\u201cThe vagina<\/i>,\u201d writes Carlton, \u201cboth looks and acts like a purse<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an odd opening for an academic treatise, isn\u2019t it?\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m not even sure that it\u2019s true.\u00a0 Does the vagina act<\/i> like a purse?\u00a0 I suppose it could be argued that \u201cthe love muscle,\u201d as he calls it, is so sought after by men that they do seem happy to throw money at it, yet it is a strange way to open a scholarly study of human love;\u00a0 but then this author is always unusual and it will come as no surprise to his many fans to find that the writer is not a human at all but a thinking machine, a 4.5 Bowie.\u00a0 I never use the term robot,\u00a0 for the word implies something mechanical or pre-controlled, which in the case of Carlton would be very misleading because he is, despite his non-humanity, a highly original thinker.\u00a0 We are fortunate indeed to have him here on Campus as Regius Professor of Humorology.\u00a0 Humorology, the study of the causes and nature of comedy, is today a well- established science but when Carlton joined our University over a hundred years ago, it was a brand new discipline, a tiny backwater in the Department of Metachemistry.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard for us humans to remember that when he came along Metachemistry itself was less than a hundred and fifty years old; this now venerable science which began with The Uncertainty Theory, where you can\u2019t say where anything is, and ended with The Anxiety Theory, where you can\u2019t say where you left it.<\/p>\n
Incidentally, I use the masculine personal pronoun with Carlton purely for convenience.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u201d seems so cold, and the modern \u201cheshe\u201d is ugly, but it is important to remember that Carlton is essentially genderless.\u00a0\u00a0 A perfect viewpoint you might say, for undertaking a study of human sexuality, which is what this fine book is, yet Carlton was ridiculed for tackling the subject of sex at all.\u00a0 \u201cProfessor Joins Cliterati\u201d <\/i>was the headline of one particularly nasty review in a Tablot, and there has been no shortage of critics denying the right of non-humans to examine human behavior, particularly sexuality.\u00a0 But even this doesn\u2019t quite explain the furor which has greeted the announcement of the forthcoming publication of Venus Envy.<\/i><\/p>\n
Perhaps Carlton should be accustomed to abuse, for he has never been far from controversy.\u00a0 Indeed, since his earliest days he has courted conflict, as you may see from his autobiographical memoir, I Carlton<\/i>, if you are ever lucky enough to get hold of a copy.\u00a0\u00a0 I need hardly expound his manifold academic achievements.\u00a0 He was the first thinking machine to submit a thesis for a Nobel Prize, De Rerum Comoedia, (Concerning Comedy) on the nature of irony in humans, although, ironically, he was disqualified for not being human.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He was compensated for this disappointment when his startlingly original thesis recognizing the force of Levity<\/i> in the Universe earned him tenure here at The University of South Titan.<\/p>\n
There were many at the time who remonstrated against accepting an android into academia, but he soon rose above this early prejudice. Indeed in the last few decades, I am happy to say, mechanistic racism has been almost entirely removed from our Universities.\u00a0 Teaching machines are now totally accepted on Campus.\u00a0 We have much to gain from non-human thought, not least a little humility when considering ourselves. \u00a0\u00a0Professor Carlton has been in the vanguard of helping us comprehend the way we are.\u00a0\u00a0 His new book is invaluable to an understanding of the way we mate.\u00a0 More than a bed-time companion, it challenges our way of thinking about ourselves.<\/p>\n
When I first joined the Metachemistry Department, \u00a0Gratuitism<\/i> was all the rage.\u00a0 Gratuitism, <\/i>or Free Won\u2019t <\/i>\u00a0to give it its proper academic title, is essentially a rag-tag philosophy which argues that chaos reigns in the Universe, that everything is happenstance, that life is a mistake and that accident is God.\u00a0 Gertrude Stein was the unwitting Godmother of this philosophy with her observation \u201cthere\u2019s no there<\/i> there,\u201d\u00a0 but she was referring disparagingly to Oakland and not denying the causal reality of all things and she would be distinctly surprised to learn she had become the basis of a philosophy, just as Mozart would be shocked to learn he had starred in a movie.\u00a0 That\u2019s the thing about the future: it\u2019s all utterly startling.<\/p>\n
When I was a young undergraduate Carlton demolished Gratuitism<\/i> in a brilliant series of lectures called Byte Me<\/i> in which he charted the evolution of the electron.\u00a0 He invented the concept of \u201cironic\u201d numbers, figures that could be understood to have different values to different observers, and was able to prove mathematically that the future is both inevitable and <\/i>unpredictable.\u00a0 Nothing could be known for sure and yet this very unpredictability was a certainty.\u00a0 So how to resolve this paradox?\u00a0\u00a0 In the Electron Age, he argued, existence<\/i> is indistinguishable from information<\/i>.\u00a0 Indeed the information and the evidence that it exists are the same thing. Existence is essence.\u00a0 He had rediscovered a form of Electronic Existentialism.\u00a0\u00a0 This led to his great work on Bionic Evolution in which he charted the evolution of the electron.<\/p>\n
What he labeled The Wood Age<\/i>, our Biological Era in which information traveled at the speed of life, and was largely carbon based (tree, paper, ink, coal, steam and oil) had been replaced by the Bionic Era, The Age of the Electron.<\/p>\n
Unnatural History<\/i>, as this subject was then called, is now better known as The Inhumanities<\/i>, but Carlton was the first to study the history and development of the information-bearing electron in his groundbreaking book The Ascent of Magnet<\/i>.\u00a0 Even then he attracted detractors.\u00a0\u00a0 His book was ridiculed, parodied as Fission Chips, <\/i>and he was dismissed as MacDarwin, but I am happy to say that this great work has remained a best seller, as well as one of my personal favorites (along with Metal Fatigue<\/i>, his slender book of poems which earned him a Pulitzer and a Tony Award.)<\/p>\n
During his later years, when asked what he was working on he would reply that \u201che was working on nothing.\u201d \u00a0He meant it literally of course.\u00a0 The concept of nothing<\/i> had always obsessed him. \u00a0The idea of the absence of thingness intrigued him. \u00a0Since nothing cannot come from something, then nothing<\/i> cannot possibly exist, since something is the nature of the Universe.\u00a0 Conceptually even a vacuum is filled with itself.\u00a0 To examine these ideas he invented his famous Negative Dice.\u00a0 He created a pair of dice numbered in the usual way except each digit was given a negative value: minus one through minus six.\u00a0 When the sum of the two dice is obtained by multiplication and not by simple addition, it is impossible to roll a negative number.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 With normal dice, it is impossible to roll a zero, but if you mix Negative and Positive Dice it is now possible to roll zero. (Actually six times:\u00a0 six plus minus six, through one plus minus one.)<\/p>\n
For this he was banned from all Casinos.<\/p>\n
Carlton has been unjustly accused of creating controversy merely for the sake of it and there are even some who refer to him as Charlatan and call his teaching The I Thing<\/i>.\u00a0\u00a0 He has, they say, invented The Nouvelle Vague <\/i>with his famous Butterfly Mind Theorem<\/i>,\u00a0 a theorem which becomes so easily distracted it is unable to prove itself.\u00a0\u00a0 But this is nonsense.\u00a0 He is an utterly sympathetic entity.\u00a0 He was the first to argue for the extension of animal legal rights to intelligent aquatic life, and his paper Habeas Porpoise <\/i>denounced man\u2019s inhumanity to manatee and led directly to legislation which permitted dolphins for the first time to have lawyers.\u00a0 Although his Complete History of the Future<\/i>, is still sadly incomplete, his Venus Envy<\/i>, stands as a shining example of popular academic writing.\u00a0 I am sure it will find many fans.\u00a0 I know that his current lectures, Enquiries into the Nature of Human Religion, <\/i>have caused anger, but I find his controversial Paradox of the Atheist God, <\/i>\u00a0in which he posits a God who does not believe in himself, a tremendously stimulating idea and I can only deplore the decision of the University to withdraw the course and ban him from all further religious enquiry.\u00a0 His enemies wanted to burn him. \u00a0Or at least melt him down.\u00a0 In this age!\u00a0 It is monstrous how much influence powerful religious bodies still wield over the academic world through their funding programs, and we would do well to remember that religions, while posing as harmless philosophies, are outside the realms of normal logic, behave contrary to the rules of science and are the primary cause of human warfare.\u00a0 As well as leading to strange costumes and bad sex.<\/p>\n
This sharp lesson in the limitations of freedom of speech left Carlton with only one major field for study:\u00a0 the subject of Sex.\u00a0 Venus Envy<\/i> is the fruit of this labor. \u00a0Ever since man first ejaculated in space \u2013 see Confessions of an Astronaut <\/i>or Hand Jobs in Tight Places (Oxford Scientific Books 2001) <\/i>sex in space has been the subject of thousands of books, from the helpful best-seller The Joy of Zero Gravity Sex<\/i> to the erotic classic 2069.\u00a0 <\/i>\u00a0So this book of Carlton\u2019s is not exactly virgin territory, if I may be forgiven a pun.\u00a0 (Carlton loves puns almost as much as paradoxes, indeed one of his early books is called Paradox Lost<\/i> and features a blind poet who cannot find his manuscript.)\u00a0 This is the first book by a non-human to attempt to understand human sexuality and for that reason alone it is worthy of attention.\u00a0 His understanding of human comedy is unique in my experience amongst academic androids and it has permitted him to observe that the mating process in humans is essentially hilarious.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This makes Venus Envy<\/i> a classic of its kind.<\/p>\n
I thoroughly recommend this book.<\/p>\n
Carl Sartre<\/p>\n
The University of Southern Saturn<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The author of this foreword, Professor Carl Sartre, was found dead shortly after writing this introduction.\u00a0 At 11 a.m. on the morning of February 45th<\/sup> 2238 (Universal Relative Time) he was found by his Housebot, lying on his back, bleeding heavily on to a\u00a0 Persian rug behind the desk in his study at the University of South Titan.\u00a0\u00a0 He had been bludgeoned to death by a heavy object.\u00a0\u00a0 The murder weapon was found beside the body.\u00a0 It attracted considerable attention due to its unusual nature.\u00a0\u00a0 It was a large heavy metal dildo.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0This silver metal dildo, an antique from the 21st<\/sup> century, on loan from The Hustler Museum, was until recently in the possession of Professor Carlton, a humanoid co-faculty worker, and the subject of the deceased\u2019s last known writing.\u00a0 When questioned, the android claimed the dildo was a research tool for his new book Venus Envy<\/i>, a study of human sexuality.\u00a0 He had no idea how it had left his possession or how it had come to be found at the murder scene.\u00a0\u00a0 He described himself as a colleague in the Department of Inhumanities, a chess partner of the deceased and the author of several notable academic books.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0The shocking nature of the crime, and the nature of the murder weapon created a stir amongst the Tellytabs.\u00a0\u00a0 Who would want to kill such a harmless old academic? Why the dildo?\u00a0 Was it a sex crime?\u00a0\u00a0 Speculation was rife.\u00a0 The Tablots were full of stories.\u00a0\u00a0 There were no apparent witnesses, all doors were locked, the usual scanning devices were in place.\u00a0 There was no forcible entry.\u00a0 No alarms. \u00a0No warnings.\u00a0 Only one person had access to the Professor\u2019s quarters.: the humanoid Carlton.\u00a0 It seems he was entrusted with the entry codes and was in the habit of visiting the Professor in the evenings, to enjoy a quiet game of three-dimensional chess or watch a ball game.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Suspicion naturally fell on him. He had the means, and the opportunity but there was a total lack of motive.\u00a0\u00a0 On the whole authors do not go around bludgeoning the writers of their forewords; certainly not at their desks and certainly not while they are writing such flattering recommendations.\u00a0 It seemed unthinkable that the perpetrator could be Carlton.\u00a0 Why should this venerable thinking machine resort to violence?\u00a0 And yet who else could it be?<\/strong><\/p>\n From The Tablots Report, the evening of the 46th<\/sup> of February (URT time).<\/p>\n Carlton, an Assistant Professor at the University of South Titan has been detained and is assisting Police in their enquiries.<\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Foreword \u201cThe vagina,\u201d writes Carlton, \u201cboth looks and acts like a purse.\u201d It\u2019s an odd opening for an academic treatise, isn\u2019t it?\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m not even sure that it\u2019s true.\u00a0 Does the vagina act like a purse?\u00a0 I suppose it could be argued that \u201cthe love muscle,\u201d as he calls it, is so sought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":329,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326\/revisions\/329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}