Tuesday, February 26, 2008

This has to be fake

...but if it were legit, this is exactly why I can't ever, EVER imagine myself getting married. People have been scandalous since the day we stood upright, but we live in a culture where destructive and even maliciously hurtful behaviors are integral pieces of pop culture entertainment. This cumdumpster admits to cheating on her husband, smirks, then suggests that she is a good person despite all she has done. The last thing I want on Earth is to be that poor bastard who gets suckered by a girl like this. Single for life=win!

Super fantastic update from FOXNews.com: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,332969,00.html

The wife of a New York City cop who admitted to cheating on him and wanting to be married to another man on Monday's episode of Fox's "The Moment of Truth" says she did it for fame and fortune.

But Lauren Cleri, 26, and her husband, NYPD Officer Frank Cleri, 24, came away from the show with no prize money, no immediate job offers for her and a possible divorce in the future after being eliminated when a polygraph detected a "fib."

"We're kind of up in the air right now — I want to [get back together], but I don't think he does," Lauren Cleri told the New York Post.

"It's not very easy to overcome," Frank Cleri, a cop with the 48th Precinct in The Bronx, told the Post.

Frank Cleri said he had been aware of his wife's cheating but was not prepared to go public with it for the money.

The pair said they had planned to share any money she won.

On the show, contestants are hooked up to polygraphs and can be eliminated if a lie is detected. Cleri's alarm went off after she answered "yes" when asked if she believed she is a good person.

According to the show's Web site, contestants "answer 21 increasingly personal questions honestly, as determined by a polygraph, and win up to $500,000."


Host: Lauren, what do we do here?
What Lauren should have said: Sterilize myself, then run blindfolded into interstate traffic!
What she did: I'm gonna keep on going for the money!

Again, if it's real, mom and dad must be INCREDIBLY proud. This has GOT TO BE FAKE! LOL

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Posted by Erik @ 2/26/2008 10:47:00 PM :: (5) comments

Monday, February 25, 2008

Just clap your hands!

This song is a couple of years old, and most people have probably never heard of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!, but their first CD never fails to cheer me up. Burning the midnight oil trying to wrap up a presentation for Art History, so I need the pick-me-up. :)

Clap Your Hands! - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!

Run the lip off sunshine shore
Betray white water
Delay dark forms
Slap young waves on wooden bones
Don't touch the laughter and away we go

Away we go

CLAP YOUR HANDS!
But I feel so lonely
CLAP YOUR HANDS!
But it won't do nothing
CLAP YOUR HANDS!
But I have no money
CLAP YOUR HANDS!
Are you up to something?
CLAP YOUR HANDS!
Where's my milk and honey?
CLAP YOUR HANDS!
But I just look funny
CLAP YOUR HANDS!
I'll just wait awhile

As time alone stands still for some
Stuffed sailor up with eyeball sun
And if by castle ship should stray
It has like you no chosen fate for
It's tongue-tied caboose that leads
This ragged lad, this finger-flipping
Mom and dad (for what is worth some
Aimless steer?) And should mouth
Confuse my foggy mirror and reveal
What is not there I shall take this
Unbound train away...


----------------
Now playing: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! - Clap Your Hands!

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Posted by Erik @ 2/25/2008 11:34:00 PM :: (0) comments

Friday, February 22, 2008

Barack, Barack, he's our man. If he can't do it, some white guy can!

Barack Obama has my vote, but that may not mean much in the end. Assuming he manages to win out over Hillary in the Democratic primary race, he still faces a steep, if not impossible, uphill battle. To my mind, he seems to be the more compelling and appealing candidate for everyone. His message of hope, opportunity, and optimism certainly seems more genuine, given his background. How electable he will be ultimately depends on whether America is ready to elect a minority President. My guess is that he will ultimately win the primary and lose the election, as I just can't see white, protestant America will allow a black man to be President of their country. So I am mentally preparing myself for more of the same old bullshit: an aging, out of touch, white male with questionable special interest connections, fluctuating values, and a we'll-stay-in-Iraq-for-100-years-if-we-have-to mentality. Four more years of anti-middle class politics disguised by "party of values" propaganda. Four more years of tax cuts that will someday, somehow (just trust us) bring a windfall of relief to middle class America. Four more years of another geriatric Republican pandering to his corporate sponsorship and a "conservative" base made up of people who are largely full of dogmatic shit (see Ted Haggard and various other evangelical/right wing celebrities). Four more years of mediocrity, arrogance, and hubris. I can't wait.

The America I was taught to dream of as a kid proved to be an utter fabrication, much like a Santa Claus myth we could live within. Whereas people eventually accept that Santa Claus was a lie (all in fun, of course), they refuse to accept that America the Great as laid out by Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, et al was then, and to some degree still is, a falsehood. After all, it is more fun to believe a magic man delivers presents to all the good boys and girls than it is to accept that mom and dad put all of that stuff on their credit cards. Similarly, it is more pleasing to believe that all Men are created equal and that rights are self-evident (bestowed upon us by our Creator), than it is to recognize that 50 years after the official end of segregation America is still almost certainly not going to elect a black man to be President of the United States. Hell, there's little or no chance this country would elect a woman, for that matter. This comes as no great surprise in a country that took 100 years to abolish slavery after a group of white males (some of them slave owners), had the audacity to write "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

When your country's alleged values are based on a hypocritical premise and established without addressing what was obviously a catastrophic case of cognitive dissonance, you are in for some serious, even tragic, shit. The Civil War was fought to maintain that cognitive dissonance in the name of money and power. Women's suffrage and the Civil Rights fights both had to be fought as a direct result of that disconnect between reality and supposed ideology. The truth is, the Civil War, suffrage, and civil rights happened because America was historically a racist, sexist nation. Has some of that come right in the past 50-75 years? To a large degree, I think you would have to say that it has, but our roots are still firmly entrenched in blacks as property/inferiors, women as baby makers/inferiors, so I just can't see a reason to be optimistic that we might finally be ready to take that leap forward as a people. Obama will be attacked for his inexperience (even though he has been in public service for 20 years), despite the fact that Repubs willingly elected an incompetent governor from Texas who had less than 10 years experience as a functioning politician, none of which was at the Federal level, but he did have daddy Bush to lean on, so I that made all the difference in 2000. Republicans will attack Hillary because she is supposedly a Socialist, though how Socialist a woman with as many ties to special interest groups and corporate America as Hillary Clinton could possibly be is highly debatable. Clearly, anyone that threatens Republican interests in the insurance and pharmaceutical sectors will be feverishly attacked as a would-be communist. Same old, predictable bullshit with what I'm worried will be the same old, predictably disappointing results.

I've said it before and I'm sure I will say it again, the greatest tragedy in America isn't where we are, it's where we are in relation to where we could be. A smarter leader here, a more authentic set of values there, and we might have actually done more than made a small percentage of the population obscenely rich and built the world's mightiest military machine. People think that money and power signify success, but these things should not be our measures for success, they should be the foundation on which we build success. As it stands, much of our money(the most recent universal tax refund, for example) is borrowed from the civil rights violation specialists in China and much of our power is based solely on having the mightiest military. Where we could have been a nation unified by a vision, working toward something like a utopia, we are instead little more than a modernized, mechanized Rome, working toward ego-fueled, global dominance. Ironically, even Egypt had a few matriarchs take the helm during its long history, yet modern, "enlightened" America has not ever even seriously considered putting a woman in the highest, elected office in the land until this year.

We need a change in direction and we need someone capable of encouraging people to hope for something new. What could be more new and different than a black President? If nothing else, Barack Obama is giving voice to an alternative to the status quo, which appeals directly to my sensibilities. Obviously, his ability to back those words up with action are what's most important, especially at this particular juncture in American history. Constantly walking around patting each other on the back and declaring "we're the best" doesn't make it so. Being the most powerful does not necessarily make us the most righteous. We have to constantly seek ways to improve our collective condition or risk collapsing under the weight of stagnation, apathy, and greed. The whole point was to put the power in the hands of the people, but the people haven't ever been willing to take that power and do something with it. Maybe this time we will. That's not to say Obama is necessarily the answer, but electing a black man President of the United States would certainly serve as a strong indication that we might finally be ready to start breaking free from of the stranglehold white (Anglo-Saxon-Protestant) males have had on the White House throughout this country's history. In my mind, that has to be a good thing.

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Posted by Erik @ 2/22/2008 03:57:00 PM :: (8) comments

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Sometimes I have to let my inner geek shine through

This is one of those times. Thanks to BoingBoing (how did we find anything interesting on the web before BoingBoing?), I came across Phun. Phun is a physics "playground" currently in beta, which allows the user to play with physics in 2D, using shapes, tools, and a variety of menu commands to goof around with physics. The software was written by Emil Ernerfeldt, a Swedish graduate student, and I must say that it's actually, strangely, a good time! Maybe I am becoming too easily amused in my old age. Anyway, a video of Emil demonstrating his creation is below, along with a link to download the last version of the app.

Download

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Posted by Erik @ 2/20/2008 10:11:00 PM :: (0) comments

Hookers are people too

I'm stuck on this prostitution thing…now I'm thinking about the monetary costs, rather than the emotional/psychological expenses. College CallGirl claims to charge $300/hour. That's $300/hour to sleep with a prostitute, not a virgin, or a supermodel, but a pro. Obviously, working as a call girl means she's not walking the streets, but in the end, it's still a job where someone exchanges sex acts for cash. While I understand there are people in this world who can spend 300 dollars the way I might spend 3, and I have heard of call girls charging much more for an hour of their services, it is hard to imagine ever paying for sex.

In an America where casual sex is more prevalent and plentiful than it has ever been, and loose women seem to be everywhere, it seems odd that people would have to pay $300/hour to get off with a professional. If I am paying $300 for an hour of anything, it had better be more fulfilling than sex with a hooker. And make no mistake, there are probably few single, fully functional males on this planet that get less sex than I do. When you don't do casual sex and you have effectively given up on dating, you're not getting laid…ever, but even I wouldn't pay. I haven't met a woman yet that I would pay to sleep with, and I can't think of any woman that has ever walked the Earth who would be worth $300/hour for a bodily fluids swapping session.

Hopefully, these people are having the most mind-blowing, jaw-dropping, spiritually enlightening sex ever, because I can think of a lot of other things I would rather be doing with $300 than getting laid (Performance Machine black chrome grips and getting my wheels installed on the bike come immediately to mind). It would be one thing if the sex was life altering (in a good way) AND lasted for the entire hour, but I'm certainly not capable of non-stop performance on that scale and something tells me these people are not being touched by the gods at the moment of orgasm! lol And I would imagine that many(most?) of these guys could probably get some for the price of a couple drinks, if not for free, considering that the type of guy who can drop 300 bones on an hour of fun probably has some substantial means at his disposal.

In South Tampa, pulling up in a Mercedes and stepping out in a $1000 outfit is more than enough to get you laid. Maybe it takes a bit more in NYC (where CallGirl claims to work), but I can imagine that the type of people regularly paying out what would be a car payment for many people just to have a bit of fun with a pro could probably swing an entry-level Bentley or at the very least, an upscale Merc. So why pay at all? I suppose because they can, and it's certainly simpler and quicker than chatting up some barslut for an hour or two, when all you really want to do is sleep with her, so in that context, I suppose it makes sense. If nothing else, hooking up with a hooker is certainly more efficient than taking your chances with some random, drunk girl. Even wealthy and powerful males strike out once in a while. Maybe it's just that simple, speed and efficiency and a guaranteed score. You're in, you're out, and you get on with your day. It's like Burger King: have it fast, have it your way, and just like Burger King, there's an outside chance it might kill you someday with repeated exposure.

It's funny that what bothers me, or at least fascinates me, most is the why, rather than the moral issues involved. Honestly, the morality of prostitution is largely irrelevant to me. Two people want to get together and trade money for a quicky, fine, people do it for free all the time, but whatever floats your boat. None of it affects me directly, so the moral implications are more or less meaningless. People have been paying for sex in one form or another since the dawn of time and will continue to do so until the end of it. There's no amount of moral pontification or guilt tripping that will ever stop them, so it makes no sense to try. That said, I am curious about the mentality that makes the buying and selling of sex an acceptable, if not desirable enterprise. Not curious enough to find out directly, it's more of a "look at the monkeys" thing, but I do get a kick out of contemplating the actions of my fellow monkeys.

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Posted by Erik @ 2/20/2008 09:30:00 AM :: (2) comments

Sunday, February 17, 2008

I found myself reading the blogged recollections of a college-aged prostitute

I couldn't tell you how I went from reading through BoingBoing, but somehow I ended up at the front door, so to speak, of Confessions of a College Call Girl. It wasn't direct, though I later stumbled across a post (the most poignant I've read on her site) that BoingBoing did link to directly, but somehow, some way, there I was. The strange part is, this is the type of material I usually avoid, because it seems to deepen the sense of hopelessness that comes over me when I consider Humanity as a collective whole. When I think about people, I genuinely feel any sense of optimism draining from my mind. When I think about female people, it often seems like someone has accelerated the process by attaching a pump to the drain line, but I realize that is as much about my perceptions as it is about anything resembling reality. The bottom line is, people do not understand me and I do not understand them.

Most people who know me know that I have some fairly straightforward feelings about sex. In short, sex is something to be valued and held above being trivialized. My thinking has always been that trivializing sex can only take us nowhere as individuals and as a people. Of course, opinions vary and are indeed much like assholes. That said, reading the anecdotes and reminisces published on a site like Confessions does nothing to dispel the sensation that things are in fact, hopeless. Many of the posts describe the encounters and lifestyles of a college-aged prostitute in a non-chalant, even witty manner, giving one the impression that the author is "someone who seems to have played with fire and barely singed her fingertips", which makes her "Price" post all the more poignant. By giving her readers that glance into her inner world, she reveals her awareness of the toll the life she has lived took upon her.

That is a fascinating revelation to me, as it simultaneously makes the author seem more human, less synthetic, and reaffirms my belief that cheapening the things we do only serves to erode us in fundamental ways. What time does with every passing moment, cheapening accelerates by several orders of magnitude. Selling our physical, sexual selves, seems a fate worse than death to me. At least in death the physical self is put to rest and the spirit is freed to do whatever it is our spirits do when these fragile containers finally falter and give up their essence. In a post explaining that hardly anyone, if anyone knew of her work as a prostitute, the author includes this passage:

"When I reason it out I don't feel guilty about what I've done. I was having lots of casual sex before anyway. I would go out on a date and hook up with some guy and not even enjoy it that much. So why not get paid for what I was doing anyway? And I do feel like it's an honest living like any other, a service provided. The only thing that bothers me, when I think about it, is that now I have a secret so deep that I can never tell anyone. That someday I may have a lover or a soulmate, someone I want to share my life with. And I will never, ever be able to tell him."


My secrets really aren't secrets at all, as just about everyone I know has some idea or understanding of what I have and haven't done in this life. There's not much to tell, so most people don't particularly care. Reading blogs like CCG make me feel something akin to appreciation for my relative banality. I can't relate to that sort of emotional encumbrance and I'm thankful for it. Strangely, I also fail to relate to worries about finding someone I might want to share my life with. At my age, I have more or less surrendered that sort of optimism up to the realization that I am growing progressively more out of touch with my fellow human beings. Somehow, even with all of this woman's sexual exploits, she seems to have held onto a strangely mutated hopefulness. It seems almost unimaginable to me, but there it is. Assuming the blog's many posts are legit and genuine, that might be the most compelling and perplexing bit of truth to be found there.

I'm left wondering, how many other CallGirls are active out there today and, were I to meet one, would I ever know it? The implications are troubling, when you start considering the possibilities. Keeping that sort of past a secret would seem like a necessity, particularly if someone is looking for genuine love (as I understand it, anyway) but eventually, that burden would have to become massively heavy. Perhaps just as amazing that a sex worker still holds fast to an idea of romantic love is that she will almost certainly meet someone who is accepting of her past, if not willing to embrace her history as a prostitute. People are incredibly diverse and while I can't imagine myself ever being able to work through that much history, someone out there can and probably will someday. She may even have children someday. She certainly wouldn't be the first.

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Posted by Erik @ 2/17/2008 09:19:00 PM :: (0) comments

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

10 Rules of Making

10 Rules lifted from an art school's website that I unfortunately forgot to note. These work well for just about any facet of life. Wish I had stumbled across these 10 years ago!

1. Find a place you trust and then try trusting it for a while.
2. General duties of a student: pull everything out of your teacher, pull everything out of your fellow students.
3. General duties of a teacher: pull everything out of your students.
4. Consider everything an experiment.
5. Be self-disciplined. This means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.
6. Nothing is a mistake. There is no win and no fail. There is only make.
7. The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all the time who eventually catch on to things.
8. Don’t try to create and analyse at the same time. They’re different processes.
9. Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.
10. “We’re breaking all of the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.” - John Cage.

Helpful hints: Always be around. Come or go to everything always. Go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully often. Save everything, it might come in handy later.

There should be new rules next week.

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Posted by Erik @ 2/12/2008 11:39:00 PM :: (0) comments

A-mazing

I had dinner with an old friend over the weekend. Hadn't seen him in nearly 8 years or so and ran into him purely by chance. Mom and I were out for some reason and decided to grab lunch at the local Olive Garden. On the way, we decided to do the Macaroni Grill instead. While waiting for our meal, my old friend, his wife, and his mother came in. I didn't recognize him at first, but eventually I realized who he was, went over to say hello, and we traded information. Fast forward a couple of weeks and we met up for dinner at a local Thai restaurant. Through the course of the conversation, I came to really understand just how much time I had wasted through my 20s.

I look at the drawing I am currently working on and I realize that I can, in fact, draw - at least I have some ability. With that comes the regretful realization that I should have been drawing in earnest all these years. Instead of spending 1/3 of my life to date laboring at jobs that ultimately left me unfulfilled and my abilities wasted, I should have been working and refining and expanding those abilities. My friend was graduating from Northern Illinois and earning a Master's degree from the University of Tampa. He did two years in marketing with Big Brothers, Big Sisters where he met his wife. They bought a house and are currently working on kids.

How do you explain that you effectively abandoned your dreams and set off on a dead-end journey toward irrelevance to people who have their proverbial shit together? In my experience, there is no point in trying. Most people won't understand or care, because the end result is still the same: renting a room from the parental units while finishing up a degree at an age when most people are well into being "settled down". Honestly, I'm not sure how to feel about that. I definitely look at my 20s as 10 predominantly wasted years, but that waste has left me more motivated not to waste the next 10 than I probably would have been otherwise. I suppose the final verdict will have to wait another 10 years or so, but I have to admit that I found myself wishing that I had a few more stories to share that related to forward progress. All I have in hand today is "I hope so" and "I plan to", which equates to little more than hot air until something comes to fruition.

If I had kept drawing at the pace and with the energy I had as a teen, I very well might be a working artist today. There's no making up for lost time, so the only recourse is to make the most of out years to come, but that brings me back to the idea that relief is always "just around the corner", but these corners are so numerous that they become a maze and this maze becomes something like a spatial ball of yarn to run through.

Time for some comic relief thanks to Sarah Silverman...

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Posted by Erik @ 2/12/2008 01:45:00 PM :: (1) comments

Thursday, February 07, 2008

Watch this video!

I am not an advocate of recreational drug use, but the use of hallucinogenics has a history stretching all the way back to prehistoric humanity. Our species has used, abused, and explored psychedelic chemicals since our earliest days. Some people ever theorize that Man's movement toward self-awareness may very well have been fueled by hallucinogen exposure. Certainly, aboriginal populations have a long history of using psychedelic chemicals in spiritual ceremonies. Like all chemicals, there are certainly dangers, and there is no possible scenario in which these chemicals could be fully legalized, because there are far too many people who would abuse them, which creates all sorts of dangers. That said, it certainly seems like there is room to move on the issue.

If a naturally occurring chemical could open up a pathway to deeper understanding and insight into existence, would you take it? I'm not afraid to admit that I would most certainly be tempted. I've gotten shit=faced on alcohol a time or three in my life, and the only insight it afforded me was a greater appreciation for how far my stomach could project its contents in a violent and unpredictable manner. Getting my head out of the way with a cup of tea sounds much more interesting at this age.

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Posted by Erik @ 2/07/2008 10:07:00 PM :: (0) comments

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Shoulda, coulda, woulda went to Ringling

I took a trip to the Ringling Museum of Art last weekend and I must admit, it was inspirational. John Ringling is best known for his part in creating the world's most famous circus, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. What many people do not know is that he and his wife were incredibly active patrons of the arts. Their passion for the arts grew to the point that they established the museum and The Ringling School of Art and Design on a large stretch of land in Sarasota. As a would be artist, seeing works by the likes of Rubens, Rembrandt, Velazquez, Van Dyck, and El Greco is always a thrill. Seeing 200, 300, and 400 year old paintings is an amazing experience, as you realize just how potentially long a created image might remain viable, given the proper care and materials. You also come to understand how large some painters were working during the Baroque and subsequent periods.

Rubens' wall paintings, completed by a team of assistants under his direction for Church commissions, are HUGE! I'm not sure of the actual dimensions, but one of the Ringling's gallery rooms features several Rubens works that have to be at least 15' tall and nearly as wide. It's amazing to see paintings that size framed and hung together in a single space. Filling the walls of a cathedral with images this size seems reasonable compared to some of the private commissions by other artists hanging in the Ringling's galleries. There are portraits which have to be 10' top to bottom and side-to-side. When I think of the structure one would have to build to make such a painting reasonable to own and it seems absurd. Then, like today, extravagance and gluttony were all the rage and it shows in the art of the time.

Old masters worked on grand scales. Michelangelo labored on the Sistine Chapel and chiseled The David (a life-sized model of which resides in the Ringling museum's central courtyard), each taking four years to complete. Titian, Rubens, and their artistic successors created giant canvases that seem almost ridiculously large to me. The cost of the canvas alone would have been prohibitive under the best circumstances. Add to that the expense of paint and frame and you have a massive amount of money committed to a single piece. In an era of opulence, spending astronomical sums of money on art was a more common occurrence. These days, the best hope of getting a grant is by creating public art, which often times is met by skepticism, if not outright disdain, but most of the general public.

Being an artist in an era when art was revered and admired must have been much more fun than being an artist in a time when art is marginalized or even dismissed entirely. In a time when people once referred to the likes of Britney Spears and Basquiat as "artists", the word is more an insult or slir than it is a compliment.

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Posted by Erik @ 2/06/2008 03:08:00 PM :: (1) comments

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

This is why I almost never watch television

Natalee Halloway is back in the news, as the American media, and its public, can't seem to get enough of her story. It would appear that America's heart bleeds for blond-haired, blue-eyed, white girls, from upper middle class society, but when was the last time you saw a multi-national police and military effort assembled to find a missing girl from South Central Los Angeles or any other of America's other poor, urban communities? I would venture to bet that in the two years since Natalee Halloway disappeared, at least one 18-year old black/hispanic/asian/etc girl with a promising future and loving parents disappeared somewhere in America. I wouldn't know for sure, because I didn't hear about it, and there was no miliary effort to find said girl. Those girls are lucky to become faces on milk cartons and mailbox fliers.

In Halloway's case, it is as easy to imagine that she got drunk(van der Sloot suggests that she and her friends were dabbling in cocaine as well), hooked up with this slob, and had some sort of seizure, as it is to think he was making a move, something went wrong, and he ended up killing her. Either way, the moral of the story should be clear to any girl with any common sense and a shred of self-respect: don't trust strangers. Don’t' trust f#*king strangers! It's the oldest lesson our parents teach us and most learned it shortly after they were taught to sit on the toilet when they had to "make poopies", because it is as simple and as obvious as not shitting your pants.

I don't get the one-night stand, particularly from a girl's perspective. You literally put your life and your health in the hands, or the pants, of someone you hardly know in order to experiece a few minutes of cheap, animalistic pleasure. This person could be carrying a multitude of STDs, or a rapist, or a murderer, or more likely, someone out cheating on their wife/husband or girlfriend/boyfriend. A girl I know once told me about a friend of hers who hooked up in a bar bathroom with a guy she had known for less than an hour. Ten minutes after their romantic tryst in a public bathroom stall, he disappeared into the night…now that has to make one feel classy. Apparently, the girl spent the next three years getting HIV tests every six months, "just to be sure". Sounds like a great time and well worth the risk, as I'm sure the sex moved mountains and opened up a whole new realm of understanding for her.

One night stands are always a bad idea, but hooking up with a stranger strikes me as unimaginable. Ted Bundy wasn't enough to scare people out of this ancient behavior pattern and Natalee Halloway won't be, either. I'm sure that all across the globe last night, tonight, tomorrow night, and beyond, there will be people penetrating, and being penetrated by, strangers. People will be people, after all, and it would be ridiculous to expect anything more from Earth's "most intelligent" species. Hopefully, Natalee Halloway died defending herself and her dignity, rather than in some post-coital embrace. How would you like the last act you do on this Earth to be a random hook-up with some pudgy scumbag on a beach somewhere? That sort of talk is disrespectful, no doubt, but the reality is that such a scenario is a possibility.

The funny thing is, most of the people I have known who participate in the one-night stand lifestyle(male or female) wouldn't get into a car with a stranger for fear of ending up a corpse rotting in a shallow grave somewhere. But a few minutes/hours of conversation and a few drinks change everything. Alcohol and drugs serve as keys to the one-night stand door, and an excuse for opening it after the fact, but that does nothing to make sense of sleeping with someone that was a complete and total stanger minutes, hours, or even days before. When we cheapen or devalue the things we do, we cheapen and devalue who we are. In the process, that cheapening puts peoples' health and even their lives at risk, but the beat goes on and on.

For the sake of her family and friends, I hope this Natalee Halloway thing is wrapped up and closed soon. It seems more and more obvious that van der Sloot disposed of her body, but questions will probably always surround the circumstances of exactly what led to this young girl becoming a body in the first place. Either way, even such a widely covered example of bad things happening as the result of, or at least during, a one-night hookup will make no difference whatsoever in the continuance of this most ancient ritual. For "normal" or "average" folks, getting drunk and sleeping with strangers is a rite of passage, so we can expect more stories like this one for years to come. Of course, you won't hear about it happening in South St. Pete or College Hill, but then, there is only so much time in the nightly news and so much web space on CNN.com.

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Posted by Erik @ 2/05/2008 09:10:00 AM :: (0) comments