Sexual Dysfunction Fastest Growing Disease

mm, don't you know it—even in a world where cancer, AIDS, and any number of illnesses run unchecked and uncured, claiming victims by the millions, one other taker has been revealed as the fastest-spreading (no pun intended) disease of the 21st century: Sexual dysfunction. The revelation is based on money spent on research and treatment in America, by Americans. While sexual dysfunction hasn't seem to reached other continents at quite the same level, the western world, and especially America, suffers astronomical degrees of sexual dysfunction.

Dr. Clammy Goodtime, and yes, that is his real name, has spearheaded (again, pun not intended) an international investigation into sexual dysfunction, based on the spending of major drug companies and private citizens on treatment. According to Dr. Goodtime, sexual dysfunction has become epidemic in the western world, where up to 20% of all money flowing into the medical profession is directed. In other regions of the world, such as Africa, the percentage is less than zero, but Dr. Goodtime remains confident the low numbers are based on a lack of diagnosis and reporting of sexual dysfunction, rather than some high-quality banging going on continent-wide.

"In most cases, even here in America, sexual dysfunction was strangely under-reported right up until the 1970s," said Dr. Goodtime, stroking his charming soulpatch. "Then, in the 1980s, major improvements in diagnosing the sexually-inadequate were made, thanks to the pioneering research of those like Dr. Ruth Westheimer. You reach the 1990s and all of a sudden the sexually-impaired were coming out of the woodwork, figuratively speaking, to treat their dysfunction. We now stand, in the early twenty-first century, as having the highest population in the history of the world with diagnosed sexual dysfunction. Take that, ancient Rome!"

Dr. Goodtime reports, darling, that in thirty short years sexual research has gone from a stodgy, secretive area of study to a mainstream psychological phenomenon. Years ago, before television and the media opened up the discussion of sex for everyone, sexual dysfunction was only diagnosed in rare and extreme cases, such as those with a severe phobia to sex. These days, patients can—and frequently do—diagnose themselves.

Advertisements for medications that prolong sexual function after its normal duration, such as Viagra or Cialis, and devices such as the Intrinsa "sex patch" have attempted to restore the libido of a twentysomething to those who might not naturally have the urge to have sex as much as they used to. On the outer perimeter of such research are also medications which can enhance the physical qualities of both men and women to make them more sexually appealing to people who want nothing to do with them.

Other treatments for sexual dysfunction—regardless of the cause—are already in the works by medical companies who want to cash in on the billion-dollar tragedy of reduced sexual activity. Among other potential treatments, Procter & Gamble is developing a "sex box," a device applied to the genitals which can treat the common problem suffered by many men and women who suffer sexual dysfunction from not finding anybody willing to fornicate with them. The product is undergoing research right now, and no, sweetie, they've got enough volunteers for the study already.

Some, like Badgeport, Tennessee apple grower Wilfred Canton, are grateful to the medical profession for focusing so much attention on sexual dysfunction instead of more incurable illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease.

"I'm a child of the sixties, man, I grew up in the age of the sexual revolution," Canton said. "I spent my childhood wishing I was old enough to have sex, and I spent my teen-age years thinking I should be having a lot, lot more of it. In my twenties and thirties, I spent all my time having sex whenever I could, at the expense of developing more lasting relationships with people. Now that I'm going to be forty, you're telling me I'm going to start losing the urge? Nuh-uh. I didn't spend my life with an unhealthy focus on sex just to have it end now."

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Goddammit! Another V-Day, come and gone.

According to nebulous website statistics, one in five Americans is single, but as we know, polls taken at pornographic sites are debatable. The truth is probably somewhere in between—all my neighbors are married or in serious relationships, yet nobody at the commune can maintain a significant other for more than a week. All I know is, if those estimates are anywhere near close, that leaves a lot of pissed off people who spent last Valentine's Day stewing in their homes.

Somehow another Valentine's Day passed and I survived, and more over, I didn't get drunk and call up any ex-girlfriends on the phone. Sure, I browsed the internet looking for the loneliest blogs I could find, just for company, then I searched for a while to see if anyone else remembered that show Tales of the Gold Monkey, but that isn't really on topic. What's important is I maintained some level of dignity by keeping my indignity within the walls of my apartment.

There are different arguments about Valentine's Day, I suppose. Some would say it's a soulless commercial enterprise driven by the almighty dollar to shill tiny greeting cards, flowers, chocolates, and chalk-flavored hearts; others are retarded, and disagree. These fucks are hopelessly whipped by whatever gender's genitalia they're dating.

Whoever first expressed the need for love, for one human being to find that special connection to another and build a lasting relationship with, is a total schmendrick. If he had been born in another era St. Valentine probably would have gone on to invent the dog whistle, another device with more espoused about it than proven. So what if a dog comes running when you blow it? Have you ever seen a dog that didn't come running to a person? They're stupid dogs. They see people and want to lick them, for whatever dog reason mandates.

Likewise, I say love is a myth. If I believed in the devil I would propose he started it as a way to complicate what could have been party city for sexual relationships in this world. You don't see animals exchanging phone numbers or discussing long-distance relationships. They know what they want and they don't confuse it with their self-esteem or worrying about how a partner reflects on them. It's not a coincidence either that animals don't suffer from broken hearts, depression, midlife crises, weight issues, or impotency—and I've seen enough websites to verify it.

I don't claim to be a genius; I may only be a seven-inch pixie with a surly attitude, but I can tell right from wrong. People who are not in relationships are miserable. People who are in relationships are miserable. If you're lucky enough to catch people during that brief period of ignorance when they think they are going to be in a relationship and find excitement in their partner and are fresh from loneliness enough so they dread going back to it, then you'll find them happy. The intelligence of dedicating your life to seeking out that one-to-two-week period in a life that lasts about 80 years, give or take cigarette consumption, it's not the brightest way to go.

Not that I have an alternative at this point. Or, I do have alternatives, but they usually end up with me getting drinks thrown in my face. I'm not advocating we drop the whole "love" deal right off the bat, but I say it wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea to re-evaluate the idea of monogamy. Elvis Costello asked what was so funny with peace, love, and understanding? That's a big question, with lots of possible answers. I'm only asking what's so wrong about paying money for sex a couple of times a month? Both you, the column reader, and the potential jurors out there I might be seeing next month.

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If you see someone crying on the street today, you'll know why: The pencil is dead. After serving as the writing implement of choice for hundreds of years, the noble pencil is now relegated to the bottom of the drawer, falling behind more popular instruments such as the keyboard, the ball point pen, the fountain pen, the crayon and the bloody stump. Rest in peace, lead brother. You have served humanity sort of well.

But what happened to this once-proud utensil?

By most all accounts, the simple, elegant pencil fell victim over the years to the fact that it sucked completely. Messy, impermanent, and hard-to-read, the pencil was all the things you'd avoid in a search for the perfect writing tool.

Before the invention of the pencil, early man would often write with a carrot, which was mostly useless, but tasted good. Other good-tasting writing implements, from cucumbers to elk penises, would pass in and out of fashion over the years.

In more modernly times, people wrote using one of two implements: either a sharpened feather dipped in mouse blood, or a stray piece of chalk, coal or random feces. In 1321, Crowburton Finley of England developed a tube of owl shit that could be squeezed to form a writing implement, which was a lot like trying to write a letter with a tube of foul toothpaste. The resultant text smelled even more like dead mice than the popular mouse-blood ink of the day, and was highly popular for writing hate mail and resignation letters. Finley's company would eventually fold, however, when it was revealed that he was stooping to unethical means to obtain the owl shit.

The pencil itself evolved from the stylus, which was a thin metal rod the ancient Romans used to control their PDAs. Before the invention of the PDA, Romans used the stylus to "write" on papyrus, which was only really good for looking busy since metal rods don't tend to make any marks on paper. Eventually someone got busted over this and the Romans had to move on to lead styluses which actually wrote, and this quickly made the Romans slow and stupid because of the highly toxic nature of lead. This development necessitated the invention of the PDA, but unfortunately by then the Romans were too dull and lead-poisoned to get the software installed and they soon went back to living in caves and throwing rocks at fish and squirrels.

Lead's eventual replacement, graphite, was discovered in a big hole in the ground in England in 1564, and people immediately began building houses out of it. Soft and brittle, graphite proved to be an exceedingly poor home-building material, but the people who lived in graphite homes were quickly recognized as excellent writing utensils because of the dark graphite coating all over their bodies. Eventually, a businessman in Sweden named Marvin Johansson become fed up with the high cost of hiring "bodywriters" and decided to cut out the middleman, literally, by inventing the first "pencil" made by wrapping a piece of graphite in bologna. Unfortunately, his first several prototypes were eaten by his son Marcus, who later came down with a little-known coal mining ailment known as "black bung."

Other, smarter, inventors did Johansson one better by wrapping graphite in things like kite string and Kevlar, creating less perishable and more bulletproof early pencils. Pencils of any kind didn't really take off until 1839, however, the year that the eraser was invented. Previous to that, people used breadcrumbs to erase their pencil writing, which was only marginally effective but passed the all-important deliciousness test.

The pencil as we know it today was invented by some Japanese guy in 1860, then stolen in 1861 by a German inventor named Eberhard Faber. Faber compensated for his unfortunately convoluted name by inventing things with every breath he took on this earth. As a baby he invented the diaper stick, which instantly converted any used diaper into a proud, shit-laden flag. Then as a small child, Faber invented the chalk hammer, which pulverized chalk into small, edible chunks perfect for inappropriate snacking.

As a young man, Faber would craft his proudest invention: the mechanical pussy. This was an enormous hit until Eberhard indignantly ceased production in 1855 after learning that thanks to a language misunderstanding, Eberhard's customers were all screwing his beloved clockwork cats.

Faber named his pencil the #2; banking on the psychological fact that people believe the first version of anything can't be that good. Faber also wanted to advertise the fact that his pencils were made with high-quality Chinese graphite, the best in the world, so he painted all the pencils he sold yellow, assuring his buyers that they were made by the proud yellow people of China. Hence the modern pencil was born.

The pencil enjoyed a long heyday of popularity, and remains today the implement of choice for any writing that is almost certainly going to be erased, such as math equations, crossword puzzles, and letters to your boss demanding a raise. However, the enduring popularity of the pencil can be attributed less to its merits as a functional writing tool than to the difficulty in finding a suitable replacement that doesn't suck just as lustily.

Early attempts to replace the pencil included the much-hyped erasable ball point pen, which consisted of a regular ball point pen fitted with hard rubber nub on the cap for tearing through the paper to obliterate the words you had written with the pen. These flopped, however, because due to the tiny erasure windows torn into the paper, schoolteachers would often end up reading assignments with words from the paper underneath interspersed randomly throughout the text, leading to the rise of the Dadaist movement, which annoyed everyone universally.

Today, most adults use either ball point pens or finger-paints, depending on whether or not they've had any nearly-fatal traumatic head injuries. Modern children do all of their communicating through cell phone text messaging. This development has also led to the grisly death of proper punctuation, but dat mi frens isa colum 4 anothr dai.

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