http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articl ... 21,00.html
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articl ... 35,00.html
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/ ... _dont.html

No, I really don't want to know whether or not you're a virgin - DOWN PRIDE,
DOWN!

I would guess most adults in this forum (at least the ones 21 and over) are not virgins.

I too am not asking but I never got the impression that this forum was full of virgins.

EDIT: About the links, N.L.Y., do you agree that they should be making fun of these novel ( ) sex scenes so as to discourage them?

Heh, man, if it were possible to physically abuse intangibles I'd bitchsmack your sense of humor back into commission.

Personally, however?
I don't really mind, Norman Mailer's status as a contemporaneous literary 'giant' is not going to be stricken at this blow, and were he alive the man's ego could well have sustained. In general, though, I don't really think discouraging their discouragement to be preferable.

I'm not sure if you are talking about my sense of humor with respect to the forum being full of virgins, the prize being awarded for bad sexual descriptions or both.

It is not that I don't have a sense of humor. I sensed that your comment was intended to be humorous. Maybe I should have just not replied to your posts, but in the same way you want to make people laugh with it, I want to make people realize that jokes about virginity and awards that single out the worst fictional description of sex (as opposed to the worst fictional description of faith or the worst fictional descriptional of war, etc.) seem to promote an uncomfortability with sex as a topic of discussion, which I am against because of how natural an act it is.

EDIT: I generally wanted to know your opinion on the subject as you have admitted (I think) that you are a literary fan, but from a social philosophical point of view, I think that I should have first admitted how I feel about the subject (i.e. that sex as a subject should be comfortable and not singled out) instead of questioning you first. I am still working on breaking that habit in these forums.

This is going to be extremely off topic. (well..i'll lol at the topic first cause that award is amusing.)

Bo.....you have got to be the most psycho-analytical person on the freakin face of this expansive planet. Seriously...Lol...At times I'm not sure whether to engage in some debate with you or to just scratch my head, shrug, and laugh.

So, congratulations and boo at the same time.

Ultimately I am not overly concerned with how another human develops - for instance, if a novelist such as the one in the last of the links is creatively limited by the thought of being stricken with such a blow, then I do not really see that she has any real place thrusting her works into a critical realm. The authors who win this award are authors who have big hairy balls and guts and step out on a limb, and if they're doing this then they will most likely have no real concern over whether or not someone finds it illicit or tawdry or shoddily written.
Similarly, in order to properly function in this world one needs must develop a certain insulative layering, and if they do then they will be only better able to exist. If they do not, they're the ones who suffer for it, not I. They call life developmental for the simple reason that over the course of it one develops, and if a person is currently uncomfortable with sex then he either will or will not develop into a state of comfort with it. I see no reason to be so overly concerned with another's development, and would much rather they come of their own accord to these understandings so that one day they too can be so comfortable with sex as to make a mockery of it. A person who is uncomfortable with sex certainly is not the most likely to find personal amusement from it in the form of a jest.
Pampering anyone will not aid in their acquisition of such things, really.

I do, in fact, take sex as a natural communion between two individuals, and that is ultimately a comfortable thing. There is ample comedy about war, ample comedy about faith. Your notion of a similar award for those two topics seems to me only pedantry.

My comment about your sense of humor, however, stems more from the fact that you often let it be supplanted by your own sociopolitical agenda.
It was amusing to me that, even though you do not find it comedic, you cannot allow a joke to be a joke, because it is inherently conflicting with your own agenda.
I am not really bothered by this, it's how you work it would appear, and so hence me making a joke about bitchsmacking your sense of humor, rather than berating you for it.

Sociopolitically, however?
The contest has very little to do with sex, much beyond it serving as the theme of each selection. It is primarily about the quality of one's writing. One does not, as an automaton, necessarily believe everything the Oscars, Pulitzers, or Grammys tells one about the quality of a production, so why should one about the Bad Sex awards?
It is merely someone's opinion, and if they have the means to promote it thus, then I can still see no more a problem with it than any other opinion.

@Kajakfaucon

Why would you call me psycho-analytical?

@N.L.Y.
That is evidence that I have a sense of humor.


I'm not really worried about the author of the award not being able to take it. I'm more concerned with notion that there is some non-(ultimately) arbitrary standard of taste that one should be ridiculed for. Admittedly if it is all in fun, that isn't so bad, but if someone is saying there writing IS bad, my questions would be "who are they to say so?"

As for comedies about faith and war, these are comedies about faith and war as objects, not about someone's particular subjective expression of them. It would be like giving an award for the most melodramatic story of someone dying in world war II, or the most ridiculous way of someone trying to fictionally show a character’s love and praise for god. Pedantry? Wow, I must not deserve to live! Oh wait, I thought that you were saying that I like to put little kids in adult situations. Oh, yeah, you actually mean using big words to show knowledge, huh? Sorry. Why, anyone like THAT must...

My girlfriend is making me leave to go to dinner so I’m being cut off mid-thought. I’ll try not to write more later.

I believe my latter point was to show that I am well aware you have a sense of humor, but more that it must be an exceedingly bored one by now.

Well, apart from that, I'm too exhausted currently to respond to someone who ignores my actual point in order that they reiterate their own. Perhaps later.
(That probably was not your intention, but I am too exhausted to further my own point clearly at the moment.)


Ah, and Heh -


So far as that goes, I'm just going to assume for the sake of simplicity you're attempting to prove you have a sense of humor.