[Culture] IRKSWATCH -- Jeepers, Creepers, Where'd You Get Those Peepers?

[Benseraglio2]

JEEPERS, CREEPERS, WHERE'D YOU GET THOSE PEEPERS? IRKSWATCH -- Essays in Honor of the Lecturers in the Friday Colloquium Series, Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, University of Pennsylvania In honor of Mike Martin -- I Only Have Eyes for You: The Metaphysics of Joint Attention I went in for my weekly appointment with my therapist, the cute Korean Jungian, and found to my astonishment that she was wearing a maternity dress. Not only that, but it was an extraordinarily lowcut number, revealing a luxuriant tract of pulchritudinous expanse, in short a truly awesome cleavage of which I would not have thought her capable. "Jeez!" I expostulated. "Somebody knocked you up, fashizzle!" "I beg your pardon?" she responded with a display of offended dignity. "Sorry," I said. "You took me off guard. I mean, you're preggers - I mean, in the family way!" "Why does that surprise you?" she replied. "Well, I didn't even know you were married. I mean, if you *are* married. I mean, I didn't mean that the way that it soundedâ." "That's OK, silly boy," she said with a tinkly laugh. "Yes, I am married, and yes, we are pregnant." "Holy cow," I responded, somewhat regaining my comfiture. "So was this planned - I mean, was it a result of a joint intention between you and hubby, if I may ask?" I tried to avert my gaze from her commodious bosom. "You might say that. And go ahead and stare - I know what you're gazing at." "Gee, no disrespect intended. It's just that you've always dressed so, how shall I say it, sedately. I mean, I've been seeing you for three years and I never dreamed â. Good grief, were you wearing a jogging bra all this time?" "Well, at least now you can talk openly about your fetishistic attraction to the female breast. But don't think I haven't noticed you eyeballing my chest all these years." "I guess I was unconscious of it. But I didn't realize you knew that I was staring at your boobs." "Oh yes, I knew. But I also thought that you knew that I knew." "As I said, perhaps I wasn't entirely conscious of it. But now that you mention it, it reminds me of some repressed childhood memories. When I was a suckling child at my mother's breast, now that I reflect upon it, there was a sort of referential triangle - that is, a sort of joint attention among my mother and I and her copious âumm â." "Go ahead. You can talk about it. So you were sexually attracted to your mother? It's not an uncommon Oedipal tendency." "Good golly, no!" I replied in some heat. "Nothing like that! My mother was a saint!" "Go on." "I mean, certainly when I was nursing I was engaging in a sort of relatively extended bout of social interaction. But it was important for my cognitive development." "Mm-hmm." "But I never had any impure thoughts! Hell, I was only an infant! "I see." "And I certainly never wanted to kill my father, if that's what you're thinking." "I see that our time is up. Why don't we continue this next week? That will be two hundred and fifty bucks."   Ross Bender http://rossbender.org/irkswatch.html