Bread and Circuses

Nothing is Sacred Anymore

2009-03-01T13:17:00.000-08:00

I have officially seen it all.

Today I stumbled across what is quite possibly the most pathetic use of modern technology ever. Ladies and gentlemen (especially ladies), I present to you the Artificial Hymen. That's right! Produced by Gigimo, a Guangdong, China-based company, there is now a way to PRETEND YOU ARE A VIRGIN.

The device, which was apparently invented in Japan in 1993, spread to Thailand as early as 1995, and is now being sold on the world market by the aforementioned Gigimo company, which sells sex toys online.

It consists of a small albumin sack, filled with a blood-like substance, which according to Gigmo's website, is safe and has no side effects.

The product description reads as follows:

"Insert this artificial hymen into your vagina carefully. It will expand a little and make you feel tight. When your lover penetrate, it will ooze out a liquid that look like blood not too much but just the right amount. Add in a few moans and groan, you will pass through undetectable."

On the site it lists ways people commonly tear their hymens without losing their virginity, including childhood accidents, using tampons, and strenuous exercise. But really, why would anyone go to all the trouble of pretending to be painfully bleeding from your reproductive organ during intercourse, when you could just say to your partner, "Honey, I fell on a parking meter as a child."

This leaves only one other kind of customer: the girl who doesn't want you to know she's not a virgin.

Guys, a quick question: if you found out your lady was using a fake hymen to make you think she was still untouched by the likes of man, how would you react?

And girls: if you're with a guy who cares so much about your virginity that you feel the need to buy a fake v-card package so he never finds out you got your cherry popped, maybe you should rethink your relationship. If you can't be honest with your significant other, the relationship will break down on its own ladies.

It just seems like every day we invent one more thing that allows us to lie about who we are, where we came from, and what we've done. Why can't we just own up to our deeds? Of course, this is a two-way street. People need to be more accepting and less judgmental. Still, faking your virginity just seems so wrong.

Peace out literary perusers, and remember, if it doesn't smell like iron, she's probably been shopping Gigimo.

Location, location, location...

2009-02-27T20:09:00.000-08:00

Recently, a coffee shop opened up near my Cave of Wordcraft here in the dark depths of New Jersey. It's a quaint little place really - nice atmosphere, open late, and most importantly, cheap, good coffee. Just to make sure you understand exactly how good the coffee there is:

Your plane ride to Amsterdam crashes into Death Valley National Park. You are stranded for nine days with no food and scarce little to drink. After a week, you have a layer of blisters on your feet as thick as the armor plating on an Abrams tank. You are sunburned so badly that you look like lobster kin, and you suddenly see a sign that says Boron*, one mile. Upon reaching the small town, you stumble fervently into the closest building, only to find that it's a bar, and inside there is currently a Fiji sales associate giving away free promotional half gallon jugs of pure, volcano-rock-filtered Fiji spring water.

The feeling of satisfaction that would result when that water first hit your dry, cracked lips is roughly equal in intensity to one seventh the amount of unbridled joy you feel when a three dollar quadruple shot of espresso from this place slipslides its way into your gullet.

That said, a Starbuck's is opening not three blocks from this wonderful coffee shop come this fall. Because some of the patrons of my lovely little cafe are college students from a neighboring university, and because the residents of the surrounding town feel malice towards said college students (it is unclear exactly why), yon coffee shop must rely solely on the income garnered from the poor collegiate-types. Obviously, this has led to some financial hardship. Now that a Starbuck's is opening up, closer to campus, mind you, these students, these lone pillars of economic support for my tiny cafe, will be drawn, zombie-like, to its evil brown and green glow of monopolizing greed and corporate dominancy, purely because it's closer. This will destroy my favorite coffee house's customer base, effectively running it into the ground.

I am sick and tired of people choosing big corporate outlets over local Mom-and-Pop style businesses purely out of convenience! Not only do local businesses provide a much nicer feel, and, more often than not, higher quality of employee, but they feed the neighborhood economy and foster community growth! I watched the same thing happen to a music store that had been open since I was a mere lad, not yet up to my father's knee. It sickens me, and fills me with a sense of impending, if not deserved, doom.

Good night readers, and make sure you support your local businesses, or so help me, I will make voodoo dolls of you and stick pins into the uncomfortable spots.

*Boron is, in fact, a real town located very near to Death Valley National Park

Frost/Nixon

2009-02-24T11:40:00.000-08:00

You should all go see this movie. Absolutely incredible. It's a masterpiece, with brilliant acting that depicts the events after the Watergate scandal, when Richard Nixon was interviewed by David Frost, a moderately successful British talk show host. Definitely worth the ludicrous sum of money that theatres are charging for tickets these days.

Maiden Voyage

2009-02-24T11:17:00.000-08:00

Growing up, I always envied kids who knew what they wanted to be when they grew up. You know the ones. The doctors, lawyers, cops and teachers. They had a dream, and I, bright as I was (and humble too I might add), had nothing. No direction, no dream to work towards or spend my life struggling to achieve. I spent 18 years like that. I looked into plenty of things, from professional cooking to physics, but none of it really fit right. Then, one day during my first week at college, I had a realization: I wanted to be a journalist. In retrospect it should have been obvious; I always liked the English language, I had a passion for photography since I was a wee lad, hell, the best year of my high school career was spent on the staff of my school's newspaper.

So here I am. I am, or at least I will be, a journalist. Nothing gives me more pride than to be able to say those words and mean them. I have been told, by many credible sources, that online journalism, and blogging as it were, is the future of the journalism industry. Therefore I have decided to grace the world with my thoughts and opinions via the modern day wonder that is the internet.

I will write at least one post every week, about whatever strikes my fancy. Be forewarned, I am not particularly a fan of politics, so there'll be little political content to most of my posts.

For this first post, I will explain the name of my blog. In the late 1st and early 2nd centuries, there was a Roman poet by the name of Juvenal. Juvenal is best known for his satires – a collection very critical poems – most including humor and irony.

In Satire X, Juvenal wrote:

"Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses"

What he's referring to are "gifts" from politicians of free wheat to roman citizens, as well as the holding of lavish circuses, both to sway peoples' votes, and to distract the public from the corruption and broken promises that the Roman government was rife with.

These days, the term has come to mean anything that distracts the public from problems going on in politics. I originally entitled my blog "Bread and Circuses" to try and make a cool-sounding political statement about how our government is pulling the wool over our eyes by making deals with lobbyists, spending excessive amounts of money trying to look busy and generally being deceptive, sneaky little monkeys who distract us with one hand, while picking our pocket with the other.

I have come to realize, however, that the name is stupid. I am in no place to unmask the great wrongs done by our government to the people (mind you, they are going on). I'm a college student. I am simply not that special, but I like the damn name, so it's not going to be changing any time soon.

Enjoy your day, huddled masses.