Bee!

Bee!

I'm still getting used to this camera, even after having it for two years. This morning I was playing with the macro lens and shot this lovely photograph of a bee on a flower. I really like the clarity of it, with the wings so clear and visible. The original (Flickr doesn't usually like me uploading the originals) is even better, but just this sample is good enough to show the result.

Paranoia Will Destroy Ya!

Paranoid Much?

Omaha and I were at the Tukwila shopping center this morning. She went in to get something and I parked the car, and on my way to join her I passed this lovely little piece of paranoia. The claim seems to be that the Ford Foundation, the Rockerfeller Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and so forth, take their orders from the CIA and the usual subjects of paranoia, and in turn fund only those "phony left-wing" institutions that get their instructions out to the mass media. I love how the Skull & Bones shares the same responsibility as the CIA.

I'm pleased to note that the URL doesn't really go anywhere; it's now a parked URL, indicating that the owner has let it go fallow (or maybe that's what they want you to believe).

I certainly don't believe that the Trilateral Commission and the CIA control those institutions. I'm perfectly happy assuming that the Ford Foundantion, et. al., are capable of funding institutions that agree with their internal mandate sufficient not to threaten it, and I'm also happy to believe that lots of these institutions get their word out despite not being funded by the above groups. Both Kos and the Freepers seem to survive just on their own.

Camping, Day 1

Girls in the Mist and Snow

Girls play in the Snow

Car in the Mist

Our annual camping trip started out with the traditional Burger King feast, a fateful reminder of what we were not to endure for the next six days. I had the new "XT Steak Burger" and it was awful. It tasted fake, as if they were trying to put one over on the diner. After a fast drive through Rainier Valley, down through Black Diamond to Enumclaw, I turned eastward onto 410 into the Rainier National Forest. All along the way we tried to find Thomas Guides, as I'd forgotten the one we had back at home and it was way out of date anyway. We were short a few flashlights so I bought some at Enumclaw, along with some new sunglasses-- I'd broken the old ones.

At the top of Cayuse Pass, we stopped to play in the snowpacks. The day had been cloudy all the way through the valley, and up here it was misty in that cold, Twin Peaks kind of way, but despite the mist and snow it was all quite beautiful.

We drove down into the Ohanapekosh Camping Area, 260 campsites in eight "loops" situated along the Ohanapekosh River, and found ours. We must have gotten the smallest campsite of all. There was only one place to put the tent, and it was less than six feet from the fire ring. We practiced tarpaulin origami to create a proper "tent footprint," as we'd been taught at REI, folding the tarp under itself so that if rain fell off the tent's rainfly it would fall on the ground and slip under the footprint, keeping the occupants warm and dry. We unpacked my sorely overburdened car; that clamshell is heavy even when packed only with the bedding, blankets and tent, and we had trouble maintaining even the lower speed limits along the twisting mountain roads. Along the way we cataloged that we'd forgotten beer, batteries, hot dogs, and tomatoes. Fortunately, on this side of the mountain there's a small town not twenty minutes away.

Omaha, the fire goddess herself, made a great fire and in no time we had pizza loaf for dinner: garlic bread sliced in half, filled with pizza sauce and shredded cheese, then wrapped in foil and reheated over the fire. They were a little blackened, but otherwise delicious.

Getting Ready for Bed

Getting ready for bed in the dark is fun; stumbling around, "where did I put my toothbrush?", discussing how much pajamas and blankets will be necessary. It was never warm at night in Ohanapekosh, but never frigidly cold; I slept great in a pair of sleep shorts and a t-shirt. The girls preferred their usual pajamas, and Omaha wore her usual lovely jammies.

What's the difference between "Use" and "Utilize" in common English?

None, motherfucker. Now stop using it that way. You don't sound cool or technological or even smart. You sound like a pretentious prick.

In which I disagree with Violet Blue about teenagers and sex...

Violet Blue has an article, Sex Ed in the UK is Actually About Sex, in which she praises the UK National Institute of Health for actually telling kids that the reason people have sex is because it feels good:

I keep saying it over and over, but besides my 'abstinence is harmful' message that's starting to be heard, the fundamentals of sex ed fail because they're always (hysterically) avoiding the truth: that sex happens because it feels good. It's pleasurable on a lot of levels – that's why we go ecstatically crazy doing it when we get the chance to enjoy it. My fundamental belief is that sex ed needs to be taught by both scientific principles (health, reproduction) and by pleasure principles – so people of all ages can understand WHY they want to do the things they do.

But I have to disagree in part with Violet's statement that "sex happens because it feels good." I am reminded of an important article that appeared in the New Yorker, Red Sex, Blue Sex, in which the author shows that, for example, evangelical teenage girls are the most likely to engage in premarital sex that leads to pregnancy and the least likely to believe that sex will be pleasurable. (Jewish girls, oddly enough, are the opposite: they hold off their "sexual debut" the longest of any group and yet they're most likely to anticipate that sex will be pleasurable when they finally do it.)

Most of them become sexually active because (now agreeing with Violet) they don't know anything about it, even as the boy, who probably knows only that little bit more about wanting tab A into slot B, is pressuring them, and they're too embarrassed to admit that they don't know anything about it to put on the brakes. Shame and embarrassment, not desire or anticipation of pleasure, are the most common emotions young women feel up to and after their first sexual encounter.

The New Yorker article is a fascinating exploration of why evangelical girls get pregnant a lot and why that's actually "okay" (in some sense) to most evangelicals: straying from the abstinence-only message is an expected, venal sin that ultimately adds to the congregation. It's such a weird, mindfucked world, I'm glad I'm not part of it.

More on that UK NIH Sex-Ed program

Following up on the "Sex (in the UK) is Pleasurable" line, Violet points us to the "City Brights" blog at SFGate.com, where the host, Zennie, complains that the program is aimed at the wrong people, young people, who are too young to even be thinking about having sex, whereas all of the straight adults in the Bay Area apparently, again according to Zennie, are so uptight it's obvious they need to get laid.

While telling an anecdote second-hand from a "teacher friend" of his about catching kids in the act and stopping them, he basically feels that kids shouldn't have sex.

Zennie misses the point. Telling kids sex should be pleasurable has been shown to be a better tactic for getting them to delay sex and to have responsible sex than telling them to abstain. If you tell them that it should be pleasurable, all of the awkward, awful, sticky, uncomfortable fumblings become warning bells: if it's not pleasureable, something is wrong, stop, figure out what's wrong, and if it's the other person who is making it awkward, uncomfortable or awful, then do something about it. Get it better, or get out.

If only we could teach people that food ought to be pleasurable, too. And not used in the way that masturbation is sometimes a substitute for sex.

Speaking of which, does anyone remember Jocelyn Elders? She was the Surgeon General under Bill Clinton, until Clinton fired her for suggesting, off the cuff, that maybe telling kids masturbation is okay and pleasurable might be a good way to keep them from having sex. What was controversial fifteen years ago is, well, kinda obvious today.