Cloud Nothings "Should've Been"

I'm a sucker for heart-on-sleeve collegiate pop records like this one from Cleveland's Cloud Nothings, who'll be in Austin next week for SXSW. That goes double when it's accompanied by an infectiously cute-and-clever video I can easily appropriate for STD prevention work in my day job. This one is rife with choices and consequences. The rest of Cloud Nothings' self-titled debut is also pretty good if you like this sort of thing.

Tufts Attempts to Rescue the Sexiled

Don't even think about hanging a sock on the door at Tufts University. Following an uptick in complaints from sexiled roomies, the Medford, Mass. institution has banned sex in campus dorm rooms when a roommate is present.

Call me old-fashioned, but it seems awfully nannyish for a university to enact such a reactionary, far-reaching policy. If one of my dormmates was in flagrante, I either found someplace else to go or put a pillow over my head. A c-block would've been downright unbromanly, especially when my own bouts of alcohol-fueled stupidity were every bit as disruptive as whatever furtive groping took place on the other side of the room.

It is difficult for me to fathom the apparent trauma that writer (and Tufts alum) J. Bruce Daley inflicted upon his roommate by having sex in his presence.

"I will never forget the look on my roommate's face the next morning," Daley regretfully recounts. "I could see that he felt is privacy had been violated...He transferred schools after our freshman year and has spent the rest of his life living in Asia."

Asia? Dude, you could've just gone to the study lounge!

Of course, I never had to share a room with a steady couple that copulated like jackrabbits at all hours. I can see how that would become a problem requiring intervention from residential advisors, but if two ostensibly adult roommates can't work it out amongst themselves, why should dorm sex be handled differently than any other untenable living situation?

The thrill of the chase

I've always wanted to shadow a tornado chaser, but as the Travel Channel's Tornado Alley U.S.A. demonstrates, it ain't all funnel clouds and grapefruit-sized hail.

There are no guarantees with weather, so you could fork over $2,000 to minivan your way around America's big wide middle and never witness a single wall cloud. Imagine hauling your ass all the way from London to Nebraska and coming up vortex-less. What a damn shame that would be.

Clearly there is a market need for a tornado chase outfit that balances the uncertainty of finding the business end of Mother Nature's wrath with the restorative powers of being on the business end of a table dance. If I were Warren Buffett, I'd double down on the first company that breaks up the monotony of fruitless chase days with a sampling of Midwestern men's clubs, particularly those with steak-and-shrimp lunch specials.

And what would this weather-porn dream factory on wheels be called? Titty Twisters!

Hi honey, I'm stupid!

From our neighbors to the north, here's an interesting essay by Susan Krashinsky in today's Globe and Mail that dissects advertising's dependency on positing men as hopeless dumbasses in order to sell things to women.

With women controlling the majority of household purchases, marketers have determined that one of the easiest routes to a woman's pocketbook is by taking a swipe at bumbling male significant others. Krashinsky dissects five TV spots selling everything from hardware to ice cream that employ this formula.

Of course, men and boys watch these ads, too. While some men resent being portrayed in a light that would likely result in boycotts if the genders were flipped, it isn't very macho to whine about a TV commercial. More importantly, men stand to derive a tangible benefit from these stereotypes. If your wife thinks you're an idiot, she'll probably just give up on pursuing an equitable division of household labor.

Meanwhile, back on the couch, the crumb-crusted manboys of the world can safely pop open another beer, scratch their balls and say, "See that, baby? I is normal!"

Texas Titty Tax Struck Down

State district judge Scott Jenkins ruled today that the Texas Legislature's oft-mocked $5 strip club fee is unconstitutional and may not be collected.

The $5 per (ahem) head fee went into effect Jan. 1 and was immediately the subject of a lawsuit by the Texas Entertainment Association (yes, even the titty bars have lobbyists) and the owners of an Amarillo gentlemen's establishment. It is not clear if the fee will immediately stop being collected because the state could still appeal the ruling.

The deflating experience of going to a bar to pay money to see half-naked women pretend to like you is punishment in and of itself, so a government-imposed surcharge on top of the overpriced drinks and $20 table dances seems like overkill to me. Also, who gets to decide what is "adult entertainment" versus "performance art." I'm none too comfortable with the idea of one of my state worker brethren making such a call.

While the sexual assault prevention and low-income health insurance programs this fee is supposed to pay for are certainly needed, I'm wary of our increasing tendency to rely on "stupidity taxes" to pay for social services against a backdrop of constant tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthiest among us.

Texas Sex Toy Law Struck Down

Gentlemen, start your pocket pussies! The asinine Texas law that made it a crime to promote or sell sex toys has been struck down by the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

Believe it or not, the obscenity section of our fair state's penal code says it is illegal to promote or possess with intent to promote any device "designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs." Relying largely on the Supreme Court's 2003 decision in Lawrence vs. Texas, the circuit court said the dildo law violates Texans' constitutional right to privacy under the 14th Amendment.

I guess that means you won't have to refer to 'em as "novelties" anymore when you go to Forbidden Fruit.

Calling All Batchelosers

The Austin Chronicle is now searching for our fair town's least eligible bachelor in its Batcheloser contest.

You can learn more about the candidates and vote here. The winner gets a SXSW wristband (which, honestly, is probably the last thing such a man needs).

What makes a Batcheloser? Is it serial unemployment, involuntary celibacy, hobbyism-as-compensation, social paralysis or bad hygiene? Nah. I think these factors are merely symptomatic.

To truly embody the ideal, you must knowingly squander potential in an inelegant manner before shrugging your shoulders and saying, "Fuck it" to no one in particular. To that end, many of Austin's foremost would-be Batchelosers can't even be bothered to enter a contest.

And when that happens, ladies and gentlemen, we all lose.

Abstinence-Only Education Fails Again

The Bush administration remains gung-ho about dropping a cool $141 million on abstinence-only education next year despite mounting scientific evidence that such programs do not delay sexual debut.

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy released a report Monday and the best thing they could say about abstinence-only education is that two programs in Ohio and Arkansas showed “weak but encouraging results.” Contrast that with several studies showing that two-thirds of 48 programs which combined abstinence with honest instruction on contraceptive methods actually resulted in delayed sexual debut and increased condom use.

Moreover, a five-year, $8 million study completed in April found no difference in the age of sexual debut between teens enrolled in four abstinence-only programs and teens not enrolled in the programs.

The Dallas Morning News headline for the story about this study is, “Teaching only abstinence not certain to curb teen sex.” I’m fairly certain that nugget belongs on the short list for understatement of the decade.

And how do abstinence-only proponents respond to these findings? By crying “faulty science,” of course.

Despite having no evidence to refute the research piling up against abstinence-only education, Kyleen Wright of Texans for Life says this is all just an attempt “to discourage parents from supporting what they feel in their gut is right for children.”

By law, the only way condoms and other forms of contraception can be discussed in federally-funded abstinence education is in terms of their failure rates. So not only does abstinence-only education omit discussion of condoms, it actively discourages their use.

The core principle of abstinence-only education is that sex outside marriage always has negative consequences. Anything that might reduce the odds of this ordained fate is viewed as sending a harmful message. Kids who don’t get pregnant or infected with an STD because they used condoms can’t be used as cautionary tales, so abstinence-only education simply pretends they don’t exist.

Schools in Texas are overwhelmingly wary of comprehensive sex education. Who can blame them? We live in a country where a surgeon general serving under a Democratic president lost her job because she suggested telling kids that it’s normal to masturbate.

To introduce comprehensive sex education is to invite religiously-induced histrionics into school board meetings that will be duly covered by local news outlets on the hunt for sexy sweeps fodder. It’s easier to just keep your head down because the faces of children failed by abstinence-only education will eventually morph together into an ambiguous, self-perpetuating social problem that no one will be held accountable for.

In the course of my job, I’ve talked to more than a few teachers and school nurses who do their best to get around abstinence-only education. When students ask questions, they answer honestly at the risk of being reprimanded or even fired. They do what they can within the system they’re dealt, but piecemeal efforts like this are not enough to turn the tide.

The only way comprehensive sex education will ever be widespread in Texas is if parents who support it recognize what they’re up against and demand changes in a sustained, organized manner. All the social scientists in the world can’t hold a candle to the proverbial angry mother waving a rolling pin over her head.

"Becoming" Lisa Cameron

Glass Eye was my first favorite Austin band. The first time I saw them at Liberty Lunch in April 1988 symbolized the moment at which I realized I actually lived in Austin.

Dave Cameron was Glass Eye's drummer at the time. I got to know Dave a few years later when he was in a band called the Personalities. They did something called "The Beatles Pus Medley," which was a medley of Beatles songs with the word "pus" (e.g., "All You Need is Pus.").

I didn't know Dave had gender dysphoria until 2005 when she "became" Lisa.

Of course transsexualism is not as simple as "becoming," as former Glass Eye guitarist/vocalist Kathy McCarty's interview with Cameron in this week's Chron explains.

Photo by Todd V. Wolfson

Gone Daddy Gone

I live across the street from a middle school, which means I have to contend with lots of school-related litter in my yard.

Mostly it's empty cans, candy wrappers, ice cream sticks and wadded up worksheets.

It gets to be a real pain in the ass to have to pick up all this crap every day.

But every once in a while, I find something wonderful...

The Merck Money Trail

As much as I think we need to provide the HPV vaccine to Texas girls, I’m no longer convinced Rick Perry’s executive order was a smart way to go about it. It would’ve been better just to hash it out in the Legislature.

A report released earlier this week by Texans for Public Justice does a good job of mapping the Merck money trail. I found the following paragraph particularly enlightening.

There would have been much less controversy if the governor had promoted the vaccine differently. It would have been different if he fast-tracked vaccine-mandate legislation—rather than resorting to executive fiat. It would have been different if he had held a prime-time press conference—rather than issuing a statement late on the Friday preceding the Super Bowl. He further invited controversy by granting vaccine maker Merck & Co. a statewide monopoly without concessions—rather than negotiating a deep vaccine discount for poor Texans. Finally, there would have been fewer questions if this initiative came from a longtime champion of women’s health—rather than an official previously AWOL on health policies.

It was my previous suspicion that Perry issued his order to circumvent legislative debate on the vaccine as a favor to his far right colleagues who didn’t want to be forced into becoming mouthpieces for batty religionists who don’t want to lose HPV as a “punishment” for sex they don't like.

The fact that so many Republican legislators have come out against the order proves that theory wrong, but I still don’t think he’d sell out his far right constituency for a measly $6,000. There's got to be more to this. Just how deep in Perry's pocket is former chief of staff-turned-Merck lobbyist Mike Toomey?

Wipe that smirk off your face!

Do You Want Easy Girls to Get Cancer?

This is the question that constituents and reporters need to ask every far right god bully in the Texas Legislature who opposes Governor Rick Perry’s executive order requiring all Texas schoolgirls entering sixth grade to receive the HPV vaccine.

Leading the charge is Sen. Jane Nelson (R-Lewisville), chair of the Health and Human Services Committee. On Monday, Nelson asked Perry to rescind his order, saying that the availability of a vaccine that can prevent most cases of cervical cancer does not constitute a public health emergency. Tell that to the 391 women in Texas who died last year of a potentially preventable cancer.

Nelson plans to ask state Attorney General Greg Abbott for an opinion on the legality of Perry’s order. Other Republican lawmakers are also filing bills to overturn the order.

I suspect Nelson’s bluster may be merely a carrot to placate the insane religionists who really do believe cervical cancer is god’s special gift to sluts. She’s not a stupid woman and it won’t help her political career to be forced into carrying water for moral degenerates who masturbate to Revelations. I can’t imagine Perry doing this without letting Nelson know about it first.

Meanwhile, Perry issued a statement to the faithful on Monday explaining that his order would do more than just keep sexually active young women from getting HPV.

"In the past, young women who have abstained from sex until marriage have contracted HPV from their husbands and faced the difficult task of defeating cervical cancer," he said. "This vaccine prevents that from happening."

Put another way, have pity on the virtuous virginal brides whose white wedding was besmirched by HPV, but not necessarily the women who get the virus outside of marriage. I also love the sexist double standard that accepts non-abstinent, disease-carrying grooms without judgment.

Some Republicans are griping about how this order usurps parental authority. They are full of hard poo. State law continues to permit parents to not vaccinate their kids for religious or philosophical reasons.

I should have known Texas could not do something proactive like this without it turning into a sad and disgusting spectacle.

Mary Cheney Gets Some Savage Love

Poor Mary Cheney. She can’t comprehend why having a baby with her same sex partner would have anything to do with the war her political party is waging on gays and lesbians whose daddies aren’t the vice president.

Why can’t the big, bad media leave her and her partner alone with their widdle bwessing? After all, it’s a child, not a political prop, right?

Here’s renowned sex columnist Dan Savage explaining to Mary why she’s full of more than just a bundle of joy:

Mary, you worked on both of your father’s campaigns, and you kept your mouth clamped shut while Karl Rove and George Bush ran around the country attacking gay people, gay parents, and our children in 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006. It’s a little late to declare the private choices of gays and lesbians unfit for public debate, Mary.

And so long as your party insists on making the fitness of homosexuals to marry or parent — or, hell, exist — a subject of public debate, Mary, your decision to become a parent is germane and very much fit for public discussion and debate. The GOP’s selective embrace of some pregnant dykes - only knocked-up lesbians with powerful connections will be treated with respect - is a disconnect that demands answers. From you, from your father, from your venomous mother, from the idiot president you helped elect.

Savage does give Cheney credit for challenging James Dobson’s popcorn fart assertion that same sex parents are somehow damaging their kids more than traditionally-sexed breeders, but not for long…

You kept your mouth clamped shut when your father needed the political support of assholes like Dobson. And now that your dad is a despised lame-duck VP, dad’s gay-bashing political allies feel free to treat you with the same contempt with which they have long treated other gay and lesbians. And now you cry foul?

Sorry, Mary, and fuck you. You and your whole fucked-up family crawled into bed with bigots like Dobson when it suited you. And now you and your whole fucked-up family have some explaining to do. So welcome to the political debate, Mary, and remember…

Your side started it. It only serves you right that you’re going to have to finish it.

Amen to all that.

Governor Orders Texas Girls to Get HPV Vaccine

I never say anything good about Rick Perry, but our governor did the right thing today by signing an executive order mandating that all Texas schoolgirls receive the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine.

Beginning in September 2008, all girls entering sixth grade will be required to get Merck's new Gardasil vaccine. HPV is a sexually transmitted disease that causes genital warts, but its more virulent strains can lead to cervical cancer. Gardasil protects against the strains that cause about 70% of HPV-related cervical cancers, as well as the strains that cause 90% of genital warts. Parents may still opt out of vaccinating their kids for religious or philosophical reasons.

For once, Texas is out front on a social issue. I don’t care if Perry did it because his former chief of staff is now lobbying for Merck or to avoid an unpleasant God bullying session from combustible legislators in his own party. The order is sound public health policy that will prevent thousands of cervical cancer cases, saving both lives and money.

Now all we have to do is figure out how families of girls without health insurance will be able to afford the $360 Merck is charging for the three-shot regimen of Gardasil.

To Circ with Love?

Former Austinite Neal Pollack has a touching, funny and occasionally horrifying account of how he and his wife Regina decided whether or not to circumcise their son in Tuesday’s Salon. I won’t give away the ending here, but the response to Neal’s story demonstrates the degree to which circumcision is capable of working rational, sane voices into histrionic froth.

I have no religious tradition and I couldn’t care less about my hypothetical son’s hypothetical penis not looking like daddy’s. However, recent studies in Africa have demonstrated that circumcised men have a lower risk of acquiring HIV. Even though HIV incidence is much lower in the U.S., that’s enough to steer me nominally in favor of circumcision as it might apply to me as a parent for now.

Airlines Decide All Men Are Potential Molesters

Although I was sort of kidding yesterday about making parents nervous by climbing around the playscape at NASA, we do seem to be reaching a point in society where childless men are commonly viewed with hyper-vigilant, preemptive suspicion in areas where children congregate.

Now Salon reports that major airlines like British Airways, Qantas and Air New Zealand have policies that prohibit unaccompanied children from being seated next to male passengers in the name of child welfare (or more likely, litigation concerns). Personally, I'd just as soon not risk being seated next to a fidgeting germ factory on a long-distance flight to Christchurch, but the implication that having a penis somehow renders me unfit to be seated next to a child is sexist and disgusting.

Moreover, any parent who feels placated by such a policy is a moron. The overwhelming majority of sex offenses against children are committed by non-strangers. If an airline doesn't feel it can protect your child from inflight molestation without segregating men from children, you shouldn't be letting your child fly that airline alone in the first place.

Rent Boy Alleges Fling with Pastor Ted

Pastor Ted Haggard of the 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs resigned leadership of the National Association of Evangelicals today because of his alleged ongoing patronage of a male prostitute.

While Haggard denies the allegations, it would be strange for him to resign if there was nothing to the claims made to the Denver Post by former prostitute Mike Jones.

You may remember Haggard from the movie Jesus Camp. While Haggard had enough public relations sense to avoid asking children if they were ready to "die for Jesus" like the sweet-heartedly insane Pastor Becky Fischer, the fact that he has (or had) a standing weekly phone call with the President of the United States ought to scare the unholy crap out of anyone who doesn't want to live in an iron-booted theocracy.

If I was the down-low pastor of a browbeating evangelical congregation whose apparent life-or-death issue is keeping the gay folks from getting married, I think it would be wise to avoid sleeping with the same male prostitute over and over again. Sooner or later, you're bound to leave some tracks. If Ted did have a thing going on with Mr. Jones, I'll bet he now wishes he would've settled for getting sucked off through glory holes.

While I sympathize with good people who struggle with sexual identity, leaders of the religious right who sublimate their homosexual tendencies with gay-bashing sermons and legislation deserve no quarter whatsoever. May they all be exposed for the hateful hypocrites they are.

Blood Screening Too Sexy for Utah

Most people who donate blood do so to help save the lives of others, but not me. I do it because those Red Cross blood screening questions inflame my heart and loins with the red-hot lust of transgression. Nothing turns me on like stepping aboard the blood bus and having a strange phlebotomist ask if I've ever had sex with another man.

Unfortunately, Diane Ogborn of Orem, Utah has folks like me all figured out. Last Wednesday, Ogborn asked the Utah Board of Education to ban high school blood drives across the state in order to protect students from sex-related questions asked of all potential donors. Her argument was that the questions violated a state law limiting the sexual content students can be exposed to in the classroom.

"As a parent (which obviously inflates the worth of her opinion exponentially), how I read it, it looks to me like it violates the law," says the 37-year-old mother of four. Never mind the fact that no one under 17 can donate blood in the first place, or that these underage students already have to have their parents sign a consent form containing a frank description of the sex-related questions asked of donors.

The board ruled that blood drives weren't covered by the state law Ogborn cited, but they are going to develop a policy that essentially does nothing more than codify the parental consent process already practiced by the blood bank. "That kids have access to that language concerns me, too," said sympathetic board superintendent Patti Harrington.

The Red Cross Lewis & Clark Blood Region estimates that some five percent of Utah's blood supply comes from high school blood drives. If Ogborn is ever the unfortunate victim of an icy smash-up on Interstate 15, I trust she'll refuse to be transfused with that five percent.