Mark L. Van Name's Blog, page 243

Ask Dr. Efficient, the Love Guru: Dr. Efficient Answers All, #2

Warning: The following is an adult entry. If you are underage or simply do not want to read about sex-related topics, stop now.

I must also note that all opinions are those of Dr. Efficient.

Welcome to the second installment of Dr. Efficient's guest column on my blog. This time, we managed to snag a few minutes of his time at three different airports as he flew around the world in search of new secrets of the Tantra to share with you. In those precious moments, he answered three more of our reader questions for him. All came from U.S. women who chose to remain anonymous.

As long as you keep sending in questions, more answers will follow in later installments.

How does one entice a partner who has apparently given up sex into wanting to fuck again?

You're really not giving me a lot to go on, here. Did it occur to you that my advice might differ depending on whether you're an obese odoriferous octogenarian burn victim married to a woman who just can't stomach the nightly horror show anymore or you're a shapely twenty-five-year-old bit of skirt dating a man who's suddenly realized that he was born to be a sausage jockey?

Still, some universal rules do apply, the foremost of which is: You can't change other people; you can only change yourself. The lover of your reality is not going to become the lover of your dreams. The best you can hope for is some accommodation that leaves you marginally more content than you are now. You have three options:

1. Get over it. Find some other outlet for your sexual energies. Consider some alternatives: Exercise. Dance. Porn. Painting. Dressage. Porn. Writing. Suicide. Porn. Maybe if you can find more fulfillment elsewhere, getting your itch scratched will seem less indispensable to you.

2. Mix-and-match. Clearly your partner satisfies some of your needs, since you're still together. He--for simplicity's sake I'm going to assume that you're a straight woman because (a) it makes no difference and (b) no man would ever ask me this question. If you're a woman dating another woman, refer back to reason (a). Anyway, as I was saying, your partner merely doesn't satisfy you sexually. So find someone who does. If your partner is sufficiently open-minded or sufficiently oblivious, there's no reason why you can't have your cake and eat it too.

3. Manipulation. If you're too inhibited to tend to your own needs or find someone who can, your only hope is to try to manipulate your current lover into providing some trouser action in spite of himself. Good luck with that. The key here is to find activities that your partner likes and try to gradually redirect them so that they end with your getting shagged. Would he like a back rub? Start with that and try to turn it into a front-rub. Does he like dessert? Invite him to lick chocolate off your nipples. Does he want to bone someone else? Invite that person to join in! Etc.

Why is love so important to a woman and not so much for a man? And, no, saying "I love you" just to have sex doesn't count.

Like most differences between men and women, this one has its root in basic biology. An act of sexual intercourse requires only the slightest investment of time and attention on the part of the man. But it may leave a woman pregnant with a child that she has to bear for nine months and (unless she abandons it) until it's old enough to fend for itself. Male reproductive effort is an abundant resource. Female reproductive effort is a scarce resource. Hence women are likely to be more selective than men.

As with our cravings for salty and fatty foods, the desires shaped by hundreds of millennia of evolution are hard to overcome. The neolithic men who survived to pass along their genes had lots of children by lots of different women. The neolithic women who survived to pass along their genes secured the commitment of men to provide for themselves and their children. These instincts, obviously, make little sense in the modern world. Conditions have been altered by the advent of birth control and the availability of abortion as a more palatable alternative to the traditional infanticide. It's no longer expected that children will be raised exclusively by their mothers or that women need men to provide for them.

In sum, love is obsolete. It's a vestigial emotion that hangs on past its time like a cerebral appendix. But you still want it because you're basically a Neanderthal at heart.

What is it about big breasts that makes men go catatonic?

The American male's fascination with breasts is about ten percent intrinsic behavior and ninety percent cultural.

Men are naturally going to pay a certain amount of attention to distinctive sex characteristics. In an eye-tracking study, men looked at the breasts, face and crotch of a bikini-clad woman, but men also looked at the crotch of a bathing-suit-clad man. Presumably men quickly focus on distinctive sex characteristics because it was important for our caveman ancestors to rapidly classify strangers as threats (male) or reproductive opportunities (female). (Women in the same study didn't pay much attention to breasts or genitals. Presumably identifying a stranger's sex is less important to women because all women are to some extent inherently bisexual.)

So men are going to pay a certain amount of attention to breasts and crotches. But the amount of attention paid covers a pretty broad range. The pages of National Geographic are filled with pictures of bare-chested aboriginal women surrounded by aboriginal men who are neither staring nor fapping furiously. Yet those same pictures are all the inspiration teenage boys in America need to stroke one out. And walking down a street in Riyadh wearing a halter top is likely to get you more unwelcome attention than walking down a street in San Francisco without one. This wide range of male reactions to what women do or don't expose suggests that what's interesting to men isn't so much breasts per se as a chance to see bits of female anatomy that, in their particular culture, are usually kept hidden.

So if you want men to stop going dumb at the sight of your breasts, start going topless. I promise we'll get used to it and stop treating it like such a big deal.

Eventually.

There might be a certain amount of wanking before we get there.

Dr. Efficient will return soon! To get him to answer your questions, email them to me or send them via

Hobo with a Shotgun

The name alone would have been enough to interest me in this movie. Add Rutger Hauer as the lead and online trailers that promised violent strangeness, and I knew I had to go if it ever came to town. Amazingly, it did, so earlier tonight a group of us went to the lovely Carolina Theatre to check out the very odd cinematic offering.

Hours later, I still haven't decided how I feel about Hobo with a Shotgun.

It begins with a color-saturated Technicolor look that is just amazing. We then see close-ups of Hauer's face, who looks like he died seven years ago and no one thought to tell him. The huge amount of wear and tear on his face serves to make his blue eyes even more vivid than usual.

Once he gets off the train, however, the violence starts. Hobo with a Shotgun is easily the most violent, over-the-top, blood-soaked, seeking-to-offend, non-Japanese film I have seen in years, maybe ever. A few samples: A head torn off by a car pulling on a barb-wire noose. Beating bums to bloody pulp while laughing and filming. A twisted Santa speeding away with a kidnapped child in the back seat. Beating hookers.

All of that happens in a five-minute span in the beginning, while the film is still stretching its violence muscles.

Later, it gets far, far worse, often going farther than I would have believed any filmmaker would go. Example: Two bad-guy brothers, one of whom is carrying a flamethrower, enter a school bus full of children and turn all the kids into charred skeletons.

I could go on, but that's plenty.

The audience reactions varied wildly. For example, two women in our group embraced the over-the-top spirit and hooted and hollered through the entire blood-splattered film. Two others left early, unwilling to take any more. Everyone winced from time to time.

Hobo with a Shotgun is something Roger Corman might have made if you had removed all the rules he had to obey, cranked him up on crystal meth, killed his family in front of him, and then handed him Rutger Hauer, a shotgun, the men who killed his family, and a camera.

When I stood to leave, I was amazed at how far the film had gone in so many violent directions, liked that in some ways and hated it in others, and ultimately felt uneasy about the movie. I still do.

One thing is certain: Do not go to this movie if you are not prepared to see violence beyond the limits of what even most Japanese ultraviolent film directors will produce.

The Hollywood Career-O-Matic

Eric turned me on to this article, and though I rarely make a whole blog post from a link to another site, in this case I simply must. The reason is not the article itself, entertaining though it is. The reason is the interactive tool that the fine folks at Slate included, a tool that lets you compare the careers of different actors, directors, and so on. Check it out here.

What I find particularly interesting is that this assemblage of ratings from Rotten Tomatoes shows how very up and down most careers are. As near as I can tell, no one is a sure-fire winner, even Will Smith (though I still want him to option the Jon & Lobo books). If you're going to have a long career, you're going to get panned sometimes.

The most fun, though, comes from comparing the paths of actors, particularly bad ones. Chuck Norris vs. Steven Seagal. Chuck Norris vs. Dolph Lundren (which Kyle observed resembled a suicide pact). Pick your comparisons, and have fun!

We also finally have, as Kyle also noted, proof positive that Michael Caine will appear in absolutely anything.

Panciuto, take 3

A couple of weeks ago, a group of us headed back to Panciuto to give it a third try. If a restaurant delivers three exceptional meals on three visits spread out a bit in time, I figure it's a safe bet to call the place exceptional.

Panciuto definitely earned that distinction.

Once again, every dish we tasted was excellent. Though many of them were close to previous ones we'd tried, none were identical to their earlier incarnations. The bruschetta, always a wonder, was once again amazing, but in slightly different ways. The rabbit with pasta was a great blending of southern frying with Italian classic pasta and sauce. The cheese-stuffed ravioli were so much better in every area than what you get at most places that it's almost a shame they have the same basic name. And so on--every one a winner.

If you haven't yet been to Panciuto, make a reservation now. It's one of the Triangle's top restaurants, and it deserves your attention.

X-Men: First Class

When I was a kid, I loved comic books. I still do, though I no longer collect them. The first comic that deeply touched me was The X-Men. I wished that I had a better power than being smart and annoying, and I desperately wanted a school where all the kids had special powers--and I did, too. Typical dreams of a young comic and SF reader, I know, but they were mine. Even though we were poor, the first comic book for which I saved money and mail-ordered a back issue was X-Men.

Clearly, I'm in the middle of the bulls-eye of the target for this film and all the other X-Men pictures.

Despite that, I have not liked them all equally, and I have found some, notably the last Wolverine picture, rather tough to watch.

Not X-Men: First Class. I loved it. It's the best X-Men film yet and one of the better movies I've seen this year.

What's interesting about my affection for this movie is that it comes in spite of the film sharing a huge flaw with the Pirates film I somewhat panned just recently: I knew exactly where the plot in this one was going. Through great execution, however, in this movie that flaw never bothered me. I cared about the characters. I greatly enjoyed the special effects. I just had a grand time, and I did because the filmmakers here simply did their jobs better than those who made Pirates 4.

If you have no special affection for the X-Men or comic books, you'll probably still have a good time at this movie, so don't feel like you have to know the comics to enjoy the film. I still recommend it for you.

If, however, you are an X-Men fan, then I expect you will absolutely love this movie. I sure did.

Graduation day

Scott graduated from high school today. I was and am, as you might expect, incredibly proud of him, though far more because he's a great person than because he graduated.

The most touching part of the ceremony was when each senior took a yellow rose and presented it to her or his mother. Even though I obviously didn't get a rose, I found the sight of all these young people hugging and thanking their mothers to be quite moving.

Scott, like Sarah, went to this school for 14 years. Some of his friends go back that far. Thus, the changes that graduation will bring are profound, but I know he will handle them well.

This was Scott's day, so for me to write more about it now seems inappropriate.

Pirates 4

On opening weekend, a group of us ignored the reviews and headed out to see Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. I've been considering for a while how to sum up my reactions to it, but now I have both an open blog day and a reasonable summary.

I had a pleasant time watching it. Johnny Depp chewed the scenery, and so did the other leads. Penelope Cruz was as Cruzalicious as ever. The plot was as sensible as in the earlier three films--which is to say, it was a thin layer of silliness on which the actors danced. All the things you've come to expect from this franchise--from the inevitable getaway-with-chase of Depp to the pirate scenes aboard ship--appeared and were competently rendered.

The problem, though, is that the film was exactly what you'd expect. At no point did I sense the smallest spark of originality. It's as if the producers and director and writers had outlined the previous films and then made sure this one contained one of every element they found.

So, if you don't mind your formulaic movie hewing so closely to the formula that at times you long for something new, or if a great cast and pretty darn good CG effects are enough to draw you into the story despite the formulaic nature of the movie, then you'll enjoy Pirates 4. Otherwise, give it a pass.

Ask Dr. Efficient, the Love Guru: Dr. Efficient Answers All

Warning: The following is an adult entry. If you are underage or simply do not want to read about sex-related topics, stop now.

I must also note that all opinions are those of Dr. Efficient.

On May 23, I announced this new feature of my blog. Today, we inaugurate both June and this column. We were lucky enough to catch Dr. Efficient between visits to India and his speaking engagements at the U.N. and the Kinsey Institute, so we now have his answers to three of our first questions. All came from U.S. women who chose to remain anonymous.

More answers will follow in later installments.

Why do men obsess so much about the size of their penises? Do they truly get penis envy? And, do they think we really care about the size?

While men clearly don't understand how women think, apparently women don't understand how men or women think. Allow me to enlighten:

1. No gentleman of my acquaintance has ever expressed the slightest concern over the size of his penis. I haven't checked, but I have no particular reason to believe that I've self-selected for a fellowship of monster-dicked alpha-male supermen. Yes, the volume of e-mail spam relating to penile enhancement suggests that there's a target demographic for such products out there somewhere. But I'd guess that demographic is the bottom percentile for self-esteem, if not penis size.

2. Freud believed that "penis envy" was the reaction of a young girl at the age when she became aware that boys had a penis and she did not. Remember how I said that men don't understand women? On the other hand, the movie Annie Hall contains this exchange:

Annie Hall: And then she mentioned penis envy. Do you know about that?
Alvy Singer: Me? I'm, I'm one of the few males who suffers from that.

So apparently the answer to your question is, yes, men truly get penis envy, at least in Woody Allen movies.

3. I've been told by several women that they do care about penis size. If you don't, I'm sure that somewhere out there is a man with a micropenis that's right for you. Try contacting Woody Allen! Do not Google the word "micropenis"!

What foods should a man eat/or not eat to make his cum tasty?

I spend years reading the ancient philosophers. I master the Tantric arts. I study psychology, evolutionary biology, and the behavioral economics of mating behavior. But do I get called upon to shine a light into the dark corners of the human heart? Am I asked to explicate the complexities of mating behavior? No. Instead, it's all, "How can I make my boyfriend's spooge taste like he loves me?" Well, you can't, because he doesn't.

There are, however, some things he can do to alleviate the bitter taste of contempt in his baby-batter. Dairy products and beer are contraindicated. By the time they've passed through the human body and turned to boysauce, they've changed much the way they would if left out on a warm day. Conversely, fruits like pineapple or watermelon reportedly give your man's mangravy a sweeter tang.

But for a heavier, creamier jism, I'd suggest trying maple-glazed bacon. Everything's better with bacon. When life hands you bacon, make Baconnaise!

Why are men so clueless about what a woman needs in a relationship?

Men are simple, direct creatures. As such, they're at a complete loss in most dealings with women. If your man isn't giving you what you need, one of two reasons obtains:

1. You haven't been sufficiently explicit in telling him what you need. Men need clear instructions. Very, very clear instructions. If you tell your man, "I'm going to tell you about my lousy day at work. I want you to make supportive and encouraging noises. I don't want you to try to tell me how I could solve any of my problems. Yes, that's irrational, but that's how it's going to be," then you're probably going to get what you want. Otherwise, you're probably going to end up somewhat dissatisfied.

2. If your man seems to forget some of the algorithm along the way, you may not be making it worth his while. A man can follow almost any set of instructions that ends with him getting laid. "I'm going to tell you about my lousy day at work... and then I'm going to give you a blow job." Sounds more compelling, doesn't it? You certainly have my complete attention.

Dr. Efficient will return soon! To get him to answer your questions, email them to me or send them via

On the road again: Balticon, day 6

A very late work night led to an all too early awakening, but that seems to be rather common for me these days. The drive home was fortunately uneventful, for which I am always grateful. When I wasn't driving, I was able to catch up on email, so I didn't slow others at work too much.

The evening went to family time, unpacking, catching up on the work that had piled up, and so on--pretty much as usual.

Tomorrow, Dr. Efficient's debut advice column!

In the meantime, for no reason I can pinpoint, this old Randy Newman song has been rattling around in my head for some time, so now I'll stick it in yours, too.

On the road again: Balticon, day 5

Too much good food and too much residual energy from all the performing resulted in a very restless night, but I still managed to spend more of it in bed than I do on most nights.

First up in the morning was a panel on violence in SF and fantasy. I wasn't satisfied with how it went, but the audience seemed engaged, so perhaps I should be happy.

After saying goodbye to friends, a three-hour drive deposited me at the doorstep of the wonderful Inn at Little Washington, Chef and Owner Patrick O'Connell's amazing creation. The Inn leaches away tension and replaces it with relaxation, so I was very happy to arrive. Dinner was, as always, amazing.

In a brief late-evening check of personal email before I turned to work, I learned that Children No More had won the Fourth-Day Universe Best Military SF award. What Distant Deeps, the most recent RCN series novel of my friend, David Drake, won the Best Space Opera award. I was happy to learn of both. My congratulations to all the winners and nominees in all the categories. I do have to also thank my friend, Lynn, who took it upon herself to draw my book to the attention of a lot of students; I sincerely doubt CNM would have done as well without all her efforts.

Even on a day that contains several hours of break time, work awaits, so I now return to it.