B-Queens Lead Such Interesting Lives

There is a breed of actor and actress that performs sex scenes and nude scenes more often than not. Usually you'll find their work late at night on HBO, Showtime, or, especially, Cinemax, or mixed in with drama and comedy sections at the video store. There are lots of things you could call them and that they are called. Softcore performers, erotic thriller stars, skinemax girls, and so on, but I'm going to call them B-queens in this note, because it more accuratley reflects the spirit of that they do. The reality is that they're actresses, just like any other actresses. They work with bad catering, low budgets, cynical swarthy crew, and have to memorize scripts and deal with other actors. Mainly, the difference is that they have to do all of this while naked except for a bandage over their junk called a patch, or a sock in a man's case, and they have to convincingly portray considerably better sex than most of us can ever hope to have while being cold, tired, and not even having the luxury of experiencing real stimulation the way porn stars do. Believe me, when you're a lonely guy who didn't even have any friends growing up and didn't lose your virginity until 22, you get to know this genre and the people that work in it, and I have a strong appreciation for these people. The cool thing is that they're celebrities, but within a very specific audience, so you can actually become their friends on facebook. Not some nonsense fan page built by someone else, like, for instance, the Christopher Titus page I'm a member of on here, but the actual facebook page they have their real friends on too. Several of them had added me in recent days at my request, and they are wonderful and fascinating down to Earth people. I'll be defining some of the eras and performers later on, with a section at the end about male performers, which are understandably fewer given the genre and my gender and orientation. Let us begin.

The 80's:

The genre really did begin in the 80s with the advent of home video. There had been sexy movies before that, but home video really provided the proper medium for the first time.

Favorite performers of the 80s.

Shannon Tweed: Every genre has its all time great. Vincent Price for horror, Tracy for drama, Jack Lemmon for comedy, and Shannon Tweed for erotic thrillers. She has said in her autobiography that she finds the whole process of making these movies easy and she certainly does make it look that way. If she's a cop in the movie, you believe she could take down a punk, and if she's psychologist, you believe she could fix your brain. Combine the genuine acting talent with the smoking hot body and it's pretty obviosu Gene Simmons, who could give Ron Jeremy a run for his money in total women had, picked this one to spend the rest of his life with. Not marry. I'm aware Gene is sensitive to that word.

Shannon Whirry: Probably the most amazing breasts in the history of anatomy this woman has. Quite a lot of integrity too, as she clearly was a serious actress with roles in mainstream fare as often as in B-movies. Her films usually had a dramatic thrust to them that made them interesting with or without nudity. Of course, they were always more interesting to me WITH the nudity, but whatever.

Tanya Roberts: She deserves to be on this list for a variety of good reasons, but most notably because she was Shannon Tweed's predecessor in the Night Eyes series. It's like Friday the 13th, where people forget Jason wasn't the killer in the first one. She also starred in Inner Sanctum and hosted the series Hotline, so we're clearly talking an unapologetic B-Queen. Yet, she's a Bond girl, a main cast member of That 70s Show, and starred in the sword and sorcery classic The Beastmaster. An impressive resume for any performer.

That's it for the 80s, as I'm a little young to remember much more.

The 90s:

Cinemax and the other pay cable stations were playing more and more B- movies and it meant that there were more and more B-Queens getting made. I will limit myself to five here, but I could go on and on, trust me.

Shauna O'Brien: In a world of blondes, she presented dark intelligence. If you had to cheat off a B-Queen in math class, this is the one you'd want to do it off of. She first came to my attention in a film called Elke's Erotic nights, where she played a rather magical woman who fixes a dysfunctional family by sleeping with nearly every member of it. Later, she got magnificently large implants, but that didn't mean she lost her edge of intelligence. In this genre, you don't always buy it when somebody's supposed to be a high-powered executive or an accountant, but you took it at face value with Shauna.

Kira Reed: A fascinating woman whose piercing blue eyes remind me of a more down-to-Earth version of actresses like Meg Foster or Jennifer Morrisson. On two episodes of the same series, she played a masterfully confident seductress who effortlessly entangles Keri Windsor and her fiancee in sexual escapades and a a frazzled drifter who has to impersonate a sex therapist to keep her lodging, finally ending up having sex with both members of the couple she's trying to help, seperately or together. Whereas Shauna was great at smart, Kira truly has range. Add that to the fact that her marriedcouple.com website allowed you to see hardcore sex with her then-husband, and you have a truly valuable member of the B-Queen community.

Regina Russell: She was one of the mermaids in Hook who brought Robin Williams back to life. How's that for innocent? Yet, of course, innocence was the farthest thing from her work as a B-Queen. Small-chested relative to much of her competion, if not average real women, she still managed to have success by bringing enthusiastic peformance to her sex scenes and dialogue scenes in equal measure and by wearin red hair better than anyone at any level or any genre of film or television. For recording a song called I Should Be Fucking Brad Garret later on alone, she deserves mention.

Kim Dawson: Earlier, I said Shannon Whirry has the best breasts I've ever seen, but I'm not sure they're natural. With that qualifer in the mix though, Kim's simply unbeatable. A southern belle of unparalled charm, she was always great as the grand dame of whatever show or film she was on. You couldn't picture this woman as a servor or a housekeeper somewhere. Somehow, you knew she just always had to be on a throne somewhere with men bringing her grapes. She didn't have a ton of range, but neither did John Wayne, and you always wanted to see him on his high horse anyway. I presume she went on to take over the damned world by charm alone.

Monique Parent: Most women retire from this genre, which is the case to my knowledge with all other women in the 90s section. Not so with Monique. If there can be said to be a venerable lion of the B-Movie genre, it's pretty hard to dispute that it's her. Not to say that she's old, because the early 40s are not old and she doesn't look a day over 25 even if so, but she's got the experience and the brand loyalty to sell a B-Queen film like no one else can. Shannon Tweed may be the all time queen of this genre, but it is an emertius position. Monique sits on her throne and still rides into battle, which is what, more than anything else, makes her a hell of a badass chick.

00's:

This was an era of real innovation, where B-Movies and series started giving their actors better dialogue and plots. They realized that some good dramatic and comedic scenes would be better material to put the sex scenes themselves in. Sex scenes are, of course, the star, but a good star needs good supporting players. Here are some B-Queens who uphold that promise.

Christine Nguyen: I've been watching the genre for some time and I've never seen a more natural comedic actress in it than Christine. That she shares the surname of my brother-in-law didn't hurt in catching my attention either. Every line she says that's ridiculous in some way, which B-Movie dialogue often is, intentionally and otherwise, is delivered with a twinkle in her eye and a smirk that makes her instantly feel like your best friend. Of course, the considerable and distinctly Asian beauty doesn't hurt either. It's like every massuesse that gives a happy ending in your fantasies came to life and starting starring in movies on Cinemax.

Beverly Lynne: This blonde and blue-eyed beauty is pretty comedically gifted too, but that's not her main capability. She is actually one of the only performers I've ever seen get innocent completely right. Strangely, she's played some mean-spirited characters before and I don't quite buy it. There's something kind in her eyes, or at least something convincingly so, to the extent that you feel like you'd have less of a nymphomaniac on your hands if you got to be with her than a real sweetheart you could feel good about introducing to your mother. More than anyone else on this list, she appeals to a man's better nature.

Amy Lindsay: She's popped up in just about every erotic series and B-Movie genre you'd care to name, but the real reason she's on her is her hand in revolutionizing the whole B-Movie world with her series Black Tie Nights. Black Tie Nights marked a first in that it was the first time I'd watched one of these shows on Cinemax that I didn't feel comfortable fast-forwarding to the sex scenes. The dialogue mattered, the characters were interesting and dynamic, and it even got a spinoff starring some of its more interesting supporting players. Beyond that, Amy's one of the only ones able to hold a candle to Monique Parent for sheer versatility, though it appears she's not terribly interesting in appearing in more B-Movie fare. Oh well, you just appreciate them while they keep doing it.

Noelle DuBouis: She's probably the least experienced performer on here, with only two credits to her hame on IMDB, yet she's on this list because she and her show Forbidden Science are the way of the future for the genre. Forbidden Science is the most innovative and interesting science fiction show on television today. It joins Co-Ed Confidential in comedy and Zone's Sex Chronicles in drama for successful cross-breeding with other genres and doing both justice. Her character Penny is some sort of avatar of every geek out there's hopes and dreams.

Okay, before I go, gotta do the guys justice.

Dan Anderson: The man is practically ubiqituous in the genre and was married to Kira Reed at one point, at which time he and she produced hardcore pornography of their sexual exploits together and with others. I envy him, in a role model for life kind of way. Heck, I should hope to do as well as Kira Reed, let alone advertise it to the world beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Brad Bartram: I gave the humor mistress props to Christine Nguyen and on the male side I give it to Brad Bartram. Unless the role or the scene calls for him to be especially dramatic, he's always got a twinkle in his eye and an amused look on his face. To look at him, you see a tall, handsome man, who seems likely to have always been that way. Yet, crucially, you feel like he'd be fun to get a beer with and you do not hate him for being able to clearly have any woman he wants. That's a rare quality.

Glen Meadows: He is married to Beverly Lynne and has the same capacity for innocence in his characterizations, but in a different way. Perhaps no one else in the genre is as good a straight man as he is. Indeed, he started out on Black Tie Nights often acting as the straight man for Tiffany Bolton's outrageous character. Beyond this, he is also the first actor in the history of the genre who, to my knowledge, convincingly played a geek/nerd type character in Ryan Lundy. Like Brad Bartram, you don't envy him. You're just happy two people as nice as Beverly Lynne and he found one another.

Jay Richardson: This guy appears in the genre all the time, but is yet to have a sex scene. All the chops of a veteran character actor let him get away with this, I suppose. I don't think much else has to be said about him.

Okay, that's about it for guys.

Anyway, I'll keep watching.

-Frank

Nonsense

Nonsense can take many forms and convince many otherwise intelligent people. Nowhere in the world of nonsense, however, is this more absurd or more lamentable than in the case of GMOs. If you don't know, that stands for Genetically Modified Organism. You see, just about every organic being of which you can think, from unicellular, to plant, to animal has been genetically modified to better serve the needs of humanity. That may sound immoral, unsafe, or otherwise undesirable to you, but we've been doing it for a very long time. By that, I don't mean for decades or for centuries, but for millennia. Oh, we didn't understand genetics in any real sense until Gregor Mendel came along and figured it out, but we've been practicing selective breeding in horses and dogs long before that.

In order to understand the importance of selective breeding, it is helpful to understand evolution by natural selection. Darwin knew that his audience well understood horse and dog breeding, as many people's lives depended on some aspect of this process during his time. Dogs bred for hunting had short legs and long ears, which kept their snouts to the ground and swept to scents, respectively. Dogs bred to retrieve game from water were bred with a coat that easily dries. In the absence of any human intervention though, the only traits specifically selected for will be the ones best suited to adapting to survive and reproduce. So the food we eat, whether vegetal or animal, is never optimized for our needs as a species. Fortunately, we have devised increasingly clever ways to change that.

Popular Christian spokesman Kirk Cameron argues that the world must have been made for man by God, citing the amazingly user-friendly banana as proof of this. Were he to encounter a wild banana though, he would not feel his argument so supported. These are tight little knots and quite inconvenient as a food source for humans. The fact of the matter is that the pre-Columbian meso-American peoples were quite good at botany and gave us the modern banana and all varieties of corn from what began as untenable wild fruit and slightly mutated grass, respectively. Modern genetically modified foods are no different from bananas or corn, in principle. All the GMO technology we possess today does genetic modification faster and more precisely than selective breeding, but speed and precision do not black magic make.

-Frank

Think It Through

One day, one of our ancestors, some Sahelanthropus Tchaedensis or Australopithecus Afarensis realized that by wielding a rock to throw or an oaken club it was possible to more efficiently either defend themselves from or better execute an attack. Although the exact timeline of the progress made since then is probably unknowable, even to the most esteemed experts currently available, we do know that some considerable advances have been made. Wood and stone eventually gave way to bronze and bronze eventually gave way to iron. Longbows gave way to crossbows which, in turn, gave way to muskets and flintlocks. Flintlocks gave way to revolvers, while muskets gave way to rifles. Modern pistols come with magazines or clips that need only be slid in for as little as a second, with training. From the moment the first ancestral human primate picked up the first rock to the time Smith & Wesson put forth their latest innovation in firearms, the ability to enhance our ability to act offensively and defensively has been with us and it will be with us as long as humanity has not achieved so utopian a state as to no longer need worry about limited resources or limited minds. Bearing that in mind, it is highly likely that every human who has ever lived or will ever live on this planet will have to contend with violence and the various technologies that allow it to be more effective. Beyond this, what is clear, what is obviously the intent of every wise and decent man involved in the founding of this country, what is clearly best for protecting children and others of the most vulnerable, what is clearly our God-given right as American is absolutely nothing. If you think you can say all that is sensible and good to be said about the issues of an armed humanity on a bumper sticker, then you don't understand enough about it to meaningfully participate in the discussion. What is stridently asserted in black and white terms can also be dismissed those same terms. So it goes, on and on and on it goes. Those involved in both sides this debate, not that much of this garbage deserves the term, want to parse the 2nd Amendment like it's Biblical Greek, link to news stories high on shock and low on insight, and, of course, simply engage in ad hominem attacks. Neither side wins the day. They both lose, but not because of each other. No, they lose because of shame that comes from the fact that they refused to do the one thing that might've actually gotten the other side to think about their points and reevaluate their own. Such refusal to think is absolutely maddening because there's no reason it has to be like this. Despite my utter disappointment with the embarrassing mockery of debate many of my friends have displayed on both sides of this issue, I continue to believe that they are all intelligent and good people capable of compassion and of understanding ideas that originated outside of their own heads and their own tribe. If you actually want to talk and think about this issue without shouting at one another, I'm going to do my best. Say whatever you like in response, but, please, think it through.

We'll start with my side of this debate, which, you can probably guess is pro-gun one. There are many good arguments for the right to bear arms, but you'd have a hard time finding that out from watching a television screen or loading a browser page. Here's the thing about sound arguments. They are not reliant upon who made them. To paraphrase what Martin Luther King Jr. said about men, ideas ought to be judged upon no more than their content. Say for a moment that all the parsing the left is doing of the 2nd Amendment is correct and all the parsing the right is doing is folly. For the sake of argument, every last founding father, were he living today, would favor us to all throw our arms into giant incinerators like they did on that Simpsons episode based on The Monkey's Paw. Would that sway you away from a lifetime of belief that the right to bear arms is a fundamental right of humankind? Answering yes to that question renders you not only unworthy of this debate, but a useless sheep peddling whatever dogma is most successfully indoctrinated into your brain when it is at its most defenseless. Happily, although your focus on the second amendment doesn't reflect this in the slightest, I happen to believe that there are few on the right who would change their minds for so poor a reason. An actual reason, on the other hand, should sway you. If logic and facts indicated that abolishing the right for individuals to bear arms would allow for a truly utopian society, or some equally unquestionably greater good, whatever value they would have wouldn't be worth preserving humanity the chance at such a society. No matter what a person's ideas, they must avoid becoming a fundamentalist. A fundamentalist is defined here as a person impossible to convince in principle no matter what argument or evidence is presented to him. However convinced one might be, one must always account for the possibility one might be unconvinced of even one's most deeply held beliefs. Contrary to what may be considered intuitive, keeping the possibility of being wrong open does not make one's ability to hold to and defend one's position weaker. So long as one is open to the possibility one is wrong, it becomes second nature to seek out arguments that are actually scrutinized to make sure that they make sense and are sufficiently understood by oneself. For example, try on the following: "Engineering a society, where, by law, and through no fault of their own, some members of society are forced to be more vulnerable than others is immoral and elitist. To say the children of some shall be protected by armed guard while others are forced to walk home alone through neighborhoods where no law-abiding person can be armed, and to call this moral, is inequality that is often downright fatal." Now try on some of the standard boilerplate: "From my cold dead hands...", "Guns don't kill people. People kill people," or, "I gotta have guns in case we need to overthrow the government." The former is calm and makes a point that is not easily blustered away and the latter are so blustery themselves that it won't matter if you're right because you'll look so goddamned stupid.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Basically, it translates as, "Who guards the guardians?" This is a question the left ought to be asking themselves any time they want to be involved in a debate on this topic. The only time it wouldn't apply is if you're such a pacifist that you believe it's feasible for everyone to just throw away their guns and that every person on Earth would comply with this. If you seriously think that, you're not worth my time or the oxygen you're using. For those of us involved in actual discussions taking place in the real world, you're going to have to make two concessions, right up front. You've always got to have a military and a police force. These people, realistically, are going to be carrying firearms in the modern world. So, at a minimum, we the civilian citizenry are going to be relying upon various uniformed personnel to defend us, and, in our daily lives, that's going to mean the police. As a Republican, I tend to trust the police, and I suppose that's also to do with my background as a wealthy white straight person whose worst offense was a ticket for careless driving at 16. Do you, the left, trust the police? Is your trust in them, in fact, great enough that you feel all the populate ought to trust them to be competent enough, staffed enough, uncorruptable enough, free of prejudice enough, fast enough, and brave enough to be where they need to be in time to stop violent tragedies a sufficient percentage of the time that it warrants that populace being disallowed access to their most effective means of self-defense? I hear tales sometimes of neighborhoods in America where the police are afraid to go right now because of issues with gangs. Lately, there have been entire border towns where this is the case due to drug cartels. Imagine entire neighborhoods or towns and they have a choice. This is a choice that I sincerely hope no one reading ever has to make. Since they can't count on the police to protect, them, they can either be a criminal or a sitting duck. Obviously, there is a plethora of reasons that things have gotten so bad in some places in America, but the fact remains that, for the people there, they have gotten that bad. So an elderly person whose local police force cannot be counted upon to save them, who lives on a fixed income, who is running out of groceries, and is afraid to leave her apartment because of what happen to her on the street should not have a gun. No, she shall risk her life and, if she dies because she was so defenseless, she will be a martyr to the cause of gun control. Sure, she was an exception, but the rule is still preventing Sandy Hooks from happening out there, so we should all be for gun control. Maybe that sentence makes sense as a policy to the left, but they can stop pretending it's such clear moral high ground. Yeah, we can talk about matters of degree. Clip sizes, fully automatic, armor piercing rounds, and so on, but don't act like, in principle, the men and women paid to police society are the only line of defense any individual ought to need or that you've made your peace with anyone who falls through the cracks of that defense becoming a sitting duck.

So I've given both sides treatments consisting of a very long paragraph each. You know my biases and you know I do have a side I'm rooting for here, but I'm not willing to kowtow to anyone's dogma, nor do I need the validation of any scripture, secular or divine, to let me know my ideas are sound. Both sides of this debate need to stop ignoring the fact that nothing is perfectible in this world. Neither the documents that men write, nor the men themselves, are some infallible substitute for thinking. Thinking will be necessary anytime we make policy or decline to, and, either way, we must accept that there will always be death and destruction. Our role in this process isn't to look at the victims of Sandy Hook, or whatever ghastly occurrences have happened as of late as you read this, and panic. That means that we do not get to engage in logical fallacy just to feel safer and we do not get to game theory the sad event so that the shooter fails and the victims live. Life tends to contain so many variables that studying them all tends to be its own occupation, not something that can be done by Monday morning quarterbacking the events leading up to a horrible incident. There is never, however, harm in seeking understanding. Many, for instance, seek to understand the mental illness of shooters in these sorts of events, and understanding mental illness is a complex and worthy endeavor. When comes to matters of such complexity, as with many things, it is wise to listen to those who seek knowledge and unwise to listen to those who claim to have it. All wisdom begins with not knowing something and then patiently seeking to know it. Likewise, all compassion begins with admitting to not knowing something about another person and letting go of whatever presumptions one might've made about that person's experience. Compassion and individual rights are, as you probably well understand, the bottom line for me. As the bluster, withering sarcasm, and sloganeering fly in the debate over gun control, I look to the defenseless in the matter. Whatever my beliefs, I must have compassion for the old woman in a bad neighborhood who might need a gun to survive and the children who might be alive today without one evil man's access to one. All those shivering in fear and facing death deserve security and life. Tedious recitation of the 2nd Amendment or arrogant assurance that one has the answer to a problem that has plagued our species since before it even was our species will give them neither. Instead, no matter your position, I want you to contemplate the idea that you may not have the answer. Perhaps more challengingly, I want you to contemplate the idea that nobody does. To come up with the answers, we may have to give it a think. Humanity is gifted with a brain to body mass ratio unequaled in nature and that is what has allowed us to create our civilization, go to the moon, and split the atom. With all that we've accomplished by thinking, let's give it a go with this whole metal capsules flying fast through metal shafts quandary. We could also keep throwing quotes and slogans at each other. It's up to you.

-Frank

Single Men Exist

http://townhall.com/columnists/KathrynLopez/2009/04/24/porn_the_new_tobacco

The article I link above talks about the pornography problem in America, about how it is harmful to children, married couples, and nonmarried couples. Amazingly, even if all that's true, the fact that single men exist is completely ignored.

Not everybody is betraying a wife or girlfriend when they look at porn. Not everyone is too young. Some people don't have a better outlet unless they want to go to Nevada and spend hundreds of dollars. Us single men are lonely and there's no cure for that if you're unattractive and have poor social skills. Stick a fork in you, you're done. So what's wrong with pornography for lonely single men? Come on, tell me? Every anti-porn person I know uses men that are coupled or married in their argument, unless they use children. We can all agree that those people using porn is at a bad idea at best and terrible at worst. Conceding that, what's the big goddamned deal?

-Frank

Why It Matters

Normally, when I write articles about religion, they are targeted at either believers or nonbelievers. Agnostics are rarely the target, but that's not going to be the case here. They tend to set themselves above the fray, as if bemusedly wondering to themselves, "Oh, you silly New Atheists and fundamentalists. Why can't you believe what you believe, or don't believe, and just leave it be? Clearly, it doesn't matter whether or not people believe in God. It's just a personal choice, after all." To be fair, this sentiment is somewhat mirrored by religious moderates. There are many ways to answer this, and most of them come with exceptions and careful parsing. However, I'm going to limit my scope, in this article, to an attempt to answer a simple provocative question. How does the efficacy of basing one's morality on a religious text change depending upon the actual existence of that religion's deity? On the surface, it is natural to assume that nothing important changes here. Thou shalt do no murder is a sound and rational precept, for instance, whether or not Yahweh exists. Look closer, however, and you'll find that a great deal changes when one bases one's morality on scripture (meaning any religious text) that is merely the work of man instead of the work of an infallible deity. After all, nothing can go wrong with following the axioms of a morally infallible being. Such a being's axioms would be perfect in all their parts and immune to changes in context of all sorts. Moral progress would be an unnecessary factor in a moral system that, by definition, has already been perfected. Things look quite a bit different, however, if there is no infallible being behind the scripture. Ordinary, quite fallible, men will have defined a code unable to foresee contextual change of any sort and the scripture would've rendered itself immune to improvement or revision by virtue of its own claim to infallibility. Either these scriptures are an eternally sound foundation upon which to lead a moral life because they are the inspired writings of an infallible being or they are ordinary words written by ordinary men that demand we pretend otherwise.

Agnostics may say that it still doesn't matter if the scriptures were written by ordinary men or not because it is impossible to know for certain either way. While it is true that we cannot be certain, it is also true that we find ourselves in something of a binary situation. The moment you incorporate something from another source, say Aristotle, into your moral code that either adds or subtracts from what is outlined in the scriptures, you're admitting that the scriptures are fallible. No matter how passionately devoted to neutrality one may find oneself, you're either going to act as if the scriptures are an infallible moral foundation or you're not and, if you're not, then you've already made your choice.  This all has to do with a concept I heard early on in my Christian days, which was referred to as, "Being your own God." For instance, if you decide waiting until marriage for sex is stupid because making a legal commitment to a lifelong sexual relationship with someone without having the slightest idea whether you're sexually compatible with them is stupid, then you're being your own God. Atheism itself is the ultimate expression of being your own God because that means you're going to figure everything out on your own. What's moral, where you should live, be in social contact with, work, and so on are all decisions you make without prayer or consulting scriptures to find out what you're supposed to do. Of course, if there is no God then you really still have two choices. You can either be your own God or you can let others be your God. For that to end well for you, you're going to need to have sufficiently good judgment to suss out which other people ought to serve as your God and, if you're got sufficiently good judgment for that, you've got sufficiently good judgment to be your own God i the first place. Scripture in a world with no God is just another God to pick over yourself, except it's often written by men far less educated than you on just about every conceivable level. Individual liberty is the enemy of the religious mindset because it offers something even more radical than being your own God.

Atheism is more than the rejection of dogma, superstition, and faith. It is also the rejection of infallible beings, including oneself. You make your own decisions in life, and you're capable of sussing out the difference between right and wrong, prudent and foolhardy, cruel and kind, and gracious and petulant. Except when you're not, because sometimes you're not. Sometimes you won't know the best thing to do and you have the wheel during those times too, for better or for worse. Christian notions of free will are similar, but an important difference is that, by those lights, you're a fallen being in a fallen world and you're SUPPOSED to be able to be perfect, but, you know, the whole ancestor fruit-eating incident screwed the pooch on that one. Contrast that with a world where you're SUPPOSED to be making mistakes because that's how you learn and grow. Sure, you'll hurt people and they'll hurt you. Both of you will probably think you're in the right too. Despite all your challenges and the utter shitstorm of chaos is that is the average human being's life, you'll have to suss out best way for you to live. So here we have two very different ways of measuring a man. Either you measure him against an infallible being who set up an infallible moral code, or you measure him against himself because his life is his own, his decisions are his own, and the only person who can ultimately be accountable for his behavior is himself. So, yes, it matters whether or not you believe in God, because it determines whether or not you're going to be able to fully and fearlessly assume control over your own life or if you think a portion of your life, however large or small, is in God's hands. Instead of seeking Christ's forgiveness, I seek only the forgiveness of those against whom I have trespassed. Instead of feeling an obligation to God for bringing me into this world, I feel an obligation to my parents. Instead of looking for the answers in the back of the book like a poor math student, I'm willing to do and show my work for every moral precept I hold dear. Believe in God if you wish. We all do what we must. Whatever you believe, believe this. It matters.

-Frank

What Happens To Us

Many times in the past, I have written about how I'll end up alone because I just can't find and keep a good woman. Mostly, this is something I attribute to autism, although obesity doesn't help. Now though, I think ending up alone is something I'm actively choosing. This is not because I no longer want family life, but because I am fed up with the sheer aggravation of trying to make it happen. While it has been a number of years since anything unacceptably awful has happened in my relationships, even my more functional recent dating relationships involve so much emotional back-and-forth. Endlessly, I must wait to mention certain subjects, to use terms like boyfriend and girlfriend, to meet family members, to have sex, and everything could fall apart at any moment without anything I've done or not done factoring into it in one way or another. Whether it's the autism or my personally in the first place, I don't know, but I think you must need the patience of a goddamn rock to date, open up, put your heart on the slab,  and have them hand it back to you going, "LOL, never mind," time and again. If I'm choosing to be alone though, I've got to think about what happens to people who never find anyone.

I've written before about how family holidays are the first thing I worry about. Here's what's going to happen. Your parents and other elders will die off until there's only your generation left. Your contemporaries will form their own families and have family holidays with those new families, of which you are not really a part. So you'll have to find a way to deal with the fact that you're going to be alone on Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the like. Personally, I plan to go eat at IHOP and see movies. Then there's the, "Who will take care of me when I'm older," question. As far as I can see, there's a good argument for saving up to pay your own way for a live-in nurse or a good nursing home. That's probably a good rule of thumb about saving anyway. Either be self-sufficient or have the money to pay people because unconditional love isn't to be counted upon.

Much of what I've written in the past on this topic seems like drivel to me when I read it down the line. In an effort to avoid that here, I really am trying to figure out how I'm going to function, having decided to choose a future with the challenges of being alone as part of the package. In many ways, I suppose I'll do what I do now. Cook, smoke, write, run errands, repeat. There will certainly be friends and laughs as I proceed into my future years. Recently, I've become fascinated with the Kenny Rogers song The Gambler. A line in there goes, "Every hand's a winner and every hand's a loser. The best you can hope for is to die in your sleep." Something about that speaks to me. Good fortune may find you and may not find you in whatever ratio there ends up being, but ultimately this is all played out against a bleak and bitter landscape where you're just playing the game every day, marking time until one day, mercifully you break even somewhere in the night.

Tips For The Home Cook

Although I no longer am a food service professional, I do have a few years of professional culinary training and experience under my belt and, for this entry, I thought I'd share some of my knowledge.

1. Do not make beverages for other people. For whatever reason, they do not want them, will not take them, and you'll eventually just spill them wherever you're storing the unused liquid.

2. Most things you can cut up and put in a large plastic container. Don't try that with cake though. Goes stale and tough when you cut it faster than all hell. Get a special cake carrier. They sell the damned things at Wal-Mart, so it's not exactly going to break the bank.

3. Don't try and bake much without having a good bread knife. Chef's need a chef's knife more than anything else, butchers a cleaver, and bakers a bread knife. Longer the better.

4. When they say to let something cool or rest, that's not an optional step. All kinds of stuff can go wrong if you ignore it. Everything from dried out meat to broken cake to the dish simply falling apart.

5. Eat a bit of whatever you bring to a gathering. If you're eating it, they'll be more likely to trust it won't give them food poisoning.

6. If something does blow up in your face, have a backup recipe that's easy to prepare as a substitution. Brownies are that for me. If I bring you brownies, chances are you were going to get something more complex until it went kablooie.

7. If you make muffins from scratch, never use electric devices to bring the batter together. Combine wet ingredients separately from dry, then the wet goes on top of the dry, and they are brought together by gentle folding with a spatula until just combined. No worrying about lumps or funny little bubbles, they'll cook out. Overmix, and you'll have tunneling.

8. Get a spice grinder and grind your own spices. You'll be amazed how incredibly different your food tastes.

9. Use butter, not margarine. Butter is better for you and is also real food. Oh, and it TASTES better. That's important.

10. If you're going to bake cakes, buy cake flour. Yes, it really does matter.

-Frank

Church Of Bahamut *Clearly Satire*

Many of you know me to be an atheist, but no more. I have seen the light my friends and it glistens off of platinum scales of the greatest of all metallic dragons.

Metallic dragons, you see, are the noblest and most benevolent of all dragons and they live a long time, longer than anything we know. This gives them epic powers of wisdom and if you a devout follower of Bahamut, he will provide you with your own metallic dragon, gold, silver, brass, copper, or bronze, to be your mentor. You will go throughout your travels with this mentor and will be taught the wisdom of the eons in all dealings in human life at his scaly foot.

It may be hard for you to believe that dragons exist, as all evidence is to the contrary, but I have faith. Reason and evidence cannot touch faith, as you know if you are a religious person, and that's why it's called FAITH! This is not to say that I do not have my explanations ready, oh no. First of all, it must be understood that metallic dragons often like to take human form, and they can become any human they wish. Obviously, if you ask humans accompanying me if they are dragons, they will deny it, as they wish to not scare people and also to experience life from a human perspective so that they may grow in their own wisdom. Even when not in human form, dragons are gifted mages and may cast greater invisibility on themselves, which will render them undetectable even if they are damaged or attack.

Of course, it would be immoral of you to try and talk me out of my faith. Without faith in Bahamut, I would definitely turn to a life of unbridled immorality. My offenses would be the usual major crimes, such as rape, murder, and robbery, but also minor ones, such as wet willies, Chinese fire drills, and production of reality television shows. After all, without the wisdom of the great platinum dragon, there can be no morality. Children not taught the basic tenets of platinum morality during their upbringing, especially the crucial first ten years, are 75% more likely to get involved with dark necromantic cults. For without the absolutely morally omniscient teachings of Bahamut, morality cannot be absolute. How can you even know what is moral reliably relying upon your feeble human wisdom alone? No, you need the greater morality of he of the many colored eyes, he who shepherds in the morning frost, and the lord of all metallic dragons in order to be consistently moral.

If you are of a differing religion or a not-year-recovered atheist, I would ask you to please not be rude in your criticism of the Church of Bahamut. Bahamut is real. How do I know this? Besides my dragon mentor, who I trust you will not be so rude as to expect to actually meet or have his breath weapon demonstrated to you, I can tell you Bahamut is real because it has been personally revealed to me. For many years now, I have had diabetes without developing any serious complications. Some say that's because I have, some of the time anyway, taken medication and I'm still relatively young so it's too soon to tell, but these people are shallow rationalist knuckleheads. It is clear as anything has ever been to me that it is Bahamut who keeps me from developing complications and that it is his scaly wing that guides my physician's hands when they get something right in terms of treatment. Do not be so presumptuous to ask me to prove that Bahamut exists. Of course he exists! Who brings the frost to the grass and to the windshield of your car? Thermophysicists seem to think that water vapor is just in the air and crystalizes at a certain temperature, but these people are just paid propagandists of the liberal academic establishment and there's no evidence for frost just happening on its own. THERE'S NO EVIDENCE! SHOW ME THE EVIDENCE! I have been to many museums and read many textbooks and I can find no convincing evidence that makes any sense. Bahamut had to do it. Besides, you can't prove Bahamut doesn't exist and the moment you can I will become a sworn atheist, but until then I am just a humble servant of the great platinum dragon. Beware Tiamat and her Chromatic minions!

-Frank

Ten Basic Scientific Facts

I'm a poor science student, but I think I have an understanding of some of the most vital basics around. Some of that comes from atheism, which tends to cause scientific interest. Here, I'd like to present ten scientific principles that Jay Leno might get an interesting Jaywalking segment out of. These are things everyone should know about science.

1. Evolution: The basic principle here is that, through change over a very long time, all life has come to be. All life on Earth shares a common ancestor, right down to the first single-cell organism. We did not, however, evolve from apes, or any other contemporary animal. The only relevant point is that we share a common ancestor and are fairly close cousins with all primates, the closest relation being to chimpanzees.

2. Thermodynamics: Heat is energy and cold is lack of energy. Cold sinks and heat rises. No matter what, heat will always move in the direction of cold. Cooling down is conducting energy away from yourself, while warming up is conducting heat to yourself.

3. Photosynthesis: This is the process of converting sunlight into usable energy in the form of plant sugars. It is enormously complicated and baffles scientists even today.

4. Sustainability: This refers to any sort of agriculture the yield of which may be harvested on a regular basis without reducing the population to the point where future harvest will one day become unsustainable.

5. Refraction: Light is white when unrefracted. When refracted, it turns into seven colors. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet are the colors formed by refraction. Black is formed by complete absence of light.

6. Atomic Theory: An element is any substance that is only made up of itself, not multiple substances. These are all listed on the periodic table. An atom is the smallest possible peace of an element. An atom may be split, but the resulting matter is no longer the element in question.

7. Placebo effect: A medication, or anything presented as improving health, will work, to an extent, so long as you believe that it will. The difference between real medicine and everything else is that real medicine can hold up in double blind controlled experiments that control for the placebo effect.

8. Ideomotor Effect: This is when the body moves without consciously doing so. It is responsible for mundane bodily functions like crying and for phenomena like Oujia board usage and dowsing.

9. Relativity: Time is not a fixed phenomenon. It passes differently as one approaches the speed of light. There's a lot more to it than this, but that's the basic theory.

10. Scientific Theory: The common use of theory is not the same as the word in science. Basically, a scientific theory is an explanation of the natural world that has been repeatedly confirmed by observation and experimentation. It also must be falsifiable and the less falsifiable it is, the correspondingly weaker it is considered. Hence, gravitational theory, germ theory, and evolutionary theory are not the same as your theory that your dog knows what you're thinking or that your lunch partner is late just to twist your nads.

-Frank

Technically True

I grew up in an era when all the kids had handheld devices, greater exposure to mass media than ever before, and were becoming more reliant upon technology. The fact of the matter is that I was born in 1981, but if I were born in 1991, 2001, or 2011, I could write the same thing. Eventually, everyone worried about kids growing up with technology will die of old age and there will be nothing left but people who have grown up with technology themselves. Until that happens, we have a strange bias against technology that simply isn't there when the technology is removed. Talking on the phone with friends all the time is evidence of a healthy social life but texting those exact same friends and having the exact same conversations is seen as a sign of being disconnected from real life and real human interaction. Reading books all the time is considered a sign of an active mind but always scrolling down the screen of an e-reader of some description is considered a problem. A kid who reads the newspaper every day is considered civic-minded but a kid who reads articles all day on his phone is considered to be ignoring the real world. What is this magic that paper possesses to suddenly have credibility with parents? Should homes come with projectors and large white screens of paper to project all the texts and sites onto so that they may be properly cleansed with the healing power of paper? It is nakedly obvious that the only reason the various screens are vilified is because they are new.

There are corollary biases that I've seen. Many times, people will talk about kids not playing outside all the time anymore, usually in the context of total lack of adult supervision and with the only rule being that one has to be home before either dinner or when the streetlights come on. Other times people speak of how there was no easily accessible pornography, violent videogames, or music with explicit and violent lyrics when they were a kid, usually with the intent to explain what is wrong with the current generation. Again, all of these are concerns that will die when the last people who hold them die of old age. Why are so many people so afraid of new things? This Luddite tendency is distressingly common and it makes no manner of sense at all. Is it honestly a reasonable thing in an era where Moore's Law dictates that computing power will double every 18 months until it finally gives way to quantum computing, where fusion is 20 years away ready to provide infinite abundance, and where we'll be mining asteroids in the lifetime of children born today to resist a tide of technology so profound that one may as well try to hold back a literal tide with a broom? As an autistic, I do sympathize with a general dislike of and difficulty with change but autistics are also big fans of accepting cold hard reality over whatever fantasies one might prefer to believe. Suffering so much fear and doubt over things that are here to stay, with more and better versions on the way, is, at best, an act of well-meaning futility or, at worst, an act of unpardonable egotistical self-rightous indulgence.

-Frank

Alarm

On September 11th in the year 2001 during mid-morning the world changed. Ever since the close of the Cold War when I was a small child, Americans had felt safe and secure, enjoying a time of peace and prosperity so total and so unprecedented it has since become known by the name America's Holiday From History. Frankly, my first two years of college we wondered what we would do with ourselves in a future like this and our young and idealistic minds imagined great things. Well, in every possible sense, that was a long time ago. We've been treated to a degree of comfort in the intervening years, certainly. The many Islamofascists we've managed to kill since then, including Bin Laden himself, make it clear that there is a mortal price to be paid for causing this manner of pain and suffering to Americans. Yet, even as we withdrew from Iraq and took some degree of pride in the administration of Hamid Karzai, at least in comparison to the Afghani Taliban government, a new and even more terrifying threat than Al-Queda or The Taliban has emerged. They go by many names and they make many demands and claims. Some call them ISIS, others call them ISIL, still others call them IS, and there are those who simply call them The Caliphate. For the purposes of this article, I shall call them, "The Assholes."

What initially got my attention regarding The Assholes was, as you might imagine, their practice of removing the heads of innocent American journalists. So far, they have done this to two people and also to a British man who was apparently a foreign aid worker of some description. Bad though this is, it is not without precedent for Islamofascists, as anyone recalling the name and sad end of Wall Steert Journal reporter Daniel Pearl can attest. However, The Assholes are taking the whole concept much further. There is no indication that they will stop beheading people so long as they've people to behead in their clutches and even empty clutches may not stop them. Reports from some sources indicate that they have agents in the United States, which is unsurprising considering that, like John Walker Lindh for The Taliban before them, confirmed reports of Americans recruited and fighting for The Assholes have been confirmed. If it is true that they have agents in America then it may also be true that reports that said agents have been ordered to murder military members, including veterans, in their homes, preferably by beheading. While I realize that being afraid of terrorists only achieves their aim, I find it difficult not to be afraid of The Assholes. Even if only some of the stories I hear about their power in the Middle East and the United States are true, these people simply seem quite worthy of the fear and alarm they seek to instill.

The Assholes make me uneasy and there's no easy answer for how to deal with them. We are weary of dealing with terrorist organizations determined to rule the world, like someone who has watched too many old G.I. Joe episodes. What's important to remember is that our weariness for this sort of messy business wil in no sense and in no way make it not a problem for us. Some think we can solve this with sanctions, air power, training indigenous enemies of The Assholes, and diplomacy. That might work, and, certainly, the ideal situation would be that such methods succeed. If they don't, however, do we care enough about the threat that The Assholes pose to go once again into the breech, dear friends? Yes, I understand boots on the ground, wars that last periods measured in decades, Gitmo prisoners, and everything else we associate with the Middle Eastern wars of the Bush years are highly undesirable. Ask yourself though, what it would take to put those methods back on the table for you? For all I know, we have a plan to kill everyone in The Assholes tomorrow, but what it we don't? What if what is happening is they are getting stronger, their tactics more brazen, and their victims more dead? What then? As sincerely and completely I hope it doesn't happen, Americans could be killed on their own soil by these people. Once that kind if threat comes into view, I fail to see any reason to keep any method that could lead to ending said threat off the table. This county can beat The Assholes, but does it really want to?

-Frank

Bad Sport

I am not a person who follows sport with any great fervor, with the sole exception of the St. Louis Cardinals, whom I have loved since childhood. A combination of the sounds of it setting off my autistic noise sensitivity and its players being the worse amongst my boyhood bullies has meant I hold something of an irrational contempt for basketball. Football is actually the only major American sport I ever played, which I did in the seventh grade as part of an unwise campaign to impress a girl in whose contempt I was, and insofar as I know am still, held. My relationship with the game though is not one of love or hate. Like all sport, I possess no talent for it, but it hasn't wronged me and I can, and have done, attend a game of it, if I must, without the experience being torturous. So it is with neither antipathy or admiration that I comment on what is happening to the public image of the modern NFL.

Recent years have seen NFL players involved in dog fighting rings, domestic abuse, child abuse, drug abuse, and probably more things I have missed. There is an element to the resulting fallout from these incidents where the NFL has my sympathy. Now, I've actually much more sympathy for the good men who strap on the pads every day and have worked hard to get where they are. Professional football players, as a group, cannot be convicted for the sins of some of their number. Each crime has a name to go with it and the owner of said name carries sole responsibility for whatever he might have done. However, as I have written before, no one can be above the law. Much as terrible crimes were merely handled internally at Penn State, rather than contacting the actual authorities regarding the worst sin available having occurred, there seems to be a sense within the NFL that infernal punishments such as suspensions and the like are the remedy when these situations arise. I simply don't care how valuable a player is because that doesn't change the moral obligation of officials to report crimes to police when they become aware of them.

Pedestals are for cakes, sculpture, and other things as might wish to admire at a bit higher level. They have always been a poor placement for human beings, however. When we try and place anyone on them, they fall eventually and we've no right to be surprised at this. These ordinary men running around out there in sweaty and heavy pads playing a game for a living aren't perfect. They're just a bunch of guy in uniforms playing a game for your amusement. Some of them are going to be jerks and some of them are going to be criminals, just like the rest of the population. What is most reasonable is to scrutinize the NFL itself, but also to prosecute its players for any crimes they may commute.

-Frank

Equal Before The Law

Gay marriage is inevitable. You may as well try and hold the tide back with a broom, although many are attempting just such foolishness. Those who do so would argue that they are protecting their rights, but they are merely protecting their privileges. Beyond the holy matrimony sort of marriage, which cannot be regulated by the federal government due to the first amendment, we're talking about marriage as a legal contract. That legal contract is obtained at City Hall, so it's pretty clear the government licenses marriage. If you're wondering why civil unions, or some other facsimile of marriage, are not a sufficient answer to the gay marriage question, the answer is very simple. No legal contract can be equal to a marriage because marriage involves over 1,000 advantages that are both the law of the land and unavailable outside of marriage. Shall we say that marriage and civil unions are separate but equal? Apart from the fact that that phrase, and its unsavory implications, will be familiar to anyone with a working knowledge of the history of civil rights in the United States, the equal part is false. By false, I mean as objectively and scientifically false as 2+2=5. So let's have no patronizing nonsense about how civil unions are enough for gay couples and that they should be happy with them. Only people who are not gay themselves or have no gay person in the world for whom they care could ever reach that conclusion. We cannot proceed in offering special advantage to heterosexual marriage without condemning homosexuals to inequality before the law. By what reason shall the opponents of gay marriage deny their fellow Americans rights that they themselves enjoy? All the reasoning for heterosexual marriages to be sanctioned and licensed by the state applies to homosexual ones. Couples of any kind want to make sure they can visit their relatives in the hospital, be protected in the event of divorce, have access to the privileged nature of spousal conversation, be granted access to assets in the event of untimely death, and have the custodial rights available to any spouse in that last case as well. These are just a few of the things, off the top of my head, that gay couples want and deserve just as much as straight ones.

Some opponents of gay marriage aren't so much concerned with the legal as they are with the moral and emotional. Okay, let's talk about that. Specifically, let's talk about babies and bathwater. You may recall when Britney Spears married Jason Allen Alexander in Las Vegas. This marriage lasted 55 hours and was later annulled. Compare this with the best possible hypothetical gay marriage. Both partners love one another, stay together until they're old, grey, and have trouble hearing one another, and adopt and raise children together. Is it possible to call that relationship less holy and sanctified than Ms. Spears' Vegas wedding, which her management later described as, "A joke that was taken too far," and, if so, is it even possible to conceive of anything more arrogant? Don't use that old chestnut about straight marriage being good for society either. These relationships and legal contracts are like anything else, which is to say that they are all unique and run the gamut from good, bad, and indifferent for society. Knowing my own mother and father as I do, I can report that they're both reasonable people who have found happiness in marriage, just not with one another. Believe me, that marriage was not good for society and it was not good for them in any sense beyond that of a useful test of one another's reserves of patience. Still think straight marriages are better for raising kids? I wonder how the parenting skills of the married Andrea Yates (drowned her children), married Marvin Gay Sr. (shot his legendary musician son) , and married Anna Nicole Smith (her son Daniel killed himself at 20) would stack up against the married Rosie O'Donnell, the married Dan Savage, or the married Ricky Martin. If any of these married gay parents' children were drowned, shot, or committed suicide, Google is unaware of the fact. As would seem to be common sense, good parenting is a combination of means, sanity, and responsibility. Plenty of gay couples, many of whom would certainly be married already if not unequal before the law, would love to adopt the teeming masses of children born to teen moms, doomed to an upbringing by abusive subhumans, or simply orphaned. Who are you to sit in judgment of those who seek only to adopt children most straight married couples would probably not? What arrogance resides within you that you would let a child live in misery rather have a good home with people who happen to be homosexual?

In my closing paragraph here, I'd like to talk about change and how it's difficult. Believe me, change is pretty tough for autistics, so, in some sense, if you're an opponent of gay marriage, I know what you're going through. As I've outlined here, your ideas are simply wrong and will share the fate that all bad ideas face in time. That I cannot relate to and can offer you no comfort regarding. What I can relate to and can offer comfort regarding is in a general sense that change is always difficult, whether it's good, bad, or indifferent. To no end in Springfield, I am plagued by road construction that forces me to alter my route to any number of places, which often included my former workplace. At one time, this forced me to take several blocks south, take a side street several blocks west, and then take another side street several blocks north, which was all because a stoplight was being replaced. Pain is a part of change, but, at least with change that is a matter of design, so, usually, is gain. Surely, this stoplight would've stopped working in some regard at some point in the near future and, while I may have been inconvenienced for several weeks, I probably will never know how glad I am to have that stoplight still working today. Change means pain in the short-term, but gain in the long-term, basically. It may be painful for those fond of tradition to see gay married couples bringing up children, sharing a marriage as recognized and advantageous as a traditional one, and as free as any straight couple to go make a bad decision on the Vegas strip officiated over by a lesbian Elvis impersonator, but that change is coming. Don't worry about marriage losing its meaning because that's a battle you've already lost a long time ago. Annulments, no-fault divorce, the aforementioned Elvis impersonator-type weddings, online ordination certificates, and so on have long since made a mockery of traditional marriage and all the things it was supposed to stand for. Lots of good things are present in the concept of traditional marriage, but there are bad things there too, and we, as a society, have already gotten used to ideas like, oh, say, marital rape being something that's actually illegal. We must evolve as a society and must keep asking whether or not what we're doing is right. Denying homosexuals the right to marry isn't right and, while I dislike the man who popularized the phrase, making them equal before the law is change I can believe in.

-Frank

We Seem To Have A Problem

An idea has been gaining traction and crystallizing in my mind. Knowing the loneliness of the geek from the inside, I've long been fascinated with how we geeks (male geeks mind you, as I do not presume to know the experience of our female equivalents) approach romance, love, sex, and that sort of thing. There is, sad to say, a great deal of misogyny in how we approach it. Lacking emotional maturity, social skill, traditionally feminine interests, or much else that is useful for attracting women, we seem to have developed a variety of deeply unhealthy coping mechanisms, most of which either put women on a pedestal, so that we may love them from afar in the manner of courtly love, or paint them as vile and base creatures, so that we need not feel so bad at being rejected. In my younger days, certainly before I was given a proper introduction to feminism, I was guilty of some of this behavior. So I'm not saying it's malicious, at least not if it's not coming out of a place of genuine hate. What I am saying is that it is harmful, counterproductive to any real romantic goals, and simply no fun for anyone involved.

So the first thing we need to establish here, and this is a crucial data point for everything else we discuss here, it is that women are people. I know that sounds just ever so douchey, but it's important. What it means is that they are complicated individuals with their own agendas, interests, personalities, ideas of what they want out of life, and so on. The Madonna-Whore dichotomy is deeply deeply retarded. It would be like considering men either he-men or wimps. That is how insulting it is to judge a woman solely upon her sexual conduct. You might as well have a Vanilla-Chocolate dichotomy and judge her solely based upon her ice cream conduct. Stereotypes aren't much less insulting. For instance, the sentence, "All women ______" can be legitimately filled in with, "Are in possession of two X chromosomes," "Feature a vagina," and, "Produce a higher ratio of estrogen than testosterone." It cannot be filled in with, "Are crazy," "Are whores," "Are the same," "Gossip," "Can't throw," "Go for bad guys," "Turn into their mother," "Go crazy during menstruation," "Enjoy long hot baths," or,"Are prudish about sex." If you still don't get it, here's the same thing with stereotypes of men, "Are insensitive," "Think with their dicks," "Are the same," "Hate talking," "Love sports," "Go for sluts," "Become their father," "Always want to have sex," "Jerk off anywhere anytime," "Are boorish about sex." I realize some of these might be funny, but I'm a man, and, sincerely, they're all false. Men are more complicated than a list of stereotypes. That's obvious. If it's not obvious that the same is true of women, then something is wrong.

Remember that scene in Glengarry Glenn Ross where Alec Baldwin says that if you're a nice guy he doesn't give a shit about that if you can't close? Genuinely good men understand that that core lesson is true in romantic situations too. Being a nice guy is the minimum standard to even being eligible for the romantic intention you seek. If you're claiming that as your central feature, you may as well go to sell your car and argue that the functional windshield wipers and horn are features. What about you might attract another person? What are your actual features? You need to come up with intellectually honest answers to that question and, if you can't, you've got some work to do on yourself. Also, what are her features? Here's a hint. Answers like, "She's a perfect angel," "She's the girl I finally tricked into liking me," or, "She seems like she could really put up with me," are all bad and you're making negative progress in terms of your overall value as a person every time you think, let alone say, that kind of stuff. What features does the woman I'm dating come with? She has a positive attitude about nearly everything, she's the most fun person to do anything with, she's allergic to cats, she loves little dogs, she laughs at the jokes no one else gets, and she likes it when I cook for her. Those are real features. Your features should be like that. Real honest parts of your personality, traits you've picked up during the unique experience of your own life, these are the kinds of features that matter and that are yours alone. There's millions of nice guys, but only one of you. Remember that.

If you're worshiping a woman and putting her on a pedestal, you're utterly blind to all the unique experiences and traits that make her different from all the other girls every other geek has ever put on a pedestal. You love an idealized vision of a person, but the real person is there too, complete with social security number, favorite movie, and preferred pizza topping. You have no chance with the ideal woman on the pedestal, but maybe if you'd talk to the human being you're projecting her onto, you might. If you're badmouthing a woman because she fell from the pedestal you put her on or because she rejected your romantic interest, you are closer to thinking like a rapist than any genuinely good man ought to ever be and it is very likely you need to sit down, shut up, and leave her alone until you learn some manners and develop some emotional maturity. Remember, any feelings or problems you have are not her concern and she is under no obligation to respond to or address them in any way. So yes geeks, go talk to women. They're complicated and interesting and can be a blast to talk to, but their lives are their own. If you keep that last bit in mind and adhere to it, we shouldn't have any problems.

-Frank

Broken

*The following is written as proposal of dating to a hypothetical woman. It is meant to show my current thoughts on my romantic prospects and dating in general.*

Greetings to you beautiful romantic prospect! I'm so happy that you're willing to give me a chance. As you can see, I'm a short bald fat man, so you're clearly willing to look past undesirable physical features. The ability to overlook glaring flaws will serve you well as you continue to explore the possibility of being my girlfriend. First, I suppose we'll want to get health issues out of the way. Diabetes is the most serious thing going on with me and if I don't control it, it's likely it will disfigure me and kill me horribly. So yeah, you're definitely taking a risk that I'll keep that under control and not die or go blind on you or anything. Harder to deal with is my autism, which makes me disabled in a number of ways, some obvious and some you'd never attribute to autism unless you knew something about it. Since part of my disability is social, I'll never know when I am getting on your nerves or the nerves of those about whom you care unless I am specifically told the fact. Neither will I be able to intuit your emotions, which will necessitate you remembering to specifically tell me not only why you are sad but also THAT you are sad (or any emotion, really) in the first place. There's a lot more to dealing with an autistic and you could read volumes on the subject without knowing everything it entails, but, trust me, it's a lot of work. If you're fine with all that, there are two more things we need talk about, mainly sex and money.

Here's the thing about sex. In my past two relationships, I agreed to wait as long as they wanted without having it. This policy resulted in me having no sex for a year total. Well, that's too long not to have sex. After having given it much thought, from the time of the first date a clock starts. After a month of dating relationship goes by, I will need to know where this relationship is going. I'm not saying the clock strikes midnight a month hence and you need to put out or get out, necessarily, but I will need to be given at least a rough idea of when this can happen. Waiting isn't the problem and isn't a problem for me, but waiting indefinitely most certainly is. Another thing you should know is that I've never successfully produced orgasm in a woman and, I suppose, there's no guarantee that I ever will. Bearing that in mind, the early stages of any sort of sexual relationship are very likely to include experimentation writ large. None of this is to say that I am particularly demanding sexually. On the contrary, I am something of a camel sexually, with the ability to get by with only one episode of coitus per year, if I must be so limited. For this reason, I rather go with the flow, as it were, when it comes to the sexual demands of my partner. When you're open to everything from once a year to several times a day, the other person tends to be in charge since they tend to have more defined preferences.

Possibly the most difficult thing to accept about me is that I am unemployable. Now, you look at me and that certainly isn't necessarily obvious. It took me my whole life, up until quite recently to realize this about myself. In the course of eight failed careers, I feel I have given this a lot of thought and tried just about everything I can think of, including running my own company. If you're confused about what regarding autism could make a seemingly high-functioning autistic unemployable, I'll give you a quick primer. Impaired social skills can sabotage relationships with superiors, coworkers, and subordinates, leading to firing or, sometimes, being first given the choice to quit. This is because I'll fail to read signals for when I have gone on talking too long or am otherwise alienating people. Then you have the physical impairments to dexterity and coordination, which makes certain movements, such as operating a broom or mop, impossible. Nobody wants to hear about your physical limitations, especially when they aren't outwardly obvious. You're to shut up and do what you're told or leave. Gastrointestinal problems also come with autism. When you may need a bathroom break at any given time, you are not a desirable employee. Finally, mulitasking is a vital part of many careers and something that I find completely impossible, as well as moving or working quickly in general. So there you have it. If you're willing to accept everything I just told you, we may have a chance.

-Frank

Atheism: A Helpful Guide

*Based on some of the most common reactions to my atheism, here's something of a FAQ regarding it.*

1. How can you be an atheist?

It's quite easy, really. All you have to do is stop engaging in wishful thinking and be ruthlessly rational. The rest follows naturally.

2. How do you explain the complexity of the human body/the natural world?

The same way scientists explain it. All of this evolved gradually, in small steps, over millions of years. The process is known as evolution by natural selection. It's all far more probable than as explained in The Bible and does not result in an infinite regress.

3. Why are you an atheist?

I arrived there over the course of a long span of years, starting with a bad experience with a worship group at Drury University called Logos in 2001. Various other small bad experiences with religion, and bad experiences in general, left my faith battered but not beaten. Most of the work would be done by horrible experiences with four specific women, none more powerful than my engagement to a woman named Marie. In that relationship, I found all the evidence I needed that there was no such thing as a benevolent God. After a rather brutal betrayal by a Sunday School group I was in giving religion one last chance with, I started reading Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and others and eventually had a logical framework for there being no God or supernatural force at all, good, bad or, indifferent.

4. You've got to believe in God!

No, actually, I don't. There isn't a single good reason you can name why I should, other than it being more socially acceptable to do so in this region of the country. Otherwise, Pascal's Wager, the argument from design, the ontological argument, the argument from personal experience, and everything else you can throw at me will fail.

5. I'll be praying for you.

Do you what you like, so long as I don't have to hear it. I used to erase your image from elementary school yearbooks and write hateful things under your class picture, but it never harmed you because you never knew it. Apply that same principle here, and we'll be fine.

6. You'll find God again.

How inconvenient for me, as I worked so hard to lose him. You must understand that becoming an atheist happened by a gradual process of evolution, much as life itself has developed, and I will not suddenly find God again that way. Were it to happen, it would happen gradually. The most important reason it won't happen is, even if I were to become irrational enough to accept theistic ideas again, I have against God an inconsolable rage that ensures, if I find out he exists after I die, he has more to fear from my judgment and wrath than I do from his.

-Frank

Narrative Experiment

*This article is going to be me narrating a day in my life in high school. For memory's sake, we're going to go with senior year, meaning 1998-1999. Some of you might gain insight from this. If not, then it's still going to be interesting for me. I'll be writing in the style of Rorschach from Watchmen. If that means something to you, then you'll know what I mean. Otherwise, never mind.*

Eyes blearily open. Dreamworld of superpowers and loyal friends shatters at the sound of Garfield alarm clock. New day is upon me. Usual routine now commences. Mother has prepared whatever breakfast she thinks is healthy this week. Her disgust with my weight is reliably evident, but it gets lost in the sea of her grievances with me. Breakfast ends and shower begins. Mirror gives me insight into what everyone else will tired of seeing today. Fogs up, and a thin veil is a momentary mercy. Get dressed to song Footloose. Hope it helps morale. Maybe a little, but temporarily and not much. Not like when I was a little kid caught up in the energy and the optimism of it. No real place for energy and optimism anymore. Still, certain minimal levels of cheer necessary to function.

Leave for school earlier than normal kid, like usual. Getting there early means entering building peacefully. Less likely to get spat on. Has become issue lately. On way play The Touch from Transformers: The Movie to try and increase morale. Failing that, Instruments of Destruction will come on next and I'll imagine the glorious burning ruins of my enemies. Catharsis will follow. Almost enough to take my mind off of house where girl I have crush on used to live. Almost enough to make me think of something else. Anything else but what I have been cheated out of because of who I am. Hatred for who I am seethes through me for a moment, going above normal levels before the music distracts my focus and I wait to see if that hill the Firebird always dies on will delay me a moment today. It doesn't.

High School comes into sight and memories flood into me. Looks light a brighter happier place than the thuggish cesspool that was the Junior High. Newer and shinier doesn't mean better though. Just a newer better decorated hellhole. Upon pulling in, I park in a distant spot favored by no one, preparing to avoid interaction with classmates after school. Spot positions me well to use a less favored side entrance. If I'm early and lucky enough there won't be guys waiting to spit on me there today. No need to go to locker once inside. Too tempting for bullies to mess with it. Once had vaseline coated all over the inside. Carry everything, all the books and supplies, on my back. Can be watched that way. Can be kept safe.

Attempt to proceed directly to class without incident. Restroom stop maybe. Can only hope to hide inside classroom for first class. Hide from hostiles. Nonhostiles out in the hall too. No trouble from them. No eye contact. No acknowledgment. Hostiles will antagonize at slightest provocation. Passing them in hall all the justification needed. Taunts unsophisticated, but relentless. Picking on shortcomings long since acknowledged by everyone. Futility of their sadistic game enrages me. Maybe I fight back with words they don't understand. Hasn't mattered for for over a decade. Damn sure doesn't now.

First class begins. English. Good at it. Frustrated endlessly with the lack of enthusiasm from my classmates. Will say something at least once to earn a strange look from some of them. Rarely will know what I said. Classmates will usually say or do something to get in trouble with the teacher. Bores me and wastes my time. Futility in their behavior apparent. Inexplicably irrational as they were the first day at St. John's.

Second class begins. Accounting. Bad at it, but have accounting professor aunt tutoring me. Tend to do better in class than most of my classmates. Have eccentric habit of using expensive fountain pen to do accounting homework. Have dumber than usual classmates. Strange. Accounting shouldn't attract them. Preparing for careers in white collar crime perhaps. Do not end up dwelling on it.

Third class begins. Study Hall. Usually bring book to this or talk to coach who teaches the class. Classmates have conversations in this class that make the ones classmates have in other classes of the day seem like Tarintino dialogue. Bored mostly.

Fourth class begins. Business Management. Seems I'm ahead of the curve on this class just from reading Dilbert books. Classmates seem to have more well-rounded intelligence levels. Enjoy the different conversational texture. On entrepreneurship team in FBLA via this class. More social with classmates out of necessity. Not nearly as painful as doing so would've been a few years ago. Making progress perhaps? Whose progress? Yours? Theirs? The teacher's? Who is to know?

Lunch begins: Choice to be made. Lean up against wall. Eat bag lunch in underpopulated area. Avoid hostiles and avoid making nonhostiles uncomfortable that way. Or sit at table and irritate and alienate all present with personality. Depends on patience. Depends how how merciful I'm feeling. Mostly lean against the wall. Don't go where I'm not wanted. Besides lunch is weird. On Atkins. Cold meatloaf, pork rinds, and sugar free jello cup. Enough to gross out anyone. No social capital anyway. Could have charbroiled live puppy for lunch. Wouldn't matter. Outcast. Understand that rule. All too well. Far too long.

Fifth class begins. Second Study Hall. Same thing. Instead Let's assume pep rally happens today. Wearing all black. Dressed specifically that way for today. Greatest tormenters are athletes. Only hatred for them. No spirit. No love. No joy. Only contempt reserved for greatest enemies. Teachers and coaches expect it by now. Tell me to have school spirit. That it's important to support school. Not supporting anything. School showed me worst of human nature. Gave me terrible education. Among worst in country. Yet seeking praise. For their sins. Rot in hell. Go to pep rally though. Filing in along with the rest of them. Wear Terminator shades, black turtleneck, black dress pants, and shiny black shoes. Black sweater too if it's cold. Never cheer. Never stand. Never clap. Only during the pledge of allegiance and the Star Spangled Banner. Loyalty to my country I have. None to my school. None to my betrayer. None to my tormenter. None to the destroyer of all that is good in life. Am assaulted as I sit motionless locked in unbroken deadeyed stare with the coaches. Assaulted verbally. Assaulted physically. Breaking me, they think. Not even getting close. As they resort to violence and intimidation to try and enforce conformity, I feed off their energy. No real point. If had one, wouldn't have to resort to violence and intimidation. Might as well beat me to death. Scream until I'm deafened. Won't budge. Would've been just fine reading a book quietly while the damned thing went on. Had to push me. Had to invite a wet blanket to your party. Fine. Wet blanket desired. Wet blanket provided. Am immovable object. Pep rallies not unstoppable force. Will be proud to dying day. Never broke.

6th class begins: Journalism. In offshoot class from main journalism class. Just four of us in the library. Coming up with stories. Mostly write movie reviews and whatever else teacher asks me to write. Lots of goofing off in this class. Classmates are not really popular kids either. Get treated better than normal. Consider them all nonhostiles. Consider majoring in journalism in college. Good experience. Went to Halloween Dance as Michael Meyers from Halloween. Got treated better than normal because no one knew it was me for a while. Got to be in journalism group photo. Journalism class highlight of day.

7th class begins: Business Law. Learn a lot in this class. Feels like college course. Have had a few of those by now. Great feeling to learn so much. Especially regarding banking business. Classmates equally dedicated to learning means hostiles and nonhostiles largely irrelevant. Everyone on learning. Good.

School ends: Mission is escape. Likely holding in considerable bowel movement due to unwillingness to use school's restrooms for that purpose. Mad dash for car. Should be largely abandoned around it if all goes well. Experience rush of adrenaline upon exiting school. Sure today will be the day one of the teams kicks my ass. For the pep rally business. For not liking sports in general. Just because I'm Frank. Just because they know I wouldn't hit back. Just because they could get away with it. Attack doesn't come, and I race home to superior restroom facility. Watch TV and do homework when arrive home. Maybe go out to see movie by myself later. Tomorrow will do the same thing. Lonely life. Barely feel human. Wondered what it would be like to be one of these people since time out of memory. Always outside of them. Sadness overwhelms. Where did it begin? Their cruelty? My weirdness? Chicken? Egg? Doesn't matter. Nothing changes. Nothing ever changes. Head hits pillow. Dreams follow. Superpowers. Loyal friends. A time and place where dreams survive.

-Frank

Comic-Con 2009

*This is an account of my trip to Comic-Con in 2009 with my friend Drew. I wrote it shortly after the trip and this is the first time it's available to a general audience.*

It is said that, upon one's death bed, one does not regret the things one did, but the things one didn't do. So it is in this sense that I do not regret going to Comic-Con. I learned a lot of things about cons, myself, and the wider United States outside of the Ozarks. Was it fun learning these things? Well, that's another question, isn't it?

Airline travel can be the worst part of a trip, and has been so for me on some occasions. Not this time though. Sure, I got locked into using first class tickets by my credit card's rewards program, meaning round trip for Drew and me cost nearly 2,000 dollars, and booking a hotel was a painful goatfuck of a process that meant I paid nearly another 2,000 dollars for Drew and myself to stay five days in the luxurious US Grant Hotel, but that's all money issues. While the trip overall set me back five grand, the actual process of getting there and staying in the hotel was quite pleasant. I got what I paid for, even if I only paid for it because I was in over my head.

When we arrived at Preview Night, it was easy to be awestruck. So very many people were milling about in so very many costumes. Someone at the cigar shop I frequent asked me if I would see any girls dressed up as Wonder Woman. I could not count on two hands how many of that exact character I saw. After proceeding through all the lines to get registered, Drew and I walked around the place to get a sense of what we were in for. We finally sat down along a wall outside a large room I would come to realize later was called Ballroom 20 and was where much of the big deal stuff was to be located. Naively as all fuck, I made my schedule up. Every day but Sunday, I had planned eight different events. Reality was about to smack me in the face like a wrench in the Dodgeball movie.

Drew and I discovered a nice little Irish pub on the route to the convention center. It would become our most frequently dined at location, though I must say I preferred their standard fare to their breakfast fare. My first scheduled event was a panel on the new The Hobbit movies and I failed to get in. That was a bit disappointing, but I knew that might happen thanks to some guides to Comic-Con I'd read online before the trip. So I just moseyed on over to another panel on a new concept called Motion Comics, which was well worth it, followed by a panel on Superman which was fine, but nothing to write home about. So I left to go to Ballroom 20 where a panel on strong women in genre fare was about to begin. Looking for a decent open seat, I spotted one on the end of one row finally. Very slowly, I moseyed on over to the seat and cautiously sat down, all the while looking for body language or facial expressions that might warn me it was someone else's seat. Having not gotten any reaction from anyone, I settled in...for about a nanosecond. Before I knew it, a very large and hairy man was physically lifting me up out of the seat and throwing me on the ground, accompanied, bizarrely, by the phrase, "Please get out of my seat." After getting up and dusting myself off, I slinked away to a much inferior seat towards the back that I was sure no one would fight me for. After this, I intentionally sought terrible seats in every room I was in to avoid similar confrontations. Any concept of geeks comprising a brotherhood or an egalitarian loose society even were washed away pretty thoroughly by this encounter.

Foolishly, I went to the bathroom after the strong women panel. Burn Notice was next in the same room, and was highly popular, and I failed to get a bathroom pass, which basically would've allowed me easy guaranteed reentry. So I wait in two large lines to get in, don't ask me why there were two, and failed to reenter both times. One con worker told me I couldn't get in and so I finally gave up and said I would leave. Then he told me I couldn't go back the way I'd came, the only way out. So I asked if he wanted me to stand there. He said I couldn't do that because I would be in people's way. So I wondered if he wanted me to stab myself and keel over dead, since that was about the only option he'd left me with, but I did the mature thing and just turned to leave, at which point he grabbed my shoulder and tried to arrest my departure. Annoyed, I wrestled free of him and ran off.

At this point, I was having flashbacks to my childhood in Harrison, Arkansas and much of my enthusiasm and awe was depleted. So I did what I always did when people were mean to me as a kid. I left them alone and freed them of my presence. For about the next five hours, I just sat on a bench in the convention center, missing everything I'd planned for the rest of that day. Every now and again, someone would sit down next to me, sometimes with helpful advice, more often just speaking with their own small group in some sort of anime pidgen.

The next day, I tried to get into Ballroom 20 for something again. They told me the correct entrance was a different one than I was at. When I arrived at the entrance indicated, they told me the original entrance was the correct one. Not wanting to get involved in a game of con worker incompetence pong, I finally gave up on Ballroom 20 completely and edited my schedule to no longer feature it at all, which basically meant that I would be going to fewer events with people in them I wanted to see less. I also had to give up on certain events taking place in a particular hallway where the lines had no beginning and no ending, just because I could not figure out how to get in line without being accused of cutting by someone. A general theme of being in constant conflict and competition with fellow geeks was emerging and it was pissing me off. Some old friends came onto Drew and mine's radar and I got to visit with them some, so that was good.

Saturday, I had basically figured out the rules for getting around what I would and would not be able to get into. Standing in line for two hours in the hot sun for Kevin Smith did the trick, but this day I was really more interested in going to a panel that was a combination of a preview for the videogame Batman: Gotham Knight and a showing of Watchmen: The Director's Cut with live commentary from Zack Snyder. Mostly, I was excited about this panel because Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy were doing the voices in the video game and were there. Nobody will ever be The Joker and Batman to quite the degree these two are. Kudos to Drew for giving up his bathroom pass to this event so I was able to go.

Sunday was a day I mainly dedicated to my shopping. The exhibition floor with all the booths was an environment I had only tentatively ventured into before. Really, I had two goals. At least physically see my favorite webcomic authors, if not chat with them, and buy me a bunch of XL t-shirts of my various favorite things in fandom. While I was not able to chat with Jerry and Mike from Penny-Arcade or R.K. Milholland from Something Positive, I was able to see them. Aeire was there as well, and it was also cool to see her in person, even if I don't follow Punch N' Pie the way I do the others or did Queen of Wands. Meeting Shinga of Head Trip or O of Commissioned would've been cool, but impossible to accomplish via Comic-Con. If I ever feel the need to do so, I can go to A-Kon and Conneticon respectively. Merchandise wise, I was able to pick up a couple of Penny-Arcade shirts, because Drew and I came up to the booth when they were taking a break, so it was easy access. Something Positive had a pretty constant line and it was one of those that I couldn't figure out where the end was. Throwing money over the head whoever was standing in front of Randy and yelling "XL Choo-Choo Shirt Please You Glorious Bastard!" not seeming a graceful option, I just promised myself I'd buy stuff off the website later. Otherwise, I got a variety of t-shirts featuring He-Man, Batman, Green Lantern, Link, and a Punisher cap that I have decided is my official DM hat.

So that's the basics of what going to Comic-Con was life for me. While I don't regret going, I think I couldn't put up with another large con. There's way too much fighting and competing with geeks that goes on for my taste. Visioncon in Springfield is still on the table, as it is small and I'd probably just game with people at it rather than try and do any of the main con stuff. If I do get talked into it again at some point, I want a guide who's willing to stay with me more often than not to go along. Drew had very good reasons why we needed to not be together most of the time, but my natural weaknesses manifested themselves in ways that should be obvious after you've read this note. Every geek has to do it once in their life just so they know what it's like. Once was enough for me. Pushing my comfort zone is probably something that's not going to happen again for a long, long, time.

-Frank

Abortion & Bankruptcy

Social conservatism got the GOP to where it is today, that is largely out of power, bereft of a meaningful future, and generally viewed as ignorant theocratic misogynistic douchebags. A political party that holds to an ethos of pre-enlightenment morality, collectivist notions of civil liberties, and callousness regarding human suffering cannot prevail in the world of tomorrow. There is, however, nuance in the field of abortion. While I support abortion being legal, I find some fundamental problems with how it is popularly viewed. To that end, I have come up with a useful analogy, which I will explain presently.

A few centuries ago, those with debts they could not pay ended up in debtor's prison. This was eventually concluded to be unjust, around the time of the American Revolution, if I recall the class I learned about this during. So the modern world still has bankruptcy. This does not mean that bankruptcy is not to be avoided by all means, that it is not a terrible highly personal event in the lives of those who seek it, or that it cannot be abused, the latter occurrence of which can and has meant regulation of it where appropriate. Similarly, when abortion was illegal, coat hangers and back alley abortionists did their damage, while those who got caught faced criminal correction. So Roe V. Wade's conclusion about medical privacy, while sound in its own right regarding medical privacy, did not actually address abortion per se. Therefore, it must be meaningfully addressed but can only be done so partially by legislation. Regulation of abortion is okay, just as regulation of bankruptcy is okay, and just as regulation of firearms is okay, despite a Constitutional Amendment. Whether Constitutional Amendment or Supreme Court decision, these freedoms are subject to appropriate regulation. What constitutes appropriate regulation, whether that be partial birth abortion or student loan exemption from bankruptcy, is always necessarily open to vigorous debate.

The final thing I think needs to change in the thought about abortion is that it must be thought of as bankruptcy. There is a certain shame and stigma about taking bankruptcy. It's not very strong or anything in law, but it is rather recognized as indicating one has screwed up. Some who enter bankruptcy cannot avoid it, and anything without consent would be analogous in abortion. In these cases there ought not be shame or stigma. Modern birth control technology means the vast majority of abortions need not have occurred. Within the grasp of modern civilization is the ability to eliminate the need for abortion almost entirely, yet we do not see this. We do not see this because one side is concerned with discouraging what they perceive as a moral evil and the other doesn't see abortion as a problem to begin with. However, morality has little to do with it and it is a problem. Let's view it as a problem to be solved and do so with contraception, education, and greater access to both for as many people, especially women, as possible. When complete control of their own reproduction is within the reach of every individual, both sides can down the signs, end the tiresome arguments, and recognize the beauty of every child being wanted and women everywhere, finally, being free of the demands of nature and government.

-Frank