The French Condition

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The French are a morose people, and I'm not the only one to make this assessment. Roger Cohen recently wrote about France's Glorious Malaise in the New York Times. Cohen thinks that the French temperament reflects a fatalistic realism. I don't think it's necessary to get quite so philosophical to explain the French condition. They simply haven't mastered some of life's basic routines.

The problem starts with a horrible night’s sleep. I’ve been to France multiple times, slept in many hotels and few French homes, and I’ve yet to find a comfortable bed. In France, any rectangular object with a sheet qualifies as a mattress. I'm staying in a Paris apartment right now where my bed is a pair of wooden shipping pallets.

Who Was That Helmeted Man?

I was sitting on a park bench, engrossed in Nissim's Taleb's new book Antifragile, when I detected a new aroma. I lifted my head and saw a woman and her dog walking away. On the ground, five feet from where I was reading, sat a fresh pile of dog crap, glistening in the late morning sun. Moving to another bench wasn't an option. Shaded park benches with free WiFi connections are a rare find in Cannes, and it was going to take a lot more than olfactory assault to dislodge me.

I Had A Dream

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Kellie awoke from a two-hour afternoon nap and plopped down next to me on the couch. "I had dream," she said.

I dreamt we monkeys. We had just arrived on a tropical island with a baby monkey and loaf French bread wrapped in plastic. The island was already populated by other monkeys and they wanted to kill us and take our bread, but we hid in a tree behind a sleeping baby bear. The cub began sniffing the air, he smelled our bread. He grabbed it from me but couldn't manage to claw his way through the plastic wrapping. He was making so much noise I was afraid he would alert the other monkeys, so I opened it for him and gave him some bread. The bear fell from the tree and when he hit the ground all the monkeys turned their heads in our direction. We fled and they started chasing us. Swinging on vines through treetops, we nearly escaped, but I had epic swing fail that left me dangling. One of the female monkeys grabbed me by my big toe. I screamed for your help and when you arrived she released my toe and started making goggly eyes at you. Music began playing, Jungle Boogie, I think. She turned blue and the two of you started undulating in unison. Then the dream ended.

I asked Kellie what she thought the it meant but she couldn't explain it. I think it means she should do whatever is necessary to ensure that I'm not tempted by undulating blue monkeys, but I'd like to hear your interpretations.

Excuse Me Miss, Are You Ovulating?

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Daniel Bergner's new book, What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire, is packed with useful information. In a previous post, I told you about women's secret predilection for porn. Researches have also discovered that the strength of a woman's desire for smut is predicated upon the time of the month when she first views an x-rated video. Women whose first exposure to porn occurred just prior to ovulation showed greater interest and excitement than women who first viewed porn in different phases of their menstrual cycle. However, the women whose first exposure coincided with ovulation maintained their level of interest in watching porn throughout the rest of their cycle, whereas those whose first viewing occurred at other times in their cycle never achieved the same level of interest. The importance of this finding did not escape Kim Wallen, the researcher responsible for this discovery: "One lesson is that you don't want a woman to form her first impression of you when she's in the wrong menstrual phase. You'll never recover."

A Day At The Beach

There's nothing like a day at the beach on the French Rivera where the locals enjoy overexposing themselves. Who can't help but smile at seeing the joy on a young boy's face as he frolics in the surf, playing paddle ball with his bare chested mother, her drooping breasts glistening with oil, flopping to and fro as she leaps through waves.

Geography With Kellie

Relaxing on a sixth floor balcony of a beachfront vacation apartment in Carnet-Plage, France, Kellie asked if we were looking at the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean. Dumbfounded, it took me a moment before I responded to her question.

"It's the Mediterranean, my dear."

Kellie claims that traveling is the only way she can learn geography. There has to be a less expensive way to receive an ineffective education.

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

We know why she's smiling.

Next time you nuzzle up to your wife or girlfriend and she tells you that she's not in the mood, you can be confident of one thing—she's lying. Oh she's definitely horny, or she could be rather quickly. How do I know this? Thanks to groundbreaking research by sexologist Meredith Chivers, we now know that female sexual arousal can be achieved in under two minutes. Amazing, it takes me longer than that just find the vibrator.

The Real Problem With Marriage Equality

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I could feel the bile creeping up the back of my throat as I realized that Pat Robertson was right. Same-sex marriage will destroy the traditional family and lead to the disintegration of civilization, but not for the fellatious reasons he typically tries to ram down our throats. Homosexuality won't lead to polygamy, bestiality or pedophilia; it won't cause birth rates to plummet and populations to collapse, and I doubt that fire and sulfur will rain from the heavens and destroy us in a Sodom apocalypse. The real path to our demise is much more insidious.

A Vision Of Love

Kellie stepped out of the shower. I examined her naked body, smiled, and was about to pay her compliment when she cut me off.

"You want some of this, don't you?" she said as she slid her hands along the sides of her torso and wiggled her hips. "But you're not getting any today because it's my birthday, not yours." 

Take Two Of These And Call Me Johnny Depp

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When Kellie and I first met, I barely needed the fingers on one hand to count the days between conjugal visits. I still use my hands to mark the time between copulations but in a totally different way. There’s an old joke that I’m sure you’ve heard. How do you stop a woman from having sex? You marry her. Scientists have long known the cause of this problem, it’s called H.S.D.D., or hypoactive sexual-desire disorder, and the pharmaceutical industry, which has been working feverishly to rid the globe of this scourge, may soon market a magic pill that accomplishes for women what Viagra has done for men. Fifty years from now, the Rolling Stones song Mother's Little Helper will have a totally different meaning.