Alaska Scapegoat Ranch, Volume 5 number 1, February 2003 Scapegoats or Jackasses? Struggles for the Market at the Alaska Scapegoat Ranch First it was Jackass: the Movie. Here at the ranch, we never gave it a second thought. Then it was "Jackass the Congressman." (After all , he did win our Hypocrite of the Year award last year, so who was paying attention?) Then it was "Jackass the Governor." Now you’d think we’d have gotten the message at this point, but nahhh! We still never thought that jackasses would cut into the market for our striking breeds of Alaska Scapegoats. But as I sadly must admit, we simply didn’t see it coming. Well, it is going to take some reconfiguring, but just when the ranch hands and I were at the winter solstice of our breeding strategy, I saw a glimmer of light on the marketing horizon. The key is that word I used back in the last sentence: reconfiguring. You see, I was down in Anchorage (I had to go through the Ted Stevens Airport and penitentiary like everyone else...), and I made a discovery. Now. pay attention here, scapegoat fans, because this is a truly unique concept, and as unimaginable as any I have ever stumbled across, as you will certainly see. First I’ll need to set the tone. This is about virginity, and its reconfiguration. OK, here goes: Couples who are about to get married are now deciding to put aside all sexual activity for the remainder of their courtship (up to six months, the article says... I’m only the reporter, here). They are among the many who now are "experimenting with a stint of pre-marital celibacy". The practice is known as "revirginization." Its aim is second virginity. As you can easily imagine, this is going to call for some serious reconfiguration. Let’s read on. "These days, a period of ‘second virginity,’ as it is sometimes called, is increasingly the norm for brides-to-be across the south, an accommodation to the modern reality of premarital sex and the traditional disapproval of it in the Bible Belt. The newly celibate couples reveled in their ex post facto purity. ‘The key is avoiding temptation,’ People magazine advised. It so often is." (p. 26 Atlantic Monthly, Jan–Feb 2003) It’s a really strange idea, I admit. I have a stubborn notion myself, that virginity, once terminated, is a dead issue. Trying to retrieve it is a search for the unattainable. "The horse is out of the barn...the toothpaste is out of the tube." No matter. These are jackasses after all, an allegation which I hope needs no further elaboration, and they are American jackasses, the primal specy. The term "born again" keeps running through my secular soul for some reason. So how does "jackass versus the scapegoat" figure into the reconfiguring, so to speak? Let’s try to think this through. These folks who want to "revirginize" are the same ones who are going to see Jackass: the Movie and voting for the consummate other asses we now suffer with. Scapegoats, on the other hand, are seeking nothing, demand only to be scapegoated, and are always able to be passed off as virgins to start with. Defiling them has a proven record. Often this is accomplished by the same jackasses who, ritually braying about their political purity, so regularly cause us to stock up on the Dramamine. Our mission and marketing efforts are therefore clear: we must put the word on the streets that it is impossible to re-virginize a jackass! Needless to say , this will NOT be easy. The reputation of jackasses as unflappable, stupid, and stubborn is world renowned. And they so regularly behave in ways to leave no serious doubt about these qualities, that things do start to seem more feasible for the scapegoat rancher with a flair for chastity and white mohair wedding gowns. We’re nothing if not optimistic. Trying to grow anything for sale in Alaska clearly exposes that. But scapegoats can be revirginized, reconfigured, made digital, and fly, for all we know. There are more jackasses out there every day who will prove it for us. Just take a look around.
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