The ordeal of monotesticularity

Bleary eyed, I got onto a nearly empty District line train early this morning to go to Central London for my internship. Suffering from what the French might call la guele du bois fumé, I tried my best to enter that mode of Zen concentration attainable only to the prodigiously serene or the massively hung-over. Still, in the midst of my meditation I was rudely interrupted by a pair of women blathering away in a glottal stop-riddled Cockney twang about a recent sexual enocunter.

Normally, the English are pretty tight-lipped on the Underground with strangers, but on empty trains they often have no compunctions speaking about the intimate details of their personal lives. This is especially true for the young, and even more so for the East-End/Essex Boy/Chav connections. So, I found myself flitting between void and consciousness, listening to one girl, no more than 16, talking about a recent 'shag' she had. Some poor geezer named Jimmy had managed to bag this bird at the boozer and was snogging away wif her at the bar. Then he offered her a bit of Charley, and so off to the toilet they go where they do a couple of lines and then start snogging anew. Things proceed nicely until this girl went to give young Jimmy a wank when it emerges that things downstairs were not entirely in order for this barmey bloke . In the immortal words of the girl: "...'e only 'ad won li'le bi' in the bollocks." Translation: Jimmy was an oddball.

This was not my first run-in with the concept of monotesticularity. At my first high school, the star all-State quarterback was a kid in my grade named Mac. Known for his quick wittedness on the field and his uncanny ability to slip through the opponent's line, our nimble, fearless leader was one of the first kids from our now burgeoning football powerhouse to earn a full ride to a Division I school. But beyond these distinctions on the field, our quarterback was perhaps best known for only having one testicle. As the story goes, he was born with a set of three testes, and as he approached puberty the doctors consulted his parents and told them that they might be able to remove the third gonad as it might cause physical (not to mention psychological) problems later on in life. So, as the process was underway there was a slip of the wrist and it turned out that two of the testicles had to be removed, leaving just one of his prized family jewels in place. Being that the athletic accolades showered upon him on a regular basis didn't go to his head, making him a pretty decent guy, nobody gave him shit about it at my school. On the field, however, he ws taunted about this feature of his anatomy to no end, and no doubt it transpired in his college playing days as well.

What with the slander no doubt circulating around Barking or Bow or wherever about poor Jimmy One-Nut, I can only hope that he has the fortitude to face the inevitable snickers and jibes that are going to follow in the wake of this incident. Rumors like these, even those that are false, will continue to dog people for ages (see Adolf Hitler and the longevity of the Billy-Goat Bite Theory). So, let us all say a prayer for Jimmy and his monotesticular bretheren: may ye have the strength of character to persevere, regardless of the slings and arrows of cruel adolescent teasing; may ye be a rock in the face of whithering criticism of your diminished manhood; and may ye follow the way of the Lord such that one day, God willing, you may enter the pearly gates of Heaven, and, nodding to Saint Peter as you pass beneath, be reunited with the long lost gonad from which you were so cruelly deprived. Amen.

For the fledgeling creationists among us

Here is a direct throwing down of the gauntlet to Mister Fedward Hyde:

This is the link to a game called Battleground God, wherein you answer questions about your conception of God and it tests the internal consistency of your position. With the logical deficiencies in your arguments of late, it will be interesting to see how you fare.

Of course, everyone is open to playing the game. Let's try to get a roll in the comments section to record how we all did.

God is dead. -Nietzsche. Nietzsche is dead. -God

Thanks again to Peter Jaworski for finding this gem of a game.

Zoe and myself on the terrasse of the Royal Festival Hall.
Photo credit: Peter Jaworski

Night on the Town With Zoe, Peter, Ray, Andrea and others

Last Friday Zoe and I met up with my friend Ray Peters, a huge ballet and classical music afficianado, and Andrea, my coworker at the George, at the Royal Festival Hall. We were there to catch the London Philharmonic Orchestra in one of the last organ concerts there before the massive contraption is taken apart for a two year renovation. The highlight of the evening was the Saint-Saëns Symphony Number 3, which Peter Jaworski, who came later in the evening, was good enough to record. You can listen to it here:

Dirty Fridge Magnet Poetry Part I

Here's my latest opus:

As the gorgeous lusty she goddess fiddles his enormous yet delicate purple love sausage/Delirious whispers flood in a languid symhony as the club-like apparatus soars and shakes/Drooling a lake of hot sweet man juice like a spring through her gown to her bare peachy breasts

Let's see what all y'alls can come up with.

Z-S: A Bastion of Free Speech and Thought

Mister Fedward Hyde, posting an email of mine on his sister blog Chez Fedward, has censored a number of comments that I made regarding his statements on Iran and the Middle East. In the spirit of free expression and exchange, I reproduce that paragraph here with the edited bits in boldface:

As much as you decry the largesse doled out by Bush and the Republican Congress, the more you open your mouth the more you undermine your pretensions towards moderation. For, if fiscal responsibility is so important to you, if large government and its resultant excesses is such a travesty, what could be the source of your rabid support for the Republicans--a party that never puts political expediency above its uncorruptable principles of wise economic stewardship--if not the radical foreign policy agenda of the Bush Administration. What with your thoughtful, centre-of-the-road policy proposals like: "modernize, or we bomb you [Middle Eastern] primitives back to the Stone Age;" your calls for preemptively striking Iranian uranium enrichment facilities and letting the ISRAELIS take the credit; your opposition of homosexual union; your laissez-faire attitude regarding Roe v. Wade (G*d only knows if you actually support the abstenance-centred family planning initiatives considering your recent rediscovery of Jesus these past few months); and your utter and vituperative contempt for the positions of people to your left, reason can only dictate that that you are, as you have claimed, a paragon of compassionate Republican moderation.

PS: For those of you puzzling over my use of "G*d", try starting a theological conversation with our newly converted Creationist buddy and you'll see what I mean.