Lust!

Is it possible that there is a pheromone attack on Portland? It seems as though rutting season has come early. Everywhere I go I see signs of sexual desire. Some are directed at me, others are exchanges between other parties. The lust is so potent you can smell it in the aisles of the grocery store. A coworker professed falling in love with the barista serving him up a cup of coffee on his way to work. Even people close to me seem to be affected. While I don't mind the girls at work or restaurants checking me out, the young teenager and her mom giving me a ravenous gaze in the baking goods aisle at Safeway was a little disconcerting. Where did this all come from? I expect it in the spring, but not mid-November.

Of course me being who I am, I have assembled a hypothesis. I place the roots of this phenomenon in the election results. While politicians wield no real power over individuals (other than what people consent to) they do act as totems or talismans. Metaphorically, the conservatives have been booted from power. While I expect very little in terms of political policy change, the atmosphere has switched to one of liberalism. After six long years of a repressive and conservative talisman of power, the king has been castrated. There has been a whole hell of a lot of penned up energy released and it is manifesting as something akin to the divine whore. As a nation of practicing magicians we banished the demons of repression and paranoia posing as security and family values to conjure up demons of liberalism and lust with Clinton and Pelosi as Babylon. The nation is getting out of a rut and into the rut.

It's all in the mind, but the mind is a very powerful tool.