MAY 9, 2008
This was so funny and eye opening! I loved it, the humour wasn't offensive at all and I did a little research everything said here is actually partly truth. Great article!
The Upside of 8 Societal Pariahs
By Ian ForteyYou already know the downsides to all of these things, they’ve been jammed down your throat like delicious, cream-filled goodies for years. Now it’s time someone took a stand and pointed out the ways all these ills of the modern world, that together end or destroy thousands upon thousands of lives each year, can occasionally not suck.
The world’s oldest profession and the world’s easiest way to find crabs, herpes and toothlessness all in one twitchy, malnourished body that smells vaguely of seafood is on a street corner of damn near every city in the world. Saddled with a most nefarious reputation since Biblical times, it’s not much better today and it’s unlikely the label of “crack whore” is going to become a term of endearment any time soon.
However, not all ladies of the evening are cut from the same cloth and while many work to fuel a drug habit, some just do it because dammit if they don’t love money and many, many, many strange penises. Many. Women who are in control of their “business,” which is to say no shady character in a feather hat and gold teeth is giving them the Ike Turner treatment, often are quite happy with their job. They set their own hours, make a hell of a lot of cash and the most stressful part of their workday is getting their assholes bleached. And admittedly, that would be a stressful part of anyone’s work day.
In countries where prostitution is legal, this has seen a rise in the quality of life for a number of single, under skilled women who would otherwise be stuck in low-paying jobs as well as ensuring many sad, lonely men with goiters and club feet can know the tender touch of a lady who may have someone else’s dried sperm in her eyelashes.
Booze has been a part of humanity since cavemen first left pears sitting too long in the hollowed out skulls of their enemies. This lead to the first ever bender, the first man to ever wake up next to a yak, the first hangover and the first promise it would never happen again. It was love at first sight. Since that time, liquor has had ups and downs, from frat parties to prohibition to keggers to Lindsay Lohan.
While alcohol consumption is frowned on by many, and does lead to some atrociously stupid and deadly behavior, it should also be noted that our dear friend booze also may reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes, gallstones, strokes and heart attacks. Moderate drinking can raise HDL (that’s the good cholesterol, but we were too drunk to look up what makes it so good), prevent blood clots, help you get a better night’s sleep, maintain a healthy weight and make underpaid comedy writers seem interesting to women while conversely making women who are less attractive than Rosie O’Donnell look at least human.
Few things have been so brutally assaulted in recent years as tobacco. It has been punished in ways porn star sphincters don’t even get abused, and rightly so given the annual total of deaths that can be linked to smoking. And while we might be so bold as to suggest an extension of our metaphor that all smokers wrap their lips around a porn star sphincter as a way of butting out, so to speak, that presents a whole new set of problems.
On the other hand, our friend the tobacco plant is indirectly responsible for saving a shitload of lives. An actual, scientific shitload, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of a cubed acre. Tobacco lead to the discovery of TMV, the tobacco mosaic virus, way back at the ass end of the 1800’s. This was important because it was the first virus ever discovered, and scientists were able to prove something smaller than bacteria was out there. Further research on the virus is what helped scientists develop a polio vaccine and rid the world of a potential scourge of polio zombies, which is pretty much what happened in I Am Legend. In some ball kicking irony, research is being done with tobacco plants to synthesize proteins that will actually fight cancer.
The word slut gets thrown around at our mom’s house a lot, and brings up confusing memories of the numerous uncles who slept over once and were never seen again. Today, most people frown on the idea of regular folk humping like coked-out rock stars, because our society is built on family values and Presidential facials. Turns out though, that a number of little backwoods tribes throughout the world really enjoy Olympic level sausage tossing with as many partners as possible. Whereas we’re apt to view monogamy as stability and look at women who do 14 guys in one night as next Wednesday’s Maury, tribal folks in South America and Polynesia view the idea of many potential fathers as a blessing. Just means more dudes to watch the kid. And for the man, there’s the thrill of running a train while high fiving his buddies, as well as being more confident that his line will live on since he lives in some backwater shitberg where malaria or candiru could strike him dead at any moment. And even if that little bastard fish does swim up his wang and kill him, he can die happy knowing there’s another man to make sure his family is provided for. Happy in a sort of existential way, as physically he’ll probably be in agony.
Generally speaking, if you look like Orson Welles in his autumn years, you may be what is clinically known as “obese” or what is more commonly known as a “fat ass.” But you don’t need us calling you fat ass as you’ve probably been insulted in far more colorful and prolific ways than we could hope to match in just this short article. Right, saddlebags? Indeed. And while society may not cut you a break, as fate has it, this deal may not be so raw as all that.
Research has suggested that cells in human fat may actually produce new blood vessels to repair muscle and heart tissue, which means every polish sausage you hide in the toilet tank “for emergencies” that brings you closer to a heart attack may inexplicably also inch you away from it, or at least help your heart get over it after it happens. You know, if you survive. As well, while fat can increase risk of dying from diabetes and kidney disease, it’s the opposite for cancer and heart disease, so there’s another reason to celebrate, so long as celebrating doesn’t involve going up too many stairs.
Admittedly, trying to find a silver lining to a crack addiction isn’t the most easy task in the world, unless you happen to be a pimp with a stable of crack whores, or perhaps a crack dealer, or basically anyone surviving in the small but lucrative heartland “Crack Belt.” Probably the same can be said for heroin, opium, meth, horse tranquilizers, glue, Quaaludes and banana peels.
However, there’s some good news for latter day hippies as there is a movement to treat a number of diseases, as well as addictions, with peyote, LSD, psilocybin and ecstasy. In a nutshell, this means you could try to suffer through getting sober on aspirin or Robitussin, or instead get completely looped and imagine a magical unicorn piloted by Tom Cruise saving your life from alcoholism or whatever the hell it is that’s wrong with you.
As well, heroin is occasionally prescribed for extreme pain in some countries, so our good friend horse isn’t always all about shriveling people into pathetic, bruised and battered looking husks. Mostly it’s that, but not totally.
A favorite vice of random conservatives and people who don’t like 10 year olds betting their allowances on monkey knife fights on the soccer field at recess, gambling actually has a hell of a lot going for it. More than heroin did, at least.
While the potential financial benefits to casinos that have to kick back a certain amount of their take to the municipalities in which they reside is an obvious one, let’s not forget that gambling isn’t always just slot jockeys drooling into their cup of quarters while their ass oozes over their stool like congealing cheese on a 99 cent foot long chili cheese dog at the buffet. Poker, for instance, is undoubtedly a game of strategy that at least one professor at Harvard wants to use to teach his students critical and lateral thinking, and problem solving. Not to mention statistics and math that are involved in any number of casino games. Plus, if not for Vegas, numerous 21 year olds would have to bang home town hookers for the first time and older married people would never be able to rationalize losing their child’s college fund and the crabs they got as something that should have happened in Vegas and stayed in Vegas.
The actual source of the internet’s power and the sturdy, time tested structure on which it was built, porn may or may not make the world go round, we don’t really care to know. What we do know is it gets a lot of shit thrown at it from people deathly afraid of anyone under 18 seeing it and the prevalence of it destroying marriages and our happy, idyllic Leave it to Beaver existence, not to mention creating false body images and expectations for sexual relationships in both men and women.
While we support not letting young teens see porn, especially the ones raising their own children as it would take up too much of their time, we have to point out that porn does fall under freedom of expression so bless its heart for being out there and being political, which we assume is the driving idea behind all porn.
Back in the day, the argument was that porn would lead to an increase in sexual violence but some studies are now suggesting the exact opposite, that as porn has proliferated, the number of violent sexual assaults ahs actually decreased. Whether these things can be scientifically linked is probably not for an article that has already used the term “crack whore” twice, with that being the third one, to say, but it’s something to consider.
While porn may present a world full of curious pizza delivery services, gullible women who will hop into the back of any van and get naked, and fisting, things probably no one would have considered if not for porn, it also generates a huge amount of money. Porn gives us billions per year, and in a capitalist society that’s money that gets spent and re-spent for the benefit of us all and that, without porn, would likely end up somewhere absolutely retarded like a low yield savings account or being invested wisely, and who the hell wants that?
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