I enjoyed a post-work gargle with some journalist friends the other evening (hmm, perhaps this should be a Barstool Blues post? no, I've started on here now, so I'll carry on). At first, we were the only people in the small and somewhat remote bar (the Stone Boat, essentially an outdoor venue, will soon be forced into hibernation); but suddenly the place started filling up rather quickly. The crowd was almost all foreigners, mostly very young, and all terribly, terribly earnest. Realisation gradually dawned that we had been overrun by an NGO networking event. Everyone else was there to save the world, one self-congratulatory backslap at a time. Whereas my companions and I were just there to get drunk and trade off-colour jokes.
We could soon feel ourselves wilting under the relentless radiation of righteousness from those surrounding us. With not a single 'corporate social responsibility' brownie point between the lot of us, we felt awkward, self-conscious, out of place. We decided that we really needed a worthy project of our own to redress the shaming virtue-deficit.
It only took us a moment to hit upon one. Just before the world-savers arrived, we had been indulging in some laddish banter about video clips that are 'too hot' for YouTube, and in particular, about some recently much-discussed-on-the-Internet Darwin Awards-type episodes involving bestiality (I do hope these stories were apocryphal!). And that was where we found our inspiration.
Stamp Out Animal Pornography!
S.O.A.P.
Keep it clean
If you believe that pornography should be for humans and with humans only, please join this important crusade.
This piece of whimsy was a group production. In fact, I should acknowledge that the masterstroke - the acronym and the 'Keep it clean!' slogan (I can see that becoming a catchphrase amongst the cognoscenti) - came from the sozzled genius of a mucker called Will. I wouldn't want to claim the credit for myself.
I think this idea has legs. It's just a pity that our website address is being squatted by a manufacturer of industrial lubricants and cleansers from Atlanta, Ga.
Now, what tag should I give this? I suppose it fits best under My brilliant website/business ideas - although, to date, the entries in this category have all been strictly commercial rather than charitable or campaigning. Ah, what the heck!
(And oh dear me, I suppose this post could attract all sorts of undesirables to my humble little blog. It will be interesting to see what my traffic analysis looks like in a week's time.)
8 comments:
It's difficult now to recall exactly how all this came about. It was very rapid, spontaneous.
Once we latched on to the animal pornography topic, it took only nanoseconds to move from 'eradicate' to 'stamp out'. Much kudos to Will for recognising the brilliant acronym first - and immediately following on to the splendidly simple slogan. But we were all headed in the same direction; I think we all felt like we would have got there half a second behind him. It was a wonderful moment of collective creativity.
On behalf of C.R.A.P. (Campaign for Real Animal Pornography) I strenuously object to this ill-conceived notion to put hundreds of hard-working dogs and horses out of a job - not to mention taking the smile off the faces of a few 'specialist' actresses. Do you Hooray Henries give a moment's thought for the poor bastards who actually have to slave away in front of a camera for a living? I think not! 'Masters of the Universe'...get real, you're just a bunch of bankers like the rest of us.
That reminds me...another mate at Oxford tried to get a tee-shirt printed up by one of the specialist shops there.
On the front it said (quite reasonably I thought) 'Fuck The Pigs'.
They wouldn't print it even though it said quite clearly on the back 'Oxford Susophilia Society'.
Wasn't it that nice Mr. Blair who said "Education, education, education...". Sigh.
Erratum
With reference to the post before last where I wrote 'wankers' I should of course have written 'bankers' :-) (or possibly vice-versa).
Apologies for having disrupted such a pedestrian, family-oriented thread with matters of such controversy and mentioning the 'b' word.
Ah, the first ever reference to susophilia on this blog! Thank you, Mothman.
I wonder what Google returns for "Oxford Susophilia Society"? Have you earned me a Googlewhack at last?
Er, no. Not yet, at least. I just tried it, and we are overlooked..... as yet. Give it a few days.
'Sus' - although I think it has a Greek antecedent - is Latin. And, as we know, no good can come from hybridized word-formations..... like television. The more common Greek word for pig is 'choiros' - hence, choirophilia (which thus far appears on the Net only once - in a blog post on The Simpsons Movie on the Daily Telegraph website).
If we were going to form the word from 'sus', I think we'd use the root only, rather than the whole nominative, and thus get suophilia.
Education, education, education, indeed. Such is the humble mission of this blog.
I defer to my learned classical friend on the correct useage of this term... I was simply reporting my other friend's attempted, apparently erroneous, tee-shirt printing activities (a mere A-level Grecian, he).
Or was this a cynical attempt to cover all possible linguistic bases for the benefit of pervy search engine crawlers? Shame on you, Froog!
I swear it had never occurred to me, Mothman.
You may be on to something there....
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