hit over the head

Sometimes in today's society we feel like we're being hit over the head with sex.

Not literally with sex itself, but with the idea of it.

Last weekend read an article that was so fascinating -- I was real impressed with it.  It was a very intelligent, thoughtful analysis of a topic I was interested in, and I wanted to copy the article so I could refer to it again and again, and continue learning from it because couldn't even understand all of it because it was hard -- very "up there" in the high levels of understanding and observation.  Very sensitive, and funny.

So -- thought, let's see what else this author has, looked him up by name, and wound up with a list of stories we (the audience) could buy -- and the text assured the reader that these stories were "hot, erotic"...??

Hot, and erotic.
Both o' those at once?  Really?
Wow.
(Hot!  Erotic!  Redundant!  Buy it now!)

Seemed weird -- a rather long "fall" from elevated and carefully arranged and fascinating thought that was in the article...

I was like -- huh.

(Like -- aren't you embarrassed to put out something so patently crass and silly, & have your name on it? -- well apparently not...)

I told someone about it and he laughed with me, then explained to me (just what I need, someone a year and a half out of high school to teach me about the grown-up world...):
"It's al-l-l-l -- about Makin'-Money."

Like that two-word sentence -- "Sex sells."  When people say that, it seems like they always say it in the same tone -- the word "sex" is said in a voice pitched several notes higher than how the person would usually talk -- "Sex --" and then the word "sells" comes in an even higher note which climbs higher during the one, drawn-out syllable, & then drops a little at the end, creating a sing-song effect.

"Sex -- SELLS!"
"S - ex -- SEL-L-ls..."

Uh huh.  Pass the asparagus please.

-------------------------
I always remembered a conversation I had once in the mid-80s, I don't know why it stays in my mind -- I said I thought a particular situation comedy was kind of -- I don't know, obnoxious, offensive, nasty -- and a friend of mine said emphatically, "That's the dirtiest show on television!" 

I was a little taken aback -- thinking, well, I haven't viewed every show on every channel and taken notes or whatever -- but -- well, yeah...

and he added, "They [Hollywood TV producers] act like they think the only thing we're interested in is sex."

Mmh.

And one other caveat with the hot-erotic-story guy:  the stories he was promoting were actually written by his wife -- so he was promoting her -- wares, as it were.

(Be a little tough to say, "No honey, I don't want to include your products -- I'm trying to maintain a classier intellectual level of discourse"
...not if you want to get along happily at home...)

Question-marks envelope our existence. ...

-30-