I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

These are the original words of the Pledge of Allegiance here in the United States of America. The pledge has gone through three subsequent changes. In 1923 the pledge was altered so the words "my flag" were replaced with the phrase "the flag of the United States". In 1924 the words "of America" were added. In 1942 the pledge was adopted as the official national pledge. In 1953 no less than six referendums were put to congress to alter the pledge yet again. In 1954 the first and only official amendment was made to the pledge. This amendment was the result of intense campaigning by a group called The Knights of Columbus but only made real headway when President Eisenhower attended a sermon based on the Gettysburg Address and the pastor made the claim that the pledge could be the pledge of any nation. He said that Lincoln's words "under God" were the words that defined the United States as a nation. The words "under God" were what set the United States apart from very similar pledges made by communist nations (keep in mind this took place during the communist scare). So in 1954 the words "under God" were added to the pledge.

In 1954 the pledge went from being merely idol-worship in the view of some religions (Jehovah's Witnesses in particular) to being unconstitutional according to the United States constitution. The rights of religious freedom granted by the first amendment are seriously violated by the words "under God" in the national pledge. In 2002 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the phrase "under God" to be unconstitutional. In 2004 the Supreme Court heard an appeal of the Court of Appeals ruling but rejected the case because the man pressing charges "lacked standing". The Supreme Court thus avoided ruling on the controversial issue.

The above is not "my opinion" it is the truth. The truth is the truth whether you believe in God or Quetzecoatl. And the truth is that not only should the phrase "under God" be removed from the Pledge to allow it to be constitutional once more but also children (and people in general) should be given a choice about reciting it and not be pressed to commit idol-worship if that is against their religion. After all, freedom of religion is a major tenet of our country and our country was founded by pilgrims were fleeing religious persecution in Europe.


To be honest I wrote this post in response to the various "viral" status posts that were being passed around Facebook which, among other things, stated that they wanted to "flood Facebook" with a statement of the pledge that deeply emphasized the phrase "under God". I feel (and yes the following are my actual feelings and opinions which for obvious reasons need to be separated from facts) that saying the Pledge in this manner is using the country to further their monotheistic goals- a complete opposite of what America is all about. I found the pledge stated in this manner to be offensive. Clearly someone who loves their country so much they're posting the pledge on facebook ought to love it enough to take a look at the constitution occasionally and also to love it enough to care about its foundations and laws. And as I said, this last paragraph is just "my opinion". My opinion about the country I love and its foundations, laws, and tenets but hey- if you disagree with me that is a completely irrational but valid and perfectly legal opinion for you to have under the First Amendment which also protects freedom of religion.

More Insights About Sex, Porn, & All Things "Hardcore"

It's not a requirement but you may want to go and read my post titled "Selling Pornography" before proceeding with this one. Here is a handy link to that post: Selling Pornography


I have no intentions of talking about my sex life or anyone I know. Let's think of this more as an anthropological study of the people who come into the bookstore to buy porn and what can be inferred about human sexuality from that observational standpoint only. Let's just say I can only hope that aliens never decide to study human sexuality by observing men buying porn in bookstores.

Allboy, Whorientals, Backdoor Honeys, Hustler, Purely 18, Vintage 60s, is it the title that makes someone buy something? Or is it the ahem tempting phrases like "enema slave punished", "all about anal", "teen lust", "hardcore", or "naughty housewives" that tells the sex part of someone's brain that they want to get a certain magazine? Is it the color of the cover girls hair? Do they get the same magazine every month? Do they prefer one wrapped in plastic or unwrapped? Do they want one that comes with a DVD? Is it the price? Or would they rather buy a magazine with a local girl on it?

Last week we got the June issue of Playboy magazine which features the very first Playboy Playmate from Maine. Within a day and a half the store in the chain that I work for located in Waterville, the closest to where this girl is from, had sold all thirty-five copies it received of the magazine. The store I work at is a bit farther away but by Monday morning we had sold all thirty-three copies we had received. Thirty-three is a few more than we usually receive and yet we sold far more than we usually sell of those in a month and it happened in five days. Not only that but I had one of the few women who didn't give me an excuse about buying porn come in and buy just one thing- a copy of that magazine. I can only think it must be the fantasy that they're interested in. The thought that this girl- this beautiful girl, is from their hometown or from their state. Despite the fact that she doesn't actually live in Maine (to my knowledge) there is still the possibility of getting with her and that's what they're buying.

The other day a guy came in and looked at the porn for a while without touching it and then moved over to a near-by section and looked through Hooters magazine and a magazine called The Women of King. He then flipped through Winq, a gay magazine, and Out, another gay magazine but didn't touch The Gay & Lesbian Review. He then moved back to the porn and lifted several of them up so that he could look at them better. He then bought a Hustler. I was deeply confused about this behavior. It also made me wondered if he was a little confused as well.

I once had a gay English friend of mine request that I send him some American porn. He was even willing to pay for it and for me to ship it to him. I wasn't particularly embarrassed about this despite the fact that explaining it might prove awkward so I said that I would if I could. It turned out I couldn't. Not because we don't sell gay magazines. We do, we have a small selection and sell quite a few of them. The problem was that all of our gay magazines are from the United Kingdom. And why would I buy something ans ship it to him that he could go to the nearest place with that sort of stuff and get himself? I can only conclude that either we do not make gay porn magazines in America (highly unlikely) or none of them are popular enough to include in our selection (significantly more probable).

I can think of a couple of men who have actually gotten visibly and audibly angry that we did not have a particular pornographic magazine. One of these men called over the phone to find out whether or not we had a magazine called "Transformations". We do carry this magazine. Transformation is, well, I have to say I have never actually looked inside it (nor would I want to). I just cannot figure this magazine out. Do you like women or do you like men? I know a number of bisexual people and none of them have ever expressed any particular desire for someone who is a transvestite or transgendered or a hermaphrodite. Transformations is about people who have been transformed from one gender to the other. Sort-of. Or maybe mostly, as I said I haven't looked. I do know that Transformations is a quarterly magazine and that when this man called the old one had already been sent back and the new one had yet to come out. This was explained to him politely but he sounded disgusted and angry that we didn't have it when he wanted it.

The other guy I can think of in particular who got angry because we didn't have something came into the store and was looking for a magazine called "Family Affairs". We did not have this magazine. And in case the title doesn't do it for you I will connect the dots. Family Affairs is about affairs between immediate family members. The actors are not actually related (to my knowledge) but they are depicted that way. I have never once had any other person request this or any other incest magazine. This guy, though, actually yelled because we didn't have it. He eventually stormed off without buying anything and I haven't seen him back. I can't say I'm particularly upset about this.

We carry some "age" magazines. Obviously we have some with purely eighteen-year-old models but we also have ones with nothing but forty or older models, fifty or older models, and sixty or older models. When an older guy comes in and gets a forty and up magazine this seems normal. I assume that either he prefers to fantasize about the kind of women he could actually have sex with at his age (unless he has tons of money) or (more likely) he doesn't want to piss off his wife should she find his porn stash. When a guy young enough that I have to card him comes in and gets Purely 18, or Barely Legal that too seems more or less okay as he is actually around the age of those girls. And when an older guy comes in and buys Barely Legal it feels a little weird to me but older guys being into younger women is more or less socially acceptable. But when a younger guy comes in and buys 60s magazine without explaining to me that it is a gag gift for a bachelor party it feels really weird to me.

We have this one guy that comes in every few months whom we have dubbed "Drunk Guy" because he usually is. And he never buys anything other than magazines. And he often drops close to or exceeding two hundred bucks on magazines. He usually gets some crosswords and word circles and such so I assume he actually likes them or else gets bored at his cabin in the woods (which he has told me about every time I've seen him). He once purchased a bunch of gardening magazines and another time a bunch of horse magazines. One time when he came in when a coworker of mine was there he got a bunch of teenage girl kind of magazines and explained that they were for his daughter (and I really hope they were). But the bulk of his purchase is always porn. And he comes up to the counter with an armload of magazines and just kind of drops them haphazardly. He then proceeds to launch into a long, rambling, explanation of why he needs all these magazines and tells us about how he is going to his cabin in the woods for a while (I guess he must have a house to live in otherwise but lord only knows). He talks incessantly (out of embarrassment perhaps or maybe just because he is drunk) the entire time his magazines are being rung up and only wraps up his story and says good buy after he has his giant bag full of magazines in hand.

I had a much older gentlemen come in and ask me one time if we had any copies of the regular (and he pronounced it this way) "tuh-boo" magazine, not the illustrated one. And we did. Because he was really looking for Hustler's Taboo magazine which is about bondage and sadism (among other things). He just couldn't find it because there happened to be so many issues of hustler that we had moved it to the top of the next shelf to make room.

A guy came in the other day and besides InTouch Weekly he purchased Show (which is a magazines sporting more or less naked women wearing "clothing" I assume is made out of dental floss and one of the few adult magazines that is not wrapped), Smooth Girl (more or less the same), Heavy Metal (weird illustrated sci-fi porn also not usually wrapped), and Taboo Illustrated (illustrated porn containing subject matter that would be illegal to subject real girls to so they have to illustrate it). It was hard to decide if he preferred his porn not wrapped in plastic (though Taboo Illustrated was) or if he prefers illustrated girls?

Mostly I do not understand. I also do not try to understand. I can attempt to wrap my head around their reasoning but asking them to explain it? Never. One thing I can say is that unlike The Parking Lot Movie (surprisingly interesting), making a Mockumentary (never mind a documentary) about this subject might be interesting but would only explain what was actually going on about as well as a video on string theory I watched in applied physics in high school. Maybe it's just not meant to be understood.

Progressive Dipodic Perambulatory Syndrome

Progressive Dipodic Perambulatory Syndrome


I would like to thank my friend Ivan, who once worked with me to develop an informative website about this medical problem back when we were in high school, for indirectly reminding me about this issue so I could write about it for you all. We didn't actually talk about PDPS but having him up to visit reminded me about this and made me wish I still had access to the website we made. Unfortunately if the website exists at all it's only on a server at our highschool and nowhere I could actually access it. I'm going to try to recreate my research on this seemingly obscure but widely prevalent issue.


In case you didn't know Progressive Dipodic Perambulatory Syndrome is a serious epidemic. 97% of Americans over the age of two years suffer from this problem (most likely yourself included). However this is not just a problem in the United States and other first-world countries but may be just as much if not more of a problem in underdeveloped nations and across the globe. 2-3% of adults in America are even seriously affected by this syndrome even in their sleep when typically the harsh symptoms of PDPS are arrested during slumber.

Most people are not only totally ignorant of PDPS but those that are aware of its dangers dismiss the problem as being an acceptable risk. An acceptable risk that claims the lives of 13,000 people each year in the United States alone. Unfortunately reliable data concerning the number of deaths PDPS causes globally is unavailable but considering that not only is the population of the United States just under 5% of the global population but also the medical care in the United States is considerably better than most of the world it's not hard to think just how large the numbers of lives claimed globally by PDPS really are.

Some people who shouldn't be ignorant of the dangers of PDPS are the members of the CDC and yet the CDC recommends that anyone over the age of six do activity that will exacerbate the symptoms of PDPS. That means that if you are a resident of the United States the health agency the government designed to protect you is actually encouraging you to make yourself sick. This is advice that could lead to your death but is widely available on the CDC website under the guise of helpful medical advice.

If thirteen thousand deaths in the United States every year does not concern you let me tell you about some of the other non-fatal injuries that can occur as a result of PDPS. PDPS can result in a huge variety of injuries including but not limited to breakages of every major bone in the human body. PDPS can incur slipped discs, internal bleeding, brain injuries, and among serious PDPS cases can even end in heart attack. PDPS is a serious ailment about which you're unlikely to have ever heard anything.

I would like to encourage you to spread the word about PDPS to your friends and relatives. This is a ailment that can be fixed but only if people are aware of it. Without knowing its dangers people cannot be expected to prevent injuries caused by PDPS.

Irrational Paranoia

I am irrationally paranoid about a number of things. I don't mean I'm paranoid that people are after me. Strangely it is the traditional sorts of paranoia to which I am most immune. I don't live in the best area and yet I am not worried about getting robbed or stabbed or shot. I don't worry about walking home at night in the dark. I don't think that there are fantastic and elaborate government conspiracies to cover up aliens or that the only reason we vaccinate children is to make pharmaceutical companies rich. I also don't concern myself a lot with things that could be considered rational paranoia, such as if, for example, there really are people after you. I'm pretty poor, I don't have a lot in the way of savings, it would be relatively rational for me to be paranoid about spending money or losing my job, neither of these things bother me (largely because I choose not to think about them.)

But in the world of irrational paranoia the things my mind comes up with are fascinating. I work in a mall and every night the janitor runs a giant noisy buffer over the floor. The floor is consequently nice and shiny even if not particularly slippery. And yet I have two persistent fears when walking across it. My first fear is when I come in from the rain or snow and the soles of my shoes or boots are wet. I always think that my shoes are so slippery that I am going to slip and fall on my butt despite the fact that I have worked at this place for over a year and not once in that entire time have I slipped and fallen- at all. Never mind actually there. Not at all. Anywhere. My other persistent fear when walking across that same floor is that the world would experience a sudden loss in friction and we'd all be screwed. Gravity would still exist so we wouldn't float away but without friction we'd all be stuck on the floor, unable to move without some hand-holds or serious magnets and conveniently placed ferrous metal. But on the plus side if you did have one or the other it would be really easy to drag yourself along without friction working against you.

I live between an airport and several hospitals and yet I cannot block out the sounds of planes and helicopters. Helicopters especially bother me. I grew up with planes flying overhead so maybe that's the thing. You see, every time I hear a helicopter I think not that it's probably LifeFlight or something hospital-related or even a rescue-related thing but that they must be looking for something. And one of the only things it's easy to look for by helicopter (other than lost people) is marijuana plants. So I start becoming paranoid that these helicopters are equipped with heat-seeking equipment and they could right now be looking at a little blob on the screen that is my heat signature. And that scares the crap out of me.

I'm not afraid of heights, falling, or crashing in airplanes but I am afraid of cars. Of course, arguably, I do have a good reason to be afraid of cars. Mile-for-mile cars are far more dangerous than airplanes. But I'm not afraid of driving in cars. I'm afraid of other people hitting me with cars. And not just hitting me in a normal situation such as if I'm jaywalking or something. I mean I am afraid that parked cars will suddenly roar to life and back over me if I walk behind them. I'm also afraid of getting hit by cars in places where the cars would have to go out of their way to hit me. When I walk down the street that goes to the church that I always walk down to get to my apartment (upon which I never meet any cars) I constantly worry that there will be a car and that it will hit me. Or I worry that when I'm on the sidewalk a car is going to jump the curb and hit me even though that would be both difficult and not at all accidental.

I am deeply afraid of leaving my wallet somewhere other than exactly where I want it to be. Some goes with my keys and my cellphone. On a normal day I check six or seven times to assure myself that they are in my pockets or in my bag before I leave my apartment and then I check two or three times immediately after leaving and another dozen times on my way to work or wherever I'm going. While I'm in stores or approaching the check-out line I usually check another two or three times for my wallet. And on the way home I check a couple more times. Sometimes I can convince myself not to check since I've checked so many times already but as I check so often every day it's hard to remember the individual times I've checked in a particular day- the checking just blurs together in my memory so I end up checking even more.

Identity theft is something that scares me to the point that I do not use automatic teller machines. I once saw crime show where a enterprising thief installed a device on top of the normal key-pad of a ATM that looked just like the ATM keypad but recorded the magnetic signature of every card that was slid through along with the personal identification number that went with each card so that the thief could make withdrawals from those accounts later. If I need cash I almost invariably get it by getting cash back at the grocery store by where I work or, if I need a significant amount, I go inside the bank. I am terrified of identity theft even though I don't have much to steal. I have zero credit and a bank account that hasn't seen four digits in six months.

People laughing. When I hear people laughing my first thought is that they're laughing at me. This is entirely irrational because there are so many other, better things to laugh at. There's awkward laughter and nervous laughter and joyful laughter and bitter laughter and humorous laughter. I might occasionally be something to laugh at (usually intentionally or at least I hope) but I can't be amusing every single time someone laughs in my vicinity. Yet somehow, in my mind, they are always laughing at me.

Considering how rational I attempt to be in my every day life when making considerations in my life (example: I needed a haircut, Cheryl offered to cut my hair for free, Cheryl has cut people's hair before, she also promised not to cut it so short I couldn't have it fixed if I didn't like it, ergo I concluded I should let Cheryl cut my hair) I suspect that being a little irrational about things that aren't going to kill me is probably okay.