APRIL 9TH -- OF PLAYBOY, MARK TWAIN, & SEX TOYS

 

"The interesting thing is how one guy, through living his own fantasies, is living out the fantasies of so many other people."
- Hugh Hefner

Twain here again.  

And old Hugh may well have been the happiest outlaw of them all ... up until the end when his fantasies turned into nightmares.

On this date in 1926, Hugh Hefner was born.  PLAYBOY was born in 1953 in Chicago. 

Both man and his magazine have been accused of the "pornification" of our culture,

especially with respectable authors, stars, and even scientists being interviewed in it.

Of course that pilgrim has it all backwards:

Now if you or any other really intelligent person were arranging the fairnesses and justices between man and woman,

 you give the man a one-fiftieth interest in one woman, and the woman a harem of men.

The other day, I read that gal's Laura Skandera-Trombley's article that I had a vibrator as a sex-toy of all things!

The mind boggles.

It's true I sent my secretary, Isabel Lyon, to buy one in New York for my stiff shoulders and sore lower back.

That gizmo could stop headaches, cure and limber lame and stiff backs --

It really was the essential key of osteopathy and kindred treatments.

Why, you can read in Miss Lyon's 1908 Date book:

"We got an electrical vibrating machine for the King [lovely girl knew my worth], in N.Y."

I mentioned that accusation to Nikola Tesla in Meilori's the other night ...

 

And the poor man (he's still alive by the way) started coughing so badly 

that Ratatoskr, the Asgardian squirrel,  exclaimed, "Sammy, you must give him mouth to mouth resuscitation!"

I turned to the prostrate man and drawled, "Nicola, old chum, you will be missed."

Luckily Toya passed by, dumped a glass of ice tea on my head, and commenced with the mouth to mouth.

I started to cough myself, but she just snorted, "You already dead, fool!"

After an eighteen-month apprenticeship, I received my steamboat pilot's license on yesterday's date but on this day in 1859, it was made official,

making good on my and every Hannibal river-boy’s pipedream:

"We had transient ambitions of other sorts, but they were only transient.

When a circus came and went, it left us all burning to become clowns;

the first negro minstrel show that came to our section left us all suffering to try that kind of life;

now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.

These ambitions faded out, each in its turn; but the ambition to be a steamboat-man always remained."
(Life on the Mississippi)

I'm forced to choose "I" 'cause that blow-hard Hemingway is taking over tomorrow's post --

And you know what Author that rooster wants to choose for H! 

And he doesn't trust me to choose him today!!

Wise of him.  I would have chosen Homer -- 'cause when I listen to that Hemingway, and I have a cane in hand --

I just naturally want to hit a "homer!"

Being a ghost and all, I was able to eavesdrop on him below --
and I could swear this was what he said:

So I get to choose I to stand for John IRVING, author of THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP:

“If you care about something you have to protect it – If you’re lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany