Sex Detective vs Love & Marriage

Love isn't usually my imaginary domain as a pretend detective, I tend to leave that to professors, poets and pussies, but you don't investigate as many relationship issues as I do without picking up a few ideas on the whole romance thingy.  Personally I eschew romance on the basis that it wastes valuable fucking time, but alot of you out there seem to get something out of it, so I'll tell you what this hard-boiled, street savvy sonovabitch knows.

Love - the type that's actually interesting, not all that unconditional shit you have with kids and pets (boring!) - generally progresses through three fundamental phases.

1. Infatuation
Yep, the whole crush n' lust phase.  You meet someone attractive, your eyes lock, you both smile and idiocy ensues.  The woman/man of your dreams is also attracted to you!  Great, you (probably) think, that'll let me spent money on chocolates, flowers and grown-up restaurants instead of duct tape, illegal prescriptions and basement sound-proofing.  You get all goofy and nervous around each other, check your phone every 5 minutes whenever you're apart, and start acting annoyingly chipper around your friends and colleagues.  You also have sex.  A lot of it.  More than you ever will later in the relationship.  Entire weekends are spent boning and ignoring the chafing so you can bone some more.  Well done, you've just turned your life into a Disney/porn hybrid of romance.

A,k.a the fun, clumsy bit.

2. Bonding
So, 3-6 months have passed and you guys are settling into a routine.  You've met each other's families and friends, and you're now universally accepted as a 'couple'.  Those initial buzzes you felt around each other are waning, and instead are replaced by an expectation of reliability and cohesion.  You start to share emotional information not just about your past but also about your mutual future.  You'll spend more time but less sex together because you're learning to accept each other as comprehensive people (including each other's flaws, habits, traits and dreams).  Sooner or later you'll move in together just to kick it to the next level.  Co-operation becomes a priority and co-dependence creeps in.

3. Familiarity
After a few years you'll realise that your identities have merged.  You've learned everything about the other pseron that you ever will for now, so it's a case of living and working together as one.  You can happily leave the toilet door open while conversing with your partner.  You may also have a couple of kids kicking around.  The whole of your relationship is now greater than the sum of its parts.  Congratulations, you are now your parents, the circle is complete.

Exceptions to the rule
It doesn't work like this for everyone, of course, and it doesn't always run the full course.  Some couples start off as platonic friends and hence bypass the whole silly infatuation phase because they've already bonded on a deeper level that would make dating ironically hilarious.  Funnily enough, although in the minority, these often prove to be the most successful relationships of all.  You have already bonded emotionally and socially, you already know all about each other, and you already trust each other because you're friends.  It's also the difference between loving someone because they're beautiful, and them becoming beautiful because you have learned to love them.  I've only come across a couple of instances where this has occurred (big shout out to Shaz and Stu, by the way) but it's fantastic to see and often explains why second marriages work so well. 

Other couples have trouble transitioning from bonding to familiarity because being familiar with a partner means tolerating every little annoyance all the time.  You put any two adults in the same house for a few years and irritability is inevitable.  Some people just can't hack that, and after a drawn out campaign of idiosynchrocratic attrition one or the other decides that splitting up is healthier than fighting homicidal urges.  Living together is not the same as growing together, and learning to do the latter synergistically is what makes all the difference.

Marriage
We are only ever as good as the promises we make, which is why I rarely used the P-word.  In my culture an oath carries mucho weight, and breaking an oath carries harsh consequences in terms of social status.  That's also why I belive that marriage as an institution is a noble decision.  Look, before you get all "What?  The Sex Detective is pro-archaic ritual/religious dogma?" just shut your fucking holes for a second and hear me out.  In the 21st Century of Western society you can take or leave marriage as you wish.  No one's forcing people to get hitched.  Hell, most of you are pro-marriage anyway because you support that right to be afforded to deserving gay couples, right?  All I'm saying is that I think it's a pity that sometimes people decide to get married for stupid reasons like keeping their families and/or gods happy instead of doing it to publically declare their intrinsically motivated long-term committment for each other.

Goddammit, Japan, I was trying to make a serious point here.

Rant: Hell, I've known some girls who get more excited and obsessed about the wedding than the actual marriage.  Fuck you, princess, if you're going to burst into tears because the flowers don't match the table cloths on your wedding day then chances are you don't deserve the man patient enough to put up with your spolit brat attitude anyway.

Every serious decision we make in life is a test of our true character.  If you decide to get married then make damn sure that you understand one fundamental truth: marriage serves to celebrate committment, not reinforce it.  Signing that piece of paper won't magically make you a better couple, only you can do that.  Ever since 'no fault' divorce laws came into effect, that piece of paper can be thrown in the bin at any time for any reason that constitutes irreconcilable differences.  So give it some serious fucking thought, people, instead of day-dreaming about white picket fences and and a 'set and forget' lifestyle, because when you finish walking down that aisle the real work is just beginning.

The secret is to kieep it fresh by not wearing anything under your blankets.

Sex Detective vs Shitty Sex Ed

I remember being in primary school and having my class ushered into the library to meet two important visitors.  This couple were sex educators, there to explain how our bodies work when puberty hits and what horrific changes to expect.  The session was pretty detailed, covering intercourse, menstruation, primary and secondary sexual characteristics, masturbation and so on.  We eagerly lapped up this knowledge, even if some of it left us a little confused and revolted.  Personally I was disappointed to find that calling someone a 'homo-sapien' wasn't a phobic insult at all, but that boobs sounded like a capital idea for girls.  Then came question time and one of my female classmates asked:  "How do you do a hedgehog?"

There was an awkward pause before the male educator cleared his throat and replied, "I think you mean 'head job'.  Does anyone know the answer?"  Thankfully he wasn't stupid enough to give us any chance to respond, delving immediately instead into a basic 'penis in mouth' definition.  Then came the whole birth control and diseases bit, at which point most of us decided that no matter how much our 12 yo pants were tingling, sex was a life sentence or death sentence, so fuck that idea to hell.

Nowadays the digital age allows kids of all ages to learn all about sex via simple entries into a searchie.  If you think kids won't do this then you are suffering blunt trauma and forgotten the first thing you did when you got online.  I figured some real research was in order on this topic so I hit Youtube and entered 'sex ed'.



Yep, one of the top results is a creepy guy in a playground seranading about which parts of your body he intends to touch.  Accurate terminology is important for child molesters so as to avoid confusion in the back of the van.  And a mere 20 seconds into this musical glossary of violation we get this strange snippet of a no-less-creepy dude clarifying what girls have down below.

Oh look, a cunt telling me about vaginas, how poetic.

The Problem

Sex ed is one of those things you needs to explain to kids before they're old enough to do it.  Unfortunately it requires a level of explicit detail not usually associated with conditionally prohibited behaviour.  When we teach kids that serial killing is wrong we don't usually throw in a biology lesson about lethal lacerations and gunshot wounds.  We certainly don't let them role-play the responsibility associated with it the by giving them murdered dolls to bury under their house for a week.

But Sex Ed - being so much lamer that Murder Ed - involves a fuckton of information: biological, social, and legal at least.  That's not including any religious crap thrown in too.

Eeew!  Whenever you make a biological function a moral controversy you automatically generate ignorance.  Hooray for this evangelist reciting the very day and minute he first fucked his wife.  It's hip to shock kids with the image of you flopping clumsily atop some poor woman for 30 seconds, I'm sure.  But tell me, Pastor Ainsworth, can your holy powers of eidetic recall tell us where and when you first masturbated?  That's the only question I'd throw at him after his creepy boasting, because I already know that fundamentalists fucking hate that line of inquiry.  They either lie outright with denial, or make some clearly insane statement about wanking without actually thinking about sex.  Do you know how many healthy, 20 year old men have never masturbated?  Of course you do, because 'zero' is always the easiest number to remember.

It's like parents who excuse their kids from sex ed for religious reasons.  "You don't need to know about it until your wedding night."  Denying sex is like denying pretty much everything else in the world: it doesn't make you a better person, just a dumber one.  Sexual morality is like lying in that regard, it's not about the act itself, it's about the circumstances and motivations behind it that mess with your conscience.


The Solution
Oh, and just one simple thing: pedophilia, rape and indecent assault are not sex, they're violent crimes of power abuse - the same way that hugging someone is not the same as strangling them.  Pretty much the opposite of the true act itself.  Do not confuse the two.  I mention this because it should be THE FIRST THING WE TEACH KIDS when talking about the social aspects of sex and sexuality.  Biology does not translate into morality.  Our bodily functions are all tools that we use within context, and it's the context part that should be explained as clearly as possible.

Yes, sex as a concept is scary and exciting for kids.  Even when laboriously explained using charts, diagrams and dolls it's still confusing as hell, especially when you're then told by pastors and over-protective parents that it's taboo.  I guess I was lucky, growing up in a rural area, because you couldn't look out the back door without seeing animals fucking each other, so the baby making process was pretty straight forward.  What I didn't know is that with humans sex is employed for many reasons other than procreation.  Sometimes it's for relief, sometimes for self-esteem, sometimes for loneliness, sometimes for money or other rewards.  Some even do it for love-based bonding.  But the fact is that the vast majority of people between puberty and decrepit age can and will have sex.  Our eyes are used to see, our ears to hear, our hands to hold things, and our junk to do the nasty.  That is how the world works, and has done so for a very long time.

Sex is the legally aged, consensual act of mutual, physical gratification between two humans (or more in some cases).  It is not masturbation (no issue of consent), it is not violence or exploitation (non-consensual) and it is not a source of shame.  Do not worry about sex ed encouraging kids to have sex.  Trust me, adolescents do not need additional encouragement, it's already hardwired into their hormones.  What you do instead is ensure harm minimisation and risk management.  Teach them birth control if you don't want to become a grand parent right now.  Teach them venereal protection if you want them to be healthy.  Teach them about consent: explain what sexual and indecent assault is, describe what constitutes date-rape and the diminished capacity inherent in intoxication.  If you want kids to act responsibly (and despite the media and religious scare-mongering, most kids want to be good people too) then you need to give them all the information, not just the bits that suit your agenda, because they will find out the rest from less reliable sources anyway.

Most of all, parents, teachers and similar role modelling adults need to educate themselves.  Think just because you're a parent that you know it all?  Bullshit, you just know how to have sex, not teach it.  Learn then teach, that's the only way it works, fools.

And now I'll leave you with a classic example of what happens when you let religious morality interfere with biology.  Heed the words of Dan Savage here.

Sex Detective reviews video affonts to God

Youtube has a Christian Film Trailer channel.  If you visit it you get to see hundreds of trailers for films you'll never actually see.  There are countless straight-to-dvd production companies in North America making such atrocious crap that only international quarantine laws save us every day from their taint.  Some folks think I give God-fearing followers of the White Christ a hard time, but that's simply not true.  I just scrutinise some of their horrible products, starting with their Bible and ending with the kind of shit I'm about to share with you.  Shit like:

Sybil Ludington


Okay, so I have very little knowledge of the American Revolutionary War, other than that America obviously won, otherwise it would be the War Where Nothing Really Changed.  As for Sybil Ludington, I can't even bring myself to google the bitch.  What I do know, from the above trailer, is that she spent most of her life indoors with a bunch of dudes stressing about something.  The only external shot is of her sitting on an inert horse, which doesn't strike me as particularly revolutionary.  Horses have been sat on for a long time, I know this because I read it in a book once.  As for war stuff, we get a brief glimpse of a British soldier through a window.

Oh no, he's firing an old timey flintlock pistol at fuck knows what, and it sounds more like a wet Christmas cracker than a projectile weapon.  Most war flicks like to highlight action scenes into their trailers, but if that's all Sybil Ludisomething has to offer you're in for 90 minutes of whiny, fully clothed conversation inside a mudbrick shack.


Snitched
One thing you notice if you're so lonely that you have to subscribe to christianfilmtrailers to get through the night is that the view rates of these teasers tend to be in the low double digits.  I'm sorry, Christian movie-makers, but when a third of your subscribers is me (a mocking atheist in a hockey mask) you sorely need to revise your marketing plan.  Of course, it would also help if you actually took the time to inspect some of this dross before dumping it online.



I dare anyone to tell me what the fuck I just watched.  Some chick on a monochrome computer, fading title overlays spouting stoned speculation about historical confidentiality, and... and what exactly is this meant to be?

An eaves-dropping time machine?  A space toilet catching fire?  Is it even a plot device or just some kid's science fair entry?  We'll never know.  Or care.


Long Distance Princess
Hey, do you know what the kids love these days?  Romantic comedies about kids.  As opposed to this audio-visual miscarriage.



That's not a trailer, people, it's just a mash up of disjointed micro-clips with a couple of antagonistic lines from a clearly over-aged cheerleader.  And what's with the title cards at the beginning?  "lisa will win todd's heart..." [insert 5 seconds of kids doing unrelated crap] "...or does she?"  That's not even grammatically correct, assholes.  But rather than waste time in the Youtube comments section reminding people how verbs work, I followed a link to the plot summary of this film to get a handle on what was really going on.  Here it is, copied and pasted verbatim.

Lisa, a high school sophomore, has been hiding her hopeless crush on todd, the irresistibly likable junior in her art class. her life starts to unravel when he asks her to help him get to know the beautiful ellie, her longtime friend living in england.



All the while cindy, todd’s ruthless ex, resorts to sinister schemes to stop lisa and ellie, so she can win him back, and todd’s image-conscious friends try to discourage him from befriending the ordinary-looking lisa.


Supporting her through it all, theo–lisa’s Christian friend from school–encourages her to tackle her problems with a biblical mindset, but mitzy, her opportunistic bff, has other ideas.

One of the mentioned characters (Ellie) apparently doesn't even appear in the film.  But that's okay, because capital letters don't even appear in the synopsis.  The only capital letter used when not starting a paragraph is the 'C' in the word 'Christian'.  Well done.  And if your plot relies on using a 'biblical mindset' to overcome the baffling array of stupid problems about very mundane things then prepared to be underwhelmed.  There won't even be a karmic revenge fantasy element because I already know that this sort of vanilla-style christianity means everyone wins in the end and becomes a better person.  You know, just like the opposite of real life.

Shadowlands


Yep, it's kinda like Star Wars and the protagonist is definitely Space Jesus.  The producer wasn't allowed to borrow his daugher's iPhone so he had to render the CGI on his grandfather's fax machine.  Laser ships and medieval swords abound in some sort of backwater desert place.  Desert places are vital when you're trying to use the premise of sci-fi to retell a messiah myth.  'Only this stranger from the heavens, with his shiny sword and stupid beard can save us from the status quo!  He must truly be the Chosen One as foretold in the vague prophecy of our ancestors!'

The obvious drawcard for this flick, though, is the antagonist - none other than Gary 'batshit insane' Busey, one time popular actor/musician and now born-again creep.  Gary's mere mention makes children cry, women flinch and men reach for blunt objects.  His filmography claim to fame was becoming an Oscar loser nominee in 1978 by playing Buddy Holly.  From there he scored a string of pretty kick-ass second tier roles in the '80's and early '90's.  Then he became an alcoholic, joined AA, and turned into a Godoholic instead.  Now anyone who isn't a backwater, homemade christian production company avoids him like the cringey, crazy bag of douche that he is.

Not pictured: sanity.

Footprints
Trailers are brief snippets of pivotal scenes that inform the viewer what to expect in the plot of a movie.  Or not.

I can safely say that having seen this trailer I now know less than I did before knowing this film existed.  A lonely, whining guy whining about being a lonely, whining guy does not tell me anything I didn't already know about lonely, whining guys.  Oh, and he finds God's love in the form of a dog, I think, or maybe half the script was written by dyslexia.

Soul Surfer
Ever wondered what happened to '90s star Helen Hunt?  Me neither, so imagine my unsurprise when I found her playing a supporting part in this 'based on a true piece of crap' movie about a teenage surfer girl who gets her arm eaten off by a shark but manages to return to surfing after learning how to compensate for this amputation.



Pretty amazing, right?  Oh, no it's not, because upper limb amputees learn how to compensate every fucking day provided they are prepared to complete rehab and stick to their training regimes.  I kinow it's admirable to see someone do that, but it's hardly a damn miracle when you do so surrounded by wealth, privilege and the best medical care available.  It's like when patronising, ignorant cunts praise kiddy cancer sufferers for being 'brave'.  They're not brave, you idiots, they're just kids perservering through some horrible shit, and most are actually pretty upset by the whole deal so try to show a little compassion instead of heaping meaningless adult terms on them.


127 Hours
Okay, if you want to see something truly awesome watch this film:



It's the story of Aron "Fuck you, universe" Ralston, the most kick-ass rock climber you'll ever learn about.  It tells the events and experiences of a man facing a horrible death after a climbing accident.  It's moving shit, showing how a man will fight to the last using nothing but will power and a cheap multi-tool.  After getting his arm pinned by a wedged rock and drinking his own piss to survive for 5 days, he gets sick of waiting for rescue or God or whatever and amputates his own lower arm with pliers and a blunt knife.  Then he strolls across miles of stinking desert until he finds some help, all the while never losing his sense of humour.  This is a 100% true story.  Mr Ralston now tours around the place delivering very matter-of-fact speeches to fans, but only when he's not still climbing the fuck out of mountains.