The Porno Connection

I love to execute plays on words; to joke, to pun, to wield the sword of double entendre and – the sharpest tool in my arsenal – that of dry sarcasm.  Of course I have to be careful of my audience; I was recently stopped by a police officer in a small town for a broken headlamp and when he commented about all the boxes on my front passenger seat (I was in the midst of moving my office that week) I made a quip about living in my car.  He took me absolutely seriously and started checking for signs of vagrancy! until I was able to assure him that I did in fact have a proper home address.  Usually I don’t let fly with such comments until I’m reasonably comfortable and secure with someone… once I am, though, watch out!!

This past week I have been conducting a family assessment (to satisfy a clinical requirement for school) using people who happen to be good friends of mine from the theatre company.  The family assessment includes all aspects of humanity including (of course) sexuality.  When we first started the battery of questions last weekend, the couple’s young daughter was present and so we decided to defer ‘those’ questions to the second session when she would be otherwise engaged.  With a good deal of giggling, we code-named the section ‘Question 42’ as we all know that 42 is the answer to everything.  Oh, and bring a towel.

We re-convened a couple of nights later to address (among other things) the set of questions relating to human sexuality.  Now the first several questions were fairly straightforward: ‘attitudes toward sexuality, sexual orientation, frequency and satisfaction with sexual activity, and contraceptive measures’… we got through those with some giggling, especially when I counselled my friend J to “walk up the stairs sooner!” when she complained about bedtimes out of phase with her husband, C.  Gee, that sounds awfully familiar...

But then, I swear to you, the following subset of questions in that section just struck us as bizarre: ‘Hazards to human life, human functioning, and human well being.’  I stared dumbly at it for a minute, and then said, “Uuuuuuuuhhhh, they must be talking about the kink!!”

They just laughed at that, so we spent the next several minutes talking about kinky practices, including joking about their cellar being a dungeon and what the true purpose of the hose down there could be.  I was completely deadpan in my delivery of ‘outrageous assumptions’ that were way too close to my own truth… and they were laughing hysterically because of course no one would actually do those sorts of things, certainly not them and not their good friend Kaz… *cough*

On one level I felt as if I was coming out to them and they were accepting what I was saying (because they were continuing to laugh and joke and not act horrified); on another level I knew without a doubt that this was something I could never discuss with them seriously.  I know that I can get away with saying some pretty outrageous things, and that in the future I’ll be able to fix J with a look and exclaim, “Oh my!  Just what do you think you’re doing with that hose?!” and have her rolling on the floor in hysterics, so I guess it’s all good.

The very next day at work I went to see my very favourite manager, P, just to check in.  She has the best insight on things that are going on within the agency and she’s got a great sense of humour to boot, so I make it a point to get over to see her as often as I can.  When I came into her office to sit she was bustling about with papers, and I saw from her screen that her computer was off-line… then she told me why…

Apparently one of the staff had downloaded a good deal of pornography AND PRINTED IT OUT, unwittingly leaving it in the printer tray for P to find.  This sparked an investigation by the IT department, who took all the computers out of the program in order to see what else they could find (because as we know every move you make on the computer leaves traces).

As if that were not enough, another staff person was going around showing pictures of her boyfriend’s willy that she had on her cell phone to other staff (but told them to keep it hush-hush because she didn’t want her husband to find out… ??! oy… *facepalm*).  One of the staff reported it to P, and the offending staff admitted to it, but then also gave P to understand that she wasn’t the only one doing such things…

So there’s a bit of an uproar going on, and P appears to be sitting on top of the Porno Connection at the moment… though I told her that may spread as the staff in question who downloaded the stuff works at other programs, which may well widen the investigation (as it is the nerdy IT guy was already going to other programs and we figure he’s having the time of his life with this, since he now gets to check out porn as part of his job!).  She’s all righteously indignant (but still managing to laugh about it), more put out by not having a computer at the moment than anything else.

Hmmmn… suppose I should do a sweep of my laptop, eh? since it’s company issue… LOL… though since I seem to have such a ‘goody’ reputation that I doubt they’d look my way… ¬¬