A few weeks ago, my 10-year-old nephew snickered a little at a photo of his father, taken back when Dad was in college. He was wearing shorts that hung just below his balls. "That's just the kind of shorts people wore back then," I explained.

Of course no self-respecting person today wears shorts that expose his thighs, and even showing your knees is considered a fashion misdemeanor.

And I want to punch whoever decided to make that change.

Not because I enjoy looking at legs. I do, but not in any big way. The fact that - I'm told - I have nice legs doesn't do a lot for my self-image, at least not as much as being told that I had a nice smile or a nice tummy would. Those I appreciate. But I've got enough photos of guys wearing nothing but a smile, so that's nothing to fume over.

No, I hate the arbiters of fashion because the long and heavy sacks that pass for "shorts" these days are way too damn hot! For the small amount of skin surface area I have exposed to the weak breezes, I might as well be wearing full-length slacks!

I suspect the reason "longs" are considered so fashionable today has something to do with popularity of baggy clothing in general. It's related to the fattening of our society. Young people these days are carrying around more fat and less muscle than ever before. Tight shirts and short shorts would show that off. So instead they hide under the folds of their fashions. And force us all to go out in 90-degree, 90%-humidity weather and sweat and sweat and sweat.

News Item:

In Little Falls, Minnesota, a lion and a tiger that were being kept at an auto body shop by their owner, escaped from their cage and critically injured a 10-year-old boy. The local sheriff reports that the lion and the tiger were euthanized.

Now that's fucking stupid. They should have euthanized the retard who was keeping these dangerous animals, and who let them get out.

Ever since the terrorist attacks of September 2001 there's been a resurgence of unapologetic American pride. You can see it on bumper stickers and hear it on the airwaves. You don't have to read between the lines; people spell it right out: "I'm Proud to be an American". It's been so strong that a president who campaigned calling for a more humble America, now uses pride as the central virtue of our society.

I've found this all a bit troubling. Which is why I found this quote I ran across interesting. It's a statement by Christian theologian C.S. Lewis from his book Mere Christianity, which is an attempt to outline the core tenets that underlie all the various flavors of the religion:

"Pride is the complete anti-God state. Pride is the chief cause of misery in the world! As long as you're proud, you can't know God! Pride is Spiritual cancer! It eats up love, contentment and even common sense!"

So if the United States is such a Christian nation... why doesn't it believe this?

I work at a college, which is at once both entertaining and a little frustrating, because a fairly high percentage of the people around me on a day-to-day basis are about 20 years old, give or take. Naturally they don't pay me much attention, unless they need my help with something. So there's a lot of looking-but-not-touching in my life. Better than not-looking-at-all, though. I don't mind the distraction. I'm certainly not complaining.

It gets a little different in this part of the summer, when the school offers a bunch of not-for-credit classes. This attracts a lot of noisy and annoying little kids, and sometimes-noisy and sometimes-annoying teenagers. Not exactly what I signed up for. I don't complain, but that's just because it'd be pointless.

The thing is, one of those teenagers seems to have taking a liking to me. My office door is usually opened, so he asked me for directions and I helped him find his classroom the first day, and I was my usually-pleasant self* in the process. Nothing special. But since then, he keeps wandering into my office for no apparent reason, during breaks or on his way in/out. He mostly just asks me goofy questions and tells me stories, and I don't think there's anything more to it than being friendly.

But I'd be lying if I said I didn't find him cute... and I don't mean in the puppy-dog sense of the word. If only I weren't old enough to be his father... and he weren't young enough that he still needs his father's signature to consent to anything. Not that even his father would be allowed to consent to what I'm thinking.

I know many people would freak out over such feelings, fearing that they've committed some mortal sin or that they have some pathological perversion. I've learned not to fret over what happens to push my buttons. But I'm also sane and ethical enough that I'd never actually do anything immoral or illegal in response to this particular kind of button-pushing, so there's no danger of anything like that. I haven't even flirted with him. He's just less annoying and more distracting than I'm used to. Which really isn't anything to complain about, either.

*Yes, at work I'm usually pleasant. Imagine that. And I'm not even faking it, because I like being able to help people like I do at work. It's dealing with insufferable idiots and malicious ghouls online that makes me unpleasant.

I've been reminded that the so-called "health care" industry in the United States is run by people who really don't care about anyone's health. They're not allowed to. It's a mis-managed bureaucy that's gone so far down the rabbit hole that its rules don't even make sense from a money-focused perspective.

Case in point: I go to my primary care physician (or PCP, coincidentally the abbreviation for a pneumonia responsible for killing countless AIDS patients, and for a lethal recreational drug) and tell him about some knee pain I've been having. So he refers me to the specialist who did surgery on it a couple years ago. Everything's good so far, and my insurance covers everything except some affordable office-visit co-pays. Then the specialist refers me to get physical therapy, and they start helping me get my knee in shape so it won't hurt. Then things go haywire. Two weeks into PT, I get a call from the PCP telling me that the specialists referral to the physical therapist is no good. That means I have to pay for it myself. Instead, the PCP wants me to go to a different physical therapist.

Understand: the issue isn't that my insurance isn't accepted by the PT place; they do billing with (let's call them) Indigo Cross all the time. And it's not that my insurance policy doesn't cover PT; it does, without even a co-pay. It isn't that this is some (in the opinion of the insurance company) quack pseudo-medical facility; like I said, Indigo Cross deals with them routinely. It isn't even about money; if the place I was going charged more than the insurance company was willing to pay, they could demand that I make up the difference, but that's not what happened.

The issue is that my PCP is part of a "network" that serves to channel patients to each other rather than to non-members. And they'll screw over a patient (making me cough up money I can't afford to part with, and then start over with a different therapist) to enforce that.

This is insane. Or at the least, it's unethical. But it's how the American medical-services industry works. I might point out that nothing like this would happen with a single-payer health insurance system. If the physical therapist is certified, and the treatment is properly judged by medical experts to be necessary, it'd be covered.

The people who defend this system (mostly Republicans, but the blame is shared by the other party in power as well) claim it's a free-market system, and that's the only acceptable solution. But it's not... free-market or acceptable. It's more like a RICO ("Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization") case or perhaps less stridently, a good old-fashioned trade-restraining "trust". I admit I'm not the biggest fan of the economic darwinism of the market system. But it's fairly benign as long as it's a true market, in which providers work to supply consumers' demand for something. But this isn't that kind of market. The customers aren't the patients; the customers are the insurance companies. The insurance companies have customers too, of course, but those still aren't the patients... for the most part, they're employers. And it's only in the most reality-distorting sense of the word that employees are "customers" of their employers. (Even when someone - like me - resorts to buying insurance for themselves, they pretty much have to settle for the worst policies the industry knows how to write, which are themselves just cut-back versions of the ones that employer's sign up for, because they can't afford anything better. The notion that I can "shot around" for a better insurance policy is laughable.)

The system might work fine as long as the best interests of the patient and of the customer coincide. But when they disagree, "the customer is always right", so the patient loses.

Over the several decades that I've been doing this blog, I've occasionally talked about comics and even reviewed a couple. I actually used to do quite a bit of that, and I'm thinking of doing more of it in the future. I'll be contributing to the newly-revived GraphicNovels.info, a site dedicated to information about graphic novels and similar beasties.

Just thought you and the search engines might like to know about it.

I'm not looking for a job... really, I'm not. But a friend of mine who is just called me to tell me about one that... sure sounds tempting. The following image is an actual unretouched advert from the June 12, 2005 edition of The Grand Rapids Press.

Now, I know that the Christian Reformed Church is more open-minded about sex than, say, the Roman Catholic Church, and they don't have any theological problem with oral sex, per se. But I'm rather surprised that they would offer it like this as an employment benefit, outside of the bounds of holy matrimony. And in the Sunday paper, no less.

Plus, I had no idea that job recruitment had become so competitive that employers were finally offering this. This is definitely going to come up in my next conversation with my boss.

I'm not a breast man.

OK, I like chicken breasts (preferably boneless), and I have a certain fondness for a muscular male chest (which is technically a "breast"). But I haven't been interested in seeing a plump female mammary in decades. In fact, I'm tired of seeing them paraded about for advertising, and opening a porn-video mailing and unfolding a flyer full of boobies is a huge disappointment. I am not comfortable seeing them in the flesh.

But I was even more disappointed by the anti-breast actions of County Clerk Mary Hollinrake (Kent County, Michigan), as described in The Grand Rapids Press this afternoon. A woman - there at the Clerk's office for official business - was very discreetly feeding her baby, and Hollinrake had the audacity to come out and ask the woman to either stop, or leave!

Hollinrake ducks responsibility for it, of course, claiming she was responding to complaints from other visitors. OK, so she has to respond to them. But the appropriate response would be to tell those visitors to stop whining and... deal with it.

There is nothing more natural, healthy, and for-the-love-of-god wholesome than a mother nursing her child. To say nothing of the fact that it's something a mother's just gotta do when the baby needs it. She shouldn't have to go hide in the bathroom and sit on a toilet, like someone with an intestinal disorder. The fact that some people are uncomfortable seeing it - and I'm one of them, remember - is their problem, not hers.

There seems to be a growing misconception in our society that people have some God-given right not to be offended or upset or uncomfortable. Demonstrators are shoved off the to side where the people they're protesting won't have to see them. Gay and lesbian couples are asked not to kiss or hold hands or hug in front of homophobes. And breastfeeding mothers are asked to please go away.

I'm sorry, but that's not the way a free society is supposed to operate. I'm offended by the very presidency of George W. Bush, but I don't expect to be shielded from its existence. I don't demand that his smug, contemptuous addresses to the nation be put on Pay Per View where I won't stumble across them whilst channel surfing. I don't expect rich SUV owners to keep their conspicuously expensive environmental hazards off the road where I won't have to see them. I don't ask that Christians make their crosses less visible and take any self-righteous and insulting messages off the signs on church lawns. That would be selfish, and most certainly rude. So I don't whine, and I... deal with it.

The right-wingers have been bitching for a while now about "political correctness" and how you can't say anything without offending people, and how horrible that is. But it seems pretty clear to me that the right-wingers are at least as guilty of that as anyone. Hollinrake is no bleeding-heart liberal, after all; she's part of the local Republican Party, and a regarded as a "good conservative". Unfortunately, she's just demontrated again that this makes here a bad public servant, one far too quick to enforce her constituents' Victorian disapproval of breastfeeding (!) against a responsible mother.

What next, a crackdown on "offensive" apple pies?

The Dove Foundation, a non-profit group that was founded to promote family-friendly (and consistent with mainstream Christian values) movies, has released a study "proving" that G-rated films are more 11 times as profitable as R-rated films, and PG and PG-13 films fall in between. They say their stats show that "what the people want" are the more openly-rated films.

Except that's not true.

I'm not questioning their statistics. Just the way they're trying to misinterpret them. The thing is, Hollywood makes way more R and PG-13 files than either PG or G. Compared to 1,533 R-rated films put out from 1989-2003 that were included in Dove's study, there were only 123 G-rated films. And those dozens of G-rated films included some megablockbusters, including the entire output of Pixar, a bunch of heavily-promoted Disney animations, and so on. All this tells us is that the percentage of G-rated movies that get huge promotion and attract a big audience is bigger than for R-rated movies. If the number of R-rated movies released was restricted to just the best (or most commercial) 123 of them, their average profit would be a lot better, because fans of sex, violence, and "adult language" would all have to go to the same 1 or 2 films playing at any given time. On the other hand, there are a lot of "experimental" and "artsy" movies - stuff no one expects to make any money on - in the R-rated bucket, which the public just doesn't go to see in any number.

Plus, there's the fact that once upon at time... such as the Dark Age before 1989... G-rated films had a tendency to bomb at the box office. Star Trek fans cringed when they saw that ST: The Motion Picture had gotten slapped with a "G" because they were afraid no one would go see it, and the franchise would be doomed. Fortunately (yes, I mean that), the trekkies turned out by the thousands, and the film got good enough reviews to overcome the stigma - yes, stigma - of a G rating. When Disney returned to feature animation in the late 1980s, there were similar fears. And they, too, beat them with quality.

That's what it really comes down to. Quality (which I have to admit probably means "quality of the special effects, marketing, and star power") makes money. The Dove Foundation is trying to dispel the myth that G-Rated films don't make money. But in doing so - by convincing the movie studios to take more chances and green-light more of these kid-friendly films that are being shopped around Tinseltown - they're helping to reduce the average quality of G-Rated films that get made. That in turn will reduce their average profitability... maybe even to the levels that nearly killed off the "G" in the late 1970s.

I saw a physical therapist today, to see if there's anything they can do about the pain I've been having in my knee (which I had surgery on a couple years ago). She wasn't nearly as impressed with my physical fitness as I would have hoped (I mean, jeez, I'm in better shape than most of my friends), and was especially dismissive of my flexibility. Yeah, I know I'm not very flexible, but it goes with my personality, OK? And at least I can - and do - ride my bike and climb stairs at work. And when she started telling me that I'm very tense and don't relax very well... that was a bit more too much like hearing my former boyfriend (the massage therapy student) talk, and got me a bit gloomy that I don't have him around to tell me these things (and to help me with therapy).

Anyway, she did have some encouraging things to say about fixing my knee. It turns out there's one muscle group that's weak (probably from avoiding the use of it back when the knee was injured), and it's causing things to get out of alignment, rub together, and get an early start on falling apart. The good news is that it's just a single problem, and there are exercises I can do to re-develop strength in those muscles. With luck, I'll get rid of the pain and get another 20-30 years of normal functioning out of it. The bad news is that to accomplish this, I have to do various sets of exercises every hour, every 2 hours, 3-5 times per day, and twice a day. None of them are very strenuous, but they're a major nuisance. At least things have been dull at work (and are typically dull at home), so I can at least find time for them. And I can hide in the server room (which mercifully has carpeting) to do the less dignified routines.

Another thing that I don't mind is that the diagrams demonstrating the exercises are illustrated with drawings of a fairly handsome-looking young man in shorts (or I prefer to think of them as boxers). I would've drawn him a bit more muscular, but I wouldn't kick him off the bench (or whatever he's reclining on). So as I'm reading the instructions, making sure I'm doing them right and doing the right number of repetitions, I at least get to look at something nice for reference.