1. Elvis Presley: I never got him. I still do not understand why the greasy drug-addicted hillbilly had the effect he did. What about Carl Perkins? Why of all the rockabilly musicians emerging in the 1950s was Presley singled out for world adulation?
2. Tattoos: Are vulgar signs of abandonment of the ideal of the body beautiful for the body distorted. They are ugly. They make one look uglier the older one gets. They indicate a propensity for hepatitis C, which was once virtually unknown outside the South Pacific Islands, and is now spreading with tattoo needles, among other needle-driven disease vectors.
3. Photographing your wife having sex with black men: I would not lend out my wife to anyone I would not trust with my chain saw, my rifle, or my wallet. In fact I do not think I would lend her out at all, both as she is not really mine to lend and because I might not like the results if I did. Yet there seems to be a genre of home-made pornography that seems to involve wives being pictured penetrated by one or more black men, and there seems to be no lack of participants in this craze. Apart from the vulgarity of posting photographs of the commission of group sex to the Internet, which is quite understandable in the conditions of life these days, and the possible embarrassment years later when she runs for alderman, school trustee, or member of parliament, the whole idea of letting one’s wife be fucked by others while the husband photographs the event is detumescifying, to find a polite term. Call me a prude. I do not mind healthy people having sex. I do not mind people taking pix of same. I do not object to putting sexual stuff on the Internet, really. But I am mystified by this particular fetish. My objection is not merely to the portrayal of it, it is to the weirdness of the act itself. Sexual tastes are beyond rational comprehension, aren’t they? Forgive me, readers, next thing you know I will be quoting Malcolm Muggeridge.After this reactionary outburst, I will sign myself in for anti-racist programming from a nearby human rights commission. But I still don’t get it.