My National Pickup Line Contest

So a while back, I saw a banner ad for a pickup line contest. Remington, a company that makes things like electric razors, was running a national contest to see who could come up with the best and worst pickup lines (translation: most likely to work and funniest). I clicked on the ad, hoping to get a few laughs out of it (it was judged by anyone logging on and voting).

Most of them were pretty unfunny, so I--being the suave urban sophisticate and pickup artist that I am--submitted a few of my own unbelievably nerdy ones. Fully aware this was primarily promotional, I used my junk e-mail address to avoid corporate spam. I soon forgot about the contest.

Last week as I was performing my monthly check of my junk e-mail account, and lo and behold! I get an e-mail notifying me that I WON. The top and bottom 5 lines got prizes, and I was solidly in that latter group. My submission was deemed by the Internet community to be among the funniest and most desperately hopeless attempts to seduce women.

I had missed the deadline for responding to get my prizes, but the woman there said she'd try to get them to me anyway, as they were running behind schedule themselves. So I hurriedly faxed in my form, and now I'm waiting to get my free electric razor and my 10 t-shirts that say:

"I wish you were cos(x) and I were sin(x), so I could always fill the area under your curves."

Awesome.

PS - The woman I talked to loved the line and wanted to know if it had any success...and later admitted to having formed that opinion after requiring a colleague to explain it to her.

PPS - If you don't get the line, put down your Art History/Anthropology/Communications reading (or whatever phony major you chose) and go ask someone with skills.

PPPS - I have Cynara's permission to go out to bars and see if these shirts work. Anyone wanna come? Or know any nerdy bars where all the hotties know calculus?

PPPPS - I hate it when people add multiple postscripts by adding an extra "S" each time. It's Postscript and Post-Postscript, etc. Post means "after." After the script, after the script after the script, and so on and so forth. Post Script Script doesn't make any sense. If you're a PS, PSS, PSSS person, consider yourself officially "ON NOTICE."

My Local Election Recommendation

If you're registered to vote in Philadelphia, please do this year. You'll see on the ballot that Judge Teresa Carr Deni has been recommended for retention to the Municipal Court by the Philadelphia Bar Association. I'd like to recommend the opposite. And here's why:

She recently presided over a case in which a 20 year old single mother, desperate to make ends meet, was working as a prostitute. This woman, while negotiating for services with a Mr. Gindraw, a potential client, had a gun pulled on her. She was subsequently forced at gunpoint to have unprotected sex with the gun holder and three of his friends.

Judge Deni decided that this was not rape (or even sexual assault or assault) because of her profession, that being a sex worker essentially meant all sex was consensual. The fact that she wasn't paid for this reduced the offense to "theft of services." (Incidentally, after being released by Judge Deni, Mr. Gindraw organized another gang rape 4 days later.)

While others who wrote about this expressed moral outrage, I went straight to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's definition of rape. And according to Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, Crimes and Offenses (Title 18), Part II (Definition of Specific Offenses), Chapter 31 (Sexual Offenses), Subchapter B, Section 3121, rape, a felony in the first degree, has occurred when a person engages in sexual intercourse with someone:
"1. By forcible compulsion.
2. By threat of forcible compulsion that would prevent resistance by a person of
reasonable resolution.
3. [there are four more definitions not applicable here]"

If this wasn't by forcible compulsion or threat of forcible compulsion that would prevent resistance by a person of reasonable resolution, I don't know what would. The Judge's personal opinions aside, it's her job to interpret and apply the law. And there is NO argument to be made that what happened wasn't, BY LEGAL DEFINITION, rape.

Regardless of the specifics of this case, a person has no business being a judge in our society when she puts her own feelings and opinions above her job, above her responsibilities and sworn duties, and above the law. In this case, her personal contempt for prostitutes got in the way of the law, and incidentally resulted in another gang rape. Judge Deni was quoted saying that calling this rape “minimizes true rape cases and demeans women who are really raped.”

So please, if you're registered to vote in Philadelphia, let's fire this person for not doing her job.

Our Children

The United States House of Representatives sustained President Bush's veto of a bill that would have expanded the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) by 35 billion dollars, and benefited over 10 million children--including providing coverage to almost 4 million American kids who currently don't have any medical insurance (to provide some sense of scale, covering 4 million kids costs about 5 weeks in Iraq).

These are kids we're talking about. Not even assistance to families or parents with kids, JUST THE KIDS. And why? Because the President thinks that this will encourage people to use public insurance instead of private insurance. Of course, this program is only available to children whose parents can't afford insurance for their kids, or those whose parents are affording it only by making tremendous sacrifices.

At a time when every industrialized nation manages to provide healthcare for virtually all of its citizens, 45 million Americans--almost one out of every six of us--goes without. And why can't we cover these people? The White House tells us it's because it would encourage others to drop private insurance and go on public plans. But riddle the American public this, Mr. President, what's so bad about that, if the private system is failing so badly that about 15% of us can't get insurance? And this is where many Republican leaders, not just the President, stand by a policy even dumber than the RIAA's business model of suing its customers: they blame the uninsured. Their stance is that Americans who aren't covered by already existing public programs, with very few exceptions, should be able to easily get insurance on their own, through employers or the private market.

So why are they uninsured? You'll get answers like "they don't want to be insured" or "they mad bad decisions and should live with the consequences of their actions."

Fine. Let's take a break from reality for the minute and temporarily grant those assumptions. Let's take them as given. Uninsured Americans don't want insurance or don't deserve it because they screwed up, and the government can't bail everyone out. But what about their kids?

Would any responsible parent making a low to mid 5-figure income decide that their kid shouldn't have health insurance? If parents really were deciding that for their children, what percentage of them should be tried in a court of law and have the kids removed by child services for dangerous and criminal levels of negligence? And what about the parents who screwed up, who can't get insurance because of their bad decisions? Are we really going to visit the sins of the father upon his sons? Do the daughters of financially ignorant mothers deserve to live without medical care? Do we really say that there are children in our country who deserve to die because they contracted a dangerous illness the same year their parents lost their jobs?

That's what's been happening, and that's what 229 House Democrats and 44 House Republicans were trying to stop. 273 people tryied to protected millions of those whom our leaders call "our future," thwarted by one man's veto and enough party loyalty to make it stick.

What do I say to this? Maybe only rich peoples' kids are our future? Please don't reelect these congressmen? I don't know what I CAN say to this. I think this isn't a job for me, but a job for us. We need to let people know this isn't what we sent them to Washington to do. I just wish I knew how. If anyone does, let me know soon, because the House leaders are going to make a few changes and try again. I'm looking forward to that.

My Quotes 1

On the lighter side, here are some amusing quotes I've been collecting from my life. It'll give readers a break from all that thinking I've been doing.

I'll start with myself, topping the list of things I never thought I'd have to say: "I'm REALLY sorry I made you shoot grape up your nose."

Cynara: I prefer to outweigh my laundry. It gives me a feeling of power.

Cynara: There are a few things I'm very reluctant to do for money. Reading Torah is one of them. Though I suppose if I were desperate, it would be higher on my list than, say, prostitution or...or...
Me: Accounting?
Cynara: Well, yes...

Max Power: The park outside you apartment is totally wasted on you!
Me: Why? I like it.
Max Power: Because there are girls in bikinis sunbathing daily right outside your front door!
Me: No there aren't.
Max Power: Yes there are!
Me: Really?
Max Power: This is exactly my point!

DeluxX: [Sheba], how are we going to explain to dad that we charged three milkshakes to his credit card when it's only the two of us?
Sheba: Simple: one for you, one for me, and one to bring all the boys to the yard.

My Asthma

Today, the New York Times Freakonomics blog/column pointed out that asthmatic children of single mothers fare significantly worse than their asthmatic counterparts in two-parent families. They visit the doctor less, they get prescriptions filled less, and here's a quote from the study the article quoted: "Children from single-mother families had more health difficulties from asthma than children with two parents, and children living with two or more other children were more likely to have an asthma attack in the past 12 months than children living with no other children."

OK, so busy parents take worse care of their kids. But here's something interesting: today the BBC reported that exposure to spray-based cleaning supplies increases your chances of having asthma and makes asthma worse. Things like glass cleaner, air-freshening spray, and furniture cleaners are the biggest culprits.

And then I thought, the Freakonomics article mentioned that kids in single-parents families fare worse than kids in two-parent families, but as far as asthma goes, it's only been shown that kids in single-MOTHER families do worse. Now, the Freakonomics guys are known for pointing out correlations and possible causes of phenomena that a normal investigator might not think of, but I'm going to one up them:

Maybe asthmatic children of single mothers do worse because their mothers ask them to clean. Think about it. I'm going to use stereotypes here, but they're mostly true in this case, so bear with me. In a two-parent household, labor is divided up, and usually the woman does more of the cleaning. But she has the time, because the man is doing other things, like paying bills, going to work, grilling, scratching himself, and playing sports with the kids (whatever). Point being, there's less of an impetus for a parent to ask a child for help with the cleaning.

In a single-mother family, however, mommy needs a little help, so she gives the little squirt a squirt bottle and cleaning becomes a family activity (also a way to keep an eye on the young one while she cleans). So why does this effect not persist in single-father families? Easy. Because single men don't clean!

Q.E.D.

Stephen Dubner (the Freakonomics columnist) can put THAT in his cake hole and pipe it.

My Lack of Faith in a Faith

I was once quoted as saying that you know you're scraping the bottom of the moral sinkhole when your insurance company is acting as your conscience and forcing you to take the moral high ground. This was said of the Catholic Church, in reference to the reason they told priests to stop molesting little boys (i.e., that the companies underwriting their cover-all insurance policies were saying that the constant private settlements--oh yes, the Church knew about the problem for years before doing anything--had to stop and weren't being covered anymore).

Anyway, despite saying just two nights ago that I had a great deal of respect for their religion, I'm afraid my opinion of the institution has hit a new low. Lizmonster found this article, about how the Archbishop of the AIDS-ravaged Mozambique has told his relatively uneducated followers not to use condoms, because the Europeans are deliberately infecting them with HIV. And to keep his story consistent, he's apparently also saying that the anti-retroviral drugs are similarly laced with the deadly virus to "finish quickly the African people."

Needless to say, unless the Church intervenes rapidly, Archbishop Chimoio has just sentenced many people to a slow and painful death. So far, though, the Catholic Church's opposition to condoms has prevented any response that my Internet connection and I can find.