guest post 14

More from Kep:

So I thought that Nina’s willingness to tamper with the template signaled her return to blogging but I got an email from her saying thumbs down to that. A few more posts from you, kep, please – she writes.

Okay. So long as it’s sweaty hot outside, why not stay indoors during my lunch break and pound away at the keyboard. I mean, it’s not as if I would be doing something useful instead, like learning a language.

It was mentioned that I might try my hand at news story commenting. That I should pick something that pulled me in this morning and blog about it. Truthfully, the story that was most interesting to me was on the female orgasm and a blogger already wrote about it here. Why should I jump in on that one? It would be dicey for a guy to write extensively about what he thinks of the female orgasm anyway. I can see getting myself into hot water with it. I remember when in mid May, the New York Times printed its story on the evolutionary purpose of the female orgasm (there was none, it was argued), a discussion about it among pals quickly degenerated into the women outshouting each other on the issue (raised in the article) of whether it was even possible to have an orgasm without external stimulation. I felt pretty left out. Though I did run through, in my head, my encounters with this and came to the conclusion that, at least theoretically, I had something to contribute to the topic. But I kept quiet.

I am not anti-news stories, by the way. I read newspapers and magazines: I want to know who got busted and what crap happened while I was sleeping. And sometimes I shred them out of anger and other times I make paper funny hats because I know how and it’s a neat thing to do. But my thoughts about what I read are for myself. Sure, people can engage me in a political discussion, but they wont do it easily. I don’t like to sound off on things that are outside my own backyard. I know my own backyard damn well and there are things I can say about it that would astonish you – things you would never believe could be true: festering and rotting right there for me to see if I look out my window. Cool things too, like there is a flower. Maybe even two or more flowers.

But place me in front of a paper and I feel I am reading about someone else’s backyard and that I should take it in, rather than spit it out. It’s not happening to me, I’m thinking. The Supreme Court decision about growing pot in your yard? It’s interesting, but it’s not my story. I haven’t worried about the Commerce Clause in years: I figure that commerce will keep on moving this way and that and I stand to lose or gain, sure, if it does move this way or that, but I can’t worry about everything. I am already obsessing about global warming ever since that New Yorker series on it this spring.

And I can’t really immerse myself on the other side of the issue either – you know, the side of the person growing corn for his own use or pot for her own malady because at this point I don’t think I have any wasting disease and so I would be lying if I were to claim that my pot was to keep me from freaking out. If I grew it, it would be for my own pleasure and I don’t really care for pot pleasure unless it’s the pot of gold kind of pleasure: I am not above spending big money to have a nice time with a friend. Or with Jill the Pill. Or with plain old tadpole.