| thoughts from a cunning linguist | |
Yesterday, when I met the MADwoman and her girlfriend for brunch, we celebrated MADwoman's birthday. A card was in order, of course. And I found such a good card, that I have to share it. Since she was celebrating her birthday in the USA, I thought a good American card would do the trick. Here's how the card read:
George Bush and Dick Cheney went out for lunch at a restaurant near the Capitol. Cheney decided he would have a "heart-smart" salad. Bush said to the waitress, "Can I have a quickie, please?"
The waitress was mortified and replied: "What about all your talk of morals and family values! I'm sorry I ever voted for you!" And she stormed off.
Cheney leaned over to Bush and said, "George, I think it's pronounced QUICHE."
My favourite sign by far at the March on Sunday was this one:
"George W. Bush: The Abortion That Got Away."
But there some other good ones, too. Here's a smattering (of the ones I remember):
Patriotic girls say it's a free cuntry.
77% of pro-lifers are men. 100% of them will never be pregnant.
Old Broads for Choice
Keep U.S. out of my uterus
One of our delegation had a hanger from a dry cleaners that read "We
The march organizers estimated that 1.15 million people were there. I could not tell because when you're inthe middle of a crowd that big, you have no sense of scale. CNN reported that 300,000 people were there. I guess there's a lot of controversy about reporting the numbers for the marches on Washington, so offocial have stopped doing it. CNN got their numbers from the metro system: apparently 325,000 people used the metro on march day. The mall was packed, though, so CNN was clearly wrong.
On the way back, we were listening to NPR and heard a caller comment on how disappointed we were that Kerry didn't attend the March and speak to the crowd. His daughter did speak. And Kerry did speak to Pro-choice activitists in Washington on the Friday before the march. We had a debate in our car about whether he should have been there. I wish he had had the guts to address to be there and speak out. Others in the car thought he had to be more politically prudent. I wonder why it is, though, that the Republicans have no compunctions avout pandering to the far right and the Democrats seem so scared of their left-of-center supporters?
All in all, a very good day, though--that produced one very tired bush/bouche by the time I got back.
Tomorrow is the big March For Women's Lives in Washington, D.C. So at the ungodly hour of 5:00 a.m. tomorrow, I'll be piling into a car with some friends and heading down to join an estimated half a million other women to make some noise in support of women's reproductive rights. Having never really marched for anything in the U.S., except in the NYC Dyke March (most of my activist marching has been in Canada), I'm quite curious to see how the whole event will unfold. I've never been to Washington before either, and I guess pilgrimmages to Washington to agitate for some sort of rights or other are something of an American tradition.
One interesting thing about this event (and note no such women's march has taken place for about 12 years now) is the change in terminology. The issue of reproductive rights and the legal protection thereof used to be couched mostly in the language of "choice," which in turn really reduced to the question of abortion availability and legality. But the language of "reproductive rights" and their connection to "womens's lives" is much more broad. It includes agitation for adequate sex education, for emergency contraception availability, for proper support for women who choose to have children as well as for those who choose not to have children. I have to say, I'm very impressed with this change in the feminist landscape as well as with how diverse the leaders in third-wave feminism are. It's not just white middle-class women marching for economic liberal values anymore (not that there's anything wrong with that). But my sense is that the current movement is more racially diverse, more class inclusive, and that instead of declining in power, feminism has a great deal of energy and the statements of its goals are reflecting a very LIVE movement.
I spoke with the Renaissance Eeyore on the phone last night who told me a marvelous, indeed inspiring, story about a friend of hers who teaches in the law school at her university. This friend is a dyke who openly teaches queer issues in her family law class, and her quite conservative law students are appalled--appalled enough to complained to the dean. Their grounds? Their professor is, and I quote, "worse than feminist!" Clearly, being feminist is bad enough--a worthy insult in it own right. But worse than feminist? What an honour they have besowed upon their professor. Given that there is no legitimate complaint they can make about the quality of the prof's teaching (the issue really is the content), the complaint has not gone very far. However, rumour has it that there may be a t-shit produced with the proud proclamation "Worse Than Feminist." I definitely want one.
In this week's Village Voice, Alisa Solomon spells out an eminently sensible position. She says the state should simply get a divorce from the churches. That way, all state-sanctioned unions would be civil unions. Further, civil unions would not need to be "sexual" unions, per se, but could be available to any two people who want to share a domestic arrangement. Then, if people want sacred ceremonies or need a blessing, it is up to the churches to decide who gets the grace. Now isn't that a concept? The state would divest ministers of the power to confer legal status. Yes, this would mean that if you get married by a minister, you would then have to speak the legal words again in front of the state official. (By the way, this does happen already in some countries, like Germany.) Though some people might find this inconvenient, wouldn't this be the truest test of secularism? That the state is not basing policy on, say, the faith of its politicians?
To be sure, I'm not a fan of marriage--never have been and never wanted to get married. But under these terms, that's a union I could live with.
For Solomon's article, go here.
I'm constantly amazed at how often I get mistaken for being male. My friends can't believe it either. I'm not that butch. But it's happened three times in the last week and twice today.
The first time this week was on Monday when I was on the subway, on the way to the airport to return to New Jersey. It was rush hour and the train was really crowded. I was squeezed in among the people with my suitcase. At one stop, a man got on the train. He seemed to be drunk. He started striking up a conversation with a couple of people, first asking them for money, and shortly after ranting about how "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." I heard this, but was not acknowledging it. Then he looked at me squarely and said, "Hello, you big bugger!" It took a minute for this to register, but he had clearly mistaken me for a gay man! Luckily, my stop was next, so I quickly got off the train and moved swiftly through the crowd to transfer to my next train.
My first encounter today took place in a McDonald's. Having been bombarded by the "elephants" for the last day or so, I was craving easy, fast food, so I slunk into the McDonald's for my french fry fix. As I was sitting down to eat, I noticed a man having an exchange with a woman across the store. I saw her give him his tray and he was trying to convince her to visit a particular website. She wasn't terribly interested and walked away from him. Then he came over to me and started to talk about how he didn't much care for women anyway. He was clearly talking to me as if he expected me to agree that women are fickle and not worth bothering with. I got this strange glimpse into a bizarre form of male comraderie.
Shortly thereafter, I was on my way home and decided to stop at a used furniture store (I'm in desperate need of a bookcase). I was just walking around the rather packed and disorganized place, when one of the deliverymen walked through. I bought most of my furniture for my New Brunswick apartment at this store and recognized him. I've had a my hair cut shorter since then, though, so he didn't recognize me. Instead he complained lightly about how there wasn't much space to walk around, saying "You know what I'm sayin', brother?"
I wonder what it is that makes it so clear to my friends that I am female, but so indicative to some strangers that I'm male?
An old friend of mine to whom this often happens, too, one explained her reaction to it this way: she didn't mind one bit. What bothered her more was that people often recognized their mistake and then started apologized all over themselves for having made the mistake to begin with, as if recognizing her masculinity had been insulting. I think she has a good point here.
...or at this rate, half a sleep. I'm in an essay-grading marathon, trying to get all my work done before I head off to Toronto tomorrow night to see Dr. Fem for doctoring of all sorts.
5 essays to go (out of 44--and I only got them yesterday). Gotta pack. (No, not that kind of packing. Although...) Gotta prepare my classes for tomorrow afternoon (at least it's two classes that are the same); send off forms to the student loans people (or else they'll try to take money from me and fail); get my immigration documents in order for my return to the land of Freedom Fries (that'll be Monday).
What's a Bush Whacker to do when there are only 24 hours in a day?!
In less than 24 hours--that is but 1 sleep now--my Toronto visitor arrives for 10 days. Yay!
Picture it: Halifax, 20 June 2003. The Whore of Babylon and The Bush Whacker waltz into a car dealership--queer as $3 bills. Having surveyed the lot for a few minutes, we are approached by our soon-to-be attentive salesman, Damian. The next four hours constitute our adventures in car-shopping, replete with feats worthy of Harry Potter: mind-reading, mathematical adjustments, and magically increasing the worth of Maurice's old car from $400 to $1500. (Must've been my magic wand. Oops, no, wait, I left that home...) But most of all, it's an adventure in heterosexuality.
Damian took Maurice and me to be a straight couple. And, well schooled in the dramas of the queer world, we played our parts to a tee. Damian asked where we lived; Maurice told him I lived in the south end "for now." (Not a lie, but not the truth as Damian believed it either.) Damian asked which colour car Maurice preferred; Maurice shuffled his choices somewhat to reflect the colours that I liked. And in the middle of the negotiations over price, it was me to whom Damian spoke most. He had to convince "the wife." Interestingly enough, when it came to the female business agent at the dealership (who did the paperwork after the deal was sealed), she directed all her attention at Maurice. Tell me now that the selling of cars is not sexualized.
I'm always amazed at how easy it is to pass as straight--not because one has to really work at it, but because so many people just want to believe that a male and a female together constitute a couple, no matter how queer they may appear. (I wonder, Maurice, what might have happened had you worn your "Homo Depot" shirt? Maybe next time?) It's a bizarre form of wishful thinking, driven largely, I think, by the fact that people assume it would be an insult _not_ to assume that people are straight.
As far as I'm concerned, if people want to believe so much in the mythology of heterosexuality, it is a queer's right to use it to his or her advantage. And so Maurice got a good deal on his car. Isn't that a "fairy"tale ending?
I seem to have a reputation among my friends for picking people up at every conference I attend. It's now a running joke. Nobody asks me how my paper went. They usually look and me with a smirk and say "So?" And I usually have a story to tell.
When flings are flings, the stories are usually not hard to tell. When an affair becomes more complicated or something more important seems to be happening, it's hard to describe to other people--hard to describe without sounding like a Hallmark greeting card, that is. Emotional drama has a Freudian feel about it, whereas social drama seems to exude allure: it appeals to people's sense of prurience and their desire to know the sordid details of other people's live. And we can play to that in telling our stories.
But it's this other thing that stymies me. I can tell you that I met an amazing woman at The Stupids. I could describe the intensity with overused words and cliches. I could talk about sarcasm as the "obstacle" to the happy ending of a romantic comedy that spanned only two days. But somehow, I think, this really means something only to people whom it's about. And even then it's incomplete, barely a gesture. I guess it's just hard to write about desire in the first-person singular. All this is just to say that something very peculiar is happening with this woman and I don't know what the narrative arc is yet. So the story does not yet make sense as a story.
The one thing that does seem to be "the story of my life," though is that my desires seem always to be played out over long distances and often via technology. I've considered this in other blog entries, but I wonder what it's really about. But more to the point, I wonder how one does it well. I'm especially concerned with balance: with balancing the life of the here and now with the emotional life of the elsewhere; with balancing the non-computer here and now with the virtual here and now. Past experiences are good teachers and I guess short of predicting the end of a story too far in advance, the best one can do is occupy the space of "unknowing" or "not-yet-knowing" without being utterly consumed by the lack of knowledge itself.
That, I suspect, is my lifelong project.
My apologies to all of you who have been visiting my blog regularly and patiently to find out the winners of the Lesbian Joke Contest. I can blame conference-going for only a portion of my absence. The rest, well, you'll have to hear that story another time. I'll just say that it involves an amazing woman who was not in town for long enough.
Okay, here are your winners. Now remember, I've just come from a Women's Studies conference where many people believe it is unfairly competitive for some people to win prizes while others don't. So there are prizes for everyone, all of which will be forwarded to the winners by snail mail--as long as you're all content to e-mail me your addresses.
1. Best Joke by a Non-Lesbian and Best Original Lesbian Joke both go to kevin for the following submission to Maurice's blog:
Q: What do you call a gay elephant being trampled by a pack of lesbian elephants?
A: Maurice!
Poupoune, you win the prize for Best Olefactory Lesbian Joke:
Q: What is the height of confusion?
A: 20 blind lesbians in a fish market. : )
Steph wins for Best Cameo by the Bush Whacker in a Lesbian Joke:
There once was a lesbian who lived in a shoe.
She dated so many bushes she didn't know what to do.
She whacked and she whacked.
'Till she thought she would crack.
Then one day she decided it was time to pack.
To keep her sanity she bid them all adieu
and moved to Peru.
Traveling by elephant, of course.
(By the way, Steph also wins the Lesbian Most Inclined to Laugh at Her Own Joke Prize for "*tee hee hee* :D")
And last but not least, David, you win the Butch Appreciation Award for:
Q: How can you tell a tough lesbian bar?
A: Even the pool table doesn't have balls.
To claim your prizes, send in those addresses, folks!
Over the last few weeks I've been dating a woman who still has one foot in the closet. Sometimes that one foot drags her whole body back in. I've been out of the proverbial closet for a long time now and I'm never quite sure how to deal with other people's closets. I know only that I'm not about to go back to my own. (Hell, I think I sold the thing at a flea market a few years ago.)
So what to do when I'm invited out with this woman, a bunch of her friends, and her brother and brother-in-law. My first question is: who am I, as far as they're concerned? I'm her "friend," I'm told. Well, how am I supposed to act? I can act like "myself," I'm told. What does that mean? Well, I'm told, she is going to act like I'm her friend, so I guess I am supposed to follow suit. Given that I've never been her "friend" before, I guess I'm not supposed to act like myself after all--just some de-sexualized version of myself. (Gee, whatever would I wear?)
I've pretty much decided I'm not going out with them. It just seems like too much of a performance. Maybe if I cared more, maybe if I weren't as cynical as I am, I'd be up for the doing the "friend drag." After all, it's not exactly "simple" to be in the closet and not know how to get out. She's young; she's been with other women before, but not with other lesbians; most of her friends are straight. In that sense, I constitute a first.
But it's a big deal being a first for someone, especially when that person is not a first for you in any respect--it takes reminding oneself that there might be a discrepancy in perceptions about the significance of this affiar. It requires carefulness with the other person's emotions and creative boundary-keeping so that the wrong signals don't get sent. I like her and we have fun, but I'm nowhere close to being in love. Yet she has told me that right now, I'm the best thing in her life. In a few weeks, she will leave for Edmonton for the summer. In August, I will leave for New York for the year. This is a very short-term, casual thing. But how much carefulness is required and expected when one is the best thing in another person's life, however casual a thing one might be?
At times like this, I think it's more of an ethical dilemma dealing with someone else's closet than dealing with one's own. Eve Sedgwick was right: closets have their own epistemologies, and coming out does not eliminate closets. It just enables different closets to exist and lets us see the same old closets in rather more complicated ways.
So West Side Story went lesbo this weekend in Halifax--in a church, no less. The singing, the dancing, the acting--overall quite good. In fact the quality of most parts of the production was so strong, that some very particular things irritated me beyond belief. When a production is a quality production, the shortfalls do seem rather glaring--especially when they centre around the very centre of the play: the lesbians themselves.
Now: correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're the lieutenant in a gang (even if you seem to be outside said gang at the beginning of the play) AND you're a dyke, then you probably don't wear a pink shirt tied up just below your boobs with white pants. And you probably don't wear sparkly studded earrings, that flicker your femininity at the audience every time you move, right? Right? Am I the only who sees a problem with this? This is supposed to be a butch character. I'll be the first to acknowledge that not all lesbian relationships are butch-femme (nor should they be). However, if you want the Tony character to be a lesbian and not a man, should this character not be butch? Should that character not be as "tough-looking" as all the other gang members (among whom there were some pretty masculinely clad women)? The mannerisms, the inflections of voice, the dress--all feminine. Tony was a femme gangster all the way. Just goes to show that no matter how many women wear pants, female masculinity is still pretty taboo (EVEN, or perhaps especially, when it comes to representing lesbians!) We wouldn't want anyone to be _really_ pushed outside their comfort zone, now, would we?
If this were not enough to burn my bush (and, need I say, not in the good way), off I go to the bathroom during the intermission only to be subjected to yet another performance of the "comfort zone." Here are the straight people discussing their "genuine" confusion. One thought this was going to be like opera where if a female played a male role, the character in the play was still male. But she could not make sense of why other characters on stage were referred to Tony as a woman, and why Tony's full name was identified as "Antonia" (as opposed to Anthony). They stacked up more and more evidence from the play that attested to their bafflement--all of which was clear evidence that the play was being staged as a lesbian love story.
There I am, caught between an on-stage performance that is not queer enough and a bathroom assessment of that performance that is queer only in its oddness.
The moral of the story? Don't go to lesbian theater in a church.
The e-bay Queen called and through the course of our conversation, a new word got added to the English language (or at least it's new to us):
Vagetarian.
Guess I'm on a diet.
There is only one cliche of lesbian life that rivals the old joke about bringing a U-Haul on a second date. This is the unspoken rule that dykes be the best of friends long after they've been mutual bushwhackers.
Why is this so, when you end up being friends with your all your ex-lovers' ex-lovers and can't get a date in a town who hasn't already slept with someone you've already slept with? For that matter, you don't even need to be in the same town to be plagued by the spectres of all the bushes you've ever whacked. Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias, really must have been lesbians in drag when they croned on "to all the girls they'd loved before."
But, as you'll come to know about me, I have a theory about this, as I do about most things. And it has nothing to do with the lesbian continuum or with women being more capable of friendships that outlast lover-ships. It has to do with telling a good story. And trust me: good stories abound. I am living proof.
Wanna hear a story?
The Great Canadian Beaver
Have you ever been the maid of honour at the wedding of your ex-lover (as she was getting married to a man)? This is the best category of stories about "all the girls I've loved before." There is a veritable genre of bushwacking stories in this vein. My story, of course, is the best. Keep reading.
[Background: I was maid of honour at another wedding (definitely a lesbian no-no, I've learned). My sister got married two years ago. I wanted to wear a suit because I'm allergic to dresses. My family would have none of this. So off I went to the affiar in a skirt and tank dress, wearing (drumroll please) metallic sandals. I managed to outlast the whole affair and the drinking was beginning--a very important part of a Newfoundland wedding, you must understand. In order to dance better, I traded the metallic sandals for my trusty Birkenstocks. I think this angered the fashion gods. Picture it: the DJ is playing The Bloodhound Gang's "The Bad Touch" and my 85 year-old grandmother is dancing up a storm to it. This is the kind of wedding it is. At this point, even the Birks are cramping my style and I just want to dance barefoot. So I leap over to the table to toss them off. I am in midleap, having tossed one sandal off, ready to flick the other. Down my foot lands on some ice that one of the kids had spilled. Three hours later, I am still flat on my back in the Emergency Room at the hospital, with only 2 out of 3 ligaments remaining in my ankle (and unlike bones, these suckers don't grow back or repair themselves). I had to stay in Newfoundland much longer than I expected and still spent the rest of the summer tits up and not having a bit of fun in the position.]
It is a few weeks after the events of the background story have taken place. I am still tits up, still on crutches, barely in physiotherapy. My phone rings. The first bush I ever whacked is calling.
She is getting married next summer, she says. Will I be her maid of honour?
"Don't you have a sister?" I say.
"Yes," says she. "But I want you. The wedding is in Calgary in a year's time."
"I can't afford to buy a plane ticket to Calgary to go to your wedding. I'm sorry."
"That's okay. I'll pay for the ticket."
"Listen," I say, "I'm still recovering from my last outing in a dress. I am not wearing any more bridesmaid dresses."
"You can wear whatever you want," I'm told.
So here she is, systematically dismantling my objections. I guess I could just have said "I don't want to," but here's the rub: I couldn't resist the story I would be able to tell. I knew the wedding would be a fucked up affair. But hell, my whole relationship with this woman has been one big fucked up affair. So I agreed.
One year later....
...I am in emotional tatters, just coming out of a five-year relationship. But I am still packing a bag containing a suit and tie to head to this Calgary wedding. I am to be met at the airport by my ex and escorted (eventually) to her parents' house where we will both be staying. I arrive, 6 hours and 3 times zones later (or earlier, I guess). We have to wait for someone else to arrive at the airport, though; in the meantime, she, the best man, and I hang out in the airport bar. What else can we do but drink, right? So we do. Then we pick up the other traveller, head to the hotel where the men are staying to drop him off, and then end up at some bar around the corner playing foozball (sp?). Soon, I am too tired to stay, and we leave.
Not long after, we are at the parents' house. My ex's family emigrated to Canada from Poland many years ago, though their English remains broken. (This will be important in a minute). They have been working class people all their lives and own a small home in Calgary--a small home whose rooms have no doors. (This, too will be important in a minute.) The mother leads us to a room just inside the front door that has two double beds: one for me and one for my ex. (You can see where this is going, I know.) We each get in our respective bed. the house is quiet and dark. My ex asks me no fewer than 10 times if my bed is comfortable enough. I assure her it is each time. But by the tenth time, I am tired of answering the question so I just say: "If you really want to know, test it out for yourself."
She does.
One thing is leading to another in the testing of the bed. In comes the mother, screaming at us in Polish, dragging the clothes off the bed, throwing the ex in one bed and leaving me in the other. Remember that I have not arrived in Calgary in the best of shape to begin with. I can just imagine spending a week in fear. My ex and her mother are embroiled in a vicious verbal battle. I am in my bed shaking and wondering what the hell is going to happen in the next few days.
Eventually all quiets down. Half an hour later, my ex whispers an apology. In comes the mother again--another Polish screaming match.
I am ready to go back to the airport.
But instead, the next day, I am shipped to the house of one of the other bridesmaids--a Christian pro-lifer. I even get my own sign over the bed I will sleep in. I am neither Christian, nor pro-life (though I am a recovering Catholic, which will also become important in a moment). I worry this could be another hell, though I am also strangely relieved to be in this Calgary suburb that looks like the set of the Truman Show with amicable Christians.
Several days later, the wedding takes place. In my suit, which the the mother actively despises, I am the candidate to be the chauffeur for the bride and the bridesmaids. My ex, ever the organized one, is in the car on her way to the church, when she realizes she has forgot to compose the petitions (prayers of the faithful in the Catholic Church). [The typical prayer/petition is something like this: "For the desceased memebers of the Smith and Jones families": (the congregation responds) "We pray to the Lord" or "Lord Hear Our Prayer." At weddings, people conventionally pray for the couple to have children, long life, all that sort of thing.] As with most things, my ex occupies conventions in very curious ways. No conventional prayers for her. Her husband wants her to write a prayer, asking that the New York Yankees win the pennant this year.
So she does.
And she wants to write a prayer giving some tribute to Canada.
So in the middle of the wedding, my ex's sister, stands up in a conservative Polish Catholic Church and asks the congregation to pray for the "Great Canadian Beaver."
Three guesses as to who that was. (And the first two don't count.)
Need I say more?
Ok, scenario:
You're whacking the bush of a woman who is a good friend of your close friend's boyfriend (with me so far?). And you know that the relationship of the friend and his boyfriend is a bit shaky. They had agreed to be in a monogamous relationship, but you know from both the friend, the boyfriend, and the woman that there has been at least one infidelity. (You suspect maybe more than one, in fact, though you have no "hard evidence.") You then discover from the woman that the friend's boyfriend may not be practicing safe sex--but you hear this info 3rd hand (she has heard it from her roommate, who had a conversation with the guy). So you don't know the context in which that info was conveyed. What you have is shaky evidence, hearsay testimony, and a request from the woman not to tell your friend what you know.
Do you:
(a) break the confidence and tell the friend anyway, ensuring that you include all of the caveats about (shaky evidence, 3rd hand info, etc)--all because you're worried about potential bodily harm?
(b) let the situation unfold as it is
(c) confront the guy and ask him yourself
(d) get someone else to do the dirty work for you (i.e. get the woman whose bush you're whacking to talk to the guy and find out what he says is happening before you decide to confront anyone)
The ethical questions are mind-boggling, the levels of responsibility multiple. One assumes that the friend is responsible for being taking care of himself and being careful. But then again, he is in a trust relationship--and if he doesn't trust the guy, the thing really is over. On the other hand, we do live in pretty non-monogamous times--and queer life has always been lived in ways that don't adhere to heteronormative standards of intimacy (people have affairs and relationships do survive). Presumably the guy who's fucking around has a responsibility not only to be safe, but to disclose unsafe behaviour to his partner. But whose responsibility is it to intervene when this does not happen?
My solution to the above is option 4--for the time being. Find out as much information without rocking the boat without actually rocking the boat. Then rock the boat as needed. There are some kinds of information that must be disclosed in spite of confidences--simply for the safety of others. But one must be sure of disclosing information, not just idle gossip.
Well, here goes. And it's all Maurice's fault (so you can blame the naughty bits on him). The vital stats:
Q. Why "bush whacker"?
A. Because being a "lesbian" requires a U-Haul, 2.5 dogs, and more flannel than I care to think about. Moreover, to quote one bush I've whacked, "lesbian is such a 'silly word.'"
Q. Why write about bush whacking?
A. There are just not enough public, intelligent bush whackings for my taste. If this isn't your taste, try some other site on Burning Bushes. Moses awaits.
Q. Why "The Burning Bush"?
Short answer: This is Maurice's fault, too. He laughed too much when I suggested the name. I couldn't resist.
Long answer (in multiple sentence fragments): (1) Because it's self-consciously sexual and I'm not Puritan enough to be modest. (2) Because it might burn the asses of a few Puritans. (3) Because we live in a secular world, so why not take advantage of it? (4) Because burning can be the result of being either pleased or pissed off. (5) Fill in your own reason.
Welcome. Stay tuned.