The Ol' Perspecter

We are excited about all the news concerning Viagra these days. We get to use arithmetic!

They say 42 or 43 of the roughly 30 million users of Viagra and the like have become blind as a possible result of their use. Additionally, somewhere on the order of a thousand sex offenders in some other states have been getting Viagra from Medicaid, even though that is stupid.

OK, so we learn that 0.143 percent of one sex offender in those states should now be blind! An entire 3/10,000th of a blind sex offender may be running around in New York State alone! At this rate, they'll all be blind in a million years, making them that much easier to hide from.

All of this is nevertheless dreadful news for Pfizer, which makes Viagra, because now men everywhere will forgo sex in order to save their vision, causing Pfizer to go bankrupt. Ha! That was a little joke of mine. Nobody is going to give up sex just to see. Still, Pfizer is worried that possible new warnings for their product might scare very stupid people, thereby ever so slightly decreasing the profits they make off the highly valuable demographic of Very Foolish, But Somehow Not Completely Parted From Their Money Yet, People.

I think, regardless of Pfizer's worries, we SHOULD warn guys that if they use Viagra regularly it might raise their odds of going blind to as much as 2 in a million, if that will help them make an informed decision for once in their pitifully ignorant, uninformed, existences.

For that very same reason, I am in favor of many other kinds of warning notices. Surely if we warn people of dangers we could only improve their lives, never diminish them. And wouldn't it be so much more useful if all the scissors we made, or that the Chinese made for us, had the words, "do not run with this product in hands - eye puncture may occur," rather than always having to rely on one's memory of one's mother? What if one had no mother? What if one had no memory, owing to advanced dementia? What if one were raised without scissors, forced to cut paper with crude razor blades, therefore having had insufficient direct prior experience with scissors, making one's parental admonitions seem purely theoretical, lessening their impact?

To take another example, shouldn't there be warnings on car doors? Let's do the math. There are 15 deaths per year per 100,000 Americans (whether they drive or not!) due to traffic accidents. That works out to around 4500 deaths per each 30 million, a lot more than 43. So maybe a warning on each car door would be appropriate. I'm thinking of something to the effect: "You are 100 times more likely to die from riding cars like this one than to go blind from using Viagra. According to 4 out of 5 doctors, dying is worse than blindness. But remember that Detroit and Toyota depend on you. Please make an informed choice."

How about warnings on warnings? "Warning, the following warning may either (1) unnecessarily alarm you, due to an unbelievable lack of ability to keep things in perspective, causing you to avoid living your life, or (2) not alarm you enough, because you've seen too many warnings already today, and due to an unbelievable lack of ability to keep things in perspective, and as a result you may very well die or at least be permanently maimed. But remember that the medical profession needs work too. Please make an informed choice."

Obligatory homeless connection: How about warnings on streets? "Warning, if you use this product as a home, you are twenty times more likely to be murdered in your sleep, while everybody else on the planet only cares whether they can take sex-enhancement pills safely. Oh, wait, you probably don't have a choice about living here. Never mind."

Let's Talk About Consensual Sex!

Warning: I kept this column under my belt for a couple of weeks. Think about that. Under my belt.

I have made a discovery. In the six and a half years that this puppy has been alive, I have discussed sex only as follows: Male/hand, once. Male/water-fowl, maybe three or four times. Nonconsensual male/imaginary-anthropomorphic-being, once (my Muse Cindy made me emit a rhyme against my will.) Only once has there been direct mention of human couple sex. And that last was in a sextrain which described the sex in question as not really happening.

I have been the guy at the orgy holding himself in the corner, writerly speaking. Luckily I haven't minded, as I haven't had that much to say about sex, anyway. What would I know about sex? What's that? Besides, we are largely devoted to the concerns of homeless people. And since when do homeless people have couple sex?

In fact, having couple sex when you are homeless generally means doubling up in a latchable one-seater somewhere and praying you finish before some irate would-be toilet user breaks the door down.

Naturally the time pressure at these events is seriously conducive to stress-related erectile dysfunction. Therefore, again, I find myself talking mainly about sex that doesn't really happen. I'm talking about male performance anxiety. I'm talking about high pressure impotence. Whatever can be done about it? What should be?

Well, I'm ready to tell you, me and Bob Dole have something in common. We both take Viagra. (Note: Admitting this effectively uncovers the personal drug cover-up I mentioned recently.) You will all know by now, thanks to Bob, what Viagra does for us men.

But my goal here is to get down to the hard realities of life, and as I have discovered personally the hard reality is: Viagra is really for women. Let's face it. As a guy needing sexual relief, all I need is for a doctor to prescribe for me a truckload of porn and a velvet glove. Which come to think of it is comparably priced these days and lasts just as long.

But men don't just have sex with their hands, with ducks, with imaginary-anthropomorphic-beings, or even with each other. Sometimes they have sex with women. And this is a good thing, for as Aristophanes or someone with a similar looking name noted at length long ago, otherwise, something would give out.

I will go so far as to say that the entire social fabric of our social society depends on armies of straight women getting erect penises when they want them, and not next week. Next week, she's going to leave you for a Greek lancer. So much for America. So much for our American social fabric. Rock and roll as we now know it would die. Madison Avenue would crumble. We would become no different than the Taliban.

As our women left us, our pride and dignity would leave us. We would finally have to learn to play bridge to occupy our desolate souls. Eventually we would be forced to read, to learn how to pronounce French, and how to distinguish conifers.

Don't let this happen to our great society. Keep our country satisfied!

What I'm trying to say here is, to all you men out there who have ever found yourselves falling short in times of high demand, do us all a favor and get yourselves some Viagra. Especially you rich people who can afford it at ten dollars a pill. You may not thank me for it, but your partners will, and America will. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about. This stuff is truly awesome.

And, who knows? Maybe you'll help bring the price down.