I Need To Learn To Self Edit

It's been a long and very busy week, and I had little time to get on the computer, much less write. Though I already love my job I need to keep writing, and to do that I must learn to self edit so the task of blogging won't be as daunting. Curse my long windedness!

Somewhat recently I saw this article about Obama's federal funding plans for sex education for teens. During the campaign America more or less realized abstinence only just doesn't work (thanks, Bristol!). No matter who says what, teens are going to have sex, so we might as well show them how condoms work so they don't get pregnant and scabby on top of it.

 It's kind of cute, actually.

I believe too many people (adults included) have such a blase view of sex. But I also believe that too many people (adults included) think sex is an act that should be banned except for the two or three times necessary for procreation. Since I'm a believer in the "happy medium theory" I'm all for couples waiting until they're ready to have sex. And though "ready" will vary, I doubt most high schoolers are "ready" for that sort of thing. 

On the other hand, what if we told our kids the truth about sex from the very beginning, from the first time they asked where babies come from? What if, rather than blaming the stork or saying God decided it was time, we said something like:

Babies come from the mommy's uterus. The daddy puts his penis in the mommy's vagina and that's how the baby is made. Then it lives in the uterus for 9 months until it's born.

I'm reminded of the movie Kindergarten Cop, where the little boy stands up and announces "boys have a penis, girls have a vagina!" If we don't teach kids that their body parts are bad words they won't feel any differently about their penises than their arms or their vaginas than their fingers, and they'll grow up comfortable about their whole body. In sex ed they can then learn how to protect those sensitive body parts for when they inevitably do what those parts are supposed to do.

This budget cut goes hand in hand with Obama's act to reverse the Mexico City Policy his first week in office: both wins. Here's a quote from Rep. Carolyn Maloney regarding our own policy:

"It's about time that evidence-based management - and sanity - return to family planning programs."

Ballet

For 3 years during high school I insisted I did NOT dance. Colorguard involved rifles and sabres, I did not do the dancing part. I had friends who did dance in colorguard, but not me. When we had mandatory try outs for dance I didn't sweat it because my goal was to not get it. My senior homecoming was a bust: should have gone to City Walk like some of my friends did. Even prom wasn't the best, considering I passed off my boyfriend to my single friend and had ONE dance with him during the whole night. I didn't dance.

In the years following high school, up till now, I've reconsidered dance. It's really not as bad as I once thought. At Moorpark College I took a swing (dance) class where I switched off partners every two minutes and had a great time whenever I wasn't with the Arab guy who shaved his arm hair (gross). I actually liked that class, I liked moving around with the skilled male dancers, being led around the classroom, being told I was a great dancer. Since then I've more or less romanticized dance, always pestering the boyfriend to go dancing (even though I'm almost always pestering for the sake of pestering, not because I really care), enjoying Bollywood movies and remembering where friends went to salsa lessons. 

Tonight I watched House, M.D. and a ballet dancer ended up in the hospital after being dropped by her fellow dancer/lover.  Her main concern was being able to dance again, and the team ridiculed her (behind her back) for it. But if you are lucky enough to be able to do your passion for money then that seems like a pretty valid concern. The show isn't over yet (yay TiVo!) but they're throwing around words like MRI and syphilis, and House's best friend's girlfriend is personifying House's subconscious, so I can't really draw any conclusions just yet. Also, this is a tipsy post (happy cinco de mayo!), so I may be missing a link or two.

Anyway, the boyfriend said he's about to pass out if we don't go to bed about a minute ago and he's now asleep on the couch, so off to bed for us. First day at my new job in seven hours!

Combating Global Warming, One Marriage At A Time

Indonesia came up with a brilliant solution to fight deforestation and global warming while at the same time inciting a new symbolic tradition for newlyweds. The bridal gift is a sapling, and the new couple plants this baby tree together. The sapling symbolizes the couple's youth and oneness, and as they grow together in love so the tree will grow strong and mature. Like the couple will provide for and take care of each other in the decades to come, so the tree's branches will provide food and shelter for the animals of the forest, who depend on the tree as much as the tree depends on them.

Also, it's mandatory.

Indonesia is apparently #3 in greenhouse gas production (behind us and China), and deforestation is a big problem. Newlyweds must plant a total of 10 trees. The kicker is if you get divorced you have to plant 50 trees. Curb deforestation while cutting back on divorce rates. It's a win win! 

It's estimated that 50 million trees are needed to start reversing the effects of over farming, and that's just in the city of Garut alone. Since the government doesn't have that kind of money (how much would 50 million saplings cost, anyway?) they decided to get those too-in-love-to-notice couples in on the fun and peg it as a symbolic gesture of their eternal and ever growing love. The Indonesian government is genius!

Virgin Lips

Every so often we see stories like this, where a couple touts the goodness of remaining "pure" for their spouses on their wedding days. For the sake of ranting, I'll ignore the idea that purity is the woman's responsibility because the men in the article also saved kissing for the altar.

First, the people who wait until marriage tend to get married very young. Of course your fiance seems perfect... you've only known him/her a year and you haven't had the chance to discover their dirty secrets. No wonder it was worth the wait if the wait was only a year.

Second, if you haven't had sex you don't know what you'll like about it. Relationships have broken up due to sexual problems. What are the chances the person you marry is just the right size for you and likes exactly the same things you do if you've never tried?

Third, having sex with someone isn't just about lust and penetration. It's about sharing a bed, sharing a bathroom, getting used to the idea that you can't hog the sheets or sleep sprawled out in the center of the bed. It's about your partner's tidiness, cleanliness, and timeliness. The physical act of sex brings so much more to the table that can't be learned otherwise and allows for unimaginable intimacy. 

Fourth, if you're having your first kiss on your wedding day, will you jump right to sex on your wedding night? How is that not awkward? Weddings are tiring, stressful events and the happy couple has to spend hours hugging relatives, kissing, dancing, traveling, and smiling, and are then expected to try having sex for the first time? Surprisingly, many couples still say it's worth the wait.

Fifth, if your first kiss is so special you want to have it with only one person, why would you want 100+ people to watch? Are they also going to watch you have sex for the first time? Maybe if it's that sacred you should have the first one in private.

Last, the plus side of waiting until your wedding day to kiss and have sex is you can mould your partner into whatever sexual shape you want (assuming, of course, you're sexually compatible). You can teach your spouse exactly how you like to be kissed, touched, and... everything else. You learn together and neither have anything to compare the other to. I still think it's a bad idea, since you have no idea what you're getting into, but if it's that important to both people then to each their own.

Swine Flu

OK fine, I'll talk about swine flu. Everybody else is doing it.

 

Pigs are actually very clean animals. It's not their fault you feed them trash.

When I heard a few days ago that Egypt ordered a mass cull of their 300,000 pigs in response to the swine flu pandemic I thought, is swine flu even in Egypt? 

Nope. 

So, if there are no cases of swine flu in Egypt and the disease is spread from human to human, not by pigs, why did Egypt go crazy with the cull?

The answer lies somewhere between politics and religion. Egypt, a mostly Muslim country, decided that since pigs are filthy creatures it would be in the country's best interest to get rid of pigs altogether.

Here's how Egyptian pig farms work: the farmers (the small Coptic Christian minority) collect the trash from city streets. They separate out the organic material and feed it to the pigs. They sell the pigs one or two at a time to butchers. The "farms" are nothing more than tiny fenced areas in the slums where whole families live among the pigs and trash and whatever other animals are around. They have no means to slaughter, package or store the meat themselves, which is why they can only sell pigs by butchers' demand. 

When the government decided to kill all the pigs in Egypt they promised compensation. But at the last second the government not only took back that promise, they charged the farmers for the slaughter, saying they could have the meat to sell as compensation. Problems with this:

1. Muslims don't eat pork. These farmers would have to sell to the Coptic Christians, who make up less than 10% of the population.
2. The Coptic Christians are the ones who keep the pigs. They'd just be selling to their neighbors, who already have a bunch of pork from their own dead pigs.
3. Since they don't have freezers or other means to store the meat the vast majority will go rancid in the Egyptian heat before they can sell it.
4. A whole segment of the population is now out of work with no other means for survival.
5. They could continue to collect trash, but they did that for free to feed their pigs.

What does the Egyptian government have to say? Killing the pigs is "a general health measure, it is good to restructure this kind of breeding in good farms, not on rubbish." What does the World Health Organization say? Big mistake. Dumbasses. Egypt plans to "restructure" the garbage collection by signing contracts with corporations, who will charge a fee, and will build new farms specifically for pig rearing. Muslims see pigs as dirty, and pretty much everyone sees trash as dirty, so you can see why the Egyptian Muslims associate the Coptic Christians with "dirty," since they do the trash collecting and the pig raising. 

My thoughts on swine flu? You're not going to die from it so calm the f down and go about your business. Don't travel to Mexico not because of the swine flu pandemic but because the police will kill you and stash your body in a shallow, mass grave.