Sex with Soul

You shouldn't use someone for sex. It reduces the person to a mere object: a tool for gratification. This is the popular sentiment; a moral imperative woven intricately into the fabric of our culture, but what does it mean to use someone for sex? I guess it would be like using someone's car. For example, if I know someone has a sweet ass Corvette, then I may befriend him or her with the hopes of one day being handed the keys, or at least I could hope to be seen riding (as a passenger) in a fancy car. Similarly, I may wish to borrow someone's tools or play video games with them. In all of these examples I treat someone kindly in order to use their things. But does this make sense in terms of sex?

The first assumption is that our bodies are something like a car, tool, or video game console. In other words, something separate from ourselves. I am a mind, but my body is an instrument for me to use. If this is so, if our bodies are mere instruments, then I would also be using my body for sex when I have the good fortune to engage in sexual congress? If we understand our bodies as separate from our "true selves", then any sexual act would involve using bodies for sex.

But is it correct to say that our bodies are mere instruments? I don't think so. I believe I am my body, or at the very least, my self (mind, soul, spirit, or what have you) is inextricably wrapped up in my body. Clearly, I can't read a book or ride in my friend's Corvette without my body. Sure I have a separate mental life, but even the richness of this mental life is dependent on how I care for my body. Caffeine fuels rapid and lucid thought, and a lack of iodine in my diet could reduce me to a bumbling fool, and there are countless other examples. If our minds and bodies are so intertwined, then my mind is involved in every bodily action, and as such, every experience involves my true self.

As such, I think we have found a way of understanding ourselves that makes it difficult for us to be used for sex. Our selves are in every conscious experience, and as such sexual experience is also a mental experience. Any full account of sexual experience must involve the mind as well as the body.

On my account, sex is less like using someone's hammer or car or joystick and more like having a constructive conversation, and by a constructive conversation I mean a dialectic, a conversation which meshes two differing opinions and creates something new. Yes, I mean to say that there is sexual listening and speaking; and, thankfully, there are sexual shared meanings and conclusions.

If sex is to be properly understood as a sort of physical conversation, then it becomes evident that bad sex would be something like someone talking past you; he or she doesn't listen to your wishes and allow those wishes to shape the proceedings. Instead, he or she tries to turn your body on like a car; he or she expects you to "start" a particular way, to like particular things. After all, all cars drive similarly. The point is bad sex is instrumental sex: sex that treats bodies as instruments that can yield pleasant results when used correctly; instrumental sex is close minded and cocksure.

When we consider consensual sex, we are left with the realization that being used for sex is only possible in that we allow our partners to ignore our needs. As such, in order to have sex with soul, we must come with open minds and a willingness to listen and learn. Hopefully, understanding sex as discourse, as another part of our conscious life, will mitigate misdirected groping and initiate responsive touching, and, ultimately, we can have sex that is always conducive to new understandings of one another.

Hark! The Testimonials

This blog has only been up since September 12th, not even a week.

This blog is a baby; complete with tiny hands, tiny feet, and tiny shits. Evidently, being a baby does not save you from ridicule. In just the short time “Hark! The Mute Scream” has been in existence, I have already received loads of comments via the Facebook note versions of these blogs.

Shall we open up the mailbag?

"You can keep that softest generation bullshit to yourself. Our generation is at the cusp of being the next greatest generation. So many young people are doing their parts in our world. So stop generalizing." - Anonymous Army

Now, now, what do you mean by doing their parts?

Playing Wii is not doing your part.

Driving a Prius isn't doing your part.

Going to church isn't doing your part.

Watching MTV is certainly not doing your part.

Signing up for "Causes" on Facebook isn't doing your part.

Attaching yourself to a "Go Green!" trend is not doing your part.

Doing something a magazine tells you is in style is not doing your part.

Joining the military is definitely, with no doubt in my mind, not doing your part.

You may say that young people giving into "cool" viral voting campaigns, people driving Hybrid cars to "do their part" in making the enviroment better, drinking soy lattes, and signing up to fight whoever we decide to go to war with this week represents our "next greatest generation", well, that's your opinon, and you are constitutionally entitled to have it. (For now anyway.)

My opinion is vastly different. However, I am entitled constitutionally to voice that opinion and not "keep it to myself".

My opinion is we're fucked.

"ARE YOU KIDDING ME. youre entitled constitutionally.. which you wouldnt have without people like [soldiers] joining the army and fighting for your ungreatful ass. everyone has opinions, but how dare you put down someone who gives their life for you and include them in your overly verbose rant about "the weakest generation"." - Anonymous Female Bandwagon Jumper

"Ungrateful and worthless American. Must feel educated and cool to talk bad about the military? How did you right this note? Oh ya, under freedom of speech provided to your ungrateful ass by the military. OORAH!" - Anonymous Marine

Is that the same thing thing the American soldiers say to the people living in the countries we invade while we force our government upon them?

I'm not saying I don't "support the troops", whatever that means. After all, they are just doing their job and some of them didn't know what they were getting into when they signed up. However, if you say you truly care about the world we live in, then join the military, that is like a vegetarian working at an animal testing lab.

Oh, and I don't remember any wars being fought for my freedom in a long time. Imperialism anyone?

In addition, I'll say that if I truly am an ungrateful and worthless American, it is because America itself is ungrateful and worthless.

America itself is built on stolen land, with a foundation of blood and greed. Many parts of our culture, including our language are taken from other countries and other people. A huge amount of our goods are imported from China, along with other countries. Simply put, America is a whore.

Now, I know what you are going to say because you've been trained to say it, much as I've trained myself to respond. You're going to go with the 'ol, "If you don't love it, leave it!" motto. Well, the great thing about America is that it costs a lot of money and you have to go through tons of red tape to get out, that is, if any other country will take you. See, because people in other countries hate Americans, hmm, I wonder why?

The good news is that if you'd like to help me get out of the U.S.A., I am setting up a Paypal account at this very blog to do just that; and if you feel as fervently about me leaving the U.S. as you did about my article, I'm sure you will donate.

Anyway, the great thing about the internet is that if you don't agree with what I write you can just not read it and the problem is solved. I just wish it were that easy for the men, women and children who have to endure bombs and bullets in the places we have ravaged.

Alright, enough with the negative, let's look at the positive feedback and clear our soiled auras!

"Genius." - Lacey from South Carolina

"Dude, you sound like me (as of late), which means we're both starting to sound like my father." - Thomas from Alaska

"Amazing. This is a fine rant!" - Chase from South Carolina

"Thank you for putting some rhyme and reason to my utter hatred for Sara Palin. I could never explain it to other people who knew not of her devilry. All I could do was sort of roar and toss my head about like an enraged polar bear. Now, I'll just link everyone to this, point at the computer screen and grunt." - Amy from South Carolina

"Finally, someone who can say what I'm thinking. Palin is an idiot." - Desirae from Florida

"Beautiful." - John from South Carolina

"This made me proud of you. True patriots are those who use their voice and question the popular. My frustration is as clear as my eight cups a day piss. I've never wanted to punch Tina Fey so hard. Why can't half of America see past all this bullshit? [Palin] is a perfect brainwash full of buzzwords and pauses for applause. Hopefully the media will get off Palin's dick and start concentrating on the two men running for the front office. Or maybe they could possibly focus on the greatness of one Sen. Joe Biden. Just saying. Is Sarah Palin to network news as Paris Hilton is to E!?" - Laser Guided Keith

The Softest Generation

I am convinced the nation will be overrun with obnoxious pansies. Generation after generation the people are getting softer. The jobs are getting easier, we rely heavily on technology to take care of a lot of things for us, and even though the world is slowly being destroyed by our existence, we are way too comfy in our new high top Nike’s to even care.

Just yesterday, I was trotting around my local downtown area, a place that, in the past, was a nice way to spend an afternoon. Now, after only a couple of years, downtown has become a pigpen for all of the local teenagers to run about and wreak havoc while their parents do whatever it is that they do. Not only that, but combined with tourists and the fat people who decide Saturday is the optimum time to absorb Vitamin D from the sun on their only day out of the house, downtown is almost more trouble than it is worth. Sorry, I seem to have drifted from my topic; sloth people and tourists are another article altogether, my war is with the young’uns.

So there I am, slithering through the cesspool of suburbia. My friends and I are having a jovial conversation about random topics of interest after listening to some local music at the local yuppie coffee house. Light does that thing where it goes into your eye, cones and rods and the lot, so you see stuff clear and in color, and what does my pair of winky-winks decipher from the world? Douche bags, twelve-o’clock.

Were they hugged too much as kids, or not enough?
I'm really digging that heart-shaped belt buckle.

They looked just like every other boy roaming the streets in downtown. If the guys aren’t wearing a popped-collared polo shirt and picnic shorts, chances are they are going to be wearing tight jeans and something like a bleeding unicorn on their t-shirt. In the distance I see them, fumbling around, acting foolish, but I try to ignore them and write them off in my mind as just being different people with different brains that causes them to act in different ways confusing to my own very different brain. Conversation between my friends continues as normal and we keep our stride. That’s when it comes. As if manifested from the oxygen in the atmosphere, a cup hurtles at me. However, this cup wasn't manifested by the air, it was manifested from douche bags. My friends and I stop as the two boys keep walking, laughing loudly. In seconds, I pick up the cup at my feet, thankfully, for their sake; it was just filled with ice. How fitting that the cup was from Starbucks.

Nice. We also would have accepted the
term, "Consumer Whore".

“Assholes!” I shouted as I turned around to face them. My friends stayed stagnant in a state of uncomfortable awkwardness. The douche bags just stood there, gum-less looks on their faces, as if they had no idea what had transpired.

“Yeah you two, you little shits!” was my retort to their silence. The only reply I received was more silence. Evidently this was the first time anyone had talked to them this way in their fruitful, give-or-take eighteen years on this Earth. Finally, one of them muttered, “Can I have my cup back?”.

”If you want your cup back, you can come and get it partner!” is what I told him. Sweet fancy Moses, I meant every word too.

Since I realized that there was no way in hell these two, yes two, guys were going to try and retrieve the cup from me, I turned around with my party and put it in the nearest receptacle where it belonged and yelled back, “If you want your cup, it’s in the trash budrow!”.

Sure. The boys very well could have accidentally dropped it, what with their weak hands and poor coordination. On the contrary, that would have called for an apology and a quick pick-up of the cup and proper disposal. Because, let’s face it, litter trashes everyone, and I could have very well trashed them. Yet, none of those things were done, these boys just giggled and walked on, not a care in the world. This, in my opinion, is just as bad as chucking it right at my face. If all this wasn’t bad enough, we saw them later as they yelled at me from across the street and behind a fountain. Sorry children, almost pissing yourself in front of me, and then yelling at me from very well the fifty-yard line isn’t convincing.

They just don't make 'em like this anymore, no sir...

This act just assures me fully that we are currently living in “The Softest Generation”, and have even fluffier ones to come. There is neither courage nor honor amongst the masses this day and age. If someone threw/spilled their beverage within three feet of a man’s presence in the 1920’s, that culprit better have made a heartfelt apology and took his whoopin’, because either way, he would have got his ass kicked, and he would have been grateful for it. In present day, you would be hard-pressed to get into a fight with someone on purpose, must less for a good damn reason. Even if you were to defend yourself or unleash a proper beating on a deserving fiend, you’d be dragged off to jail and locked away with all sorts of immoral monsters. What has happened to our nation? I mean, we live in the goddamn United States of America! If I dish out some justice on some evildoers face, shouldn’t the public in the streets applaud me for that? No, for that I am deemed unfit for society and taken away to be sodomized by my new roommate Bubba.

...Except in Russia, the elusive "real man" still thrives in
all parts of the former Soviet Union.

Listen, I am not saying that we should all be violent people, flying off the handle at anyone. I am also not condoning giving into hormonal angst or taking out a bad day at the office on innocent bystanders, no matter how much fun that would be. The point I’m trying to get across is that people are growing up learning that their will be little to no consequences to their actions, and if there are consequences, the reward for their bad deed is worth enduring the slight punishment thereafter. In addition, in this pampered society of ours, people; especially those being raised in our time, need some rough treatment and hardship to help them to better deal with problems as adults. Finally, and most important of all, if some prick commits a nefarious act, I should be able to challenge him to a duel and suffer no legal actions due to him falling in the battle.

Immediately Imperative Address of Idiocy: A Rant

Opening my car door, trying as hard as I can to not to give in to Neanderthal instincts that tell me to smash the face of the person who is talking to me, I sit down in the driver’s seat and turn the music up very loud as I speed off. My knuckles are white from clenching the steering wheel all too hard, my brain on the brink of an aneurysm; my eyes turn to the giant American flag flowing outside of the nearby car dealership. The flapping of our ol’ red, white, and blue starts to sink its way into my head and I starting thinking about America.

Everything started with hope. It seemed as if everyone thought that the world was ushering in a new age, an enlightenment of sorts. A woman and a black man were neck and neck to be the first of their kind to rule the great United States of America. Of course, the usual slack-jawed yokel still harbored resentment towards the innate differences of the candidates, those differences being skin color and the possession of a vagina. However, most beings of reasonable intelligence thought that it was pretty neat. After all, a woman or a black man would have never even feasibly thought of being president fifty years ago. Actually, many things would have never happened fifty years ago; some notable mentions being Oprah, the movie Gigli, and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

Then, it all changed. A candidate who was barely still in contention announced a running mate. Her name is Sarah Palin. She was head of the P.T.A., a seasoned two-year Governor of a small town in Alaska, winner of a Tina Fey look-alike contest, and she could be one feeble heartbeat away from being the next president. In addition to all of those air-tight traits that make her ready to be Ruler, or Vice-Ruler for that matter, she is already being investigated for abruptly firing Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, whom she allegedly pressured to fire an Alaskan state trooper who, coincidently, suffered a rocky divorce from Palin’s sister. Isn’t that curious?

If only it was the younger, perkier SNL Alumn Tina Fey in the running for
Vice Presidency. What's her policies on reform? I don't care,
that nerdy vixen gets my vote everytime.

Sarah Palin has many beliefs she feels strongly about and which will make her a solid candidate. First, she supports capital punishment but is pro-life, meaning people must leave the womb before we can murder them. Palin is against “explicit sex-ed” in schools and believes in abstinence-only education, which she continually stresses to her eighteen-year-old preggo daughter named Juno*. Same-sex marriage is another thing Sarah Palin is against because of the same reasons as all other republicans, that it “destroys the sanctity of marriage”. Breaking news. Gays do not destroy the sanctity of marriage; marriage is being destroyed everyday by abuse, money, alcoholism, drugs, sometimes children and usually divorce.

I could go on and on speaking about her ideals, creating literal “Bridges to Nowhere”, her beliefs about the war, the inexperience, but I will top things off on Palin by talking about oil. Palin promoted oil and natural gas resource development in Alaska, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A beautiful place that is approximately 19,049,236 acres, abundant with creatures great and small. Innumerable vairities of plants and animals populate the area, hell, Polar bears give birth there, it is a magical place. Unfortunatly, Sarah Palin hates magic, and argues that drilling will only take up 2,000 of those acres. Although, I’m sure Palin would be against me shitting in a small corner of her large house. Palin also helped pass a tax increase on oil company profits and put forward an Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AGIA) to encourage building a natural gas pipeline from the state's North Slope. Oil, oil, oil, money, money, money, segway, segway, segway.

"My name is Mr. Snuggles, and Republicans are trying to kill me."

Anyway, so there I am, driving around to obtain fuel and I see it, like a scab on the horizon, holding its place on the throne with the McDonald’s glowing “M” and smog. The sign told me that gasolene, Texas tea, black gold, dinosaur juice is currently four dollars and seventy-five cents a gallon. I laughed so hard I almost crashed my vehicle. Surely this is some cruel joke, much like the posting of “arm, leg” where the price should be. Alas, my good people, this was no joke. I kept driving seeing the prices all being similarly and ridiculously high. Some authorities blame it on the impending doom of the hurricanes, but I blame it on idiocy.

Sarah Palin is pro-life, and judging by the rise in gas prices
we will need all the babies we can get.

Whenever some slight remark is uttered on the news, radio, or computer(not the newspaper though, everyone knows no one reads anymore.) people go mad. If there is a chance of snow or ice or perhaps a slight mist, everyone goes to the store and buys milk and bread. When the media says something about gas everyone goes and fills up in lines that stretch down the highway. Why can’t people just turn things off and stay home? Imagine how things would change if just half of our entire nation stayed home and didn’t spend one red cent for a whole week, but that will never happen because we are all idiots.

Finally, I settle on a place to purchase gas. Just so happens I run into a guy from highschool who is on the pump adjacent from me. Pleasantries are exchanged and I go in and give my money to the kind Indian man. The Indian man and I start to converse and we both unleash our sympathies upon each other. He says it is a sad day and he is not proud to be an American, and say the same thing. He says I am the only person to only purchase twenty dollars worth of gas today, that everyone else is going crazy and spending eighty to one hundred dollars, and even filling up canisters of oil to take with them. I say have a nice day good sir. Contemplating the state of affairs, I return to my designated pump and fuel my car. Cue my highschool aquaintance. The blandly-dressed young man decides to tell me, while I am pumping almost five-dollar liquid in my car, that he is a youth pastor now and would like for me to join his church. Sorry budrow, but fuck you five ways from Sunday.

In this atrocious present day, for a strapping lad to be so lost in some religious belief that he would offer me to join, and donate money to his church, while I am putting the better part of my wallet into my gas tank, and hoards of people flock to McCain and Palin rallies, I do not see how anyone can argue that we are all buffoons. I suggest we use our constitutional rights now and gain weapons. Pretty soon the whole world will be like the Mel Gibson classic Mad Max. We will be murdering and killing people in the search for oil and water on a dry wasteland of a landscape. So everyone keep driving around and when you aren’t driving and buying, watch the news and get all riled up to go buy more oil. Meanwhile, I’ll be at home reading a book, lifting weights and cleaning my gun.

* Correction: Sarah Palin’s daughter is not named Juno, her real name is Bristol, named after one of the greatest Nascar races. Her other children are named Track, Trig and Willow. No one knows why.