Banner photo of Larry Eugene Meredith, Ronald Tipton and Patrick Flynn, 2017.

The good times are memories
In the drinking of elder men...

-- Larry E.
Time II

Thursday, July 1, 2010

There is Nudity in This Post

One advantage of growing old is you can say outrageous things and no one cares.

"After all, he's up there in years, you know, confused, probably a bit senile, just humor him."

It's doubly, or I guess triply so when you are an old nobody blogger.

"He's a nobody, why listen to him?"


"And he's a blogger! You know, one of those pimply faced losers who are just desperate for some kind of attention, like a streaker."


"Like a streaker," now that's an idea. We'll get to that, but first let's mention we are constantly being reminded of the problems we have.

I get up this morning and look at the local paper, which I actually get via email so I don't know what to call it because it is the daily newspaper except it isn't paper.  Nonetheless, it has a story of the newest danger to our health that if you don't stop doing you are all going to die, which is sitting down on the job. Not goofing off, but literally sitting there at a desk doing what you get paid for all day. There is a need to educate the public to stand up while working. Well, I'm safe and sound I suppose because I stand all day to do what I do.

The story contained an interview with some AOL Executive (AOL is still around?), who stands all day to do his job. He's had his desk and all his work space build to a height where he can stand to keyboard or write or draw doodles or whatever he does. He is quite proud of this, too, and thinks everyone should follow his example, because if you sit all day you are going to die and I guess if you stand you are never, ever going to die. (I think he may be a hypocrite, though, and may be pulling out leg as we sit here about his standing all day. I mean look to the left in that picture above and what do we see. Isn't that a chair raised to a height to fit the heightened desks?)

Anyway, we have these people telling us we sit too much and we eat too many potatoes or we go to tanning salons or all these things that people with too much time on their hands sit around and study so they can tell we folks it is bad for us.  The first thing the government should do if they really care about our health is take away the grants for all these studies. These people need to find a real job where they have to actually work hard and produce something positive for their fellow man instead of always worrying about what you and I are eating or doing.

Then the second thing the government should do is outlaw clothing. Well, not all clothing. Clothing should be allowed when appropriate to protect us from adverse weather, such as the chill of winter, but on all other days and in all climes where the normal days are conducive to nudity, then clothes should be banned, except shoes. I do a lot of walking and hiking and I wouldn't trust my bare feet to what may be lying in wait upon the trails and paths I trod. Socks would have to go. Nothing looks more silly than a man wearing socks while in the altogether or wearing his business black knee-highs with shorts for that matter.

Naturally exceptions would be made for risky (to the bare flesh) occupations, you know like chefs dicing carrots or welders or people who handle feral cats, etc. Football players could still don their pads, but that's about it. After all, there is something called the "Lingerie Football League" where they are practically wearing nothing beneath their pads now, so how dangerous can it be? (Shaw, they hardly even wear that much padding; that we can see anyway.)

Now I know the prudish out there are probably already yelling, "We'll have sex in the streets and lust in the lanes!"

I doubt we'll have any more of that than we have now at least not for very long. Nudity is boring. It is like the sense of smell, which is the sense with the quickest threshold of endurance. You smell something, but you get use to it quickly and don't even notice it anymore after a few minutes. The scent's still waffing through the air, you just don't care. Same with a world full of naked people, you note it for a moment and then you don't even see it.

Want proof?

Back before the so-called sexual revolution of the 'sixties, before Russ Meyer and when Playboy still airbrushed the centerfolds, there were theaters showing "naughty bits films". These theaters generally called themselves Art Theatres. (Reversing the "er" to "re" always adds a bit of class, don't you think?) Between one-reelers of old-time strippers doing their thing they would show nudist films. I am talking about "Naturalist" nudists, people who went to isolated campgrounds to spend a vacation in their birthday suits. Oh, these films were supposed to really release the beast in men, all this full frontal, full rearal, full sidewaysal nudity. Yeah, about as long as the credits took, and credits came at the beginning of films then and they didn't list everybody in the world like the accountant and drivers and the gal who made the sandwiches for lunch. The credits were over in a flash (no pun intended). Then for an hour you had a parade of people walking down a garden path nude, sitting by the poolside nude, playing croquet nude until it led to the grand finale of the volleyball game nude.

This volleyball game wasn't greeted as the climax, it was greeted as relief. It meant this movie was just about over. There is nothing more boring then sitting for an hour watching nude people do ordinary things. So when you see the neighbor lady out watering the lawn in the nude or the postman delivering your mail in the nude it is pretty dull stuff.

But let's think of the benefits. Now we hear all this bishwah about obesity. Everybody is too fat to please the skin and bones crowd, who sit about gloomily counting their ribs and angry because they can't count yours. Yet, most of us don't like others to see our fat rolls or how we jiggle when we walk. Outlawing clothes would incent most of us to get into shape. We'd change our diet and do more exercise because we want to look good striding about in the buff.

Not only that, we would end a lot of this class elitist stuff. You might be able to tell the difference between a wardrobe from Walmart and one from Nordstroms, but one nude body is pretty much generic.  Oh, I suppose we better outlaw tattoos as well. Wouldn't want someone parading about with some designer's name tattooed across their hindquarters.

This might cut down on violence. You can't tell a gang's colors when they aren't wearing any and if there are no tattoos either, then one street hood looks pretty much like any other street hood.

I know, the sunstroke police would be beside themselves about all these bodies exposed to the sunlight. Well, maybe we will allow wide-brimmed hats. Sunlight is good for me, it clears up my little skin problem with psoriasis.

Forced nudity wouldn't cure all the world's problems, of course. It isn't going to solve the racial problems obviously. We need to get rid of the politicians who use such divisions to get votes and also the people who make their living by constantly stirring that pot, but maybe if we are walking about in our skins, whatever shades they may be, we will see we are pretty much the same, a couple arms, a couple legs, a few other things, but basically the same design.

It wouldn't do much for the economy. I mean, all those kids making clothes for slave wages in China would be starving. Mother's would be saying, "You eat your dinner, there are children starving in China" and now it would be true. Clothing stores would go out of business. Tommy Hilfiger would be begging on the street corner. Hey, wait a minute, I'd be begging next to him. I work for a clothing store.

Whoa, this naked stuff is a bad idea forget it.

Look below for the author of this post nude:



  Hey, I'm nude under my garments. After all, they haven't passed that no clothes law yet.

And don't tell me I lied about nudity in this post, either. I used the word "nudity" several times, so it was there.

That is no more deceptive than all those politician commercials on the TV.


(The photo at the top of this post is of sculptures in a public garden in Phoenix, Arizona taken by the author in 1982. They're nude.)

2 comments:

Ron said...

Ah yes, very nice posting about a subject which garners just about everyone's interest. And Blaze Starr yet. Wasn't she one of Frank Rizzo's flings?
About the "nude" picture of you at the end of the blog. I note some kind of electronic contraptions with an antenna pointing skywards. What is it? Some kind of nude space alien?

Practical Parsimony said...

I know I am late to this party, but that was a funny post, good ideas.