An Uneducated View of Sex, Food and Politics - Derek Haines (beach read book .TXT) 📗

AN UNEDUCATED VIEW OF SEX, FOOD AND POLITICS.

As seen from the vantage point of misunderstanding, self-indulgence and simple blind reasoning.


By Derek Haines


PUBLISHED BY:
Derek Haines on Createspace


An Uneducated View of Sex, Food and Politics
Copyright © 2010 by Derek Haines


Cover photograph:
Courtesy of www.morguefile.com
Photo taken by Kabir at the Cincinnati Zoo September 2005
http://www.cincyzoo.org/Exhibits/AnimalExhibits/GorillaWorld/gorillaworld.html


Table of Contents.

Foreword
Chapter 1. Why Am I Here?
Chapter 2. What is Food?
Chapter 3. Sex? I’m Confused.
Chapter 0. Not A Chapter. Just Autobiographical Egotism
Chapter 4. A Want To Be Cosmopolitan.
Chapter 5. I Wish I Had Dropped Politics From the Title.
Chapter 6. Normality A Go Go!
Chapter 7. The Marriage Manual.
Chapter 8. Food, Politics and Marriage Vows.
Chapter 9. Just Life!
Chapter 10. Fat For All.
Chapter 11. Takeaway.
Chapter 12. Absurdities.
Chapter 13. Dog’s Heart, Wolf’s Liver.
Chapter 14. Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.
Chapter 15. You Call That Rational?
Chapter 16. Why Can’t I Live in Fantasy Land?
Chapter 17. Recipes
Chapter 18. Afterword
About the Author

Foreword

If you are reading this forward in a bookshop, in the hope of ascertaining what percentage of this book is devoted to sex, and weighing this proportion up against the cost of the book, I can give you this simple advice. BUY THIS BOOK!. You can be assured that there are many references and thoughts in this book that should not be made available to your eight year old offspring. So, please consider this fact when you begin reading this book at home. Do not leave it lying around.
If I might be as bold as to make a suggestion, (now that you are on your way to the cashier to stake your rights as the outright owner of this copy, and continue to read while you wait for your credit card to be checked for worthiness) that once you have read this book, it can be filed happily with your recipe books. This small piece of advice should give you a small clue as to subjects other than sex, that are visited in this volume.
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” This phrase has stayed with me since childhood. Being that was a long time ago, I cannot remember who to credit with passing this wonderful insight to me. Possibly a grandparent, or perhaps an answer to a question on an early sixties quiz show. Regardless of origin, it has stayed in my brain. This is remarkable, because so much knowledge has not stayed in my brain. While some people, who are far more intelligent, intellectual and just plain smarter than I, manage to retain mammoth libraries of information in their ‘sponge like’ minds, I have always thought that my mind is akin to a craggy reef. As knowledge and information pass through my mind, like the water through a reef, I retain only what ‘sticks’ to my protuberances. It is a pity that this little gem of wisdom is of no use whatsoever, as I believe it is for me, hopelessly inaccurate.
Therefore this book will not consist of lengthy quotations and excerpts from previous books on the subjects at hand, neither will it be a chronicle of the reading habits of my life. This is a volume of thoughts, insights and cynicisms of an uneducated middle aged being. After reading avidly during my life, the thoughts of philosophers, intellectuals, prominent thinkers, poets and Oxford comics who elucidate their views from the heights of our society, I believe my views can be firmly categorised as the opposite. I will however take the liberty on some occasions to mention some of these writers, if only to credit them with inspiring me to think, look and learn.
At some point while reading this book, you will surely reach a pivotal moment where you will close the book, put it down, and silently wonder. What the hell it is this book about? The author seems very confused, and his writings have no logical pattern, reason or rhyme. If you reach this, or a similar conclusion, I praise you now, in advance for your incisive observation. If however, you read this book with a voracious appetite and interest, and suffer from the ‘I just cannot put it down’ reading syndrome, and think thoughts as you read such as, ‘I know this feeling’, or ‘Yes, I have asked the same question’ then you are probably a poor soul like me. Aged between thirty five and fifty five, with an Australian or possibly English childhood and teenage upbringing that prepared you for a full and happy life in Victorian England. However you have had to live your adult life in the screamingly open, permissive, free, ever changing years of the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties. And beyond. My reasons for writing this book were initially cathartic, but during the early stages of writing I realised the reasons had shifted to ones of an out of body experience and nature. I could look at myself and laugh, and laugh and laugh. What a complete idiot I have been for most of my life. Hopefully, one day, I will change this impression I have of myself.
The reason I have issued early warnings regarding the possibility of young children reading this book (that you hopefully now own) is to save you the reader, the embarrassment of a child of eight or nine saying, “I know all this stuff, We learned it at school in grade two!”
So I give you these thoughts, not from a vantage point of looking down, but from looking up and across.
1 Should you still be reading and waiting for your credit card to be approved, I would add this further piece of advice. If you believe yourself to be easily offended by normality and have a deep and kindred feeling of admiration for John Howard or a love of Mills and Boon classical literature, maybe you should put this book back and look for a colourful book of pasta recipes.

Chapter 1. Why Am I Here?

May I start at the beginning? “Why am I here?” Why indeed! Why must be the most used word in the English language. I am sure it is also totally overused in every other language. If I was an educated man, I could begin now to fill this entire page with translations of the word why into one hundred and fifty languages and dialects. But as I am not educated, I will simply say that a puzzled look and tilting of the head is universally accepted, as proof that the ‘why’ question is universal in it’s asking.
Never a day goes by in a human life without this word or feeling. “Why am I here?” “Why was I born?” “Why do I have to go to work?” “Why didn’t I stay at school?” “Why is my wallet empty?” “Why do I have to pay tax?” On and on ad infinitum. Just reflect on your day, and try and count the number of times you asked why today.
After all this time of the existence of intelligent human beings (and some not so intelligent ones) on this planet, why is it we cannot answer these seemingly simple questions? As a species we have been able to cure dreaded diseases, travel into space, discover the answers to our physical world. Even map every strand of DNA in our bodies. But can we, as an intelligent race answer the question, “Why do I feel so fucking depressed?” in a logical and informed manner? No! For all our understanding of the world around us, the one matter that we do not understand is the emotional and self indulgent psychology of the human animal. Oh yes! I can hear you now, espousing the ideas and conclusions of any number of ancient, latter day or in between sages of wisdom. There have been one thousand times more answers than there have been questions through our eternity. But, I ask you this. Why, if these answers are presumed to be correct, do we continue to ask the question? “Why?”
Forty Two! This was the famed answer to a vital question asked in the novels by Douglas Adams. The question was, “The Life, Universe and Everything?” After waiting millions of years for the computer ‘Deep Thought’ to calculate his answer to the question, the ‘Askers’ were to say the least, a little pissed off at the answer. They had imagined a much more complex, thought provoking and above all, conclusive answer to their question. What the hell did 42 mean? It was ‘Deep Thought’ who pointed out to them that they may not have asked the right question. Could this be applied to the continued asking and answering of our questions about ourselves? Have we had an unending supply of answers to the wrong questions over millennia? Have the answers been so complex, because in not being satisfied with the answers we have been given, we have believed, by simple reasoning, that we must ask a more complex question? I have read and listened to many who profess expertise in the area of understanding the human mind and emotional behaviour. While many have given me delightful morsels of insight and understanding, just as many have bored me to sleep with the endless use of something I despise. Talking for the sake of listening to one’s self. Domination of a conversation or opinion, so as to fake superiority.
2 Anyone who can write a five part trilogy gets my vote of confidence. There are many like me, who hope for a sixth part of the three part series. Our hope is slim though as poor Douglas is now departed!
As I am sure everyone has done, I have read books, or listened to eminent members of our academia or political elite drift into a type of speech that uses an abundance of words. Tied together in long uninterruptible sentences, dotted with words that would send almost everyone to a dictionary or French phrase book. Are they trying to communicate? Not at all. They are generally simply filling up space with their own importance. To appear smarter than their audience or readers? I thought this the answer for some time, but I have now come to the conclusion that the reason they do this is that the answer or hypothesis they are trying to communicate is actually very simple and concise. But to phrase the answer or hypothesis in ten words or less, would make them feel inadequate. What a waste of a degree in Astrophysics if asked, “Is the Sun hot?”, and the educated answer was “Yes, very hot”, instead of a dissertation about the Big Bang theory, the relationship of Einstein to his favourite dog, the fact that the answerer once met Carl Sagan while roaming the halls of Cambridge trying to arrange a meeting with Stephen Hawking.
Could it be that there are some among us who have arrived at their own answer already of “Why am I here?” These being of course those among us who know they are here to fill in the silent areas after a question! And for as long as possible!
It should not be said that I suffer from inverted snobbery. I respect anyone who has made the effort and undertaken the hard work and sacrifice needed to complete a successful formal education. Many times, right up to this day I have considered abandoning the stereotype of my life’s path, and venturing off to the world of the young. To university at a mature age, and fill