May. 24th, 2008 @ 07:18 am Okay - this is creepy and funny at the same time
Current Mood: annoyed

Automated calls warn of 'unhealthy sex acts to be taught in schools. Like anal sex and oral anal sex. They didn't teach that when I was in school...You've some a long way, baby.

I think it's hysterical that the religious freaks (and conservative freaks of whatever religion) are so convinced that sex ed is going to have kids fucking in the streets. And porn, and all the rest. I'll give you a little secret: I took the sex ed in school, I watched illicit porno at the age of 7(?), and read all kinds of books on teen sexuality, etc. Far from putting a shingle on my door to say I was open for business I told my boyfriends I was waiting until I was 18 to lose my virginity, and if they didn't like it they could take a hike.

Okay, I can't thin of many teens on either side of the gender fence being quite that adamant to their 'true love', either. My point is that sex ed (or porno) didn't radically alter my mind about sex. I din't feel the need to race out and put to practical use all that I'd learned. I did learn about health and how to say 'no'. That it's okay to say no. Sometimes it's better to say no. That I put to good use.

The other thing I love about this is that these twerps are somehow convinced that if all mention of sex is swept under the rug (lets assume they even managed to get it off tv and out of movies) that teens would just forget about sex. Let me ask this: how often is pissing and shitting discussed in the media in any way? Think anyone (including teens and children) likely to forget about taking a dump anytime soon? Not bloody likely. Think if parents refused to give to give their children toilet training they'd stop going? Think we'd live in a cleaner more moral world?

The body does what the body does. What toilet training (and sex ed) does it teach kids when it's appropriate, and how to stay clean (in a hygenic sense.)

Okay, /rant

(article via disinfo.com
About this Entry
2 comments
What do you think?
Permanent Link
May. 24th, 2008 @ 07:55 am I <3 Douglas Rushkoff
I don’t know that the challenge is any different than it’s always been. If anything, all the technologies and overlapping media realities and such just help us to see that the same things are happening on every level. And that can feel either liberating or repressive, depending on your ability to access some of the tools of authorship.

I mean, take me this very week. On Christmas Eve, I got mugged in front of my house. I rent an apartment on the top floor, but it’s in a neighborhood of Brooklyn with million-dollar townhouses all around. And these townhouses are lived in by rich white folks, and pretty much surrounded by poorer folks of all colors. So this guy from a surrounding area sees me taking out the garbage, pulls out his gun, and takes my money and stuff. ..

Or consider the conversation I had with Steven Johnson at a conference a few months ago. He was trying to explain how great neighborhoods are like emergent systems. First there’s an art gallery or something, then a coffee house to serve the people going there, then a few studios, then some artsy people moving in, and pretty soon you have a cool neighborhood where none existed before. It emerged out of nothing.

But I challenged him: it wasn’t out of nothing at all! There was a neighborhood there *before* the art gallery showed up. And an indigenous population there, doing what it could to get by. It may not have looked like a cool and trendy neighborhood from our hip, college-educated, espresso-drinking counterculture standards, but there were people living here before we got here - just as there were natives in America before the Europeans came.

And no - the market does not take care of these people since they didn’t own their houses to begin with. They’re renters, and they get priced out, and they get nothing for the neighborhood’s "improvement" except eviction.

You can read more of Rushkoff's insightful comments in this interview here.

(also found via disinfo.com)
About this Entry
What do you think?
Permanent Link
May. 24th, 2008 @ 08:24 am One more link
Because I think this video is so damned adorable:




Weezer playing with a zillion internet video memes. I especailly love the dramatic groundhog.

(is anybody seeing the video? if not go here.

Okay, two links...incense is cheap anti-anxiety therapy? I know burning (white) sage after nasty nightmares is the only thing that will let me go back to sleep.
About this Entry
What do you think?
Permanent Link
May. 24th, 2008 @ 01:24 pm (no subject)
Did you know that you can make a gourmet meal out of starlings and squirrels? You can according to The Nero Wolfe Cookbook.
About this Entry
What do you think?
Permanent Link