Hair: A Phase we're going Through

Because I don't play videogames, and don't read manga, I think belonging to Deviant Art is my only insight into youth culture.  And what I'm seeing is: fussy, elaborate hairdos for girls.  The whole idea seems to be to divide the hair up into multiple strands, each strand done up a different way: some strands braided, others curled, some hanging forward, other tired into a sort of knot, one of these knots on top of the head, two knots on either side ...

Girls who have a lot of hair are lucky: the rest have to make do with hair extensions and other ways of showing more hair than they naturally have.

I can only hope that this is a passing phase.  In my opinion, hair has to be styled with taste.  If it is to be permed, it should be done with moderation.  Colored; beribboned, curled, twisted into a knot: all with moderation.  Sometimes a girl getting ready for her wedding is put in the hands of a beautician who is eager to show what she can do, so she (or maybe he, who knows) pulls out all the stops, and the friends of the bride look upon the finished product and shudder: what happened to our beautiful girl?  To my mind, the one requirement for a beautician is a sense of proportion.  (Of course, her restraint can be overridden by an overenthusiastic mother of the bride.  I'm sure some girls just don't get married, to avoid the anticipated excesses of their mothers.)

Because of the trends of the present day encourage hair-styling excesses, we're going to see crazy hair for a decade.  Often, a girl's hair is truly her crowning glory, so it is a tragedy to see it styled into a chaotic mess.

Kay

Diversity Around Here

People (I mean friends and family) often ask me about attitudes of the people I meet and talk to, and I answer as well às I can.  But increasingly I find that there is often an attitude that I have never heard before!   I'm reminded of the fact that, perhaps because of the freedom of speech, or because of the widely different places people have come from (and no, this isn't a cosmopolitan area, like NYC; it isn't a Blue Enclave at all), you do get an opinion that startles me.  It shows what a diverse place the US is.

And no, it isn't racial diversity I'm talking about.  Most of the people I talk to are white (sorry about that; I should try to widen my circle), it's just that even among whites, opinions are highly varied.

I can't give you statistics, but views on religion are varied.  Views on whether to go to the doctor when sick are varied.  Home schooling.  

War in Ukraine.  Migration across the border with Mexico.  Plastic.  The police.

I can't remember most of the other attitudes that surprised me.  Of course, when I used to teach, in a much larger community, the attitudes were even more widely diverse.  But in this little town, which is a moderate island in the vast Conservative farmland that is Rural Pennsylvania, attitudes are pretty diverse.

Don't get me wrong; I don't go around soliciting opinions.  I guess people are disarmed by my cute face (Not) or whatever.

People know I'm an ex-teacher, so negative opinions about the educational system are usually preceded by a sort of disclaimer.  "Nothing personal, but I have no use for Chemistry, or Algebra, or nothing."

Writing Erotica / Porn

At one time, I wrote a lot of porn text, just for my own satisfaction.  It was a little different from the erotic text commonly found in fiction these days: detailed accounts of sex and lovemaking.  Most authors who include these kinds of episodes in their stories would deny that it is porn; the difference is based on what the intention is: is it to excite and stimulate, or is it to underline the passion of two characters for each other?

In my case it started out being to excite and stimulate, initially just myself (that is, it was porn), but then morphed into romance, when I began to become interested in the characters other than as sexual puppets.  One of the stories in which this happened is--believe it or not---the story of Helen.  It was initially redolent (diffused, drenched, saturated) with descriptions of sex, where Helen persuades beautiful girls into being intimate with her.  Helen and Leila, for instance, would have sex with each other everywhere, especially in strange and dangerous places.  But I took all the sex out when I sanitized the story, once I decided to publish it.

I just took a look at the sales figures (or rather, the statistics of which stories have been downloaded, so it's silly to call it sales, because the stories are free) and once again noted that it is the stories with purple passages that are being downloaded.  I dearly wish I had some of those pornographic stories for you guys to have, but now I have become respectable, and I have standards to maintain!

I'm tempted to write some stories under (a new) pen name, and upload them.  Once I think of a good pen name, I will tell you!

Kay