The Hidden Wrongness of Harry Potter

These days, everybody wants to be a wizard. How could we not? The Harry Potter universe is so beautifully realised that it feels like you could walk right in, pull up a Butterbeer, and chat with the Order of the Phoenix like you've known each other for years. Not to mention that the place is freaking AWESOME in every respect, from magic wands to dancing chocolate frogs, unicorns, dragons, potions, and high school that never involves maths or science.

Of course, you have the downsides - Lord Voldemort, a variety of terrifically lethal monsters, sadistic teachers, irritating blonde enemies - but, let's face it, nobody ever looked less cool for smiting any of the above. If you don't mind the occasional near-death experience (and zombies, there are fucking zombies), then it would be unbelieveably, incredibly awesome to live in the Harry Potter Universe.

Except that it totally isn't. Some scary and seriously overlooked shit goes down in the Harry Potter universe. Stuff like...

1. Fat people are evil.

Let's play a game. First, let's have a glance at some of the heroes from Harry Potter:

The three main characters

Dumbledore's Army (the entire student resistance)

Get a good look? Now, here are some images of Harry Potter villains:

Harry's asshat Uncle Vernon...

...and Cousin Dudley

Draco's fat, stupid henchmen; Crabbe and Goyle

Sadistic, chubby torturer; Dolores Umbridge

Getting the idea? Of course, I can already hear the bitching start, "But most of the Harry Potter villains are thin! And so is Imelda Staunton and you're full of shit!" To that, I say, take a closer look at Harry Potter and you'll notice that there is not a single fat character who is a nice person*. And that Dolores Umbridge is supposed to be fat in the books, with a double chin, bitches. J.K. Rowling really seems to have it in for the fatties in her novels, but occasionally must have felt like she was pushing the envelope as she settles, now and then, on simply ridiculing the appearance of unpleasant characters. Let's take Slytherin student Pansy Parkinson - a mere footnote to the story, she is rarely mentioned without Rowling adding, with relish, that she has a face like a bulldog.

2. No sex ed. And probably, no sex.

As Harry and the gang grew up, there were more than a few clues as to their romantic awakenings. And, at first, these seemed to be right on cue. By the fifth book, Harry sneaks a pash with Cho Chang, and it's not long after that Ron spends half of an entire book sucking face with Lavender Brown. Even mousy, bookish Hermione enjoys a flirtation with Viktor Krum - at one point even hinting that she may go to visit his home over the summertime.

And then, right when everything seems to be steaming up... nothing. J.K. Rowling avoids the mention of sex almost studiously - no mean feat in novels featuring adolescent students of a co-ed boarding school. By the final novel, despite being alone, terrified and full of teenage hormones, seventeen year-old Ron and Hermione share perfectly chaste accommodation for months on end. The only hint of physical contact we are informed of is the scandalous detail that they actually fall asleep holding hands. But then, as explained by Rowling earlier in the series, women in the Harry Potter universe are curiously devoid of sexual desire - apparent in the fact that the girls' dormitories are equipped to keep the boys out, but the boys' dormitories require no such security measures.

Maybe it's a good thing that nobody at Hogwarts is getting down and dirty, though, considering that at no point are they ever seen to receive any sexual education. We readers would have really benefited from some as well, come to think of it. I have unanswered questions about wizarding contraception.

"I can't handle another unplanned pregnancy!"

3. It's all about the... *ahem*, wand.

In case you haven't noticed, it's a wizard's world out there. But I like to think that Rowling's hand was forced on this; in a climate where she was encouraged to use a gender-neutral pen name, she may have naturally (and probably correctly) realised that the series would have the most mainstream appeal if it featured a male protagonist.

"Guys, you ever get this feeling when chicks feature in books?"

Of course, Harry's best friend is also a guy. So is his mentor, Dumbledore, and his only remaining relative, Sirius. And his arch-enemy, Professor Snape. And his super-arch enemy, Lord Voldemort. There's Hermione, of course, but she's mainly there in a Lisa Simpson context; as a mobile encyclopaedia and force of temperance against the constant wand-stroking going on by the male main cast.

"Hey Voldemort! Wanna... duel?"

Aside from the scarcity of female leads, the Harry Potter universe doesn't present women particularly well. In the Goblet of Fire Tri-Wizard Tournament, we not only saw the standard ratio of three men to one woman, but a female competitor who came last in all three events, and needed to be rescued (by men) in two of them.

Life for witches in the Harry Potter universe presents some considerable drawbacks, as well. Most wizarding marriages seem to take place straight out of high school, and any suspicions we have about wizarding contraception would seem to be borne out by the fact that women like Lily Potter, Molly Weasley, and Fleur Delacour all became mothers before their twenty-first birthdays. But that's not much of an issue, so long as their children don't turn out as...

4. Squibs

For the uninitiated, a Squib in the Harry Potter universe is a child born to wizarding parents but without any magical powers of their own. Wizard attitudes to "special" children fall on the "only-just-above-Spartan" level, in that they don't merely fling the unfortunate prodigy from cliffs. However, Squibs are seen as a source of shame and embarrassment, often hidden, and usually sent into exile in the Muggle community because it's "kinder" that way. Rowling hints that a culture of Squibicide may have even existed in the wizarding world, what with widespread acceptance of the conspiracy theory that Dumbledore's sister was a Squib, deliberately done away with by the family.

Don't worry, kid, Muggle society is used to failure. You'll fit right in!

* I should also point out that Hagrid isn't "fat" so much as "retarded half-giant".

Taking It Back?

Most everyone with an internet subscription has probably heard of SlutWalk by now.

It all began in January of this year, when a Toronto policeman told a group of ten young women that “I've been told I'm not supposed to say this – however, women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised."

Biggest "Police Fail" since Kill Bill.

The women were so (understandably) outraged at this betrayal of misogyny by those appointed to protect them, that they held a protest in Toronto on April 3, publicly condemning attitudes which blame and shame victims of sexual violence. They named it SlutWalk. Founders justified this decision in their online manifesto;

"Historically, the term ‘slut’ has carried a predominantly negative connotation. Aimed at those who are sexually promiscuous, be it for work or pleasure, it has primarily been women who have suffered under the burden of this label. And whether dished out as a serious indictment of one’s character or merely as a flippant insult, the intent behind the word is always to wound, so we’re taking it back. 'Slut' is being re-appropriated."

Change the word "slut" for the word "bitch", and you're left with a pretty reasonable explanation for the title of this blog. In naming it, and myself, Clever Bitch, I had hoped (perhaps naively) to preempt the most obvious epithet used to criticise opinionated females taking the wind out of its sails and the sting out of its tail. Yes, the writer of this blog is a Bitch. She's takin' it back.

Yet, while I thought of this move as empowering, an entire subsection of women resent the move to re-claim misogynist language. Not all participants in SlutWalk are advocates of reclaiming the word for our own use. Some march in outright hatred of the word, and refusal to accept that their dress or behaviour should warrant such a label. For them, reclamation of hate-speech is dangerously close to self-hate.

"Why stoop to their level?", asked a friend. "What can we have to gain in taking on the language that has been used to oppress us? If we start to normalise and identify with words like 'slut' or 'skank', in the end we just devalue ourselves."

She may have a point. Indeed, it can be argued that our reclamation of hate-language can work to feed, rather than undermine its legitimacy. Society may have been largely rid of the sickening racial epithet "nigger" by now, were it not for the African American community "taking it back". Despite the way the word is thrown around self-referentially by rappers, it doesn't appear to have lost any of its sting in an inter-racial context. Vis a vis, the world of shit that rained down upon comedian Michael Richards when he taunted a largely-black audience with the 'N' word.

"Taking it back" doesn't always work.

There is, however, a definite potential for the reclamation of hate speech. Take the word "queer", originally an adjective, which in a few short decades has morphed into the proud adjectival noun, "Queer". If the gay community can do it, can women do it too?

I have a dream...

Slutwalk will be held in Newtown, Sydney on 13 June.

Do you think that hate-speech can be effectively reclaimed and re-purposed by women? Or are we selling ourselves out?

Tough Call

A few years ago, a bout of the flu and an overdose of daytime television catalysed a decision I had meant to make for years. Somewhere around the third consecutive day of infomercials broadcasting the wasted bodies and sad eyes of poverty-stricken children, I picked up the phone and said those fateful words, "Yes, I would like to sponsor a child." It seemed like such a straightforward decision. Then came the question that almost knocked me off my feet.

"Do you have a preference for the gender, age or location of your sponsor child?"

It had never occurred to me that you were able to select a sponsor child the way you might select a pet from a shelter. The question almost seemed offensive - as though I were being asked to play God with the futures of any number of starving children, to determine who was the most worthy of my sponsorship dollar. So I was surprised to hear myself smoothly responding;

"A girl, please. Give me the first little girl on your list."

Of course, I had my reasons. There is plenty of evidence that the weight of poverty falls the hardest upon women and girls. Where food resources and educational opportunities are scarce, it is daughters rather than sons who tend to miss out. I liked the idea of giving a little girl a hand up, ensuring she got enough to eat, sending her to school and maybe even paving the way for a tertiary education, meaningful vocational training, and a way out of poverty. It sat well with my beliefs as a feminist and underdog-supporter to help the person I thought was least likely to benefit without it. So, a little girl it was.

This decision never wore particularly heavily on my mind, especially when the photographs and letters from my sponsor child and her family evidenced that she was, indeed, happy, healthy, vaccinated, fed and attending school. Good on me, I thought. Pat on the back for helping out the little girl in need.

And then came the letter. My sponsor-family had moved out of the area, wrote World Vision. However, they have taken the liberty of assigning me a new sponsor child so that I may continue to help families in need. Accompanying the letter was a photograph of my new sponsor child - a little boy in Central America. They "hope this is not a problem".

Of course, it's a brilliant tactic to retain sponsors, as it's much easier to refuse a new sponsorship than to cancel one that you are already associated with. They gave me a face, a young, adorable face, to associate with my new sponsorship, one that I and anybody else made of less than 50% concrete would have terrible trouble refusing. But part of me was annoyed. This totally ruined my little feminist plan to promote the well-being of the global sisterhood! I didn't sign up to be thrown a random child, I wanted to choose, god-damnit! I should call them up and let them have a piece of my mind.

Then came the creeping fingers of moral panic, coldly up my spine. Was I seriously on the verge of abandoning a child in poverty because they were the wrong gender? Wasn't this male child also in need of food, schooling and medical care? Wasn't this the very type of sexism and gender-based system of privilege that I was seeking to avoid by sponsoring a girl in the first place? Stumped again, I never made the call. For almost a year now, I've been sponsoring the little boy, and never do I receive a statement from World Vision without feeling that churning feeling of reprehension in my stomach, knowing that I would rather sponsor a girl but also that it is morally indefensible to make the switch.

Our choices and prejudices about who to help creep up on us in other unlikely places. For example, I recently came across the disturbing fact that black cats in animal shelters are euthanased at twice the rate of cats of other colours due to far lower adoption rates.* Whether it's down to superstitious beliefs, individual evaluations that black cats are too "plain", "common", or "lacking in distinguishing features", or even latent racism, the fact remains that black cats are routinely overlooked. Several animal rescue groups have even begun educational campaigns encouraging potential pet owners to go for black when adopting a cat or kitten in order to redress this imbalance.**

I breathed a sigh of self-satisfied relief reading such articles because, happily, my beloved rescue-kitty is blacker than the Ace of Spades. I'm helping the problem! One less black cat euthanased! But, in consideration that only about one-quarter of dumped cats are eventually adopted out, I have to acknowledge that my choice was utterly moot in real terms. No matter which colour we choose to take home with us, another two or three cats of various colours are hitting the electricity. Adopting more black cats won't reduce overall euthanasia rates, simply skew them towards a more equal colour scheme. If this is equality, I'm not sure what the point is.

Of course, giving advantageous treatment to a statistically disadvantaged group, be it women or black cats, seems like the responsible thing to do. I recall that, at the shelter where I adopted my little Black Panther, the kitten who had received the most expressions of interest was a little tabby, missing an eye. Everybody wanted to adopt him, the workers said, because everybody thought that nobody else would. Everybody wanted to be the saint who helped the overlooked and marginalised, with never a thought that they were creating a new status of marginalisation for the supposedly "privileged". Their group may look stronger, but it is still comprised of vulnerable individuals, be they cats on death row or children in poverty.

Is this the area to which I verged in seeking to send my finite resources to a girl in poverty, rather than a boy? I hope I have made the right decision in the eyes of the world. A little girl will miss out, but, unlike my little boy, I will never see her face. More importantly, I will never look at either face and say, "I want to help someone, but sorry, I had something else in mind."

* (http://www.mchumane.org/blackcat.shtml)

** (e.g. http://www.itsaboutcats.rescuegroups.org/info/display?PageID=2175).

Would you choose the gender, age or location of a sponsor child?

And seriously - aren't black cats just awesome?

Are the kids alright?

You might not guess this at a glance, but somewhere underneath the Hollywood styling, designer accessories and buoyant coiffing is a little girl of ten years old.

... And if that's not scary enough, this photo was actually taken when she was nine. Her name is Willow Smith, and she's widely touted as the Next Big Thing on the pop music scene after the success of her first single, Whip My Hair. She's not the first child in her family to hit the entertainment scene in a big way before she even hits her teens;

Recognise him? That's Jaden Smith, as he appeared opposite Jackie Chan in the remake of The Karate Kid. If the parental penny hasn't dropped yet, here's a family portrait to jog your memory:

Yep, Will Smith's kids are looking to end up as famous and successful as their Mum and Dad. And not everyone's happy about it.

Author Terry McMillan recently tweeted that:

The Smith children already act like child stars. There's an arrogance in their demeanor and behavior. I find it incredibly sad. It feels like the Smith children are being pimped and exploited. Or, they're hungry for fame. What about 4th grade?

She further hit out against the gushing descriptions of the children in public media - often from the children's parents - describing their prodigal talent and enthusiasm:

These kids don't already know what they "love". Total bullshit. They're not prodigies. They think Hollywood is real.

And it was in this comment that she tapped the vein of the issue. The coverage of the Smith children has always been carried out with a considered, kid-glove professionalism that ensures a message of their empowerment and stomps upon the merest suggestion of exploitation. The army of managers, choreographers, songwriters, agents, stylists and make-up artists behind the scenes are played down as far as possible, and the resulting efforts touted merely as each child's "individual style", as though it was arrived at in the usual course of nine year-old experimentation, during an afternoon with Mum's pilfered makeup and jewellery.

Not pictured: realistic styling by a 9 year old.

In September 2009, then aged 9, Willow Smith told radio host Ryan Seacrest, "just be an individual, you can't be afraid to be yourself... and you can't let anybody tell you that's wrong". Neat, both in the sense that it would seem to both prove the child's utter commitment to their public image, and absolve any adult stakeholders in Willow's career should things go down the proverbial shitter. Listen to the child, people! She's not being exploited or marketed, she's a talented child, expressing her individuality!

Now, naturally the world is full of little girls and boys who would love to be actors, singers, rappers or the like. In fact, this trend is so common that in a recent survey of British schoolchildren, the most frequent answer to "what do you want to be when you grow up?" was simply; "Famous". Many of us remember our abortive childhood fantasies of rock stardom or Oscar acceptance speeches, and dreamed feverishly of "real" parents who would pick us up one day and turn out to be rich and famous, paving our way to the red carpets and superdomes of the glamorous people.

No doubt, offered the deal that the Smith children have been born into (mega-star parents, unlimited access to the gears of fame creation) we would have jumped at the chance as well. We would have recorded the singles, we would have starred in the movies. We would probably have loved it - and we probably would have said so just as enthusiastically as Willow and Jaden.

We probably would have thought pretty highly of ourselves, too. Not in our scene, the busboy actors and taxi-driving musicians looking for a break in an industry where it's always been about who you know. Not for us, the cattle-call auditions where children are seen and dismissed in their hundreds per hour. Not for us, the agony of forging a new brand in an industry already splitting at the seams; the talented rubbing elbows with the mediocre, the beautiful frantically exercising their advantage over the ordinary, the rejects by their thousands lining the exit corridor, bitterly stroking the fantasy of a big break that never came.

I can imagine any of us, styled to perfection and adopting our image as our individual style, sitting on a couch with Jay Leno, saying how we were "born to do this", speaking of our love and passion for our work. I can imagine us believing in the adoration, in the money, in the fame, perhaps even until it became integral to who we were. Would we ever be able to be happy without the flash of the cameras and screams of the fans? Would we ever know another desire for our future lives?

So is this exploitation? Or, as McMillan would have it, pimping? Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith didn't respond publicly to McMillan's tweet, but it's clear that their intention is to give their children the best possible foothold in the slippery Hollywood market. Talented though the children undoubtedly are, it is understandable to criticize the way that coveted movie roles and recording contracts have fallen to them as a birthright, and at an age where they will be more likely to internalise their success as the deserved recognition of serious talent than to recognise it as a lucky side effect of their parentage.

But yet, the sheer volume of tickets and albums sold seems to speak for itself in that, for now, the Smith children are at the top of their games, and we are happily spending plenty of money to see them play. Perhaps someone is being exploited, and perhaps it is us.

What do you think?

Terrifying Search Terms

Sometimes the details dished out and presumed necessary to our lives can be far, far too much. For example, despite the media's insistence that I find this out, I never needed to know that Prince Charles murmured to Camilla that he wished to be her tampon. I have no idea what possessed my grandmother furnish me with a detailed description of the premature rupture of her hymen. I never needed to see Tara Reid's botched breast and stomach surgery. Or to hear that John Mayer waxes his pubic hair into the shape of a lightning rod, Lindsay Lohan is a "fire crotch", or that Lady Gaga thinks her creativity can be stolen through her vagina. I could have happily lived my life without any of this information.

But the very apex of my list of things I didn't need to know were some of the search terms that lead the net-surfing public to my humble little blog. With occasional blog titles such as Jew Skin Lampshade, In case you ever wondered what humans taste like and An Historical Compendium of Dick Jokes, some may argue that I brought this upon myself, but the fact remains that I was much, much happier before I logged on to Google Analytics.

The first few entries are misleadingly vanilla. For example, Jim and the Indians comes in with a healthy 121 searches this year. Variations of What not to name your kids and Vengeance is Mine Inc. total up to several hundred each. And then it starts getting more abstract.

Bitches

People must love us bitches cause over 300 individual search terms featured the word. Most were prosaically along the lines of bitch girl names, clever bitches or hot bitches take it up the (name your orifice) but some solo-handed surfers out there managed to go one better.

My favorite, terrifying search terms including the word bitch were fortunately limited to one search each, and include;

- Can you name your kid 'bitch'?

My response: "no".

- LBJ was a jew bitch

I wanted to put this in the next section but the "bitch" part seemed rather more operative than the "Jew" part.

- Zeus was a bitch

Totally agreed.

AND THE WINNER:

- 5pm is bitch raping time

Actually, this came up four times. I'm terrified.

Porn

Most readers will not be surprised to hear that this simple concept was elaborated in nearly 500 different search terms, most also including the words bitch, secret or nasty. And then there were some other somewhat inexplicable keywords, including:

- clever porn

This came up almost 50 times. Can someone please explain what makes porn clever?

- vengeance is mine porn

Did Roald Dahl sign off on this script?

AND THE WINNER:

- Admit it bitch, you were porn

I have no idea what this is meant to mean.

Tattoos and Jews

It seems that, despite my mother's horrified reaction to the idea, there are many sick individuals out there who have also toyed with the idea of preserving their tattoos after death, as I discussed in my first-ever post Jew Skin Lampshade. Over 50 searches were based on variations of "preserve tattoo after death", but the true horror only becomes evident when you scroll down and discover that variations of Jewskin, and Jewskin lampshade were searched OVER 100 TIMES. In addition, some charming individuals searched terms including:

- Where can I buy Jew skin?

I wouldn't have guessed you could, except...

- Jew skin for sale

Now I'm officially horrified.

AND THE WINNER:

- How to skin a Jew

Honestly - is there somewhere you can report this sort of thing?

Historical sex

On a lighter note, some people just can't get enough of Zeus' sexual shenanigans. The exact term Zeus rape appeared 17 times, but variations on the phrase pushed searches into the hundreds. Some stunners on the topic included:

- Did Zeus rape Danae?

- Did Zeus rape Europa?

- Did Zeus rape his mother?

Yes, yes, and - sadly, yes.

- Ron Jeremy as Zeus?

I can't scrub my brain clean enough, I tell you.

AND THE WINNER:

- Beatrice's tits in Dante's inferno

Searched twice to lead to this blog, despite no references anywhere here to Beatrice's tits.

The taste of humans

Sounds like the grand taboo is no longer that taboo. 12 searches were run using humans taste like pork? as keywords, an equal number for pork taste like human, and dozens more referenced cannibalism, pork, crackling, firemen, William Seabrook and "long pigs".

AND THE WINNER:

- Rump girl meat cannibal

This was searched up to A DOZEN times - by someone sick, no doubt.

Tony Abbott

Dozens of people came across this site whilst searching for Tony at election time, mostly with keywords including misogynist, abortion, adoption, shocking and hypocrite. Yet it seems that Tony is never without his fans, and thus;

THE WINNER:

- Tony Abbott sexiest ioning board (sic)

As I previously pointed out, his abs would look great at Mardi Gras.

And then...

There are those keywords that defy any decent categorisation - or even an explanation of how they lead to this site, such as:

- Clever masturbation

Is there a "smart" or "dumb" way to rub your dick until jizz comes out, dude?

- receding hairline beer belly sexy

And then finally...

THE WINNER:

- live donkey show

Somewhere on this blog I must have mentioned one, or this search term wouldn't have lead you here. I'm sorry... really.

Awesome Ways Movies Predicted Future Technology

The future has arrived... and it looks oddly like an eighties film. Despite the fact that a quarter of a century after Back To The Future, we still do not have hoverboards, flying cars, or cold fusion, a lot of modern ingenuity has yielded results that look, well, pretty much like the movies we grew up with.

Here a few of the more brilliant future predictions from films of previous decades.

The Roomba

Predicted by: Star Wars, The Fifth Element

Oh, the mind-blowing, fantasy-inducing concept of sitting back with a cold one while a robot cleans your kitchen for you! When Zorg leans back in his chair and ruminates on the beauty of his robotic cleaning appliances, it's hard to disagree. Also hard to disagree with is the sort of elephant worm-baby he keeps as a pet.

It has HUMAN EYES!!

Elephant aside, it seems we didn't need to wait until the year 2263 for some tech geeks to put the ultimate human fantasy into motion. Product: the Roomba. A freaking robot that cleans your freakin' house, while you sit back with a cold one.

Guaranteed not to overthrow the universe.

Robotic Limbs

Predicted by: Star Wars, Cyborg, The Six Million Dollar Man

Recent advances in prosthetics have yielded replacement limbs so cool as to almost take the sting out of losing a limb in the first place.

A good sense of humour can also go a long way towards this end.

But seriously, behold the beauty that is the myoelectric limb:

These nifty devices operate using myoelectrography - that is, sensors attached to the remaining limb interpret output from voluntary muscle movements. You might not have a forearm anymore, but you have muscles in your upper arm that would have controlled its movements. The prosthesis extrapolates what your forearm or hand would be doing when those muscles are moved, and moves the prosthesis accordingly. The most recent models allow complex movements of the fingers and thumb, allowing for rotation and adjustment of grip, giving users a fairly good approximation of normal hand movement.

You can even get a fancy cover for these prosthetics, called a cosmesis, which approximates the appearance of normal human skin. Copy and paste the link below for some great images of just how realistic this can look, as well as an enthusiastic testimonial from a user.

http://www.gearability.com/2007/07/18/a-life-like-fully-articulated-prosthetic-hand/

Neural Prostheses

Predicted by: Johnny Mnemonic, The Matrix

Ok, it doesn't really look like that. It looks much more like this:

Pictured: Less frightening

Fortunately, the 90's shocker that was "Johnny Mnemonic" predicted the technology but not the application. Rather than nefarious purposes such as information-smuggling, modern medicine employs these implants for things made of sheer awesome, such an enabling deaf people to hear again. Oh, and speaking of sheer awesome, did I mention that these devices are basically computer chips that are configured to fit into and work with your brain, replacing damaged or impaired neural networks?

With these types of advances, it's only a matter of time before we can download Ju-Jitsu straight into our skulls.

And, presumably, stop bullets while looking like a stone-cold douchebag.

Androids

Predicted by: Blade Runner, Alien

The Japanese android or "actroid" DER-01 contains 47 moveable joints, and is capable not only capable of performing complex hand and foot movements, but mimicking a range of facial expressions.

In a really non-convincing way.

Potential uses for this type of android have not been clearly articulated - they don't really need to be, as most tech-geeks are happy enough just to stare at the thing in wonder, and ruminate on how much it might cost to buy one. My personal prediction is that they end up somewhere between interpreter droids and sexbots:

We are already frightening close on this score.

Any others?

An Historical Compendium of Dick Jokes

Clever Bitch is up to her elbows in her Masters thesis, so it seems like time for something light. It's hard to get lighter than dick jokes, so here is a collection of stunners from the last couple thousand years.

Yes, they really do go back that far.

Martial (circa 38 - 104 AD)

When you hear clapping in the baths,

You know some moron with a giant dick has arrived.

Juvenal (circa 100 AD)

When you've run out of luck, it doesn't matter how long your dick is.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

This little treasure was found scrawled in the margins of one of da Vinci's notebooks:

A woman was washing her clothes, and her feet were very red with cold. A priest who was passing by asked her in amazement, whence came the redness and the woman replied at once that it was the result of the fire she had burning below. Then the priest seized that part on his being that was responsible for his being a priest and not a nun, and drawing close to her, with a sweet and soft voice, begged her to be so kind as to light his candle for him.

William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night, 1601-1602)

Fool: Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage. (Hahah, geddit?)

William Shakespeare (Anthony and Cleopatra, circa 1603-1607)

Iras: Am I not an inch of fortune better than she?

Charmian: Well, if you were but an inch of fortune better than I, where would you choose it?

Iras: Not in my husband's nose.

(Translation: in his fucking pants.)

Mae West (1936)

To a Los Angeles police officer who was to escort her:

Is that a pistol in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

"Alexander DeLarge" (A Clockwork Orange, 1971)

To an attractive girl, sucking on a popsicle:

Bit cold and pointless isn't it, my lovely?

Robin Williams (1951 - present)

When in doubt, go for the dick joke.

Amen, brother.

Please add your own!