two kinds of music in there? You can fake it, but you can’t really do it.

Critics have made a career out of accusing me of having a career of confounding expectations. Really? Because that’s all I do. That’s how I think about it. Confounding expectations.

“What do you do for a living, man?” “Oh, I confound expectations.”

You’re going to get a job, the man says, “What do you do?” “Oh, confound expectations.: And the man says, “Well, we already have that spot filled. Call us back. Or don’t call us, we’ll call you.” Confounding expectations. What does that mean? ‘Why me, Lord? I’d confound them, but I don’t know how to do it.’

The Blackwood Bros. have been talking to me about making a record together. That might confound expectations, but it shouldn’t. Of course it would be a gospel album. I don’t think it would be anything out of the ordinary for me. Not a bit. One of the songs I’m thinking about singing is “Stand By Me” by the Blackwood Brothers. Not “Stand By Me” the pop song. No. The real “Stand By Me.” The real one goes like this:

When the storm of life is raging / Stand by me / When the storm of life is raging / Stand by me / When the world is tossing me / Like a ship upon the sea / Thou who rulest wind and water / Stand by me

In the midst of tribulation / Stand by me / In the midst of tribulation / Stand by me / When the hosts of hell assail / And my strength begins to fail / Thou who never lost a battle / Stand by me

In the midst of faults and failures / Stand by me / In the midst of faults and failures / Stand by me / When I do the best I can / And my friends don’t understand / Thou who knowest all about me / Stand by me

That’s the song. I like it better than the pop song. If I record one by that name, that’s going to be the one. I’m also thinking of recording a song, not on that album, though: “Oh Lord, Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.”

Anyway, why me, Lord. What did I do?

Anyway, I’m proud to be here tonight for MusiCares. I’m honored to have all these artists singing my songs. There’s nothing like that. Great artists. [applause, inaudible]. They’re all singing the truth, and you can hear it in their voices.

I’m proud to be here tonight for MusiCares. I think a lot of this organization. They’ve helped many people. Many musicians who have contributed a lot to our culture. I’d like to personally thank them for what they did for a friend of mine, Billy Lee Riley. A friend of mine who they helped for six years when he was down and couldn’t work. Billy was a son of rock ‘n’ roll, obviously.

He was a true original. He did it all: He played, he sang, he wrote. He would have been a bigger star but Jerry Lee came along. And you know what happens when someone like that comes along. You just don’t stand a chance.

So Billy became what is known in the industry — a condescending term, by the way — as a one-hit wonder. But sometimes, just sometimes, once in a while, a one-hit wonder can make a more powerful impact than a recording star who’s got 20 or 30 hits behind him. And Billy’s hit song was called “Red Hot,” and it was red hot. It could blast you out of your skull and make you feel happy about it. Change your life.

He did it with style and grace. You won’t find him in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He’s not there. Metallica is. Abba is. Mamas and the Papas — I know they’re in there. Jefferson Airplane, Alice Cooper, Steely Dan — I’ve got nothing against them. Soft rock, hard rock, psychedelic pop. I got nothing against any of that stuff, but after all, it is called the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Billy Lee Riley is not there. Yet.

I’d see him a couple times a year and we’d always spent time together and he was on a rockabilly festival nostalgia circuit, and we’d cross paths now and again. We’d always spend time together. He was a hero of mine. I’d heard “Red Hot.” I must have been only 15 or 16 when I did and it’s impressed me to this day.

I never grow tired of listening to it. Never got tired of watching Billy Lee perform, either. We spent time together just talking and playing into the night. He was a deep, truthful man. He wasn’t bitter or nostalgic. He just accepted it. He knew where he had come from and he was content with who he was.

And then one day he got sick. And like my friend John Mellencamp would sing — because John sang some truth today — one day you get sick and you don’t get better. That’s from a song of his called “Life is Short Even on Its Longest Days.” It’s one of the better songs of the last few years, actually. I ain’t lying.

And I ain’t lying when I tell you that MusiCares paid for my friend’s doctor bills, and helped him to get spending money. They were able to at least make his life comfortable, tolerable to the end. That is something that can’t be repaid. Any organization that would do that would have to have my blessing.

I’m going to get out of here now. I’m going to put an egg in my shoe and beat it. I probably left out a lot of people and said too much about some. But that’s OK. Like the spiritual song, ‘I’m still just crossing over Jordan too.’ Let’s hope we meet again. Sometime. And we will, if, like Hank Williams said, “the good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.”

THE SCUNTHORPE PROBLEM: UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

/ Ken Finton / 1 Comment

by Kenneth Harper Finton ©2015 elk-jumping-fence

 “Give me land, lots of land with the sunny skies above, Don’t fence me in.”

 – Cole Porter

   Riding in the car on Route 287, the lead elk jumped a fence leaving the others struggling alone on the other side. Fences isolate and entrap while they pretend to protect and defend.

   “Good fences make good neighbors,” Robert Frost has said, as though building a wall around yourself is desirable and morally essential.

   It brought to mind the day I returned to the country from New York City and took my old dog for a walk in the woods. We came to a fence and I lifted  Lassie up over the fence, but she had gained weight and was heavier than I remembered. She struggled free, caught her back leg in the wire and hung there upside down and yelping. I ran off to the nearest neighbor to borrow some wire cutters, but while I was cutting the leg free, the frightened old girl bit me several times. They were painful punctures on the hand that later swelled and ached like a bad tooth.

   Until the last one hundred and years life ran free upon the Earth. Then we built the fences and the roads and divided the herds as though we had the inalienable right to do so. After all, are we not the cream of living things, the tamers of nature, the universe itself come to intelligence and great power. Does not ancient and misguided scripture give us power and dominion over all the living things? “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Genesis 1:27.

slide-elk-calf-caught

   Our freeways have separated the species. They are giant fences that imprison and subdue the beasts of the wild and halt their natural evolution. Our fences are created to provide us with a food supply and keep the victims we choose safe for tomorrow’s meals.

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Unintended Consequences

Our world is full of unintended consequences. The Scunthorpe problem is named from an attempt to protect people from exposure to the obscene by filtering out strings of letters that spelled what the censors considered to be key strings of letters. As a result, people on Scunthorpe, England could not use the web of look up a local business because the word cunt was in the town’s name. We can solve our Scunthorpe problems, but it costs money that people would rather use for other things.

   Little can be done on the lonely byways where fencing is mandatory and the animals are left to their own devices. Not even Vegan ideas can solve such problems, as wild herds are not used for our primary food supplies. Outdated, obsolete moral codes are responsible for many problems that could easily be solved if only people used reason instead of faith and knowledge instead of dogma.

   The prohibition era in the United States was intended to control the liquor traffic and protect the public against alcoholism, but it drove the trade underground and the profits into the hands of mobsters. The same has occurred with the war on drugs.

   Abstinence-only sex education has been shown to increase teenage pregnancy rates, rather than reduce them. Compared to either comprehensive sex education or no sex education at all, it has been shown to be ineffective. [Kohler, Pamela; Manhart, Lisa; Lafferty, William (April 2008). “Abstinence-Only and Comprehensive Sex Education and the Initiation of Sexual Activity and Teen Pregnancy”, Journal of Adolescent Health.]

   It seems reasonable to require that children be constrained by car seats to prevent injury in case of accidents, but air bags killed many kids. So we decide that moving children to the back seats in rear-facing seats was a solution, but there was a great increase in children being forgotten and left to suffer in overheated cars as a result. Robert K. Merton listed five possible causes of unanticipated consequences in 1996. [Merton, Robert K (1996). “On Social Structure and Science”. The University of Chicago Press.]

  1. Ignorance, making it impossible to anticipate everything, thereby leading to incomplete analysis
  2. Errors in analysis of the problem or following habits that worked in the past but may not apply to the current situation
  3. Immediate interests overriding long-term interests
  4. Basic values which may require or prohibit certain actions even if the long-term result might be unfavorable (these long-term consequences may eventually cause changes in basic values)
  5. Self-defeating prophecy, or, the fear of some consequence which drives people to find solutions before the problem occurs, thus the non-occurrence of the problem is not anticipated.

Unintended consequences write the stories of our lives. The world about us is immensely complex. Solving problems create other problems that take their place. The best we can do is be willing to change the basic values that prevent us from creating and maintaining a better world for all.

POSTMODERN MAN

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escher postmodern love relationship society free conversation

by KENNETH HARPER FINTON © 2015

 

 

 

While I was busy eating
My carrot spoke to me.
It said, “You simple, idle fool,
You cannot swallow me.”

“You grubby root,” I said to it,
“That’s not for you to say.
Your purpose, so they tell me.
Is to look the other way.”

 While I was busy reading
The author chastised me.
“These thoughts that you are thinking,”
He said, “are not of me.”

 While I was busy sleeping
The world went bust on me.
While I was busy drinking,
I snubbed reality.

 While I was  busy writing
My friends all disappeared.
When I was busy dreaming
Then some would reappear,

Half dead and resurrected
For allegiance can’t be bought.
Tortured and neglected,
They swam across my thoughts.

I realized the truth therein
And closed the book of dreams.
It seems that nothing ever was
Exactly what it seemed.
 

Postmodernism is a late-20th-century movement in the arts, architecture, and criticism that was a departure from modernism. Postmodernism includes skeptical interpretations of culture, literature, art, philosophy, history, economics, architecture, fiction, and literary criticism

The Menopause and Sex Benefits

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SEX DRIVE

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Sex Drive

© 2014-2017 Ken Finton

Do men have a greater desire for sex than women?

Many studies have been done to compare the sexual appetites of men and women. How many of them have any value for us as individuals?

Probably none, because as individuals we vary greatly. Not one of us is a typical cross sample because typical samples do not exist. Statistics are mathematical averages like the average temperature in a given month.

I can only tell you of my appetites. I know nothing of yours.

I can bear witness to the fact that sex is a driving force in adolescent years and reduces in importance with time and age. They say this is partially caused by a decrease in testosterone output as men age. Obviously, nature has not objected to this decrease. It seems to be a natural and inherited process that leads some to a more focused use of their time and effort.

Scientists will tell you that is due to a hormone they call ‘testosterone’. The blood level of this hormone is seven to eight time higher than in a woman.

When given this hormone, “At the higher dose, the percentages of women who had sexual fantasies, masturbated, or engaged in sexual intercourse at least once a week increased two to three times from baseline.” [The New England Journal of Medicine, September 7, 2000.]

This then shows that a high sex drive is a product of male hormonal levels?

Maybe not. The tests were conducted on women who had hysterectomies and hormonal disorders.

I can tell you this. I have desired thousands more women than women have desired me. That is the primary difference between male and female appetites.

It does not take that much to set a man off on the road to desire. It is a path he has followed all his life.

Women Are More Selective

It is likely an ancient biological trait that enabled the choice of stronger, more dependable mates for the procreation of the family group,

That is why there is a battle of the sexes. That is why many men feel rejected, lose self-confidence, then settle for less desirable women. This balance populates the world.

Though men may exercise their sexual desire every day—even every few hours—that does not mean that they act upon it.

Affairs are complicated. They can be quite frightening. Affairs have as many implications as there are individuals involved. Affairs are uncertain and can often be time-consuming. Consenting individuals that have not been truthful in their motives to either themselves or their partners make the grist for the massive amounts of pulp fiction that washes over our social oceans.

Woman are only fertile for a short time each month. In order for the human race to persist, the man needs to be ready for sex when this occurs. What better way could nature devise than for a man to be ready than to give the males a bigger dose of carnal longing?

Who Leads the Seduction? 

The woman must be willing—unless physically forced. Inhibitions can also affect willingness. The fact that so many of us walk the earth is a clear sign that most women are not that inhibited at least some of the time. By responding to a man’s advances, the woman is not the victim of carnal desire, but a willing participant and the primary instigator of the sexual contact.

Do I hear a nay-not-so in the distance?

Then think about it. Without an agreement, conjugal acts are deemed vile. The agreement for conjugal relations is sealed by the woman.

Do Men Tire of Their Partners?

There is the story of the farmer whose spouse was starving for sexual attention. She reminded him of the prize bull that they kept penned. “Old Ben” has no trouble satisfying the cows whenever he is called upon for service,” she says.

“But not with the same cow,” was her husband’s reply.

Although sexual familiarity becomes routine, most men do not use that as an excuse for frequent affairs. These affairs require work. Many men are too lazy to have an affair. These affairs may require change. Comfortable people generally like to keep things the way they are. These affairs require much energy, and the body has only so much of that to give.

On the whole, one would think that a man and a woman’s sex drive should be about equal. Once procreation is removed from the picture, the woman might even have a stronger drive than the man. The big difference is the woman’s ability to say “Yes.”

Men cannot sexually perform repeatedly as women can. This difference in biology can be used to show that women can have an even greater sexual appetite than men. Visions and tales of profligate women abound. These stories put the braggadocio of the world’s playboys to shame.

The Roman Empress Theodora would take on thirty slaves at a time to make certain that she was properly served. According to Procopius, she used all three of her body openings and lamented not having a fourth of a fifth that could be filled.

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Pliny the Elder told us of Messalina, wife of Claudius, cousin to Nero and Caligula. She was one of the most promiscuous women in Rome. She competed with a prostitute to see who could have sex with the most men in a single night. Messalina won the contest.

Women generally bear the burden of conception as long as they live. This does not have to be so for men. They can hop on their horses and ride off into the sunset.  So can women, but it does not happen nearly as often.

Women develop an ability to please and be of service that few men can ever possess. So we have cultures where woman are born and raised to please and men are born and raised to be pleased.

None of us made this world. We were born into it. We have to deal with it as we can. We learn to change what we can—provided we have the will to do so. Comfort decreases the will for change. Discomfort increases it.

Sexual appetites are as important to us as food itself—men and woman alike—provided they are healthy both mentally and physically. For some, it seems a shame that society perverts these ancient longings for the sake of social perpetuity and family structure, yet nature has many species that have the same sexual preference and mate for life.

We use sex as a tool in many ways. We learn at an early age to exploit sexual energy.

Advertisements flood us with promises of sexual gratification. Movies and books fill us up with fantasies and stories that we might have never known, had we not been semi-literate moviegoers and seekers of the mysterious unknown.

Pornography is a depression-proof business. Prostitutes, they say, are practitioners of the world’s oldest profession. Where prostitution is legal, sex crimes are much rarer.

So it seems that whether men have a stronger sex drive than women is not an important question at all. Every woman is different. Every man has his own private longings and dreams.

All of which brings us back to where we began, as does any cycle of life.

We should be thankful that this is so.

WHY I AM A WRITER

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Try though we might, we cannot stop change from taking place. It is a natural process. Nature changes as part of life’s process because of the essential nature of change. Change is renewal and growth. It is people that pervert and oppose change for self-centered reasons.

Albert Einstein said, “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”

This is not a new revelation. La Tzu recognized that institutions and societies must change thousand of years ago. He said, “Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”

So you wake up in the morning in a bad mood, somewhat depressed. It is easy to be depressed. Even your dreams can depress you. You can be feeling triumphant one minute and wake up the next morning in a most sombre, unsatisfied state of mind.

Trying to control your emotions and your mind and your thoughts are often extremely useless endeavors. Thoughts pop in and out of our minds all the time.  They change the chemicals in our bodies that regulate our emotions and our feelings of well being for the better and for the worse.

Thoughts Are Not Real

Do you think your thoughts and ideas are real? They are not. They are no more real than the dreams that come into your mind and the nightmares that frightfully awaken you in the night.

There is no reason to allow negative thoughts to have power over you. Recognize that they are unreal and do not give them any value. A thought can be made real through action, but in its inception it is as wispy as a fantasy.

We might not be able to control our thoughts, but we CAN evaluate them. We can learn to recognize the judgmental thoughts that make us miserable.

Thoughts are neither right not wrong. They simply are. We are the ones that assign the value to them.  Some thoughts are going to be positive and some are going to be negative. Anyone who tells you to always think positively does not know much about thinking.

It is simply a fact that you are going to have thoughts that are negative. The real trick is to catch these thoughts before they depress you, recognize that they are not real and do not let them distress you. In time and with rest, they will pass.

There are times when we are thinking about things we need to evaluate. We think about our choices and our course of action. These are the times when we need to moderate our thoughts and evaluations and make certain that they are capable of leading us to a place we wish to go.

They very act of evaluating your thoughts is a kind of mediation. It will stop the chemical changes that lead to emotional distress. It does take some practice, I suppose. It is not something I am good at.

That is why I am a writer. I write my thoughts down and evaluate them later, throwing out those expressions that do not lead me to a clear place in which I prefer to dwell. That is what is great about being a writer. You are able to learn from yourself, your research, and your evaluations. It is cathartic in nature and always makes you feel that you have accomplished something worthwhile, produced something from nothing that has value.

TIME’S PASSING

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by Kenneth Harper Finton ©2015

Science-Museum-Exhibition-2

Remember how your hair blew in the wind

that night we kissed and dreamed of sins.

I asked you why your large dark eyes

stared with wonder at the sky.

When we were young, two kids in love,

the world itself was not enough.

I dreamed that we’d forever lay

together at the end of day.

Now that time has flickered by,

I’m sure you still go watch the sky.

Oh, I remember well these things,

but now I have forgot your name.

THE WRITER’S DILEMMA

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by Kenneth Harper Finton ©2015

a2351c22-19ff-40c4-8852-cbf36ff8bda3 It is said that writers “write to be read.” Then painters paint to be seen, actors act to impress and singers sing to be heard. If this is the case–and most often it is–the newer writers of the world are setting themselves up for great disappointment. They will not find the audience that they did on the past. They will not achieve the fame that others did in the past. They will quite likely not enjoy the riches that others have had In the past. Technology and world Internet communications have obviously changed the world.

Though it has democratized the ability to be read and seen and heard, by doing so it has practically eliminated the institutions that originally supported and brought culture to the world. Some vestiges of the old system remain, but they are losing ground with each passing year. They have been replaced by myriads of smaller, more democratized platforms that do not pay, do not develop and do not guide.

Moguls still control what is printed and sold in local stores. They chose the music that is allowed to be bought at box stores, the movies that are shown and the art that is displayed in museums and fine art shows. The competition for such space is fierce. The rewards to the artists have been drastically reduced from that it was just thirty years ago. This leaves the would-be writer with a great dilemma. They feel that they have talent and should pursue an audience and readership, but the audience is slimmer and the finger of fate even more fickle than ever.

Only by applying a talent is the talent polished and sharpened. “Practice,” it is said, “makes perfect.”

Perfection, though, is a subjective judgment that should be left out of that axiom. Practice makes us more exceptional. It is a fact, though, that natural talents of all kinds need to be performed and utilized to get beyond the level of the commonplace. Writers now write blogs to keep their talents active and polished, but the readers of blogs are also a fickle lot. The individual blog does not really reach a substantial audience. Blogs and personal journals are worthy tools for a writer, as they can refer to them in the future, draw on them for ideas, and reference them for later promotion.

There are few, if any, works that cannot be made better by multiple rewrites. So coming back to what you did before is quite valuable for the future. Professional writing has not totally become extinct, but it is nearing that vanishing point. Professional writers are not free to write as their muse moves them, but are pressured to write what their superiors believe their readership wants to read. Even with access to statistics that determine what people are choosing to read, the writer is often no longer free to follow their muse and write from the heart if they want to increase their following.

Yet, writing from the heart and being true to your own voice is the only possible way to beat the odds. Only that will make you stand out in a crowd. Even if you write from the heart, your heart and voice must be very special, very unique and quite original. Your perceived persona must be likable, strong and quite different from the masses. The vast majority of us will never be that person. Chloe Thurlow recently spoke of  “the time before smart phones made the whole world a banal image and the photographer like the editor became a dinosaur.” https://www.facebook.com/chloe.thurlow.5?fref=ts

We have a changing dictum. As writers, we must write for ourselves to be original. We will probably never make any financial profit from these efforts. Few in history ever have. We may not even achieve any large readership no matter how hard we try. Everyone has an opinion to share, a broken heart to express, a love that they feel they must share with the world about. All lives are novels in the making. The only thing we can do is persist or quit.

Of course, if we quit, we never will have an audience. If we want an audience or a readership, our only alternative is to persist. To persist means to continue through depression and despair. It means we need to develop tools to combat and dispel our negative feelings. To persist means to struggle with the reality that we spend too much time doing things that we do not love in order to do what we do love. It is easier to be a baker or a cook or a carpenter. All such work is creative, but the requirement of pleasing more than a few is not essential in many occupations.

Artists always had to pay their dues. The fees are even higher these days. Inflation, you know.

PAYING FOR SEX

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by Kenneth Harper Finton ©2014

 

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In the Old West, the first thing the dusty lone stranger did when he got to the muddy streets of the town was clean up a bit and go the saloon. He wanted a drink and companionship. There among the spittoons below the brass railed bar, he could look in the mirror behind the bar and view the buxom ladies who were quite willing to take him upstairs and make love for a reasonable fee.

Prostitution has been recognized and controlled by law for thousands of years. Sumerian records from 2400 BC speaks of kar, the term for a prostitute as a bona fide profession. The code of Hammurabi, in 1780 B.C. Specifically refers to the rights of prostitutes. “179. If a “sister of a god,” or a prostitute, receive a gift from her father, and a deed in which it has been explicitly stated that she may dispose of it as she pleases, and give her complete disposition thereof: if then her father die, then she may leave her property to whomsoever she pleases. Her brothers can raise no claim thereto.”

Theodora, the wife of Justinian, was co-ruler of the Eastern Roman Empire. It is said that she took to harlotry like a duck takes to water. Procopius said that she gave her youth to anyone she met in utter abandonment,” then went on to describe her sexual exploits in detail.

Newsweek published an article in 2011 called “The Growing Demand for Prostitution.” It stated that “Surprisingly little is known about the age-old practice of buying sex, long assumed to be inevitable. No one even knows what proportion of the male population does it; estimates range from 16 percent to 80 percent.”

There are studies and statistics, however, In Cambodia, a whopping 60 to 80% of the men pay for sex. In the United States it falls to 15 to 20%. In Holland, where prostitution is legal and licensed by the government, the percentage is just a little higher that in the United States. In Japan, it is tacitly understood that a business man has the right to join with his associates in a visit to the red light district.

Many Muslims the practice Muta, a temporary marriage contract where the man pays a woman for sexual favors.

There are almost as many reasons for paying for sex as there are occurrences. Many women think that the only reason men pay is because they are too homely or anti-social to strike up a sexual relationship with another.

Some men point to the cost effectiveness of hiring a woman. They bring no emotional baggage to the table, they say. Others seek out what they cannot get at home in their married relationships. For obvious reasons, men in higher income groups spend more on sex than those who struggle to make ends meet.

My own experience, being a part of that 100% that make the male population, is quite limited. I will not go into it now, but I might write a story about this unforgettable experience in the future.

That being said, the energy expended sexual release must have some psychic value and bring some type of change to the life of the participants. One cannot expend energy without changing something. Whether that energy is released for pay or for free, something in nature changes.

Is anything free in nature? Since everything has a value in the human experience, then everything has a price. Even the act of breathing is a form of using energy, but we need to breath if we are to continue living. Breathing is the price of living for us and the cost of breathing is measured in aging.