Letters to the Editor

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Amerigo

Published Letters: 955     Editor's Choice: 60

  • Dirty women/clean women

    [Read the article: Men on eHarmony seem obsessed with women who are "clean"]
    [Read more letters about this article: Here]

    I have had oral sex with numerous women, and I am fairly confident that this "clean" women thing has nothing to do with that, for a very simple reason. You don't just grab women off the street and go down on them without both of you have a darn good shower first, whether it be together or singly. You just don't.

    And you brush your teeth and preferably use mouthwash to avoid infections in those delicate nether regions, because the human mouth is a positive cesspit of germs.

    However, if I was desperate enough to be looking on e-harmony I might still check the box for clean women.

    Why?

    Well, first of all this would rule out any smokers. Yes, it would, because I can't stand women whose hair, clothes, and homes smell of rancid smoke.

    Secondly, because I recently had an experience with a very dirty woman. Not that kind of experience, though! She was one of my tenants, and when she left the house it stank. The spare shower had been used as a cat toilet, the carpets smelled of cat piss, the kitchen was crawling with roaches, the oven was beyond recall,and the refrigerator was the proverbial biochemistry lab.

    The reason she left was that her husband had been promoted to a new job as assistant store manager in a well-known Dow Jones Index company that occurs late in the alphabet, and I found myself asking "how on earth could that man marry such a filthy woman?" (I should mention here that the wife was home all day and did not work outside the house. She did not appear to be depressed, though she complained that she thought her husband might well be gay as they had not had sex in three years.)

    OK not every one has had this experience, but most of us men do prefer a woman who keeps a clean kitchen, does not leave dirty dishes out overnight etc. We do not wish to shack up with a slattern.

    So my bet is that many (not all) of these men have had a bad experience with a woman who was not a good housekeeper, and that it has nothing to do with oral sex.

    Another possibility though is that "clean" is a code word for not sexually promiscuous. The late Princess Diana was quoted as saying, with regard to her virginity, that she was keeping herself “tidy” for someone special. The words "clean" and "tidy" seem to have a special affinity for each other and often occur in tandem.

    And finally, to people of a religious bent, the word "unclean" may also have special connotations, especially in connection with menstruation and skin diseases. So with these god-fearin' guys, you definitely don't want to be getting menstrual blood on the bedsheets or zits on your face.

  • Good for Amazon, count me in

    [Read the article: Amazon's MP3 store: Better than iTunes]
    [Read more letters about this article: Here]

    Sounds like a good deal as I use a Toshiba Gigabeat mp3 player with the open source Rockbox operating system (also available for other players) which I highly recommend.

    Traditionally I have usuallly bought CDs so as to have a permanent hard copy, but recently have tried something different.

    You can buy a pack of 5 recordable DVDs for only few dollars. Since in 126 kbs mp3 form you can put about 12 CDs on to one CD, you can put about 80CDs onto a single DVD disc as a data disc, thus 400 CDs onto a set of 5 DVDs as a backup for about $5.

    I have done this and then sealed the package to be used in emergency. But the real significance of this is that probably that long after I am dead my heirs and descendants will have free access to a collection that includes all the significant music of the big band and swing era, the 100 best jazz albums of all time, and the 50 or so best blues albums of all time.

    I also have a collection of over 100 BBC radio shows featuring musicals, film, and dance band music which may also be of interest to future generations.

    Others will have fantastic collections of rock and rap to pass on to their heirs. Now that we are in the digital age, music will never be the same again.