One Hand Jerking

by Paul Krassner

  Lipset began reciting a litany of those porn videos. The most notorious was Greg Bautzer, an attorney for financier Howard Hughes, together with Jane Wyman, the former wife of then-Governor Ronald Reagan. There was Sharon Tate with Dean Martin. There was Sharon with Steve McQueen. (That was a silent Aha! moment for me.) There was Sharon with two black bisexual men.

  “The cops were not too happy about that one,” Lipset recalled.

  There was a video of Cass Elliot from the Mamas and the Papas in an orgy with Yul Brynner, Peter Sellers and Warren Beatty. Coincidentally, Brynner and Sellers, together with John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, had offered a $25,000 reward for the capture of the killers.

  I always felt the executioners had a prior connection with their victims. I finally tracked down a reporter who had hung around with police and seen a porn video of Susan Atkins with one of the victims, Voytek Frykowski. When I asked Manson about that, he responded: “You are ill advised and mis-led. [Victim Jay] Sebring done Susan’s hair and I think he sucked one or two of her dicks. I’m not sure who she was walking out from her stars and cages, that girl loves dick, you know what I mean, hon. Yul Brynner, Peter Sellers . . .”

  Meanwhile, Charlie has become a cultural symbol. In surfer jargon, a “manson” means a crazy, reckless surfer. For comedians, Manson has become a generic joke reference. I asked him how he felt about that. He wrote back: “I don’t know what a generic is, Joke. I think I know what that means. That means you talk bad about Reagan or Bush. I’ve always ran poker games and whores and crime. I’m a crook. You make the reality in court and press. I just ride and play the cards that were pushed on me to play. Mass killer, it’s a job, what can I say.”

  But Manson has apparently been moonlighting, because his new CD, All the Way Alive, was recently released. He was discussing with the producer of his album the notion that people’s public images can be vastly different from the way they behave in their private lives. As an example, Charlie mentioned “the sex movies Steve McQueen and Peter Sellers were doing with Sharon Tate.”

  EATING SHIT FOR FUN AND PROFIT

  I am in complete awe of the democracy of the Internet, which presents an infinite menu for individual tastes and ideologies, and in this context, specifically to viewers of online porn. From golden showers to farm animals, the World Wide Web caters to virtually every imaginable desire. With the privacy provided by a computer screen, you can worship at the fetish of your choice. But, in the process of surfing porn sites—for research purposes only, of course—I realized that I had never come across a site specializing in coprophagia. It means eating shit. Literally.

  There’s an old saying among nutritionists: “You are what you eat.” However, comedian Darryl Henriques, playing the role of a New Age swami, says, “You are what you don’t shit.”

  One of the nastiest things you can say to someone is, “Eat shit.” A non-fiction book, The Pit, reveals a strange cult in San Francisco where a group of successful businessmen were forced, along with other acts of humiliation, to eat their own shit. Ultimately, they were represented in a lawsuit by flamboyant attorney Melvin Belli. But that was involuntary shit eating, and what we’re talking about here is the voluntary kind.

  For many years I heard stories that comic actor Danny Thomas, the star of Make Room For Daddy, was a coprophagiac. I assumed it was just another urban legend until I bumped into an old friend who was now working as a prostitute in Hollywood. Over lunch, she mentioned the names of some of her celebrity clients, including Danny Thomas. She told me how he had hired her to save her solid waste in her panties so that he could rub the panties on his face and gobble up her shit as though it were cotton candy.

  When he finished, he would wash himself thoroughly, then pay her, and, as if coming out of a trance, he’d say, “Where was I?” He was trying to distance himself from what he had just done. Instant denial. Since then, I have believed that Danny Thomas’s fundraising for Saint Jude’s Hospital was really for the purpose of having secret access to their bedpans.

  Anyway, I googled “Eating Shit.” Topping the list was “Shit Eating Grins: In Defense of Adam Sandler, South Park and the Proud Tradition of Poop Humor”—an article in Salon.com. But sure enough, I was soon led to hard-core shit-eating sites, which I found totally disgusting yet absolutely riveting. You may not want to read any further, but we both know you will.

  There are photos of beautiful women shitting; if you click for a close-up you can spot a yellow kernel of corn in one big brown chunk o’ shit. Women are spreading shit all over their naked bodies and inside their vaginas. A pair of lovely lesbians are eating handfuls of shit, then tongue kissing each other. Two women are eating the same lengthy turd, starting from opposite ends. A woman, fully dressed, wearing a mini-skirt, is shitting as she walks along the sidewalk. One woman is shitting into another woman’s mouth. Mmmm, good to the last dingleberry.

  Among the shit-eating sites, there are Asian movies. Here’s a couple of descriptions: “A bunch of kinky Japanese guys find some truly hot looking girls and take them down below the streets of Tokyo into a real sewer full of shit.” And, “Cute Kyoko’s diarrhea suddenly acts up again. Her piano teacher becomes a willing student of hot scat games. Lots of shit pours out of her hot ass into his waiting mouth. Then she asks if he would rub it all over her. Sure, why not, he says.”

  If there is one particular image that remains in my mind’s eye, it is an innocent looking, attractive teenager—she’s over 18, of course—and she is cheerfully drinking a shit shake through a straw in an old-fashioned malted milk glass.

  I thought about her father discovering that photo in cyberspace, yet he is unable to confront his daughter about it because he would then have to admit what he was doing at that site. I mean, this isn’t exactly the type of thing that would be mass e-mailed by one of those selfless spammers. And even if the father did confess to his daughter, he would undoubtedly hesitate to ask if he could eat her shit, because that could be considered a form of incest, and you have to draw the line somewhere, right?

  There must be an especially strong bond among coprophagiacs, though, because they have experienced in common a form of liberation from a taboo that can be traced all the way back to infancy, when a parent would cringe and say, “Stop! Don’t eat that! I said no!”

  Who knows, some day coprophagia might even become a religion?

  Holy shit!

  LISTS FOR THE LISTLESS

  PREDICTIONS FOR 2004

  The annual frenzy of psychic prophesizing in the supermarket tabloids is now in full swing. Help yourself to some free samples of predictions from the weekly Sun:

  ☞ In an effort to boost the sagging tourism industry, Florida will provide free airfare to anyone wanting to vacation in the Sunshine State.

  ☞ A plot to assassinate President Bush will be uncovered in the nick of time by CBS newsman Dan Rather.

  ☞ A nationwide anti-smallpox inoculation program will have the astonishing side effect of increasing the average life span by eleven years.

  ☞ A chorus of 1,000 angels will appear over the Pentagon.

  ☞ Pope John Paul II will be miraculously cured of Parkinson’s disease while conducting a special memorial mass at the World Trade Center.

  ☞ An attempt to clone terrorist kingpin Osama bin Laden from one of his beard hairs will be thwarted by U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

  ☞ Scientists working on an antidote for anthrax infections will stumble upon a cure for Alzheimer’s disease.

  ☞ The three major television networks will announce that they will stop airing shows that glorify violence.

  ☞ It will be revealed that the Taliban has been kidnapping American children and selling them on the white slave market.

  ☞ The weather this winter will be unseasonably warm, reducing our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

  But tabloid prognostication has its academic counterpart at the University of Alabama. This is the 23rd year of their traditional making o
f forecasts, “Educated Guesses.” Spokesperson Chris Bryant told the Birmingham Post-Herald, “We ask the faculty to speculate within their areas of expertise, to go out on a limb and make predictions of what will happen in the next 12 months.”

  For example, last January, Donald Snow, professor of political science and an expert in military and political affairs, predicted that George W. Bush would lose his bid for re-election if the United States were to go to war against Iraq in 2003. He placed the likelihood at two to one in favor of a military strike. “If we go to war with Iraq,” he said, “it will cost George W. Bush the election in 2004. Even if the war itself goes well, the post-war will not, and that’s what’s going to do him in. Post-War Iraq is going to be an extraordinarily messy place that we are going to have to occupy for a long time. We will become the recruiting poster for al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.”

  The previous January, Snow predicted that Osama bin Laden would be captured “in the next few months, but possibly not in Afghanistan. I think he’s left the country, but eventually we will catch him. Somebody will rat on him. Someone will see him going through a village and will have dreams of sugar plums in that $25 million reward and turn him in. Islamic brotherhood is one thing, but $25 million in cold cash is another.”

  That same year, Nick Stinnet, professor of marriage and family studies, predicted that there would be a mini-baby boom in June or July 2002, directly correlated with the attacks of September 11, 2001. “In times of stress and crises,” he explained, “people often draw closer to one another for comfort and consolation as an antidote to uncertainty and loneliness. And in couple relationships, that drawing closer may involve sexual activity and consequently the possibility of pregnancy. Some people regard sex as a good stress reliever.”

  Robert Robicheaux, professor of retailing and director of the Hess Institute for Retailing Development, predicted the demise of the computer companies: “A midwestern United States-based entrepreneur will announce the introduction of a technology that completely makes obsolete traditional integrated computer chips. The product will enable easy and inexpensive remote Internet service via satellite transmission technology.”

  And so here am I, caught somewhere between the tabloids and the academics, with a selection of my own humble predictions:

  ☞ The first legally sanctioned marriage of two metrosexuals will take place in Massachusetts.

  ☞ Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant will be cellmates.

  ☞ Charles Manson will be released on parole and announce that he’s looking forward to spending more time with his family.

  ☞ Arnold Schwarzenegger will introduce a bill that would legalize the sale and use of steroids.

  ☞Fidel Castro will come out for term limits.

  ☞ Counterfeit euros will flood the international market.

  ☞ Wal-Mart will move its corporate headquarters to China.

  ☞ The draft will be reinstated and will not exclude women, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, sado-masochists, transvestites or the transgendered.

  ☞ The weather will remain unpredictable.

  ☞ John Ashcroft will be diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and consequently change his mind about medical marijuana.

  ☞ Rush Limbaugh will get arrested for purchasing his painkilling pharmaceuticals in Canada.

  ☞ Laura Bush will overdose on Botox.

  ☞ Saddam Hussein will be sentenced to a lifetime of community service.

  ☞ Jessica Lynch will become a director.

  ☞ The stunt doubles for Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez will get married.

  ☞ The world’s tallest building, to be built at the site of the World Trade Center, will be sponsored by the Target chain, whose corporate logo of a bull’s-eye a few floors below the spire will be visible for miles.

  ☞ It will be discovered that Libya has been selling off its weapons of mass destruction to North Korea.

  ☞ The Patriot Act will be expanded to include thought crimes.

  ☞ The ACLU and PETA will combine forces to fight for the civil liberties of all animals.

  ☞ The use of cell phones with cameras for the instant communication of personal porn will bring about pandemic performance anxiety among masturbators.

  ☞ The reappearance of pubic hair will become so fashionable that bikini waxes will be outlawed.

  ☞ A combination penis-enlarger and erection-stimulator patch will be invented.

  ☞ A pill taken daily by men will transform their semen into a contraceptive device.

  ☞ Strom Thurmond will be tried posthumously for statutory rape.

  ☞ Jesse Jackson and Johnnie Cochran will compete against each other in a national poetry slam.

  ☞ Bottled water will be imported from Mars.

  ☞ There will be an epidemic of genetically engineered crops being inundated with genetically engineered crop circles.

  ☞ Particles of food will be embedded into dental floss for those who are too busy to eat between flossings.

  ☞ Dick Cheney’s pacemaker will fail when he tries out the microwave oven he was given for Christmas by Rudy Giuliani.

  ☞ The Bill O’Reilly action figure dolls will all be recalled because they have a tendency to self-destruct.

  ☞ Monica Lewinsky and Paris Hilton will enter a convent and become nuns for a reality TV series.

  ☞ Senator Joe Lieberman will convert to Islam.

  ☞ God will at last be given credit for creating evolution.

  ☞ The Second Coming will occur, and Jesus will reveal himself as the antichrist.

  ☞ And finally, you will definitely not die this year.

  BIZARRE SEXUALLY ORIENTED SPAM SUBJECT LINES

  Every one of the spam senders in this informal survey is trying—in the hope that you won’t immediately press the delete key—to entice you into checking out their messages and purchasing their products. In that process, they will sometimes deliberately (but not always delliberately) misspell words in the subject lines of their spams in order to bypass any electronic filters you happen to set up.

  A friend writes to me, “I just upgraded to AOL 9 which has a feature that takes out spam before it gets to you. Theoretically you submit and save a list of words you don’t want in your subject line—in my case some are Viagra, Xanax, cheerleaders and mortgages—then voila! But, as always, the spammers are one step ahead. Now I’m getting spam for Viagara, Xannax, cheer leaders and mort.gages. I don’t know why they think I’d do business with anyone whose spelling skills were so faulty, but I guess their target audience may not care.”

  And from another friend: “Has anyone had a problem with blocked e-mail? I have had fully one-third of my mail blocked by my ISP that is running Norton’s ‘Barracuda Spam Firewall.’ Phooey! It blocks e-mail from friends and newsletters but lets the porn, Viagra and ‘grow your penis pills’ through. I am ticked! Anyone else all of a sudden not hearing from friends?”

  Meanwhile, federal agents have arrested a man for repeatedly making death threats against employees of an Internet advertising firm. He faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted. He had mistakenly believed that the company was the source of unsolicited e-mail ads he received about penis enlargement. Well, everybody has their breaking point.

  Carol Liefer observed on Comedy Central that apparently there are a lot of people who want her to have a bigger penis. And, on the all-female morning TV talk show, The View, this rhetorical question was posed: “Which is worse, a tiny little penis or a lot of violence?” As if in response, a dwarf detective on a Comedy Central promo for their movie, Knee-High P.I., observed, “Sometimes the best dick is a small dick,” though you’ll never see that in a subject line.

  Anyway, here’s a quaint selection of penis-enlarger subject lines:

  There’s the impress-a-female approach—“Women have always said: Size Matters!” . . . “No girl will give U a damn if U have little pe-nis” . . . “Hey My Girl Bought Me the Patch” . . . “
She likes my new weenie” . . . “I am lookin for a big man like U! C*U*M* to me!” . . . “Wanna be big enough to shock people?” . . . “You will leave her speechless” . . . “Make her scream OHHH YEAAA!”

  But men also like to impress other men, as in “Feal proud when your in the locker room” and “Your friends will envy you”—(guaranteed up to 4 rock hard inches).

  Plus some more choices for the road: “gipzyxdtcbidvd + yeilopcecsu” . . . “Keep praying eyes away!” . . . “Monster Cocks at Discount Price” . . . “impede her ybpajh” . . . “dont worry about ur stupid little penis, ha ha” . . . “do u think u still can fuck like those who has macho dick?” . . . “Every man wishes he had a larger penis” . . . “Be a man and add a third leg” . . . “Enlarge your Manhood” . . . “Increase your penis size in one day” . . . “my hole was bored out by the reaper” . . . “Be happy when you make love!” . . . “With these pills you can shoot cum like a porn star!” . . . “Penus Enlarged in 2 Hours!”

  The misleading subject line is a popular method of tricking you. “Tickets arrived” led to this message: “there is no other way to enlarge your penis.” This vague subject line—“Hey, shit happens”—and this non sequitur subject line—“Do you like oranges?”—both led to the same message: “Use this patch and it will grow i SWEAR. . .”

  All right, so now the good news is that every man has a larger penis. However, the bad news is that none of them can get it up.

  “I remember a spam,” writes a friend, “about free Viagra after a Penis Enlargement operation that would take place someplace in Nigeria just before the search for my share of several hundred million dollars that my new friend is cutting me in on. Seems his dad stashed bullion in foreign accounts to which they’d have no access until I brought several thousand dollars first. Could have gotten way rich while erect for days while I fucked myself.”

  Another friend quotes a spam—“Massive rock-solid Erections, new natural product bmrgwhmsmnmb”—and adds, “I like how it turns into nonsense at the end. I kind of picture like it’s a mild mannered guy at the beginning who takes the ‘natural’ Viagra somewhere in the middle and then by the end he’s like the incredible Hulk with a hard-on so powerful he can’t even make coherent sounds. Also: ‘From Keith Moon: Re: Generic Viagra’—At least they have a sense of humor. Maybe they’ll start coming from ‘Rush Limbaugh’ next.”