This might have been an opinion piece or a review of a controversial book. Instead it is an interlinking stream of thoughts; ideas that I do not wish to maintain residence in my consciousness for the length of time it would take me to work them all into a coherent opinion piece. The following is largely an attempt to purge this content from my organic hard drive.

My friends and family occupy every possible point on the religious compass, from rabid atheist to born-again Christians waiting for the Rapture. I am ever tiptoeing through the conversations on this subject they originate. I do not start religious discussions. The atheists think I am one of them. The Christians think I’m an atheist also. The spiritualists think I’m an agnostic. The truth is, I have sunk so much of my life into studying religion and spirituality that I have shut myself out. I’m a total student-investigator too curious to pick a side. I suppose I have robbed myself of the ability to have ‘faith’ as the Christians see it.

I have been dragged into many a discussion as a third party, or by a witnessing evangelist or griping atheist. Of all of these kinds of experiences I have had, the conversation that stands out most in my mind was in writing, and some things I read this week have kept dredging up this dead man’s words in my mind…

With perhaps 400 fiction and nonfiction books to his credit Isaac Asimov is a giant in the science-fiction literary field. In his day, writing in the 1940s and 50s, if you were not a Christian of a long standing protestant denomination you were socially suspect. If you were an atheist, you were a nut-job. Asimov lived as an avowed atheist. When he was nearing his end I read one of his last editorials in the sci-fi magazine he edited. He had announced his terminal illness, and was immediately beseeched by religious nuts who wanted to convert him on his deathbed. One of these people was a New Age believer in spiritual transmigration [a variation on the Hindu ideal of reincarnation].

With his trademark acumen and dry wit Asimov announced that he had considered the subject, and preferred to believe that reincarnation was not possible. He had run the numbers and determined that, if reincarnated, he had a miniscule chance of coming back as a member of an enlightened society. Instead, he pointed out, that any New Age upper middleclass American who passed from this life destined to transmigrate into the fetus of a soon-to-be-born member of the human race, would almost certainly come back as a starving, neglected, child of squalor in a third world country. He declared that with such alternatives he would embrace oblivion…

I was having a discussion about birth control, abortion and other politically vogue topics when my friend leant me the sequel to a book called Freakonomics. He described the first book as having caused a big storm when the authors suggested that the crime decline in the early 1990s was due to the legalization of abortion and the fact that abortion is primarily practiced [indeed marketed to] inner city blacks. He had lost the first volume but leant me the second volume. Much of their research, like how much money crack-dealers and hookers get paid, raised the eye brow I flex when in Harm City mode, and I read on. I don’t have time to do a review, but I definitely want to read Freakonomics and can highly recommend Superfreakonomics, Levitt & Dubner, Morrow, 2009.

Here is a taste: a drunk walker is eight times more likely to die than a drunk driver; Chicago street prostitutes are beaten on average once a month and are more likely to have sex with a cop [by a wide margin] than they are to be arrested by one; in 1898 an international urban planning conference was held in New York to find a solution for horse manure choking city streets, failed to find a solution, and broke up seven days before scheduled; in 1900 200,000 horses were living and shitting in New York City, and horse accidents killed 200 New Yorkers.

When I got to living conditions for Indian women I was immediately reminded of Asimov’s dictum about reincarnation when these two economists began applying their science to domestic violence and sex in India. I already knew that Indian men had the smallest penises in the world [see Attack of the Last Virgin in Harm City] and that the women did not smile much, but…

Male children are so favored in India that males outnumber females by 38 million—that is a lot of baby killing, with midwives charging $2.50 to snuff out the little girls.

Indian penises are so small that World Health Organization condoms come off most of the time, resulting in high rates of STDs and unwanted pregnancies. These same condoms split when American teenagers try to use them, and are apparently sized for Chinese and Japanese men. No wonder nobody uses condoms in Africa, what is the point? Have a water balloon battle instead.

51% of Indian men claim that wife-beating is good.

54% of Indian women agree that wife-beating is necessary, as a punishment for overcooked flatbread for instance.

About 100,000 Indian women a year, most of whom have probably never even had a conciliatory orgasm, are immolated in ‘bride-burnings’. If she is a bitch you burn her. If she is a good girl someone else burns her to death at your funeral.

Okay, I have written novels about reincarnation, and, as a boy wanted to believe in it. After reading this book I’m with Asimov. Could you imagine being born a poor girl in India?

The authors then turned to prostitutes in Chicago, and found out that the primary reason why they get beaten is because when a customer cannot get erect he blames the hooker and beats her. The larger study of prostitution in this book does conclude that hookers are temporary wife surrogates, and the high class hookers get treated much better than the street hookers. This, taking into account micro-penis fueled beatings of Indian women, seemed to me to be linked, so I called an expert. Having only handled one penis I can hardly consider myself an expert.

I know numerous female experts on abuse and other things from all of the interviews I have done over the years. I will occasionally call and ask the opinion of some of these ladies on various female issues, sometimes to do with Harm City reports, and sometimes for ‘girly’ back-story information for the composition of my fictional female characters.

The lady I called this morning is an upper middleclass woman who has done well for herself managing a string of hard working husbands, male bosses, and boyfriends throughout her life. My Sunset Saga character Joan Henderson is largely based on this lady. Now, she comes from the same lower middleclass origins as most of the abuse and rape victims I have interviewed. I even asked her for general advice for abused women, to put into a book that no publisher wants, about women and violence. This lady is a right wing Republican who does not believe in global warning, and thinks we should nuke the Taliban. This isn’t some prissy New Age cross-cultural Mother Goddess chick, but a protestant who works in finance.

How, I asked, has she negotiated a life populated with a number of abusive male bosses [abusive to other women she pointed out], estranged husbands, and discarded boyfriends without ever even being slapped?

Here are her four keys to dating and avoiding wife-beatings and bitch-slappings, told to me some ten years ago, and looped back to me this morning with an “I told you so” when I called to tell her that Indian women are the most abused chicks on the planet and their men have the smallest penises. Listen up ladies:

Only date men that are more intelligent than you.

Only date men that are good earners.

Only date men with large penises.

Only continue to date these men if they “can really fuck. If they can slap you good with that they don’t have the need to slap you with anything else.”

If I was rich I would send her to India with a squad of mean twerp-crushing bodyguards and a suitcase full of ‘toys’ to go on a speaking tour and engineer a vaginal counterinsurgency...