I am currently employed in a low-level retail setting as I search for a ‘real’ job with my newly-minted degrees from Arizona State and my nightmarish tendencies have already come into fruition.  A few days ago, I said the word ‘fuck’ which, by all accounts, is about as uncommon in my day-to-day as nitrogen is in the air surrounding us all.   In other words (for those of you who may have forgotten your elementary science studies) I swear constantly and rarely refrain from verbalizing any and all of my thoughts as they arise.

In this particular instance, after the store had been closed for the day, I said it in front of two females and three males, one a Mormon, one a manager, all others on par with my title and largely in-line with my sensibilities.   The manager then began to explain that I can’t “…drop ‘f-bombs’ in front of the ladies.”  I thought he was kidding because I’ve heard him say ‘fuck’ and worse many times in front of plenty of people.  We then had a bit of humorous back-and-forth before I finally realized that he definitely was not joking around, he honestly meant that I can’t say the word ‘fuck’ in front of any females.  I asked him if he knew how sexist that was and that Human Resources would probably have a heyday with such blatant gender discrimination.  He then pulled that move that every person who is too dumb to argue pulls (if they’re in some way in a position of power over their opponent) when he said “End of discussion.”  My parents used to pull that shit with me when I was a kid.  They have since learned to simply ignore me, especially when I’m speaking.

I’m seriously considering reporting him to the HR Department, not just because I was discriminated against and that’s fucking bullshit (if I were female, he would not COULD NOT have verbally reprimanded me in the same manner using the same words) but a small portion of it was that, for the first time in a long time, I couldn’t say what I wanted.  I couldn’t stand there, tell him to go fuck himself, gracefully knock over a few cardboard displays and simply leave without a care in the world, never to return.  As much as I hate to say it, I need this fucking job and, as a result of that need, I had to swallow my pride and my words, hike up my testicles, and just quietly clock out like the piece of shit, part-time retail bitch that I am.

+I hate math and am generally pretty bad at it (two tries each to pass MAT117 – College Mathematics and MAT210 – Brief Calculus)

+I didn’t know much about the major or what jobs it would theoretically prepare me for post-graduation when I selected it.

+I have no interest in sitting around anywhere all day staring at a computer screen unless there is porn involved.

+The dream jobs this degree generally leads to (CFO, CEO, Investment Banker, Fund Manager, etc.) are exceptionally-lofty expectations for someone not holding an Ivy League diploma.  Not impossible, just lofty, and ASU is certainly not in that realm.

After all that, who in their right mind would select finance as their major?  I would and here’s why: I had a career counselor tell me that she didn’t think that I would even be able to make it through the program, let alone build a successful career.

Although not generally so, I most certainly have the capacity to be a spiteful and vengeful person.  For example, in junior high, I played football for all of two weeks.  I never even made it to a game as I quit long before that because I fucking hate exercising which was all we did.  It wasn’t even remotely fun but it was exceptionally painful which are exact opposites of what I’m looking for in recreational activities (beer, anyone?).  Anyway, there was a kid on the team who loved making fun of how pale I was and it infuriated me to no end.  Unwilling to risk the suspension that would likely follow my attempt at putting a beat down on him, I patiently waited for an opportunity to get back at him for humiliating me.

Five years later, that opportunity presented itself in the way that most of the great things in life often do: attached to large breasts.  This kid had himself a girlfriend and she wasn’t all that bright, a trait that is usually a huge turnoff for me but was exactly what I wanted to have in this situation.  I befriended her over the course of several months and, during a semi-drunken night at a mutual friend’s house, we engaged in an ultimately fun but thoroughly awkward sexual encounter – although I suppose pretty much all sexual experiences between teens are that way – as ‘Cast Away’ starring Tom Hanks played loudly in the background.  As if that weren’t enough, she ended up being the one to tell the boyfriend about it, probably due to guilt or some other emotion that I no longer experience due to the abyss where my soul was once located.

What does that have to do with finance?  Nothing, really, I just like telling that story.  Piss me off and I’ll fuck your girlfriend, or at least give it my best shot.  What’s the going rate for a fistful of roofies these days?

So here’s the reason: I chose to major in finance because some bitch who fit the entirety of her knowledge of me onto a single-paged high school transcript told me that I wasn’t smart enough to make it through the program and, frankly, that was the best reason I’ve had yet to choose any major over another.  Further proof that I am truly not passionate about anything.  Except for maybe proving other people to be wrong.  And beer.

Several months later, I met with a career coach at the business school to discuss my post graduate employment.  What was supposed to be a quick, 15-minute meeting turned into a fairly deep discussion that lasted more than an hour and left me more confused than I had been when I walked in the door.  The coach suggested during the meeting that I may be better suited to work in a field other than business because I am “…too goddamned funny, personable and intelligent to be stuck in a cube farm slaving away over balance sheets, worried about money that doesn’t belong to [me].”  I’m paraphrasing, of course, that meeting happened more than six months ago and I can’t remember exactly what the man said but I assure you that the spirit of his message remains intact.

I then turned to those whom I thought knew me best, my friends and family, asking them what they thought I would be both good at and enjoy doing for a living.  My mother was of the least help, giving me the standard “Mom Line” that is apparently activated by and canned for simplistic regurgitation thereafter by giving birth: “You’ll be happiest doing what you want to do and you’ll be good at doing anything you try.”  I paraphrased that one too but that’s because after I heard the first few words I realized that I was getting a stale answer and I quit listening.  As it turns out my friends and family are probably the worst assets I have when it comes to help making a decision that doesn’t affect them, so I began to think about myself and who my stakeholders were.

I suddenly realized that – not including people I hadn’t met yet such as future children and spouses (intentionally plural) – there are only a few people who could have any personal interest in my life’s successes who could also help me out: my professors.  It’s their job to turn me into a thoughtful, successful adult and my failure in life would reflect poorly on them.  Then came the difficult task of choosing a professor out of the 30 or so professors that had instructed me at some point, only a couple knew me by name, and only one was even remotely familiar with my personality, so I set up a meeting with him to find out what he thought I should do.

Wouldn’t it just figure that this son of a bitch gave me the same goddamned advice that I received from everyone else?  It all boils down to this simple question: “What are you passionate about?”  That’s it.  That’s the best advice available to ASU students.  Find your passion and figure out a way to get someone to pay you to pursue it.  He then told me that he finds me to be a fairly skillful writer (he’s an English professor) considering that I have never entertained the idea of doing it professionally nor enjoyed doing it personally.  Then came the threat: start a blog and keep with it or I’ll kick your ass (I’m paraphrasing again).  Keep in mind that this is the same guy who told me to “…knock off the ‘Professor B.’ shit,” and call him by his first name, so any liberties I’ve taken with these quotes have minimal impact upon their intended message.

So that’s the story.  I started a blog because I was (jokingly but assertively) threatened.  I titled it Passionate Drivel because I have no passion for anything but I will talk at great length about almost anything, the majority of which is trivial by nature.  Of course, if you’ve read even one full sentence (poorly constructed though it may have been), you’re already well aware of that.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, these beers aren’t gonna drink themselves and I’ve got a lonely patio in serious need of a near-alcoholic on deck.

Anyway, back to what I came here to say: I’ve been reading over some of my past posts and it seems as though I’ve found some things that, although I won’t fix them (I’m far too lazy for that), I’d like to fix.  For example: the ‘Think You Know Obama’ posts have a shit ton of broken links.  A ‘ shit ton,’ by the way, is roughly 10% heavier than a metric ton and, perhaps unsurprisingly, regardless of what’s being weighed it always contains trace amounts of Taco Bell.  That said, there would be little point in ‘fixing’ the posts, he’s the president and some people just simply can’t be convinced of something no matter the preponderance of evidence.

My post about donating plasma could certainly be edited to make reading it a bit easier, but that damn laziness thing is preventing me from doing it.  The post isn’t even that great anyway, no surprise there.

I’m sure there are other issues, I just wanted to let you know that I’m aware and also that I won’t be doing anything about it.  This blog is terrible, rarely funny, even more rarely informative, even less often entertaining in any capacity and has absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever.  Continuing with that mindset, I’ll be randomly posting new stuff again as I find things to complain about and find the time to actually pen my thoughts.  In other words, the advice I offered from the start continues to be the best I have to offer: don’t expect much.

And welcome back.

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.

-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…

What term did they search for?

“big dicks”

*sigh*

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.’

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.

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?