Olney Garkle is presently enjoying a nervous breakdown. Over then, to former Bilegrip staffer Benoît Balz, the only libertine on his block, for the following item. Other former staffers will hopefully be conned into service until Garkle is repaired. -- Admin

Wrong way, go back!

Young believers pray and sway to a new beat.

Teenagers often lie to their parents when they are going out for the night, but some Melbourne teens are now telling their parents they are off to parties when they are going to church.

What's all this, then? We sent our children to Catholic schools, the reasons being twofold: To learn about the quaint concept of compassion, which we surmised was glossed over in state schools and held to be blasphemous in MBA-motivated private schools, but mainly to get religion completely out of their systems so they wouldn't fall prey to nutter sects like the above.

They look like regular folks, but are they? In dealing with those of our species should we not adhere to the admonishment to accept no substitutes? Yea, I say unto thee, do not be fooled by weirdos posing as ordinary blokes and sheilas.

Here's what one of 'em says:

Every day I get up feeling happy," says Sam Hill, 17, who previously suffered depression. "The difference between me and some of my friends is that I don't go to parties, drink, smoke or do sex. I stay away from anything that might pull me down."

Well, Sam, stay cocooned if you want to, but life was meant to be lived, not feared. Of course, you don't have to do all those things to excess, or even do them at all, but only the odd monk or nun has the remotest chance of pulling off total renunciation. And, at such an early age? Sounds to me like bullshit rationalising away stark raving fear.

Looking again at the photo, that honey in the middle might exchange her look of tentative rapture for the full-blown kind if she were engaged in some hard-core copulation. The kind where you suddenly think, "Crikey, why does anyone ever do anything else?"

Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette

Smokers more likely to have girls: study.

Couples who smoke are almost twice as likely to get a baby girl, according to research that suggests tobacco "kills" boy foetuses.

At last! The solution to all man-made violence. If mum and dad keep smoking, 99 per cent of those bloodthirsty Y chromosomes won't get a look-in. As for the one per cent of fella spermatozoons who manage to break on through to the other side, it'll be the porno heaven life was meant to be. Every bloke's dream (before being picadored by the work ethic): a planet of slishy beauties all to (mostly) himself.

Getting to the root of rooting

Sexual healing in the aftermath of 9/11

Dr Michael Bader, a practicing psychologist and psychoanalyst and the author of Arousal: The Secret Logic of Sexual Fantasies, describes a phenomenon he calls “terror sex”. “The lowering of external prohibitions promotes the lowering of internal ones, internal injunctions against being too vulnerable or too altruistic,” says Bader. “When the external trappings of regulation, order, and control are lowered, one’s forbidden longings and impulses can more safely flourish. This explains the surprising finding that people seem more sexual after a disaster.”

In other words, we spend most of our lives distracted from sexual ecstasy by meaningless, insectoid work. How wonderfully sane it would be if there were an attractive little shed at the corner of every city street, manned by a jolly old woman who took your money and changed the sheets on the small bed therein, so that strangers could satisfy their morning pings of lust before heading off to work. Indeed, the peppy old tune, Whistle While You Work, would take on vastly new meanings. But no, it's a conservative world, and those momentary secretions of desire are swept away in a desert of time clocks and the inanity of having to earn a crust.

OK, so most people are too boring, or (like the folks at the top of this page) too frightened to let go. That's no reason to inhibit the rest of us. The world needs less John Howard's and more revelling libertines.

-- Benoît Balz