Category Archives: sexuality

Men Like Looking at Women

Let’s face it: men like looking at women. And there are good biological reasons that can be used to explain this affliction, at least according to this article at canada.com.

Like the masses of planets and stars, our bodies curve the space around us. We
radiate signals constantly, radio sources that never go off the air. We cannot
help being centers of attraction and repulsion for one another.

Well that explains it all then, really. But for more read the article; it’s interesting even if some will say it is male chauvinist. Personally I don’t think it is, just good biological sense. But then I’m male!

Guilty Pleasures Meme


Guilty Pleasures Meme, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week’s meme is all about those events, foods, hobbies, people, restaurants, beverages that we love, but bring about a little (or a lot of) guilt.

As usual here are the questions ans my answers:

1. Breakfast cereal — As I don’t do breakfast cereal as such I’ll have to say Sausage and Bacon Sandwich
2. Cheap Restaurant — Nico’s
3. Expensive Restaurant — If I must The Ritz is as good a candidate as any!
4. Alcoholic Beverage — Beer
5. Non-alcoholic Beverage — Hot Chocolate, with Cherry Brandy!
6. Sad song — Arlo Guthrie, Alice’s Restaurant
7. Convenience Store item — Food
8. Tabloid Magazine — Nah, don’t read them!
9. TV Show — Anything with one of my heartthrobs in it!
10. TV Celebrity — Oh let’s go for Michaela Strachan; she’s been around forever and is still as luscious as when she started!
11. 80s Movie — Emmanuelle, well it’s 70s actually, but who’s counting?!
12. Way to completely waste time — CENSORED

1. 3/365, 2. Nico’s, 3. Putting on The Ritz – Reworked, 4. German Beer Girls, 5. koko black hot chocolate, 6. Alice’s Restaurant, 7. A seminar student choosing Convenience store food, 8. Day 47 of 365 Days of Music, 9. Paul Shirville (Heart Throb) Rose, 10. Michaela!!, 11. Pierre Bachelet and Herve Roy / Emmanuelle, 12. Some of my photos have been CENSORED by Flickr – Here are the instructions to see them:

As always these are not my photos (except which is mine) but please follow the links to enjoy the work of the photographers who did take them!

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

30 Years!

Last night we had a little celebration. Only a little celebration over a bottle of wine followed by an early-ish night. For why? Because Noreen had hunted back through her old diaries (who has the time and discipline for these things? I never did) and discovered that we first properly went out together on 24 November 1978. I said I thought it was earlier, like late October, but she insists on the veracity of her pretty comprehensive journal from those days. So I figured I’d say “thank you” and not argue.

There are other such mini-celebrations coming up: the first time we had sex, 15 or 16 December; engagement on 30 December (well that was when Noreen dropped the bombshell on her mother anyway); Noreen moved in with me the following May; and we married in September 1979.

If you think that’s all a bit quick, well we had known each other for at least 3 years. We both knew, but didn’t tell the other, how we felt for each other. And then we almost lost contact after a disagreement when we both thought we’d screwed up and lost the other. But somehow we managed to stay in contact; just. Then unexpectedly Noreen asked me to her birthday bash in early October 1978. The rest, as they say, is history!

But hey, I realised properly last night that it is just as good as it always was. We’ve had our ups and downs – who doesn’t?! The first 2-3 years were hard – we fought; I was depressed; we had a crummy rented flat. When we bought the house in mid-1981 mortgage rates were very high – people today think they have it hard, we started our mortgage paying 14.5% interest, and after 6 months it was up to 17.5%!! That hurt. Many couples would I’m sure have thrown in the towel. But we stuck it out; somehow. And it’s got better; we don’t fight any more; we discuss, compromise and agree a way forward. By diligence we managed to pay off the mortgage seven years early. And we still have great sex; it’s different now from the early days but it is still great.

How have we done it? We don’t really know; we ask each other this question fairly regularly. But there are a number of key factors: a shared sense of humour; shared interests but also our own separate interests; doing things together but also separately; but perhaps most importantly we talk – all the time! And like all good relationships it is multi-faceted varying between friend-friend, parent-child, adult-adult, child-child, lover-lover. Even when, say, lover-lover is missing (as it will be sometimes) many of the others are there and keep things ticking along. Where relationships hit the buffers seems to be when many of the roles are missing and they degenerate into child-child, parent-child or enemy-enemy. (I’ve written more about this on the Theory of Relationships page of my Zen Mischief website.)

If we could make another 30 years we’ll both be getting on for 90. And who’s to say we can’t? Onward and upward! Here’s to many more happy years together.

Happiness Meme


Happiness Meme, originally uploaded by kcm76.

1. Meet the cat: VIC, 2. Sand Sea Sun – Snorkel!, 3. The meaning of Photography, 4. Happy Nude Recreation Week!!!, 5. my wine and Brad’s beer, 6. My wife’s hairy cunt, 7. 8×6 frosty morning railroad, 8. day one hundred five, 9. Longing for Spring, 10. ordinary pic, but really tasty salad, 11. Reading A Buyer’s Market, 12. Katsuo-ji Temple bells

This week’s question: Just tell us 12 things which make you happy, and a picture for each.

Answers:
1. Cats – because they’re magic
2. Sun, sea and sand
3. Photography – it’s about the only creativity I have
4. Warm sunshine on my skin
5. Beer and wine – two of the essentials of a contented life
6. Noreen, my wife (perhaps I should not say explicitly what I was going to!) and that after almost 30 years of marriage we still have great sex
7. Bright frosty mornings
8. Nudity – it’s normal and it’s comfortable
9. Spring green and blossom on trees
10. Good, tasty, fresh salad
11. Books, especially Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time
12. Bells

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

Osho on Pornography

A final thought from Osho, this time on pornography …

What is pornography, and why does it have so much appeal?

Pornography is a by-product of religious repression. The whole credit goes to the priests […] pornography is created, managed by the Church, by the religious people.

In a primitive, natural state, man is not pornographic. When human beings are naked, man knows the woman’s body and woman knows the man’s body, and you cannot sell Playboy. It is impossible. Who will purchase Playboy? […]

The whole credit goes to the religious establishment. They have repressed so much that man’s mind is boiling. The man wants to see the woman’s body. Nothing wrong in it, a simple desire, a human desire. And the woman wants to know the man’s body. A simple desire, nothing wrong about it.

Just think of a world where trees are covered with clothes. I have heard about some English ladies who cover their dogs and cats with clothes. Just think, cows and horses and dogs dressed. Then you will find new pornography arising. Somebody will
publish a nude picture of a tree – and you will hide it in a Bible and look at it!

This whole foolishness is out of religious repression.

Make man free, allow people to be nude. I am not saying they should continuously be nude, but nudity should be accepted. On the beach, at the swimming pool, in the home – nudity should be accepted. The children should take a bath with the mother, with the father, in the bathroom. There is no need for the father to lock the bathroom when he goes in. The children can come and have a talk and chitchat and go out. Pornography will disappear.

Each child wants to know, “How does my daddy look?” Each child wants to know, “How does my mother look?” And this is simply intelligence, curiosity. And the child cannot know what the mother looks like, and the child cannot know what the father looks like; now you are creating illness in the child’s mind. It is you who is ill, and the illness will be reflected in the child’s mind.

I am not saying sit nude in the office or in the factory […] there is no need to be naked, it should not be an obsession; however, this continuous obsession of hiding your body is just ugly.

And one thing more: because of the clothes, bodies have become ugly because then you don’t care. You care only about the face. If your belly goes on becoming bigger and bigger, who bothers? You can hide it […] let one hundred people stand nude, and they all will be ashamed […] and they will start hiding themselves. Something is wrong. Why is it so? They know only about their face – the face they take care of; the whole body is neglected.

This is bad. This is not good. It is not in favour of the body, either.

Any country where people are allowed a little freedom to be nude becomes more beautiful; people have more beautiful bodies […]

Nudity should be natural, should be as natural as animals, as trees, as everything else is nude. Then pornography will disappear.

[Osho, Sex Matters, pp 137-8]

Nico's


Nico’s, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week’s self-portrait: 52 Weeks 33/52 (2008 week 41).
Yet another reflection picture!

This week I’ve been eating out at the best “greasy spoon” in all London: Nico’s, 299 Cambridge Heath Road, London, E2 0EL. Open Monday thru’ Saturday, 0645 to 1900. It is right outside Bethnal Green tube station on junction of Bethnal Green Road and Cambridge Heath Road.

Greek Cypriot, now run by the second generation. You can have anything from a bacon roll, through Egg & Chips to Dolmades or Kleftico. The food is cheap and the portions are large; do not order the mixed grill unless you are a real glutton or starving: it comes on two(!!) oval plates, one of meat the other piled with chips. A steak sandwich comes with (free) chips on the side — a full portion of chips that is! And they’re real chips too. Everything is cooked to order and the kitchen is openly visible from the counter. Needless to say it does a steady trade! Eat in or take-away.

It is very close to the V&A Museum of Childhood, where Noreen works; I was there too earlier this week and was taken out to lunch at Nico’s: I had: 2 (large) Sausages, Mushrooms and (a pile of) Chips; can Diet Coke. Noreen had: Double Egg, Beans and (a pile of) Chips; can Diet Coke. Total cost £8.50.

Highly recommended for restoring the soul but not for either the cholesterol levels or the waistline. Pure food pornography. 🙂


Nico’s, originally uploaded by kcm76.

Zen and Sex

Further thought from Osho …

What is the Zen approach to sex? The Zen people seem to have a neuter gender, or asexual aura about them.

Zen has no attitudes about sex, and that is the beauty of Zen. To have an attitude means you are still obsessed this way or that. Somebody is against sex – he has an attitude; somebody is for sex – he has an attitude. And for and against go together like two wheels of a bullock cart. They are not enemies, they are friends, partners in the same business.

Zen has no attitude about sex. Why should one have any attitude about sex? That’s the beauty of it – Zen is utterly natural. Do you have any attitudes about drinking water? Do you have any attitudes about taking food? Do you have any attitudes about going to sleep in the night? No attitudes.

[Osho, Sex Matters, pp 178-9]

Zen Mischievous Moments #143

Yet another timely contribution from the “Feedback” column in this week’s New Scientist

Saddle saw

MOST surprising paper title of the week has to be “Cutting off the nose to save the penis”. This article, by Steven Schrader, Michael Breitenstein and Brian Lowe appears in the August issue of The Journal of Sexual Medicine. What could it possibly be about? The online journal Physorg.com’s report on the article makes things a little clearer: “No-nose bicycle saddles improve penile sensation and erectile function in bicycling police officers.”

It transpires that the traditional bicycle saddle, with its protruding nose, can cause deleterious health effects such as erectile dysfunction and groin numbness. A study of 90 bicycling police officers before and after using noseless bicycle saddles for six months found “significant improvements in penile tactile sensation” and “significant increases in erectile function”. Irwin Goldstein, editor-in-chief of the journal, found the article so rousing that he wrote an accompanying editorial entitled “The A, B, C’s of The Journal of Sexual Medicine: Awareness, Bicycle Seats, and Choices”.

You wouldn’t believe it if you hadn’t read it here first.

Science Catch-up

I originally started off the previous post intending to write this one. So, having been diverted, here is the post I’d intended to write …

Having been “under the cosh” recently I’ve missed writing about a number of science items which have caught my eye. This is by way of a quick update on some of them.

Food Production & Agriculture
I’ve blogged a number of times about the need for a major restructuring of world-wide agriculture (see here, here and here). New Scientist on 14 June carried an article and an editorial on this subject. Sadly, being part of the “mainstream science establishment” (my term)they don’t get the need for restructuring. They see the solution only in terms of improved varieties, increased production and a decrease in food prices, with all the sterility that implies. They’re unable to see the problem in terms of overproduction of animal protein and a reduction in useful farmland due to poor methods and bio-fuel production. All very sad.

Don’t Blame it all on the Gods
The same issue of New Scientist – it was an especially interesting issue – carried a short article with the above title. I’ll let the introduction speak for itself …

Once phenomena that inspired fear and foreboding, lunar and solar eclipses can now be predicted down to the second, forecast centuries into the future, and “hindcast” centuries into the past. The person who started us down the path from superstition to understanding has been called the “Einstein of the 5th century BC”, and was known to his contemporaries as “The Mind”. He went on trial for his impious notions, was banished from his adopted home, but nevertheless influenced generations of later scholars. He was Anaxagoras, a native of Ionia in what is now Turkey, and the first great philosopher to live in Athens. Now this little-known scholar is being seen by some as the earliest known practitioner of the scientific method.

Worth searching out if you’re interested in the history of science or the Ancient Greeks.

America’s Abortion Scandal
This is the title of the third article I’ve picked from 14 June New Scientist. In the article Pratima Gupta, a (female) practicing obstetrician-gynaecologist, argues against the prevailing belief amongst US medics that abortion is always psychologically damaging for the woman. Gupta sees no evidence for this and rails against “personal moral beliefs trumping scientific evidence [and even] individuals’ personal beliefs”. What’s worse is that there appears to be covert censorship making abortion something which cannot be researched or discussed. All very interesting when put up against the case of Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin whose unmarried 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, being made (as I read it) to have the child and marry the father (see here, for example).

Cut!
Finally, this time from New Scientist of 19 July, which contains an article on male circumcision; again something I’ve blogged about before (see here and here). Quite predictably there is a rumpus brewing about the medical profession’s desire for all males to be circumcised – at least in Africa and by implication world-wide – egged on by the WHO. The studies which showed such huge benefits from circumcision are being criticised for their design, for being stopped early and for their assumptions. Surveys which question people’s experience of circumcision are also highly criticised. And of course being a mainstream science journal, New Scientist totally ignore any question of human rights, abuse and mutilation. It’s about time the medical and scientific professions woke up and smelt the coffee.

Finish this Sentence Meme

I stole this meme from Girl with a One-Track Mind and Troubled Diva because I liked it’s zen mischief potential. My objective is just to complete each of the following sentences. Your objective is to work out which are serious and which aren’t.

  1. My uncle once: sailed the ocean blue
  2. Never in my life: have I taken illegal drugs
  3. When I was five: I looked like Prince Charles
  4. High school was: much better than I realised at the time
  5. I will never forget: and that isn’t the only resemblance I have to an elephant
  6. Once I met: a man in a kilt
  7. There’s this girl I know: who is unattainable
  8. Once, at a bar: I met a Colonel with a dog
  9. By noon, I’m usually: in need of lunch
  10. Last night: I didn’t have sex on the beach
  11. If only I had: the power and the glory, for ever and ever, Amen
  12. Next time I go to church: I’ll be taking photographs
  13. What worries me most: is politicians
  14. When I turn my head left I see: something sinister
  15. When I turn my head right I see: a right tit
  16. You know I’m lying when: I keep quiet
  17. What I miss most about the Eighties is: not very much
  18. If I were a character in Shakespeare I’d be: a lion whelping in the street (Julius Caesar, Act II, Scene ii)
  19. By this time next year: I might be retired
  20. A better name for me would be: Zanzibar
  21. I have a hard time understanding: why people need religion
  22. If I ever go back to school, I’ll: be in a time machine (’cos neither of my schools exists any more)
  23. You know I like you if: I kiss you
  24. If I ever won an award, the first person I would thank would be: grateful
  25. Take my advice, never: admit that you know
  26. My ideal breakfast is: a full English
  27. A song I love but do not have is: a John Mayall mouth-music track from the ’60s that I can’t now identify or find
  28. If you visit my hometown, I suggest you: search out its history
  29. Why won’t people: think
  30. If you spend a night at my house: you’ll be solicited by a pussy (or two)
  31. I’d stop my wedding for: a KitKat
  32. The world could do without: religion and politicians
  33. I’d rather lick the belly of a cockroach than: do a bungee jump
  34. My favourite blonde is: Michaela Strachan
  35. Paper clips are more useful than: a grapefruit and Marmite sandwich
  36. If I do anything well it’s: only to lull you into a false sense of security
  37. I can’t help but: be a perfectionist
  38. I usually cry: inwardly
  39. My advice to my child/nephew/niece: if it harm none, do as you will
  40. And by the way: there’s always toast at the end of the dragon

I’m not tagging anyone for this, but feel free to borrow (or steal) it if you like it. If you do use it, it would be nice if you left a comment here.