RISKY BUSINESS
DEAR ANN ROMANO—Regarding a couple items in the most recent edition of your consistently aggravating but unable-to-not-read column [One Day at a Time, Nov 25]: I realize each member of Kate Gosselin’s brood has a readymade tattletale squad about him or her, but they need to start doing what I did with Mom’s Velveeta on white sandwiches: Shitcan ’em. (Sorry, Mom.) And contrary to you, Ms. Romano, and our now-apostate Pope, condoms ARE SO forged by Satan himself in the fiery furnaces of hell. Perhaps the Sodomites get enough stimulation even with a condom but for us Breeders it’s a nonstarter. If you don’t want to catch a social disease, don’t be a slut, male or female, and don’t lie down with sluts, male or female. If it’s safe, it ain’t sex.
-Brian A. Cobb
UP TO SPEED
DEAR MERCURY—I am a devout driver and will always be on the road [“Broken While Biking,” News, Nov 18]. First, if bikes are going to act like cars they should have to carry some type of liability insurance. Second, be a bike or be a vehicle; that distinction lies in where you ride. If you ride in the car lane you need to ride the posted speed limit. I want bikes to be on the road. I love the outdoors and being part of keeping Oregon livable. I just wish bicycle riders would realize as I did 35 years ago when I rode my bike around town as a teenager in Portland, [that] riding to the river or downtown was an adventure, but we knew a car could kill us and we stayed out of the way. I am just saying.
-Steve Gross
NUT UP
I had this procedure and it was VERY routine [“Snip Tuck,” Feature, Nov 25]. I’m actually a little upset about this being so prominently published. Guys, if you aren’t wanting kids, do it. It’s way more cost/pain effective than any female permanent contraception. Your partner doesn’t have to inject hormones into herself anymore, and you aren’t creating one more mouth to feed. Did I mention how much better the sex is? No need for condoms (assuming an exclusive relationship with no current STDs) and no back of the mind worries of “an accident.” Just unadulterated, do-it-whenever-we-feel-like-it fucking.
-posted by bucknroses on portlandmercury.com
PRECIOUS PARTS
Why is this story important [“Snip Tuck,” Feature, Nov 25]? Are testicles/scrote sacs some sort of untouchable golden calf? Lots and lots and lots of surgeries have exceptional cases of unexpected swelling and bruising. Is this one more important because it has to do with the ONE BODY PART on a human being that Must Never Be Fucked With? Has anyone ever heard of/witnessed/personally experienced, say, an episiotomy? Go get your effing vasectomy and stop whining.
-posted by mel on portlandmercury.com
TOOTHLESS
We all benefit from everyone having proper access to adequate (or better) care [“Desperate for Dental,” News, Nov 25]. We also all suffer when others are denied such access. That sniffler on the bus who keeps coughing and sneezing isn’t doing so just to bug you. If s/he could afford to take the time to stay home and get well, s/he would. The children whose parents can afford to stay home with them when they’re sick, or pay someone to care for them, will. Each individual’s health is vital to public health, which is the responsibility of the state. Our right to health care entails our obligation to fund it (including wages for providers) for everyone.
-posted by nwspirit on portlandmercury.com
AND HOW, nwspirit. Maybe if we repeat it enough times, single-payer health care will come true. Until then? Enjoy two tickets to the Laurelhurst Theater and lunch at No Fish! Go Fish! Just please FLOSS afterward, okay?
Could there be a Mercury feature, “Straight Sex With Brian Cobb”? One paragraph is not enough!
May I add a snippit to your story ‘Snip Tuck’?
Not being of the heterosexual persuasion issues around reproduction have never come up. But since it seems a big deal with ‘those people’ perhaps the solution my sister and her husband came up with would be instructive. Since they had four children and my sister would almost prefer to be dead than pregnant again and since her husband would love to have more children my sister decided that it was up to her to get ‘altered.’ And so it came to pass. I think that the one who doesn’t want (more) children is the one who should take action and not demand if of the other. We are all adults here aren’t we?
No, Slow Bump, it is not that easy. First of all, such surgury is not as easy for a woman as a man.
Second, if our second child had been delivered by ceasarian as the first was, my wife would have had the surgury right then and there. But because he was “natural birth”, the ball was in my court, and as a result, I manned up, and got the snip, and was out of the office in under a half and hour.