Nerdy, Litty Bullshit

My room mate is working now the exams are over and in though in the beginning I was thinking I should have done the same thing, seeing her dress in her black suit at 6:00 in the morning on what was certain to be a sweltering summer day, being a bum with only one lecture suddenly was a lot more appealing.

Now, if msn would start working, life would be sweet. I can’t afford to hook up on my mobile though.

So what did I do with my boring day? I rediscovered the magic of google search! Now, I’m no stickler for British humour (it’s a bit ‘huh?’) but Giles Coren is pretty funny, and this{http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,10653-2145489,00.html} article is not too bad. This article {http://www.fact.on.ca/newpaper/ti99090e.htm} deals with an interesting topic as well.

Some of the stuff he tackles is rather controversial which again is unusual among the English but highly commendable (at least in my book) in any case. This food critic-turned-novelist won the 13th annual Literary Review Award 2005 presented by The Guardian for Bad Sex in Fiction for describing his character’s penis as "leaping around like a shower dropped in an empty bath". How bad can he be?

Another contestant whom I am not very familiar with, who was also running for this award, possibly the most dreaded literary prize is John Updike with this amazingly disgusting passage, an extract from Villages in which an adulterous character appraises his lover's vagina: "[it] did not feel like Phyllis's. Smoother, somehow simpler, its wetness less thick, less of a sauce, more of a glaze".

I have never read anything quite as vomit-inducing.

Sex and literature have always had a rather fascinating history though. Goes way back into Medieval times when writers/poets like Chaucer first began introducing ‘fablieux’ which is in other words writing centralising around pretty crude humour and ‘The Miller’s Tale’ is a classic.

The Elizabethan era saw a great flourishing of literature, especially in the ... the high spirited sexual comedy of The Country Wife and Shakespeare’s works.

On the other hand, Victorian Britain is mainly remembered for two things: sexual prudishness and long novels. Not true. It was an age when sexuality was rampant, at least among the higher classes. In fact, nineteenth-century scandals establish the terms for, and supply the history of, the manifest absorption of contemporary Anglo-American culture in sensational stories of sexual exposure i.e. gave birth to the explicit gossip columns of today.

Still oscillating about that point, scandalous ness of an act hinges upon the degree of secrecy requisite to its commission. The Victorian scandals revealing about the imagination of sexual privacy are therefore those that concern the sexual activity construed as most insistently covert; sex between men. Male-male sex is literally unspeakable; sodomy (then identified as sex between men) was defined by English law as the crime not to be named.

While such male sexuality generated public displays of disgust and horror, the Victorian ideology that desexualizes women also provoked numerous scandals. While the wilful effort to deny female sexuality resulted in celebrated adultery, divorce, and illegitimacy cases, ironically it largely precluded lesbian scandals, which were less unspeakable than unthinkable; indeed, the refusal of lawmakers to believe in the possibility of sex between women is supposed to have exempted it from statutory prohibition.

Tsk tsk… what a lame excuse for the ‘ultimate male fantasy’. Obviously, men haven’t evolved too much in this Century.

Still on the whole freedom of discussing sex issue, not surprising is it? The essence of life. The oldest story known, of ‘Adam and Eve’ cannot be repeated without explaining the sexuality behind it. It is actually more surprising how it became ‘taboo’ in the first place, but lets save that for another time.

As mentioned afore whilst discussing the Victorian Period, repressing the idea and practise of sex has pretty bad results. All boils down to the forbidden fruit that allegedly landed us in this hell hole. So why do Maldivians keep going on down that path, when it is obviously doing no good? No use complaining about the pregnancies if you’re still too embarrassed to discuss the sex that happened first.

Idiots.

Today, the age of ‘erotica literature’ where even sadomasochism is widely celebrated, I have no idea how parents imagine (despite having internet at their disposal, MTV flashing sexual messages constantly and Cosmo mags anywhere/everywhere) that they can get away with being ignorant. Not just in discussing sex I mean. So their forefathers were lucky. This is another world, deal with it!

Pisses me off when they keep paving the way to disaster.