There’s a lot of appeal in the notion of devoting your entire life to the study of reproductive biology. Studying animals (and people) fucking to learn how and why stuff works has to be at least a little amusing. This article describing the phenomenon of “last guy to blow his wad wins” illustrates the more embarrassing side of the art of studying sex — sometimes you can get so buried in it that you don’t realize you’re stating and studying the obvious.

The best part of this article, though, comes right at the end. They’re talking about studying different animals, taking notice that the last male to inseminate a female tends to be the most successful in actually impregnating her. The last line reads “As for human examples, Hodgson said he couldn’t think of any.” I sure hope he’s just being polite, because I can think of one just in Palm Bay … she at least doesn’t mind letting plenty of different guys park in her garage, so to speak. Whether that happens in rapid succession or not is another question, I suppose, but when I lived there I sure as hell saw a different face every week sneak shamefully out of that bedroom. Bad jokes about whores aside, though, this kind of thing does seem to be a matter of “stating the obvious.”

At first glance, it makes sense that whoever shoots the gun first gets a “head start” towards the goal. The problem is, as the article points out, that the female reproductive tract doesn’t exactly make life easy for all those little buggers swimming their way towards the egg. Putting away the potentially icky consideration that we’re talking about “sloppy seconds” (or thirds, etc. as appropriate) here for whoever comes last (hah! I love puns), that “donor’s” little buddies get the easiest “ride” through the theme park. While all the previous deposits are wearing themselves out blazing the trail, the late-comers find themselves with a very mild journey, and zoom right past.

Snicker. I don’t think I could have crammed any more bad puns into that paragraph.

Ambition, n: An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.
— Ambrose Bierce