Both my best male friend and a co worker of mine recently smoking. I quit years ago, with no ill effects. They, however, are currently grumpy bastards. I think the idea of absorbing a drug thru your skin is weird and a tad disconcerting, but if that's the new thing, they should make a Prozac patch, or some other form of topical Happy Lotion to help keep John Q. Public going.
Besides K-Y, you nasty smart alec freaks.
Apparently the two are available together: nicotine and anti-depressants, I mean. (Not nicotine and K-Y. You can find that in any room at the St. Mark's hotel, along with an entire assortment of other fun things that are bad for you. Bring Your Own Needles, though, kids, please. This isn't the 80s.)
Isn't that fascinating? Addiction so strong that it requires treatment with anti-depressants--yet, this substance is still legal to sell to the general public. I almost admire people for whom a substance can counterbalance the effects of hunger, sadness, or stress. It takes work to be that lazy with regards to the world around you.
And do people get addicted to the patch? These are things I need to know to satisfy my curiosity.
*
The topic of patches reminds me of an evening in my old apt, when Sir Gonzo and I were reading my old Boy Scout manual. No, you didn't miss anything. I said Boy Scout. I am a book junkie, and I found this vintage print on the street many years ago when I was in about 6th grade; it hasn't left me since. I even took it to college.
Laugh if you will, but I was the only person laying out on that soccer field who knew what those stars we were looking at were.
Anyhow, we moved from the kitchen to the bathroom so I could resume scrubbing the tub, and Gonzo sat on the toilet lid and occasionally read aloud from the manual.
Not gonna lie to ya, that stuff can be pretty entertaining. There is an entire section on being "Morally Straight". It's cute and sensible in most ways; the manual encourage you to respect women and your elders, to be kind and helpful to others, and emphasizes self reliance . In short, it's full of things that I'd want my son to learn.
But then, like most things, what started out as a good idea just went straight downhill from there. When you take a closer look at the politics that have become involved with the organization of late (darn those politics!), you start to see how conservative values have been perverted by Conservatives to mean that espousing these values means condemnation of anything outside of the strict interpretation. These people go to COURT over this stuff--LAWSUITS, over the Boy Scouts because allowing homosexuals into Boy Scout leadership perverts the morals of youth!
This is ridiculous. With all of the REAL issues affecting the American family, like healthcare, loss of jobs, inflation, the mortgage crisis, gas prices, mounting debt accumulated while fighting a war we can't win, etc, you'd think the Bible Belt would find another dead horse to beat. But nope. All of these pressing issues facing our Congress take a back seat to the issue of gay marriage and how the gays are slowly ruining the American way of life for all of us.
It's bad enough that Conservatives use the Bible to justify everything from hating Jews to subjugating women and not recycling...because religion has always been a way for people to leverage power over the vulnerable to further their own agenda. But you already knew that, right? To let you in on a secret, the natives of South & Central America weren't always Catholic, and neither were the natives of anyplace else.
But I digress.
Scouting is/was meant to be an opportunity to teach boys how to be strong and how to lead, and prepare them to be able men.
The commitment to "God and Country" doesn't mean to Jesus Christ and the governor. It means to a higher power in general, to the one to whom we will all answer for our existence and our choices. It's meant to remind kids that they are a small player in a large universe, that there are things greater than they that require respect. Like nature. Like society. Like our interconnectedness.
But it doesn't make the organization an automatic extension of the local parish's Sunday brainwashing and hate mongering *(in instances where this goes on, not to say that all churches preach hate against homosexuals). It becomes that when people/parents allow organizations to make parenting decisions for them, perhaps as these organizations made decisions for their parents. But really, in this day and age, with such access to information and culture? This kind of refusal to grow up and accept that human beings can be different and still worthy of love and respect isn't "tradition", it's pigheaded, stubborn FEAR stunting our growth as a nation and as individuals.
The purpose of the Boy Scouting community and code is supposed to promote civic responsibility, respect for oneself and others, and leadership...not at the expense of tolerance, understanding, and respect for individual choices. Children have no bias and no politics except for what they are taught. It makes me sad that something generally so positive has become increasingly politicized over the years as Conservatives continue to promote the myth that homosexuals are threatening the American way of life, Christian morality, and the sanctity of marriage and the family.
It makes me giggle when the First Amendment issue comes up of counties and towns trying to impose local dress codes for certain colors and baggy pants, because of what these articles of clothing, in their minds, represent. Ever stop to think that the boys whose parents put them in Scouting are just really wearing conservative gang insignia?
They've even got a handshake, man. Come on. Didn't y'all see Boyz In the Hood!??! This is like a gang! THIS IS PROGRAMMING and GROUPTHINK!
Someone should start an action group. Make a bumpersticker. Something.
