Here’s some news that will make the blood of moral crusader-types run cold: an Australian researcher has determined that nudie magazines are practically immortal.
During an investigation into the rate at which wood-pulp products degrade in landfills, this intrepid scientist found that magazines with coated, glossy pages — the ones with lots of pictures, in other words — were the best preserved of all the printed matter he uncovered. A 1979 copy of Playboy was described as being in “near-mint condition” after decades in the dump. The smart-alecks at Fark (quoted by the other smart-alecks at Boing Boing) say this means that “porn will be this civilization’s gift to the next civilization.”
So, am I wicked for finding this impossibly droll?
Porn is as old as cave drawings, my friend. (Mind, there’s not so much detail as there is today.) Future civilizations will be glad to know that every civilization that ever existed was just as depraved as they no doubt will be.
One of the more amusing tidbits of data I carry around in my head comes from a book I read years ago on Herculaneum, the other little town buried by the Mt. Vesuvius eruption in 79 A.D.
It seems that archeologists have uncovered a public latrine in this town, and on the walls of this facility are still-readable bits of graffiti that are essentially the same sorts of things you can read today on modern men’s-room stalls: dirty limericks, references to easy women, and scatological humor.
Nothing ever really changes…
Apparently, one of them said:
IENNAE
VIII-VI-VII-V-III-NIHIL-IX
Ah, yes… I understand that was a big hit for Tomas Tutonus, a well-known lyre-player of the day.