Cleveland Steamer

It's said that there's no accounting for taste, but when it comes to sex there clearly is NO accounting for taste. I know that the internet contains everything you could possible imagine, along with many things you couldn't, but for the most part you can remain in blissful ignorance unless you actively go and look for something (in which case you have only yourself to blame).

I could have happily gone my whole life without knowing about the sexual act known as the Cleveland Steamer, but when I heard the Bob and Tom song of the same name I admit I had to Google it, along with many of the other acts mentioned in the song (rusty trombone anyone?)

Now there seems to be some debate among aficionados of this act as to what exactly constitutes a Cleveland Steamer. It seems clear that the first part of the process involves a man taking a shit on the chest of a woman with whom he is having sex. Then the process may (or may not, depending whose opinion you trust) require him to sit on the shit and rock backwards and forwards, possible while making a whistling noise. Personally I doubt that these embellishments are required - they sound like the kind of thing that would be added after the fact to enhance the myth. I mean, it's hard to imagine any woman lying quietly while a bloke on top of her smears shit on her chest (although it's equally unlikely that she will lie there while he takes said shit on her chest). Has anyone ever actually done this? I mean for real, with the intent of actually getting pleasure from it, not as part of some twisted video shoot?

Let's just imagine, for the sake of argument, that two consenting adults actually did want to indulge in such an act. (I can hardly believe anyone could type those words with a straight face.) We're talking about a bloke taking a shit here - surely he's going to want to grab a newspaper or something. And I don't think I've ever known a woman who didn't moan at her man for the amount of time he's spending in the bog; just imagine how pissed she's going to be when he's squatting over her, flicking through USA Today for twenty minutes, while waiting to get the turtle's head. "Can you just hurry up and shit on me already?"

And what's the etiquette for afterwards? I mean, assuming you don't just want to kill yourself? You're sitting there, either the shitter or the shittee, surrounded by the smell of fresh excreta, and it's not as though you can just wipe and flush is it? You're going to have to get that bad boy down the pan somehow. And wash the sheets, for sure. Possibly scrub the carpet too. And, worst of all, try and make some conversation with your erstwhile partner. "So, how was the turd for you?" "Oh, fine." "Fancy a chili dog?" "Nah. Not hungry just yet..."

Frankly it's hard to believe that anyone would want to try this Cleveland delight, but even harder to imagine that you could work it into conversation. "Hey, how about we try something a bit different tonight?" "OK. What did you have in mind? Dressing up? Talking dirty? Role play? Outdoors?" "Well, actually, I thought you could lie on your back and I'd take a massive dump on your tits. How's that sound?" Sounds like you might be pulling yourself off alone tonight.

Oh, and by the way, why Cleveland? Is that the kind of thing they dream up in that town? That's now what you're known for. Detroit has cars, Chicago has corruption, San Francisco has queers, and you have people taking a shit on each other. Might want to rethink that marketing approach...



Copyright © 2010 Edward Bison

Someone Else's Fault?

Here is the conclusion of a recent report by the Council of the Great City Schools:

"Black males continue to perform lower than their peers throughout the country on almost every indicator"

And what is the conclusion that is to be drawn from this report? That we must spend yet more money improving the prospects of black urban youth.

"...African American males are not getting the attention and support they need to succeed..."

Really? Here we go again with the mealy-mouthed, politically correct bullshit. The thesis of this report is that somehow this inequality of outcomes is the result of inequality of opportunity. Inner city blacks do badly in school because they are poor, or so we are told to believe, but how about the opposite hypothesis: inner city blacks are poor because they do badly in school. Of course you don't have a whole lot of income opportunity if you drop out of high school and end up illiterate, incoherent and functionally useless to any employer. No shit!

We are also asked to believe that inner city blacks do badly because they are in poor schools, but how about the hypothesis that the schools are poor because they are full of inner city blacks? We never hear that possibility explored, do we? Why not? After all, a school is the sum of four components: building, teachers, kids and parents. The quality of the building has absolutely fuck-all to do with learning potential. I remember being schooled in temporary huts, with an oil-fired heater in the corner, and sent out to play in the freezing cold at break time, and it never did any of us any harm. Likewise the teachers, while not unimportant, are not the major issue - we grew up with teachers that were crap, as well as those that were great, and inner city schools don't have a monopoly on shit teachers. (Besides, you won't ever hear the politically correct lefties blame the teachers - they're good union members, and can only be cast in the role of victim.)

That leaves us with kids and parents. Since parents are very largely responsible for the behavior and attitude of their kids, I think we can narrow the reason for crappy inner city schools down to crappy inner city kids, a result of crappy inner city parents. Not that all inner city parents are crap, but the study doesn't state that all inner city blacks fail, only that a much larger number fail than do whites.

Is it possible that inner city blacks don't care about education? It would be reasonable to believe that a very large proportion do not; otherwise they wouldn't be dropping out of school. In a superficial, mindless sub-culture, where respect comes with money and guns, why would you work hard to get a low-paying job when you can live on welfare while you try to make it big as a rapper, basketball player or drug dealer? You think this is a stereotype? Check the fucking statistics.

The repeated response to the observed failure of inner city black males to become educated is to spend more money trying to educate them. What the fuck is the point if they decided that they didn't want to be educated in the first place? Perhaps it would be more productive to cut off any welfare support for them or their bastard offspring, so that they would have to go out and get a low-paying job, simply to survive. Then they might put some emphasis on education for their own kids. Until they start taking responsibility for their own failure I fail to see why it should be my responsibility to dig even deeper in my pocket to bail them out. Society has provided schools - if you choose to waste the opportunity then the consequences should follow.

Generations of dirt poor immigrants have worked hard in crappy jobs, putting their kids through school so that they could have the opportunities their parents couldn't. Does the inner city black community lack that selfless attention to the development of the next generation? The massive majority of single-parent "families" doesn't exactly suggest otherwise.

The debate on this issue is pointless until the really tough questions can be raised, and the responsibility for the low achievement of inner city blacks finally be accepted by the people whose laziness and lack of commitment to education is so vividly on display. Crappy people make crappy schools, and not the other way around.


Copyright © 2010 Edward Bison