Category — education

I just finished reading a great post on Pannonica’s site called A World Without Celebrities? and I had a few things still to say (I posted in the comments – but I can’t write a five-hundred word reply in there; it’d be rude).

Pannonica questions whether we, as a society, are capable of going without celebrities and all the attendant coverage and media madness that surrounds them.

Ultimately, she believes the answer is no – and I agree.

I understand why we’re obsessed: they’re beautiful, rich, they get to hang out with other beautiful and rich people. They wear designer clothes, drive expensive cars, live in palatial mansions and receive favours and gifts from people simply by virtue of being in the public eye.

I think we figure it like this: Some celebrities start out just like us – living a normal life, doing normal stuff, wearing clothes from Walmart or Target and then Something Magical happens and they are suddenly living like gods – the world at their feet, everyone wanting to know them, see them, and if at all possible, to BE them. They have everything.

We want some of the Magic too – we want to know how to get there and failing that, watching them do stupid things like get arrested for drunk driving, shaving their heads in a fit of madness and depression, or seeing a photo of them looking frumpy, tired and badly dressed is fair compensation. If we can’t have what they have, we want to see them lose it. Watching famous people mess up or look bad makes us feel better about ourselves. It makes them more human and brings them back down to our level.

What if we simply stopped being interested? What if, as Pan envisioned, we turned on the news and saw coverage of actual news instead of the latest shenanigans on Big Brother or American Idol?

What if we went one step further and deep-sixed our cable TV and picked up a book, or decided to spend more time with the kids instead of the idiot box? What if, at the grocery store we didn’t buy entertainment magazines because we simply didn’t care all that much about Brad and Angelina’s new babies? What if we stopped squeeing over their love lives and screw-ups?

What happens if we stop watching – and thus, supporting -  crap like Big Brother, Blind Date, American Idol, America’s Top Model and all the other tripe that passes as “quality programming”?

It won’t happen of course. It’s far easier to be entertained than to entertain yourself. Simpler to veg out in front of YouTube or the TV and just let the voices and pretty colours wash over you.

Joe and I got rid of our cable over a year ago and it was weird at first. We had so much more time in the evenings. I spend more of it reading now, writing, playing video games and going out with friends, talking to Joe and generally being engaged with the world. We do buy a couple of shows on DVD (House M.D. and Heroes) but if I didn’t get to watch them anymore, I’d be OK with it.

After all, no one on their death-bed says, “I wish I’d watched more TV when I had the chance.” or “Please, God, just one more YouTube video of dancing hamsters and I’ll come quietly.”

A world without celebrities? I want that world, but I think I’m in the minority.

As of September 9, 2008, I will be taking some geek lessons at UBC.

I’m finally putting up a website for my business – so far I have the domain name and lots of enthusiasm – and since I want to use WordPress for the site, I need some idea of how PHP works.

I’ll be taking Introduction to Programming Basics and Introduction to PHP Programming as seen here. If those go well I might take the Advanced Web Programming Using PHP course too.

When I can, I prefer to do things myself. If I can teach myself HTML and CSS, I can learn programming basics and PHP too. Even if I’m a complete dunce at these courses, I hope to at least walk away with some idea of what I’ll be paying other people to do for me.

I’m kind of excited to take some university courses – I’m interested in seeing how the old grey matter stands up against new information and what my classes will be like.

I hope it’s better than the time I was in fourth year university and taking a first year course. I know I was an obnoxious little moron in first year and I didn’t pay nearly as much attention as I should have, but I had no idea how annoying I was until I took that class.

All the new students did was talk – well, they whispered, but it was still distracting.

“Oh my god, I was soooo sick this morning. Monday nights are SO NOT the new Friday.”

“This class is so boring, if goes on any longer I might kill myself.”

Some people simply slept, which was OK by me - drooling on a $150 textbook is stupid, but at least it’s quiet. The professor for that class is legally blind and therefore has exceptionally keen hearing. He used to turn his milky eyes on the worst offenders and stare at them until the whole class was uncomfortably silent and then he would continue the lecture.

I always wanted to applaud when he did that. It was very effective. After a few classes the talkers either shut up, or dropped the course.

So, I’ll be a student again – at least for a month or two – now who wants to pay for my textbooks?

Yes, you read that title correctly.

Yesterday I was browsing around Chapters waiting for Joe and I found a copy of Details magazine. The story on the cover – “Forget condoms – Young, single guys are getting vasectomies” – caught my eye.

I assumed the tone of this article would be a horrified one. That some older and wiser man had written an article to say “Getting snipped might be the latest thing in sexcapades, but you can still get the clap you moron. Use a condom.”

Nope. No mention of STD’s or responsible use of condoms at all. In fact, guys worrying about “their partners’ vigilance with the Pill” are getting snipped rather than using condoms because condoms are “less than ideal in terms of pleasure” and are not 100% guaranteed to prevent pregnany. Worse, the article implies that lots of women lie about taking birth control and are looking to “oops” a guy into fatherhood and collect hefty child-support payments.

The first guy the article mentions, Marcus Whitlock, got a vasectomy when he was 23 (he lied to the doctor and said he was 30) because sex was a “tense, fraught ordeal” due to the possibility of pregnancy. Whitlock says “Now I can never have a girl say I made her pregnant. I don’t have to worry about being tricked.”

Tim Vass – another poor guy who nearly fell victim to evil, baby-craving women – also got snipped. He made the decision after “a half-dozen pregnancy scares, including what he says were two attempted oopsings. Both of the latter were one-night stands.” Tim is now a free bird and has “swinging-from-the-chandelier sex”.

My first thought was “Don’t flatter yourselves, you assholes.”

What I get from these two guys is not just “Women are tricky bitches.” (though their statements reek of that sentiment) but also “I plan on having a lot of sex and I can’t be bothered to use condoms.”

I hope these two studs have good health care plans that will pay for a lot of penicillin and Valtrex.

Sure, condoms might make things feel a little less sensitive than they could – but you could always check out what Trojan has available. I counted no less than six types of extra-sensitive condoms on their site. Don’t tell me they’re too expensive either – Trojan will send you a free sample.

You could also just resort to good, old-fashioned, solo masturbation. Not quite as fun as sex with a partner, but the paranoia surrounding possible “oopses” drops to exactly zero percent.

I have to admit, there ARE women who trick guys into being fathers – and the people who suffer most in those instances are the child. I don’t feel sorry for the woman who tricks a guy into fatherhood, nor do I feel particularly sorry for the guy who got tricked (you could have chosen the solo stuff dude); I feel sorry for the kid. 

This article was probably read by other men like Marcus and Tim – paranoid guys with a sense of entitlement to all the free-wheeling sex they want – so why is there nothing in this article to educate them about being responsible?

Guys like that are going to get vasectomies anyway. Trojan could dump a lifetime supply of condoms – free of charge – in their laps and they’d get snipped and use the condoms for balloons. This article had a responsibility to tell these idiots that getting snipped does not entitle you to become a man-whore and collect STDs to pass along to other people. A vasectomy is not a guard against syphilis, chlamydia, gonorrhea, genital herpes, HIV or any other nasty little infections.

I have to give the author a tiny bit of credit – he does mention the fear of “sneak pregnancies” is “irrational”, but then goes on to say that many of the guys getting vasectomies are doing it so they have control over when and if they have kids. They are sick of it being “only the woman’s opinion” that matters.

Uh, guys, you already HAVE control. It’s called condoms – sometimes it’s called abstinence. Your opinion matters, and you can express your opinion by wearing a condom. In fact, if you’re sleeping with a woman who you feel would trick you into fatherhood – maybe you shouldn’t sleep with her at all. Why not do the solo thing until you meet a woman you can trust and respect?

That’s the sort of control that is directly within your means – and there are no unpleasant side-effects.