Another favorite from Post Secret.
A recent letter:
I’m getting penis envy from hanging around all these dating and hookup sites. Amazingly, the average dick size in these chat rooms is eight inches! Yes, 8 inches! I know because people tell me so. Of course, they’re measuring from the crack of their ass to the tip of their lies, but maybe I’m being a sore sport. My question: For those of us who want to know how big our dicks REALLY are, what’s the best way of measuring them?
— Digging deep for one last inch
Dear Digging:
So here’s the bad news: the average penis size is not six inches. The “six inch myth” got started when Kinsey did his landmark penis size study back in the 50’s. Although there were 2,000 men in his study, it had a fatal flaw—the results were self-reported. Men were asked to go into a room, get themselves hard and measure themselves. Now tell me, would you believe anything coming out of a man’s mouth while he’s holding his dick? I mean, who do you think came up with maps that say an inch equals a mile–women?
Realizing that too many men were backdating their stock options, urologists developed a new way of measuring the size of the prize: A third party. So, now every legitimate penis study includes medical staff doing the measuring and reporting. And guess what happened? The average erect penis size shrank from Kinsey’ 6.2 inches to 5.1 inches. Yes, the average size is just over five inches. Kinda makes you weep, doesn’t it?
If you want to know your exact measurements, here’s how to do it:
1. Get undressed in room temperature. “Shrinkage” will occur if it’s cold.
2. Use a cloth ruler. Tape measures or straightedge rulers don’t measure curvatures well.
3. Lie on your back and start where the base of your penis meets your stomach. Do NOT start from the back of your balls. Nobody includes the basement when they quote the height of a skyscraper, so don’t include the tip of your ass in quoting yours.
4. Round up to the nearest centimeter, not the nearest foot.
5. Read it and weep. Most men will fall between four and six inches, with the average being 5.1 inches.
Actually, there’s a much faster and easier way to measure your cock. You don’t even need to get hard to do it. All you have to do is stretch your flaccid flogger and measure it from the penopubic region to the tip. Believe it or not, every major study shows a high correlation between erectile and flaccid/stretched length.
Now, here’s an interesting trick I learned from a condom company. If you want to find out if you have a big dick without measuring it, then put a tube of toilet paper over your erect penis. If it slides all the way down to the base, you’re average or below average. If it gets stuck, then pop the champagne corks because you’re one of the lucky few. Yes, FEW. Condom manufacturers estimate that only 6% of the population needs extra-large rubbers. I know. Another reason to cry.
The economy is taking its toll on everybody’s love life. Marrieds: If you think your partner wasn’t putting out before, wait till you see what they’ve got in store for you once they realize you had all your money in Wachovia and Citi-Group. Couples living together: If you think your partner didn’t pay you much attention before, wait till you see how much shade his “Project Ignore” stamp is going cast on your emotional needs now. And singles: If you think finding somebody was hard before, wait till you go to the bars and see how they’ve turned into empty bowling alleys.
But the people I feel sorry for the most are gold diggers.
I mean, this housing market is the functional equivalent of date rape for them. Once, real estate was the best investment they ever made. Or rather, marrying somebody with real estate was the best investment they ever made. But now, what’s a gold-digger to do? How do you tell the house-poor from the plain poor? They’re both driving about-to-be repo’d BMWs.
“Everyone is looking for handsome, rich and charming men but there are less and less of them to go around,” says one gold digger in The NY Post’s Page Six Magazine. And here’s the London Telegraph on men cutting back on “mistress-associated costs”: “More than three-quarters of the adulterous multi-millionaire men surveyed said they planned to spend less money on gifts and treats for their lovers, and 82 per cent planned to cut their regular payments.”
One reader wrote with a great solution—-a kind of modified Heimlich maneuver: “Place your fist on his abdomen and squeeze quickly and firmly until he coughs up more cash.”
Hey, the Hermes scarf on that shelf ain’t going to buy itself…
This is one of my favorite videos on Blabbermash.com. He’s not asking a question so much as re-enacting what has to be one of the most hilariously awkward moments since Sex and the City’s Charlotte went home with a guy who couldn’t orgasm unless he yelled, “you f*cking whore!”
Take a look:
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The Advocate had a potentially interesting cover story about African-American nay-saying to gay civil rights. I say “potentially” because the story punted on its own premise. You have to go two pages into the story before they actually say anything about the subject. It’s yet another example of the magazine’s ongoing struggle with publishing bulimia–Binging on a delicious topic, then throwing it up before it’s fully digested.
But enough about why the magazine’s so thin you could mistake it for a brochure. Truth is, it’s a very provocative title. Some excerpts:
“Gay is the new black in only one meaningful way. At present we are the most socially acceptable targets for the kind of casual hatred that American society once approved for habitual use against black people…
Except in a few statistically insignificant cases (the gay kid who happens to be the child of gay parents), being gay begins with recognizing your difference from the people with whom you have your earliest, most intimate relationships….
Our oppression, by and large, is nowhere near as extreme as blacks’, and we insult them when we make facile comparisons between our plights. Gay people have more resources than blacks had in the 1960s. We are embedded in the power structures of every institution of this society. While it is illegal in this country to fire an African-American without cause and in most places it’s still legal to fire a gay person for being gay, we are more likely to have informal means of recourse than black people have. Almost all gay people have the choice of passing. Very few black people have that option…”
Here’s the problem: While these are all good points, does it matter? Is black support for discrimination acceptable because there are differences between us? Methinks the writer punted. Instead of holding that part of the African-American population that supported Prop 8 accountable, he gave them a pass. It’s almost like he’s apologizing to them: “Well, you know, we’re DIFFERENT, so you don’t have a moral obligation to stop what was done to you.”
By holding them accountable I don’t mean BLAME. I mean holding a mirror up. The way MLK did to that part of white America that objected to black civil rights. Mirrors have a way of double-checking our self-perceptions. If I were the editors of the Advocate, I would have put an African-American clutching his Yes on 8 ballot on the cover, looking into a mirror, and seeing George Wallace smiling back.
(scroll down, look right)
David Mixner had an interesting post about how straight media ignores the larger themes of hit gay movies to concentrate on the perceived ick factor. The post’s money shot:
“One of my biggest regrets with “Brokeback Mountain” is that I did not speak out as we allowed this work of art to become a national joke. Not only did our straight friends mock it with one liners and parodies but, the LGBT community was first in line to make a joke out of a movie that had a powerful message for all to hear. It was a movie about love, the destruction of the closet, gay-bashing and the definitions of masculinity. Unfortunately, most missed these powerful messages as we watched clip after clip on “YouTube” of different, humorous (yes, they were funny) versions of “Brokeback Mountain”. The result of this was that we laughed “Brokeback Mountain” right out of an Academy Award. Please lets not allow the same thing to happen to “Milk” this year.”
He then rails against the recent David Letterman interview with the co-star of Gus Van Sant’s movie about the assassination of the country’s first elected openly gay politician, Harvey Milk (played by Sean Penn). See trailer after jump.
Why? Because Letterman focused the interview on what it was like to kiss another man, not the larger themes of the movie.
Is he right? Ahem. I watched the clip (below)–yes, they were a little awkward, but it was cute actually, especially when franco kissed Letterman. Look, straight guys WHO ARE NEVER GOING TO SEE OR RENT MILK, witnessed two famous straight guys talking about kissing men in a way that was not threatening, slightly comic and somehow ok.
I don’t disagree that they lowered the conversation from courage, freedom and the sacrifice that is often the midpoint between the two, but HELLO, it’s Letterman. It’s TV. It’s comedy. And the truth is, “what it’s like to kiss a guy” has more resonance to straight men than a movie they’re never going to see.
I thought the interview made the kind of impact that everyone hopes the movie will make–to question, to engage, to reveal a higher truth. The best way to change people’s mind is to meet them where they are and invite them forward. Letterman and Franco reflected straight male discomfort (meeting them where they are) then pulled them toward a “no big deal” attitude that ended with a sweet peck on the cheek. Sometimes, distractions from the point of a movie makes a bigger point.
The Letterman Interview:
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The trailer for “Milk”:
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I know that many of you can’t shake a sense of déjà vu since your vote—you know, that feeling that you’ve witnessed or been part of something before. Certainly, your vote had an eerie metaphorical familiarity—someone standing at the doorway of a great institution, protecting it from people who shouldn’t be there. But if the rest seems a little fuzzy it’s probably because you’re confused about the role you played.
See, you thought you were God’s warrior defending the institution of marriage from gay people. But really, you were George Wallace blocking the entrance to the University of Alabama.
In 1963, Governor George Wallace stood at the door of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama in a symbolic attempt to block two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, from enrolling at the school. He used the same arguments to keep you out of school that you used to keep us out of marriage. He used the same logic. He even used the same language.
I’m sure many of you are looking for a way to shake that awful feeling you’ve revisited a shameful part of history. I think there is, but it requires going further into that awful feeling, further into that history.
As many of you know, George Wallace, one of the biggest racists who ever lived, at some point, stopped, and saw your humanity. At some point he stopped and thought, “I have no right to take your rights away.” At some point he stopped and said, “I’m sorry. I was wrong.” And devoted his life to undoing his deeds.
My guess is that if you want that unsettling feeling to go away, you probably need to complete your experience of deja vu and act more like the guy who once stood in the doorway of a great institution to stop you from coming in.
Sincerely,
Everyone Who’s Been Locked Out for No Good Reason
I figured churches and other religious and conservative organizations know a lot about saving marriages because they deal with so much divorce. Knowing that these good folks would not spend over $25 million to change California’s State Constitution to prevent gay people from marrying unless it truly threatened the institution of marriage, I figured they made a list of the Top 10 reasons couples get divorced and it looked something like this:
1. Some guy they don’t know, who lives in a city they’ve never been to, marries a guy they’ve never met.
2. Infidelity
3. Domestic Abuse
4. Financial issues
5. Child rearing differences
6. Substance Abuse
7. Sexual Incompatibility
8. Religious and cultural conflicts
9. Lack of Communication
10. Boredom
So, you see, spending $25 million on Proposition 8 makes sense. A whole lot more than spending it on counseling centers that offer programs to deal with the bottom nine on this list.
I mean, you gotta start at the top and work your way down, right?