Ambiguity of the day (from GQ): "If your friend says she wants to cut off every dick in a five mile radius, let her!"

The article, by Marian Bull, is "How to Talk to the Women in Your Life Right Now," and by "right now," she means:



There's quite possibly a lot of good advice there. But what made me select this — out of everything — to blog was the absurd, grisly second meaning of "If your friend says she wants to cut off every dick in a five mile radius, let her!"

ADDED: I'm reminded of a poster I saw in Amsterdam back in 1993. I made a drawing — previously, blogged here — in my "Amsterdam Notebooks":

"PUBLIC CASTRATION IS A GOOD IDEA/VICTIMS OF RAPE DEMAND JUSTICE."

What called that to mind was my discussion with Meade as he was writing this comment:

"If your friend says she wants to cut off every dick in a five mile radius, let her!"

And then tell her: Only five miles? "No artificial limits as to time or [distance] should be imposed on this [mass amputation]."

And then run, old man. Run like hell.

I had suggested that Meade could avoid attracting language/anatomy pedants by using the word "amputation" instead of "castration."

I'm also reminded of the Ernest Hemingway story, "God Rest You Merry Gentlemen" (1925). Summary:

Two physicians sit in the Emergency Room of a Kansas City hospital on Christmas Day.... The doctors are telling the narrator of their most interesting encounter of this holiday season: a distraught adolescent, in a religious frenzy, had come in requesting castration for his "awful lust." The two docs managed to blunder the encounter so sufficiently that the boy left, only to return a few hours later bleeding dangerously from his penile self-amputation. The self-centered conversation returns to verbal ego-play between the two physicians, without a hint that either has considered the magnitude of the medical malfeasance against the boy.