This has to be the biggest marketing blunder in advertising history: Trojan is marketing condoms to pigs.

The double-standard in advertising won't permit females to be represented as anything other than the most physically attractive members of their own species. I could be mistaken however; in that case, what animal should the women have evolved from?

The implication of this campaign is that males are solely and exclusively responsible for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and the epidemic of teenage pregnancies. This is mistaken.

Here's a quote from a Fox News story: "Jim Daniels, vice president for marketing at Trojan, said the ad is more expensive than any previous campaigns, but he declined to give a specific amount. Daniels said the company's goal is to "dramatically increase" condom use in the U.S. "The 'Evolve' ad does a nice job of being humorous, but it's also a serious call to action," Daniels said, adding, "The pigs are a symbol of irresponsible sexual behavior and are juxtaposed with the condom as a responsible symbol of respect for oneself and one's partner"

The pigs are a symbol of irresponsible advertising by persons who themselves could fairly be called pigs. There is no law that says we have to interpret the symbol of pigs the way some obscure marketing executive says that we should. His interpretation is obviously wrong.

The conclusion we should draw is that Trojan is marketing to pigs, and not humans. Trojan is marketing condoms to another species altogether. It is the biggest marketing blunder in history.

Initially I thought this commercial was part of a pig-headed campaign to sell Pig Condoms to pigs. I had hoped that Trojan's campaign would lead to reduced levels of sexually transmitted disease and unwanted pregnancy in their target demographic: the pig population. The commercial couldn't possibly be marketing Pig Condoms to humans.

But upon further reflection, a more profound interpretation occurred to me: Trojan is promoting bestiality.

Leviticus 20:15-16. "If there is a man who lies with an animal, he shall surely be put to death; you shall also kill the animal. If there is a woman who approaches any animal to mate with it, you shall kill the woman and the animal; they shall surely be put to death. Their blood guiltiness is upon them."

The transmogrification of a pig into a human is figurative. The perspective of the scene is that of the genetically privileged, evolved female denizens of the bar, who go there in search of interspecies relations with the pigs. When the transformation occurs, it happens only in the mind of one of those females. We know that pigs cannot evolve by purchasing condoms.

The transformation shouldn't be taken literally; instead, it should be regarded as a master stroke of cinematographic technique, a deft evocation of the psychological process of rationalizing bestiality as if it were ordinary human heterosexual sex. This carefully calibrated scene exposes the state of denial through which a female human sees a pig as if he were a human male, so that she can engage in interspecies relations with the animal. A stunning achievement.

This is the more profound interpretation of the commercial.

Self-indulgent, superficial, derivative fatuous drivel.

I had missed the point of this advice column: Cary is more confused and has more problems than his correspondents. That's entertaining.

Cleaning out an inbox is a grand waste of time these days. Gmail does a decent job of spam filtering and provides excellent search capabilities. The intention was to make it easier to search through thousands of email messages without having to waste time sorting them into folders or develop the habit of periodically archiving them and moving them somewhere else.

I doubt that whoever thought of the moral imperative to maintain an empty inbox was a historian. Most likely it was a politician with something to hide.

Fatuous drivel posing as satire.

I too have never tried drugs, and like the letter writer, I consider drug use unforgivably self-indulgent. Succumbing to peer pressure is weak-willed. We admire people who resist peer pressure to sample drugs, even if they never become addicts. Independence in the face of pressure from peers whom you might admire really is a sign of superiority and moral rectitude.

So I find the letter writer's response, which stops somewhat short of terminating all contact with his girlfriend without explanation, to be that of a wishy-washy enabler. He'd prefer to be shocked and tolerate drug use, than act to ensure he has nothing whatsoever to do with it.

I never married or had children. Marriage and kids would have been a distraction. When my father died, I had to leave college to help support my mother and two brothers. There wasn't much of a choice. When I had been working for a while, I bought my mother a car on a loan; it was a financial setback. In a sense, I already had a family. That deadly experience was enough.

Later, I put myself through graduate school. Now I have a Ph.D. in mathematics, and I'm on the faculty of a postgraduate institution. People select themselves out of careers they aren't suited for by choosing--when they have a choice--to pursue a relationship instead of a career. (This could be my own rationalization for not having the energy to put up with the pressure to support a family, or the patience to have my thoughts interrupted.)

"I've also noticed, at least in my circle of people, that men from former generations seem deeply threated by women with earning power."

There may be a few people who are intimidated. I think women make more out of this than men, who aren't stopping women from becoming mathematicians, physicists, construction workers, chemists or anything else. Nobody cares. I'm certainly not standing in anyone's way. The complaint about men being intimidated is beginning to sound like an excuse.