Things That Make You Go WTF?

“Maw, what’s on the teevee tonight?”
“Nothing, Paw, no reruns of Hee Haw, no Larry the Cable Guy and NASCAR’s not on on Tuesday.”
“What the hell are we gonna do then?”
“Well, if your porn files have downloaded, we could watch the border.”
“Great idea, we can hate on brown skin people and act like we’re protecting the good ole’ US of A at the same time. I’m sure them furriners are coming to take my job”.
“No, Paw, they’re probably over trained for that.”
Governor Rick Perry of the former nation of Texas has discovered the key to getting 38% of the vote. He has focused on “border security” with the motto “If the Feds won’t do anything to protect our borders, Governor Perry will”. God, that makes me feel safe. One of the keystones of his program is a plan to put a series of cameras along the border, which are accessible via the internet (a plan put to good use by the other porn sites) and deputize every God fearing, Latino hating red necked white person with a modem to view the cameras and report every transgression picked up by the unblinking eyes in the sky.
Perry, in an attempt to out cowboy that other pseudo macho dude ostensibly from Texas, has committed $5,000,000 to build this marvel of internet security. The first phase of the program was to install 12 cameras and run them for a month. The original cost for the month was $100,000 but cost overruns brought the overall price to $210,000+. The site went live three days before the election for governor. Wow, what a coincidence. It has now been shut down until a more detailed plan is developed. During the month, the site got about 27,000,000 hits and about 220,000 people registered to use it. If there was any doubt about the appeal of a xenophobic, jingoistic (warning, Thesaurus alert) site like this, all doubts have been erased.
It could be that the appeal of this site was the impression that it might be combined with the technology of the original internet hunting site and the cumbersome ideas of due process, fairness, compassion and the use of actual policeman could be eliminated. I’m not sure that Perry would be opposed to this if a vote could be obtained.
The $5,000,000 allocated for this project bears some further inspection. The Texas/Mexico border is about 1,000 miles long. If you assume that 25% is already fenced, is in a metropolitan area, is adequately guarded or policed or is basically unsuitable for crossing, that leaves 750 miles to be observed by the Perry Peepers. If we further assume that one camera can adequately cover about a hundred yards (putting aside for the moment that obstacles and technical issues, e.g. electrical power, maintenance, etc. may require more), that means that at least 13,500 cameras would be needed. Just for the sake of mathematical simplicity, let’s reduce that to 12,000 cameras. 12 cameras cost $210,000 for less than one month. Using simple ratios would mean that $210,000,000 would be required for one month operation of the full project. Let’s see Good Hair sell that one. I know that simple extrapolation like this is fairly inaccurate but you get the idea. This doesn’t even consider that this system should be fairly easy to avoid by cutting the power, avoiding areas where the border patrol is not present or shooting the cameras.
It should be apparent that this is intended only to pander to the worst instincts of the electorate and is a cynical, hypocritical attempt to garner political advantage on the back of brown skin people again.
Lord, won’t we ever learn?

Things that make you go Hmmm?

German scientists and condom advocates are proposing to develop a spray on condom. This is designed for use by the male and is not to be confused with a Chinese product that is already available but is used by the female. Condom use should be strongly encouraged. I believe we should have baskets of them on each street corner. They should be dropped out of airplanes. They should be free, freely available and stigma free. In the early years of my pharmacy career, state regulations provided that condoms could not be openly displayed in the pharmacy. If inspectors came by and condoms were visible, some points were deducted from your overall score. If your store was marginal to begin with this could have been a serious problem for the pharmacy. This lead to the infamous condom drawer in the pharmacy department and the hesitancy and embarrassment of some people to ask for and therefore use condoms. Situations like this were illustrated in the painfully awkward scene in the movie “Summer of 42”, where the teenager buys a magazine, an ice cream cone with sprinkles and hems and haws before he gets the courage to ask for a condom. This leads the pharmacist to be an ass and embarrass him even more. It’s funny and painful to watch but situations like this lead to people avoiding the hassle and therefore not having a condom when the need arose. I’m sure you know that the urge to have sex is stronger than the urge to be safe, so I feel safe in saying that more than one pregnancy occurred and more than one sexually transmitted disease was transmitted because of this short sighted arrangement.
Having said all that, let’s review the male spray on condom concept for a moment. The advantage to this, the developers say, is that it is effective for all sizes. The concept is for the penis to be inserted into a type of spray can whereupon at the push of a button, rotating nozzles coat the throbbing member with a latex spray and voila!, a condom is created, which is custom sized for the participant.
I hope this works and is widely used. However, here are some problems I envision. Carrying a spray can around in your wallet will lead to uneven sitting and back problems. When I was younger, we carried around the single condom until it made an impression on the outside of your wallet and was so old that when you opened it, it probably had turned to dust. However, you could sit on it without much pain. Also, some of you will recall the condom dance, the unwelcome interlude in a process where the last thing you want to do is stop. The fumbling for the package, either in your wallet, your pocket or the bed side table. The often ineffective attempt to open the package that was not designed to be easily opened with fingers that, for whatever reason, usually did not provide the best traction. That was followed by the ritual installation and unrolling. Often this takes place in a dimly lit environment so you can’t readily tell the proper direction to unroll it. So you place it up there and begin to install. If you guessed right, it fairly easily unrolls and fits into place. If you placed it there upside down, you are left with two options: either take it off and turn it over and reinstall (all this with the admonition in our heads that we have heard before that this increases the chance of future child support obligations) or force it into place hoping that it will unroll in kind of a reverse order as you force it into position. Most males know that we have evolved into a creature with a brain and a penis but with only enough blood to operate one of them at a time.
Now, let’s run that again, using the spray on condom. There’s still the same awkward interruption while you get the spray can from your back pack, the glove compartment of your car or the bed side table. I’m assuming that this would be most effective only if you insert your appendage while it is in the most turgid state. So you lower a hollowed out spray can over your hoo-hah and hit the button. Hopefully the can is calibrated so that you only have to hit the button once and the proper amount is dispensed. I don’t think that it would be very effective to leave that decision up to the male at that point. The hitting of the spray button is presumably followed by the standard whoosh of a spray can, which signifies that the latex is being dispensed. The developers think that a five second burst will be sufficient for adequate coating. I’m guessing here again but most aerosol delivered products are dispensed at less than body temperature. The releasing of the propellant creates a distinctively cooling effect in most sprays. I’m also assuming that a suitable curing and drying time is required. So you are in the throes of arousal and you stop to place yourself in a spray can that coats you with cold latex. I’m thinking this will act as an effective birth control device in and of itself. The discussion: “Oh, baby, I love you. Hold it right there and let me do this.” Whoosh! “Oh! Never mind. Is Letterman on?”
Like I said: Condom use good. Proper use good. Right size good. Cold, wet genitals, not so good.

World Aids Day

Today is World Aids Day. This frightful disease is killing millions of people. And no one seems to care. Actually, that's an overstatement. Many people care, like these. Just not enough people yet. However, you can always count on Bush's government to come up with workable and common sense solutions to this and many other problems. Not!