Douglas Whaley

I know, I know.  That title needs unpacking before it makes sense.  Let me do that. The word “ejaculate” has fallen on hard times.  In its purest historical sense (and the one I’m using in this blog post) it simply means to express something suddenly and passionately.  Thus, anytime you’re surprised and say “Wow!” you are ejaculating.  Of course the more crude and therefore dominant meaning is to produce semen at orgasm, which is also a sudden and passionate demonstration of feeling, but let’s drop that meaning for now. A “pious” ejaculation is what you exclaim when, for example, you hit your thumb while hammering and your exclamation has some religious connotation.  There are many examples: “Jesus Christ!”  “Oh, God!”  “God damn it!” “Holy Fuck”  Etc.   Doubtless you can think of many more (or will if you speculate a bit).  “Oh My God” has become a national ejaculation for almost any situation. ...

I want to know who—in 2017—still thinks that buttons are the best way to fasten clothing?  Show me this person and we’ll have a debate that at some point will escalate to the point where I pull out some of the choicer words I learned in my Navy days. Let me start by making it clear that I don’t suffer from koumpounophobia, which is the tongue-twisting name for the fear of buttons.  I don’t fear buttons.  I just detest the vile things. Starting when I was a little boy struggling to push a button through a tiny slit slightly larger than the button itself, up to yesterday when I grabbed a shirt from the closet that had just come back from the dry cleaners and realized that even though I was in a great hurry I would nonetheless have to fasten fourteen buttons before I could get out of the house, my hatred of the damned things been a steady feature of my life. I’m not a particularly clumsy person, nor am I remarkably adept at motor movement...