About a month ago, ABC aired a special on guns in America.  Within 30 minutes of the start the proverbial media fear-mongering had entered full swing on 20/20’s broadcast that Friday night, showing (via hidden cameras) children, teenagers and twenty-somethings handling guns.  As you can imagine, they repeatedly showed the subjects looking down the barrels, pointing guns at other people and doing all of the things those of us exposed to guns by a responsible owner at some point were taught not to do.

I’m no expert on guns by any measure, but even with my limited experience I’m fully aware of which end of a gun is the business end and I’m smart enough to be aware of the risks involved in choosing where to point that end.  In this day and age, with the prevalence of guns in movies and television, I think it’s safe to assume that virtually everyone – children aside – also knows all of this.  Yet there is still a fairly common belief that guns are as dangerous as can be, firing deadly rounds at random any time they are even touched.

The thing that these people don’t seem to grasp is that a gun is a machine that lacks any ability to expel a round without external force.  The operative word here is force.  A loaded gun sitting on a shelf is no more inherently dangerous than a bullet sitting in the same place.

Sidenote: Yes, I understand that there are physics in play when exploding gasses are contained within a space and behind a projectile that make the loaded gun significantly more dangerous when it’s fired.  But the chance is small that the gun is aimed back into the room where the shelf upon which the gun rests is located, so I’d say the two are about even in terms of risk.

Regardless of the specifics, the point is that a gun will not fire unless someone squeezes the trigger (with the safety off, round properly loaded, breech closed, etc.) at a rate any higher than ammunition will fire sitting in a box.  Pointing a loaded gun at your face is no more dangerous than a pilot peering into an engine nacelle prior to takeoff.  Both could easily kill you, provided something else happenes first: pulling a trigger or starting an engine.

People have been killed by jet engines, guns, cars, ladders, swimming pools and elective surgical procedures.  Despite that, these things haven’t been banned because of the desire for a return in the face of the risks that they present.  The risk of any activity is accepted or rejected based upon the reason for engaging in the behavior and the strength of the want or need for the outcome, a concept I’ve come to understand is colloquially referred to as ‘living life.’  I once heard that humans are 800 times more likely to die if they get out of bed in the morning versus staying put under the covers.  Does that stop anyone from getting out of bed?  Very few, if any.

Regardless, quite a few jackasses in this country believe that legislation, not education, is the best way to mitigate this risk.  I, as you may have guessed, disagree.  But let’s entertain the fantasies of the unimaginably stupid for a moment.

Imagine that guns are banned tomorrow, how do you propose that the guns already in existence be collected for destruction?  Just have everyone bring their guns down to their local police station and drop them off?  Only the most law-abiding people in the country would even consider doing that and there are only four of them.  You can trust me, I know, I dated their daughters.

Since the honor system would be completely ineffective, how about having the police confiscate any gun that they happen to discover while performing their ordinary duties while our political leaders pass laws to lock up those found to be in possession?  That’s a bad idea too because 1) it would take so long to complete that those hell-bent on getting guns would surely find a way to do so, rendering the law useless, and 2) it would cause those unwilling to part with their weapons to go to great lengths to prevent their seizure.

So why should we not ban guns?  The most obvious answer is that banning doesn’t work.  The oft-repeated argument that “…if guns are outlawed, then only outlaws will have guns,” is true.  For proof, look no further than the idiotic ‘War on Drugs.’  Cops already confiscate drugs, as well as raid the cars, homes and businesses of those who are suspected of having some involvement with them and arrest millions of people in the process.

What’s the net result of all of this confiscating, raiding and arresting?  Millions of American tax dollars spent on salaries, equipment, training and planning for the police and millions more spent on prisons filled to the brim with non-violent offenders who pose no serious or immediate threat to society.  Those inmates will eventually be released back into the general population and, because of the black mark on their record due to the conviction, will have few options other than crime to support themselves.  The best evidence that banning doesn’t work is that with a few phone calls and a little cash, I could have virtually any drug known to man delivered to me like a pizza within a couple of hours.

Who could possibly be stupid enough to believe that banning guns would have any different result?  Apparently, the folks at ABC are and, assuming this special was effective, then perhaps a few more Americans.

There are times in every man’s life when he is forced to do things that he would, under normal circumstances, never do.  Things like:

-sleep with a woman larger in every physical dimension than he

-snort powdered wasabi in an upscale sushi restaurant with predictable results

-run naked into a lake in full view of more than 30 people that he had to see the next day

-kiss another man on the mouth (obviously only applies to straight dudes) in exchange for free beer

-have sex with someone for the first time when there are other people in the same room

-stab himself with a kitchen knife to prove a point

-urinate on an electric fence, a tennis court, a police car and an occupied, windowed storefront despite having other legal options available

-slap himself in the face to prove both his sobriety and his masculinity

-vomit on a slot machine, then blame it on a nearby geriatric hooked up to an oxygen tank when confronted by casino security

I just realized that all of these are alcohol-related, which the gist of this post is most certainly not, so I’ll move on.

Sometimes a college student needs some quick cash and, with no available assets that he could swiftly liquidate, he’s forced to resort to unusual methods.  The easiest method with the highest level of potential fun is, of course, prostitution.  However, when you’re a 5’10”, 160lb Irish/English guy (pale, moderately freckled, moderately hairy), that option isn’t actually an option.  So I decided to resort to a lesser-known form of prostitution: selling my plasma for use by multinational drug corporations.

So what’s the process like?

Tuesday:

7:30 AM – I woke up, fully prepared for a long day of classes, which I then attended.

3:30 PM – I stopped by the donation center on my way home, only to find out that, as a new donor,  I needed a photo ID, Social Security Card and a recent bill to prove my current address.

3:40 PM – I made it home, ate a can of green beans (I’m broke, remember?), chugged a half-gallon of Tempe’s finest tap water per the instructions I had been given during my earlier visit and went back to the center.

4:10 PM – I signed in, showed my documents to the staff, sat down in the waiting area and looked around at the place I had come to die…I mean ‘donate.’  I took note of the 40 or so other people who were waiting to donate and realized that the last time I was this far out of my element was when I was working as a bouncer at a bar in the Mexican Ghetto a while back.  There were the drifters, the addicts, the physically disabled, the mentally ill, the generally destitute and me: a college student in flip flops, cargo shorts and a golf shirt.

The sight of blood makes me nauseous, so I began talking to myself (not out loud of course, although that probably would have helped me to blend in better with the rest of the clientele) in an attempt to calm my racing brain and heart.  I then noticed something odd about the staff: not one of them looked to be any older than myself, except for the maintenance guy putting a door back on its hinges.  God knows how the hell that thing fell off, but I convinced myself that it had been torn off by the paramedics in a rush to get a hemorrhaging ASU student to the hospital before he bled out.

I’m in my mid-20s, technically an adult, but I still expected there to be a ‘real’ adult around the place, you know, a 45-year-old woman with rubber gloves, eye glasses and a caustic attitude, but she was nowhere to be seen.  I then spent the next few minutes unable to tear my mind away from the idea that I was going to die in that center that day.  I broke out in a cold sweat, my mouth went dry, I felt nauseous and I began shaking.

4:20 PM – I got up and left, explaining to the kid behind the front counter that I just couldn’t do it.  There was no fucking way I was gonna let the prepubescent result of a condom failure jam a needle into one of my veins, somehow resulting in me slowly dying as a homeless guy sat in a donation chair across from me serenading Rachel, his plasmapheresis machine.

Wednesday:

6:00 AM – Aware that I was running low on cigarettes, I decided to pace myself.  One an hour, was the plan.  I kept with that until about 6:45 AM.  Willpower doesn’t exist with me when it comes to nicotine.  Realizing that I needed some cash, lest I kill someone for their cigarettes, I decided to spend the day amping myself up in preparation for a return to the donation center with several slogans: “Quit being a wuss, your future illegitimate children will never respect you.”  “You’ve been mugged once and had a gun pulled on you twice, this is nothing.”  “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”  “YOU can DO EEEEET!”  “You could just quit smoking.”  That last one did it.

1:00 PM – Out of cigarettes, I finally decided to shave and shower, but I was struggling with what to wear: I wanted to make it clear that my donation was motivated solely by pure altruism, not because I needed the money, but I was unsure whether a sport coat and tie would be too ostentatious.  Finally settling on an Abercrombie polo and Hollister shorts, I left for the center.

2:15 PM – I arrived at the center, signed in on the New Donor Check-In sheet (again), and sat down in the waiting area.  The same people were working there as the day before, the fifth-grader at the front counter even recognized me: “Back again, eh?”  I wanted to scream “FUCK YOU! I don’t see any goddamned giant needles sticking out of your arms!” but I decided on “Yeah, needles freak me out.”  Awesome, now everyone knows I’m a pussy.

2:45 PM – They finally called my name and I went into a small room with glass doors, a desk, a computer and a 12-year-old in a lab coat.  He looked over my documents, filled out a few pages of information, quizzed me on my documents (one of many attempts to weed out the active drug users), checked my local address against a database of known crackhouses (I’m not kidding) all the while trying to make small talk:

“So you’re a finance major, huh?  Good job opportunities there right now.”  I didn’t expect him to be a genius, but for christ’s sake, does he EVER watch the news?

“I’m a finance major too at Mesa Community College.”  And he still doesn’t know that the financial services industry is imploding?  What the hell is with this moron?

“Well, I was, I dropped out.  I’m going back though, eventually.”  Ah, there it is.

I decided to ask a question, his reply would decide whether or not I left again: “Do you ever get to collect the plasma?  You know, stick the needles in and whatnot?”  Fortunately, he did not as he lacked the training, so I stayed.

3:05 PM – Back in the waiting area, my name was called again.  I walked into another small room, practically identical to the one I’d just been in, but instead of a computer, this one had a blood-pressure machine, a thermometer, a scale, and two machines that I would later find out calculate how much plasma and protein your blood contains, based upon a sample taken from what they refer to as ‘a small finger prick.’  The prick itself was small but they put a tube up to the gash then rub, yank and jerk your finger to extract about a gallon of blood from you so that they can test it in their machines.  I asked the technician, Mr. Sadistic-Finger-Puller, if I should remove my flip-flops before I stepped on the scale and he responded with an unintentionally funny “No, never take your shoes off anywhere in this place,” coupled with a look on his face that finished his sentence with “OR YOU’LL DIE!”

That guy was actually enjoyable to be around, although he did recommend I gain some weight: “You’ll get paid more if you can make it over 175 pounds.”  Thanks, I’ll get right on that.  Become a big fat guy for another $10 a week.  Another round of questions regarding my documents followed, but I managed to outsmart them and pass.

3:20 PM – I headed back out into the waiting room where a whole new cast of characters had been cycled through.  I recognized none of the donors, although that may have been because I had already started trying to forget the whole experience as a form of self-preservation.

3:30 PM – I got called into a small room where a lady in perhaps her mid-40s sat in front of a computer with an examining table behind her.  She asked me questions about recent travel, past illnesses and my current health.  I explained my irrational trepidation regarding the donation process and she calmed me down by talking about things unrelated to why the two of us were in that room.  Her exceptionally conversational demeanor gave me the feeling that she didn’t get too many people in there who had heard of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, let alone anyone able to discuss the inevitable alterations to the global political landscape if the disease were to begin afflicting millions of people on more than one continent.

She then had me lie down on the table and pressed on my abdomen, checking the health of my spleen and liver.  Fortunately, my liver passed the pushing test – I had my doubts about that.  She then told me that they don’t take urine samples, so I could use the bathroom if I wanted.  I had been holding it in anticipation of having to piss in a cup and she apparently felt my bulging bladder.

After a ton of questions about my sexual history (‘Any sexual contact with any men since 1970?’  Apparently gay men aren’t allowed to donate plasma) and the histories of my sexual partners, my past drug use and a check of my extremities for track marks, she gave me a pass for the front of the donating line and sent me back to the waiting area.  Despite being at the front of the line, the wait was a little longer than I had expected.

4:10 PM – My name was called and I was escorted to what looked like a permanently-reclined dentist’s chair with a machine next to it.  I tried to take a quick count of the number of people in the room, but I only got to 40 before I sat down and my view was cut off, limited to the dozen or so people directly surrounding me.  I wanted to ask how frequently the chairs were disinfected, but I wanted even less to hear the answer.

4:15 PM – A guy whose age I estimated to be fairly close to mine walked over to me and started talking to me as he readied the machine to kill me, I mean ‘take my plasma.’  I was surprisingly calm at this point, doing everything I could to pretend that what was about to happen was something…anything…other than what was actually about to happen.  He explained how the machine works in a rapid-fire delivery as he applied a liberal amount of iodine to my arm:

“I’ll place a needle in the main vein on the inside of your left elbow.  Blood will flow through the tubing into a centrifuge where the plasma is separated from the rest of the material in your blood.  About a cup of blood will be taken at one time before it’s returned to you.  During the return phase, some of the anti-coagulant fluid in this bag will be returned with your blood to prevent clotting near the needle.  It’s normal for your lips to go numb and a metallic taste to fill your mouth each time this phase occurs (Side note: neither one happened to me).  You’ll be able to see the collected plasma flow into this bottle here.  Once it is filled to this level (indicating a line on the bottle), the machine will cycle for the final time and the fluid in this other bag will also be delivered to you as well to help replace the fluids you lost during the donation.  At no point does your blood or plasma enter the machine, it is all contained within this sterile plastic setup I’m installing now.”

He affixed a blood pressure cuff on my left bicep, gouged me with a giant fucking needle, taped it to my arm, pushed a few buttons on the machine, and walked off.  Within a few minutes, my left arm was cold and numb.  After a few more minutes, it began to hurt, so I asked one of the technicians walking by if my symptoms were normal.  She loosened the blood pressure cuff on my arm, and within seconds my arm returned to normal.

The rest of the donation was uneventful, save for the occasional temporary freak out I had whenever I would think about what it was that I was doing.  After about 55 minutes, the machine began to pump the saline solution into my arm and I could feel the cold fluid spread up my arm and across my chest.  It was a very odd feeling, and I highly recommend you donate just to experience it.

In the end I was paid $40 for my donation, and another $40 for the one I made a few days later, with subsequent donations worth about $25 each.  I’m also left with a relatively noticeable scar at the puncture site which means I’ll be less able to refute possible future accusations about intravenous drug use.  *sigh* So goes the life of a collegian…

I was checking my blog stats a few minutes ago and something caught my eye.  A visitor was referred to my blog by way of the WordPress.Com search engine.  What term did they search for?  “big dicks”

*sigh*

A couple of my Facebook friends joined a group titled “LIFE – Let’s see how many pro-life people are on facebook,” which made me realize the stupidity and pomposity of the naming conventions surrounding the abortion issue.

The argument is primarily between two sides, those in the ‘Pro-Choice’ camp think it should remain a legal option while those in the ‘Pro-Life’ camp think that it should not.  I’ve noticed that often times this difference of opinion is frequently twisted around to make the argument about something else, be it morality, religion, faith, politics, feminism, gender equality and so on.  While these can be tools utilized by all of us to make our argument regarding this issue, all I’ve seen any of this do is further complicate the problem and the names don’t help.

‘Pro-Choice’ is fairly accurate in that its supporters believe that people should be able to choose to have an abortion, while its opponents think that the option shouldn’t be available, essentially making the ‘choice’ for those actually involved.  Rather than call themselves ‘Anti-Choice’ possibly due to the decidedly un-American vibe that phrase holds, the opposition chose a different term that sounds overwhelmingly positive: ‘Pro-Life.’

Unfortunately both sides chose titles that serve not only to strengthen the resolve of their supporters by offering what is essentially a semantically-positive rallying cry but to further polarize and confuse the issue.  How could anyone possibly be ‘anti-choice’ or ‘anti-life?’

The real goal that we should all be working toward is to reduce the number of abortions which, just like drug use and gun violence, simply can’t be achieved through legislation.  Perhaps the best first step is an overhaul in sexual education coupled with easier access to effective birth control.  We are all pro-life and we are all pro-choice, these are two of the attributes that bind us together as a society under the broader term ‘freedom.’

I wrote a new post about Ann Curry’s on-air experience with corporate censorship earlier today, and it reminded me of something funny that I experienced nearly a decade ago while I was in high school.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I attended a small public high school in a rural portion of the midwest.  Socially conservative, historically Republican and less diverse than Utah, it was a rough go for those of us capable of free thought.  Being called ‘gay’ was the worst possible insult for the males, though it never seemed to be used accurately.  Instead, it was what I call ‘Midwest Gay.’  It’s not ‘real’ gay, mind you.  The target’s sexual inclinations were presumed hetero as homosexuals were either non-existent or totally invisible.  The sight of a gay person would have probably caused the agitator’s head to explode, raining down hate, ignorance and bigotry in a bloody mess of intellectual inferiority all over the gymnasium.  I became Midwest Gay pretty early into my freshman year despite having been threatened with suspension for making out with a cheerleader on school property.  It being a small school, news traveled exceptionally fast and there was no such thing as a secret, so I’m sure everyone heard about it within seconds.  Just how did I manage to acquire the label then, you ask?

- I taped a brief and edited version of Joseph Lewis’ An Atheist Manifesto to the outside of my locker.  I wasn’t necessarily an atheist, I just didn’t like having Christian doctrine rammed down my throat every other day and I knew that such an action would at least open up a dialogue.  Unfortunately, the dialogue consisted of a few dozen juveniles calling me gay (and all of its colorful derivatives) and frequently informing me of my inevitable descent into the fiery depths of hell where I’d be spending all of eternity for hating baby Jesus.  On the upside, I hate cold weather and I’m guessing that there aren’t too many snowy days near The Lake.

- There was a display case in the hallway outside of the library that was used to call attention to different literary periods throughout history.  During the time in which the focus was on the Renaissance, a miniature version of Michelangelo’s David was prominently displayed in the case but with a tiny piece of paper taped conveniently over his genitals.  I explained to the librarian just how ridiculous it was that she felt that one of the most famous sculptures in the world needed to be censored in an attempt to protect the sensitivities of a bunch of high school students, but to no avail.  The statue had a penis and a penis is indecent.  Period.  I then got to spend the next few weeks overhearing people in the hallways saying things like “That’s the gay pervert that wants to see guys’ dicks.”

- While sitting in an English class one day I was handed a piece of paper composed by the same librarian of Art Censorship Infamy suggesting books that all of us planning to go to college should read, conveniently separated into ‘fiction’ and ‘non-fiction’ sections.  Of course, the first book listed in the ‘non-fiction’ section was *drumroll* the Christian Bible.  I asked my English teacher why it was listed there when it clearly didn’t belong.  She responded by saying “Of course it does!”  I argued and was then told to either shut up or leave the classroom and report to the principal’s office for being disruptive.  I gladly left, taking the paper with me and coincidentally arrived at the office at exactly the same time as the librarian, so I asked her about the list.  I was then accused of starting trouble and stirring things up for no reason.  I assured her that that was certainly not the case, just that I felt that the book was wrongly categorized.  I even went so far as to offer a compromise: put a third section on the list titled ‘Religious Texts’ and include the Bible, the Tanakh, the Talmud, the Koran, the Book of Mormon and so on.  I wasn’t against them recommending a religious text, I was just pissed that a public high school was clearly endorsing a specific religion and presenting it as truth.  Much to my dismay, though I had predicted this outcome, the list wasn’t altered and I became Midwest Gay-er.

- I was once asked by one of my male classmates point-blank in the cafeteria while eating lunch if I was gay.  I responded by asking “Why?  Looking for a date to prom?”  In hindsight, that probably didn’t help quell any rumors.

- During my junior year a former professional athlete of some sort (Football?  Wrestling?  I can’t remember.  He was big, though.) came to our school and an assembly was held.  The first thirty minutes or so of his speech were really interesting as the man spoke of the wealth he had amassed and how he wasted most of it on drugs and women.  Then he found Christ and his life changed dramatically.  If we wanted to find similar happiness then he suggested we do the same and become born-again Christians just like he did.  It was at this point that I stood up, walked down the bleachers and across the floor directly in front of him as he continued to preach.  I was stopped by the principal, threatened with suspension (noticing any common themes?) for disrupting an assembly, then forced to stand in the hallway until the end of his speech, still within earshot.  They maintain that I was told that I didn’t have to attend, though they couldn’t find anyone who could confirm that anyone had actually told me this.  I had ceased to be Midwest Gay by this point, though, because I had become good friends with one of the captains of the football team and remain so to this day, having even been the Best Man in his wedding some years ago.

I suppose the lesson here is that all it takes to legitimize a person, product or idea is one celebrity endorsement, which is why we should all be scared shitless of Scientology.

While watching Today on NBC this morning I was underwhelmed by a couple of the stories they aired, several of which served to propagate the typical ‘doom-and-gloom’ media hype I’ve come to expect from television.  For instance, some jackass killed a bunch of people in Alabama, so did another in Germany.  These are stories that would usually be reported ad nauseam but then a bit of good news trickled in toward the end of the first hour.  For starters, Citi reported a profit (easy to do when your losses are wiped away with a magic, taxpayer-funded wand), Wall Street ‘rallied‘ yesterday, Madoff may go to prison for the rest of his life and apparently Obama told those who disagree with his stimulus plan to blow it out their collective ass.  It’s always fun to see a President say something firm when that something isn’t also retarded (I’M THE DECIDER, DAMMIT!).

Then the hosts did something fun: Matt, Meredith, Al and Ann went to the New York Academy of Art in NYC to paint.  They ‘warmed up’ by drawing a bowl of fruit, then moved on to painting a couple of nude models.  As the scene was filmed, any bit of the models’ so-called ‘intimate parts’ that happened to make its way into the shot was pixelated thanks to our archaic social rules regarding the human body.  For fuck’s sake, people, the one thing that every person has in common is a naked body…how could the most common thing in humanity possibly be considered indecent?!  I hope to god that reincarnation is real so that I can come back to this country in a few thousand years once the average level of common sense has progressed beyond that of a common house fly.  But I digress…

While the hosts were painting their works were not displayed to the television audience, presumably so that they could be revealed to us at the end of the segment with some sort of anti-climactic flourish.  It turns out that I was half-right.  The segment did end with the paintings being revealed to the audience, but there most certainly was a point where my blood pressure reached what can only be described as a climax.  The previously-mentioned ‘intimate parts’ were covered with pixelated tape.  The painted intimate parts.  The fake intimate parts.  The ones that, judging by the astonishing level of photo-realism displayed by the painted non-intimate parts, probably looked much like the bowl of fruit drawn earlier.

So what did Ann Curry do?  She reached over to her painting and ripped the pixelated tape covering the breasts of the female figure she had painted right off of the canvas as Matt gave a half-assed attempt at covering it with a red cloth.  So what did the painted breasts look like?  Grab the nearest CD or DVD and imagine it flesh-colored.  Salacious, no?

So I say to you, Ann Curry, cheers for understanding that nudity is not inherently bad – especially not an artistic representation of nudity – and for standing up on behalf of common sense!

As I was typing this, another segment aired regarding breast cancer in women.  During the segment four x-ray images of different breasts were shown, void of any pixelation.  Other than context (art versus medicine), what’s the difference?  Both are images depicting breasts, neither one looked necessarily realistic and both were created in two dimensions.  So what the hell, NBC?  Are breasts offensive and deserving of censoring or not?

Don’t bother asking how, but I ended up reading the Wikipedia entry about PETA, the animal rights group.  PETA stands for ‘People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,’ which is certainly a noble concept.  I don’t think that animals should be treated cruelly, unnecessarily restrained or otherwise inhibited as they go about living their lives.  However, I’m confused by some of the group’s policies and positions as they are laid out in the aforementioned entry.  Their official website is similarly complex but it has less to do with their specific positions on certain issues and more to do with finding out exactly what they are, especially when the damn page won’t load properly for me.

Let’s start with the name, which acknowledges that a distinction between humans and all other animals exists in that people are the only creatures known to exist that are capable of intentionally treating other creatures in an ethical manner.  We have conquered virtually our entire planet and, by extension, every other species with which we co-exist.  While this allows us practically limitless power over our world, it is not without a large degree of responsibility.  The vast majority of us agree that human life is more valuable than that of any other persuasion, plant or animal.  This exists in stark contrast to what I perceive to be the organization’s overall message that animals are just as valuable, if not more so, than humans are.

The president and co-founder of PETA, Ingrid Newkirk, was quoted in September of 1989 by Vogue as having said “Even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we’d be against it.”  Allow me to reiterate my position that I am indeed against the commission of cruel acts against animals, but isn’t sacrifice in the interest of the greater good a noble act?  Perhaps she would argue that the difference lies in the absence of choice for the animal: the rat wasn’t given the opportunity to choose a life outside of a lab.  While this is true, it is so for the same reason that we travel in space shuttles to the moon while all other animals achieve locomotion only to the extent that their own biological faculties allow.  In other words, humans are intelligent, self-aware creatures while all other animals are, comparatively speaking, dumb.  If a human gets sick, we can usually make ourselves better.  If an animal or plant falls ill, it is almost always a death sentence unless we selfish humans intervene on their behalf.  Isn’t taking an animal to a veterinarian against its will the same deprivation of liberty of which this organization rallies against, despite this being – unbeknownst to the animal – in the animal’s best interest?  Perhaps the issue here is what species benefits from human intervention into the lives of animals, rather than the well-being of the animals themselves.  If PETA intends to argue on behalf of the animal, that the animal should ultimately choose its own path in the world, then that argument applies in all situations regardless of how obvious the ridiculous nature of any hypothetical situation may be.

While promoting a vegetarian or vegan diet as the best course for all to take, PETA seems to overlook one important fact: meat is delicious.  Who cares if it’s unhealthy?  This is a society that chain smokes, drives intoxicated, engages in recreational drug use, trades exercise for hours in front of the television and refuses to teach its children anything of real value regarding sex.  Personal health is of superficial importance to us, especially when the alternative is pleasurable, fun or tasty.

Perhaps most famously, PETA works to end the use of animal parts in clothing and fashion.  I had always assumed that this was because they are against the slaughter of animals, but I was intrigued to find out that PETA is far from being against killing.  During 2007, PETA euthanized nearly 2,000 animals, in Virginia alone.  If that is an average number per state, then it can be extrapolated that the nationwide number is around 100,000 animals, dead at the hands of an organization that claims to exist solely for their protection.  The organization admits that euthanizing is a necessary evil (especially pit bulls), and they claim to work toward reducing the number killed by spaying and neutering domesticated animals.

Continuing the theme of protecting animals from unscrupulous acts by humans, PETA has set circuses, zoos and the affiliated acts such as Jack Hanna and the late Steve Irwin in their sights.  While I somewhat agree with their position on this (filming is fine, touching is not), I’m interested to know what they think of the new show “The Exterminators” on A&E in which a camera crew follows around a team of exterminators in Louisiana.  The name of the show is a bit misleading, though, as the ‘exterminators’ have said multiple times on the show that they only kill animals as a last resort, instead preferring to trap the pests in a manner as humane as possible then release them as far away from humans as they can.  I’m sure they would support this as another ‘necessary evil,’ but doesn’t it also go against interfering with the animals’ free will?

I think that PETA’s sweet and peaceful bunny image on their website is meant to be ironic given their unwavering support of militant activism in achieving their goals.  The organization has supported:

• Those who throw paint on fur coats
• Those who throw pies at their opposition
• Giving animal carcasses and boxes filled with their entrails to those they oppose
• Damaging or defacing private property
• Funding the legal defense of those who have set fires, attempted murder and committed other illegal acts on behalf of animals
• The comparison between the treatment of animals in America to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany, slaves and Native Americans in early America, child laborers in third-world countries and other oppressed groups

These tactics combined with their anti-meat and anti-animal testing positions are the things that keep me from supporting PETA in any way.  Perhaps there exists some middle ground in which animals are processed in painless slaughterhouses that utilize methods that cause an instantaneous death following a clean, pain-free (although relatively short) life.  We could ban the use of fur in fashion, close all circuses and zoos except for situations in which containment is the only chance for the animal’s survival.  Unfortunately, though, I suppose that these advances wouldn’t be enough for PETA because animals would still be dying prematurely.

We do have an enormous responsibility to interact in an ethical manner with the world around us but the thing I think PETA seems to be forgetting is that above all else, we have a duty to ourselves to ensure that the well-being and continuation of humanity comes first.

Today I registered for classes that I plan to take during the Spring 2009 semester, and apart from the usual headaches surrounding that process, I found myself experiencing a noticeable lack of optimism. When I first came to ASU more than three years ago I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, admittedly naive and in serious want of intellectual stimulation on a level far beyond that of the mental stagnation to which I had been subjected throughout the entirety of my upbringing in a socially-conservative Midwestern public school system. I dreamt of being surrounded by bright people, independent thinkers capable of discussing abstract topics without unnecessary and often self-imposed hindrances such as religion, personal biases and willful ignorance that I found so pervasive in my hometown. I assumed my fellow collegians would be people who could discuss topics that offend the sensitivities of the general public without resorting to violence, instead being able to set aside all of our differences for the passionate pursuit of knowledge and greater understanding.

Imagine the disappointment I had in myself when the reality of the situation which I had so callously overlooked finally set in: I was attending Arizona State University at Tempe, one of the largest college campuses in the country and a notorious ‘party school.’ Colleges don’t achieve those distinctions in a geographical region with such a comparatively light population if their admission standards are such that only people who fit the above description are offered acceptance.

I then adjusted my expectations accordingly after my freshman year and explained to myself that with such a large number of people in one place – a place devoted to furthering the promises of academia – there were bound to be a few students who shared my outlook. Finding them proved to be difficult, though I predicted that they may be more easily identified as I transitioned from lower-division to upper-division classes.  Unfortunately, that prediction has yet to come into fruition.  Instead of being surrounded by students who have no idea why they are furthering their education – as was often the case in the lower division classes I took – I am now surrounded by students who want nothing more than a bigger paycheck than what they would likely receive without a degree.  Admittedly, I too am pursuing a degree partially because of the economic advantages it will offer me, but it is far from my only reason.

Many of my classmates, if not most of them, lack the desire to be challenged with their school work, instead opting for the easiest route possible to graduation.  One of my biggest problems with this school is how much work the administration seems to put into enabling those attitudes and placating the morons that they allow to attend this institution.  Instead of being challenged, I’m being bored nearly to death with material that is not only uninteresting and uninspiring but far below the threshold of what I would consider to be the norm for a major university.

For instance, I am required to take two science courses, each with a lecture portion and a complementary laboratory portion.  I chose Geology and Biology, the two basics which nearly everyone seems to take, on the advice of my Academic Adviser. While sitting in the Geology lab one morning, I was tasked with coloring the different types of rock found within a topographic map of a portion of the Grand Canyon, which took the better part of an hour to complete.  As I was coloring the paper, an interesting thought crept into my mind.  I paused, looked at the TA and asked “How many hours during their college career do you think undergrads at Harvard spend coloring as a requirement for their classes?”  Without missing a beat, the TA replied “This isn’t Ivy League material, Kyle, this is busy work.  Now get back to your coloring.  Lunch is at 11 and nap time starts at noon.”  Gotta love those Canadians with their quick wit.

I could have taken a very difficult Geology course, one that required extensive knowledge of Geologic processes and it would have been quite challenging.  However, I chose to take an introductory level course because I didn’t know anything about Geology, and the challenge would not have existed because Geology is inherently difficult to understand – which is the challenge I am after – it would have been solely because I had yet to memorize all of the things I would have needed to know to do well in the course.  The concepts are quite simple, though the vernacular is somewhat cumbersome, and the high potential for damage to my GPA due to a course that has virtually nothing in common with my intended course of study made this an easy choice.

It hasn’t been all bad, though.  Aside from what I like to think are my more noble pursuits regarding higher education, I also wanted to drink a lot of booze and have sex with many different women.  In those respects, there is no finer university in the country – or possibly in the entire world – than ASU.  Perhaps my baser instincts played a subconscious role in my selection of a school and, typical of what occurs when that portion of the male mind exerts its influence, the end result has been bittersweet.

Oh what a difference context can make. Like the difference between the President of the United States making a ‘crude,’ sexual gesture:

…or the President of the United States posing with the Arizona State University track and field teams, which is what was really going on in the photo.

So why the ’shocker?’ ASU’s mascot is Sparky the Sun Devil, a creature that carries a three-pronged pitchfork which the gesture is intended to simulate. Of course, most people seem to be unaware of that usage, instead being either oblivious to any meaning or understanding it only as ‘The Shocker.’ It is the latter group that I suspect will begin calling for the President to apologize to their god and to their sensitivities for his crass behavior.

Today a friend of mine made note of something that surprised her with its stupidity and, at first, I agreed with her.  But after some careless consideration, I’ve realized that it was actually completely reasonable.  She said (via Facebook) “r ppl really so hardheaded that they’re willing to lose friends over politics? really?”  The short answer, for me, is ‘yes…sort of.’

Prior to this election season I knew the political affiliations and inclinations of only a few of my friends, and it was rarely an issue.  As November 4th came near, some of my friends who had never before displayed to me the slightest interest in politics were wearing t-shirts supporting their chosen presidential candidate. Many of them began using their Facebook profiles as political soapboxes from which they would espouse the virtuous nature of their candidate while simultaneously condemning the opposition.  Though the latter was irritating due to the volume and frequency of updates all on the same topic, I was comforted to know that the news media’s characterization of my generation as politically apathetic wasn’t completely true.  More important, and more relevant to this post, is that although I may have disagreed with some of the positions my friends had taken, most of it was far too trivial for me to consider ending a friendship over.  Most of it…

There were a few people who really surprised me with their ignorance, both on Facebook and in the real world.  These were people who managed to destroy all respect I had for them by arguing that Barack Obama really is a Muslim, or that Sarah Palin is a brilliant person, or that John McCain was never a prisoner of war, or that Sarah Palin’s youngest child is actually her grandson.  The worst I heard was arguably also the most ridiculous, and that came from those few who were willing to admit that they would never, ever, under any circumstances, vote for a black candidate solely because of their race.

I can’t possibly maintain any sort of meaningful relationship with these people after these events have transpired.  Some of them are actually too stupid to comprehend the truth, like when it is explained to them that just because someone is named “Barack Hussein Obama,” he, like every other American, is free to choose and follow any religion he likes and is not, by default, a devout follower of Islam.  Others activate their self-preservation gene and utilize their skill in willful ignorance, like when they are given countless examples of Sarah Palin’s stupidity, or are shown photos of John McCain in a POW Camp, and they still refuse to accept the obvious truth of your argument.

While it may not have been directly because of politics that I’m willing to lose a friend, it was politics that saved me from wasting countless hours, if not years, investing in these morons.