Thursday, August 6, 2009

Sex Ed

As a hardcore noticer of the highly suspicious (a telltale sign of which is often making hardcore statements such as "Huh!"), sometimes I have to dip back into the archives to reach my noticing quota. It's not that suspicious things aren't going on in the present; it's just that life is full, what with all the exciting and glamorous adventures we young persons have, such as being on the phone with Amazon customer service for 6,253 hours this week. The result being, today's nugget comes courtesy of the November 2007 Marie Claire, the same periodical responsible each month for purveying the following information:

* HOW A FLEETINGLY FAMOUS REALITY-SHOW CONTESTANT WITH A NAME LIKE "CANDEIGH" LEARNED TO BELIEVE IN HERSELF AND GOT A HOT ASS!!!
* 770 SUREFIRE WAYS TO DROP 20 POUNDS WHILE INGESTING FRIED CHEESE BY THE TRUCKLOAD!!!

And of course:

* 353,569,103 SIZZLING NEW TECHNIQUES FOR GETTING YOUR PARTNER HOT IN BED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So of course I follow religiously, even though there are usually actually only 16 SIZZLING NEW TECHNIQUES, and all of them pretty much boil down to, "Involving the naughty parts usually works." But who am I to judge? Especially when -- hold on to your fried cheese now -- it turns out certain other countries believe it takes actual formal education to complete your sexual know-how. Marie Claire says so itself: in Moscow, which qualifies as a location in a certain other country, there is: a sex school. As in, a school that teaches you how to ... like ... do sex. I quote from the article:

On a Saturday night at [the school] ... five students are gyrating their hips and tossing their hair to the manic beat of Russian disco (think early Madonna crossed with Cossack music). And this is just the warm-up. Tonight's class is "How to Be Your Man's Number-One Lover." Lessons include trying out erotic massage on a live male model, practicing fellatio with the aid of bananas and lollipops, and learning how to praise a man's sexual prowess "convincingly."

Now it must be noted that this is only a small excerpt of the article, and there are many other parts (heh-heh) that are seriously depraved and disturbing, and I feel compelled to say that -- as a 21st-century American woman -- I find them funny. This is why -- call me new frontier* if you must -- I am posting here the parts that, as a 21st-century American woman, I find the most funny.

I'm not quite sure why this is. I have never been to Russia ("The Show Me State"), so I cannot identify with the story on anything like a personal basis. That said -- not that I wish to toot my own horn here -- I did personally take one whole entire semester of Russian, during which I attained the invaluable cultural skill of learning words I would promptly forget.** The existence of the sex school, however, entirely restores my faith in a country that could call an innocent alphabet letter an "R" when it is flagrantly a "P." Nobody would have ever dreamed of letting them get away with such a thing if their athletes hadn't kicked all the other athletes' butts dating back to the 3,000,000 B.C. Australopithecine Winter Olympics. (That was the one where the australopithecines in charge of the world figure skating federation engaged in underhanded dealings that were all over the newspapers.) (FUN FACT FOR NON-FIGURE SKATING ENTHUSIASTS: These same individuals are still in charge of the federation today.)

But back to Russia, and why I am cool with the whole sex-school deal. You know what I think it is? I've spent far too much time - approximately 671 years since my birth in 1988 - as an American student in the American system of higher education, which has its benefits,*** but in which they would never dream of hiring a male model as an Educational Supplement. This is because this would constitute an act. In the American system of higher education, theory, theory, theory is the order of the day; the more degrees removed you are from actually doing anything, the better, as evidenced by this highly authentic transcript from a sex class at West Southeast North Montana Technical Agricultural & Umbilical:


PROFESSOR SWITHIN R. HORKBUCKET: ... therefore it is altogether necessary, as we theorize about theorizing about, but do not actually ever theorize about, the theories pertaining to this theory ...

STUDENT: Excuse me. Can we get a male model in here?

PROF. HORKBUCKET: No.

STUDENT: Oh. But uh... we can maybe look at pictures of a male model, right?

PROF. HORKBUCKET: Heh, heh, heh! No.

STUDENT: Are we allowed to, uh...think about a male model?

PROF. HORKBUCKET: Ah-ah-ah! That's thinking. You're at an American university, remember, you little mucus-wad? Thinking is but a baby step from activity, and activity is anathema. The name of the game here is, through inaction and non-thought, to get yourself as close as possible to THE HOLY GRAIL OF NON-BEING.

STUDENT: Uh ... well, then ... can I maybe think about not thinking about a male model?

PROF. HORKBUCKET (grudgingly): Closer.

STUDENT (in an epiphany): Hey ... it's kind of like ... THE HOLY GRAIL OF NON-BEING!

PROF. HORKBUCKET (in a low voice): You getting hot yet?

So I admit I kind of sympathize with the Russians on this one. And get this: the male model isn't even the best part of the article. No, the indisputable best part is the photograph of the chic young bosom-intensive cutie humping -- purely in the academic sense of that word, you understand -- a stuffed tiger. Though, as a scholastic-type, I cannot help but observe this raises the following troubling questions:

- Do they sanitize the tiger between each use?
- Can tigers get human crabs?
- Can crabs get human tigers?
- Do you think the tiger ever gets tired? Or does he just smoke a little cigarette after each "lecture," and then bounce back, good to go?
- Do you think there's any point in my thinking up these questions anymore inasmuch as you guys are all off googling the picture of the chick humping the tiger anyway so actually I can do whatever I want now OOGY BOOGY BOOGY BOOGY BOOGYBOOGYBOOGYBOOGYBOOGYBOOGYBOOGY that was fun?

Still, in conclusion, I must depart on a somber note**** to my fellow young persons: young persons, after you engage in tender moments, ALWAYS remember to sanitize your tiger. There is no excuse to do otherwise. Plus, in some institutions, doing so may get you college credit.





* But before you call me new frontier, remember to punch "7" to dial out.
** I suspect this was because many of these words contained funny letters, which was in itself highly suspicious.
*** Like sometimes the cafeteria serves International Food.
****E-flat.



©2009, Nicola McEldowney
The Snark Ascending

2 comments:

Chris Wolfgang said...

That Marie Claire -- always educating us about something.

The Old Wolf said...

*snrk*

The Cyrillic alphabet was invented by a drunken priest who, in a fit of pique after having lost a game of Scrabble, flung all the tiles to the floor, thus inventing the word "onomatopoea" (pronounced "hqiz!" in Russian), as well as the ROT13 algorithm. For this reason, one never finds an old HOBO in Russia - they're all new.