Flaming Chords

This is my front page. All comments here are screened; if you don't have my email address, you can drop me a line here. If I know your email address, I'll reply by email -- if not, I'll reply to your comment, and then rescreen both your comment and my reply.

It's also got every tag I have -- this is because my current LJ style doesn't include a tag index. (At least half of my participation on LJ is on my Treo. I chose this style because it loads quickly and it's still readable on a small screen.)

I'd tell you more about myself, but that's what my profile -- and the rest of my journal -- are for.

Way back when I was a senior in High School, Madonna released a book called SEX. It was the most controversial thing evar™, it was a collector's item, it was specially made, and all the media was going batshit over it. Well, one of my classmates got his (or her -- I don't remember) hands on a copy, and I got to see it.

I was disappointed. To quote from Tom Hanks in the movie Bachelor Party, "I don't normally like my filth this clean." And I was disgusted -- disgusted, I tell you! -- by all the things that Madonna was almost-doing in that book. (In my defense, this was during one of my celibate periods in between manslut periods, so I had a bit of a stick up my ass at the time. Also, in my defense, she did include a photo that was intended to be easily mistaken for her straddling a dog, probably in a bid to piss off a few recording executives.)

But seriously, the book was terrible. It should tell you something that I remember the faux stamped-metal cover of the book more than I remember any of the contents, and this was back before I'd ever seen a pornographic website, let alone had a hand in creating one, so I was not as jaded back then as I am now.

Well, someone at weepingcock found a copy online, and it's just as awful as I remember. Well, the few pages I looked at. I felt no need to look through the whole thing.

For those of you unfamiliar, God Awful Fan Fiction was a website devoted primarily to finding really bad fanfic and tearing it to pieces for fun. I've wasted many happy hours there, but I became something of an infrequent visitor after a while, and a while back, the owner of the site closed it down. Well, I'm sick at home, and I'm feeling a bit nostalgic, so a few things I remember about the good ol' days...

I remember that GAFF was where I first ran into Ginmar. I'd started a thread on a proposal in Sweden to tax all men to raise money for services for victims of domestic violence. She burst into the thread, all guns blazing, and concluded from the fact that I posted this that I don't care when women get raped. I took that very poorly, having not only been there for a couple of women who've been raped and had to pick up the pieces afterward, but also helped pull a few teenage girls from parties where the purpose of the party was clearly to get them too drunk to say no. This colored my attitude toward her to the point that the next time she showed up and attacked one of my friends... well, I was kind of a douche. I've gained some respect for her since, but I still plan never to comment in her LJ, and she's still banned from mine.

I remember a piece of fiction in which the female character apparently had a prostate. This led to a discussion on how ignorant many fanfic writers are about even the basics of sex, and two of us guys who actually had sexual experience offered to field questions. This was a terrific thread, lots of people learned lots of things, and to this day I am proud to have taken part... and then came the words "orgy at my place," which took the thread in a very different direction. (For the most part, I went into lurk mode, since cybering is really not my thing and I'm terrible at it.) After a bunch of the Old Guard came in and broke the thread up... things were said.

I remember a thread on a of batshit insanity on the level of TimeCube, which included links to a site. Soon, the owner of the site, "Xanthius," showed up and threatened to irradiate us all. One of Xanthius' avatars was an old man with one eye, and since I was known as Loki on GAFF, I took that as a cue and started roleplaying. (If I remember right, Ayezur started it.) Soon, Xanthius had left the thread, leaving about a couple dozen of us to our RP.

I remember Miss Kitten having it on good authority that Brandon Routh, the guy who played Superman in the latest movie, was gay. A certain guy, whom I remember mostly for being a hard-core comic geek who favored green text, took this very badly. Flames erupted, followed by a flounce... until someone else came to GAFF, with the same encyclopedic knowledge of comic book minutiae and penchant for green text... but by that time, she'd moved on to bigger and better things. (Anyone heard from Miss Kitten lately? It's been a while, and I miss her.)

I remember Ouch and Shadsie, back from when they were BFFs. Other than having little in common with them, I kinda liked them both. Then, one day, they decided that they didn't like each other any more, and I (and the rest of the board) got sick of hearing about their stupid conflict day in and day out. Their antics showed up on Fandom Wank regularly, where Shadsie became known as a nut with anger issues and Millyfan became known as an attention whore. For a while, I tried to give basic lessons to Millyfan in not being a wanker... but then, at times, I'm the sort of person who bangs his head against a wall because it feels so good when I stop.

I remember sporking Aaron Agassi's work (which is less like shooting fish in a barrel than dropping a nuclear bomb on a small glass of water with a goldfish in it), and how he always came around to defend it. Several members of GAFF attacked his grammar, or him personally. I attacked his CSS -- on a webpage intended to show one's fanfiction (you know, text), one does not include large floating images with z-index values higher than that of the text. I explained this to him, and why... and he thanked me for the advice, but claimed that the values were as they needed to be for the sake of his "artistic vision."

I remember "Puppy," the anonymouse who was fucking her dad and very much willing to discuss it in a thread on incest. She portrayed it in a very positive light, but as the thread progressed, more and more of us smelled a rat. (The thread included a number of incest survivors, as well as a police detective who specialized in sex crimes.) Then, "Puppy" turned out to be a longtime member of GAFF, and from that point forward, no one could read any post by Hellfire without thinking "she fucked her dad."

Normally, I filter posts about GAFF, so that only people on my friends list who are themselves GAFF members can see them. This one is public. Share your own stories. If you know GAFF members who aren't on my list, but might have fun stories of their own, bring them here.

Remember Roe v. Wade?

Well, it ain't over -- the battle rages on. Roe v. Wade was a milestone, but it was not the final word on abortion -- and I suspect that there can be no "final word" on the subject. Well, maybe there can, one day. When rape stops happening, when both men and women have simple, convenient, and foolproof contraception freely available to them, and when there isn't a child around who doesn't know what sex is and where babies (and venereal diseases) come from and how to prevent them, then there may be a final word on abortion. But definitely not until that day, and perhaps not even afterward.

Normally, I don't debate abortion or write about it, because there's usually no point -- most people have already made up their minds on abortion, and nothing will change them. Certainly, I will never change my mind on this subject. Today, I'm making an exception. I'll try to keep the wank to a minimum, but this subject lends itself to wank all too easily, so I make no promises. If you hadn't guessed, I am pro-choice, with absolutely no exceptions.

Still with me? Here goes...


One: Abortion is an ugly subject, and it is possible for good and decent people to find themselves on either side of it, for the proverbial best of reasons. Of all the pro-lifers out there, there are some who are actually concerned with the welfare of the baby-waiting-to-happen. For these few, I can manage some grudging respect. Note that I'm only admitting that I can understand and respect your viewpoint -- not that I share it. I still absolutely disagree with you.

(I hate linking to ginmar's LJ, because of, well... personal issues. Despite agreeing on most of the issues she writes about, the two of us have proven unable to get along. The fact remains, however, that as crazy as I often think she is, I'll admit she can frequently write a good piece, and her LJ was where I first discovered this story.)


Two: These pro-lifers who actually care about the unborn are sadly a rather small minority -- certainly, they are not being well-represented by Randall Terry and his gang of idiots. I've done escort duty at Planned Parenthood, and in my experience, a lot of the more vocal pro-lifers don't care about the unborn all that much, and are far more concerned that as long as abortion remains legal, God is being cheated of his Divine Right to make those dirty sluts pay for having dared to have sex.

To these people, a fetus is a life, and therefore sacred... but once born, an infant is simply a convenient scarlet letter to be hung around a harlot's neck. The fact that said infant might actually be a living human being, with a life worth respecting, only occurs as an afterthought to this breed of pro-lifer... if it occurs to them at all. Certainly, they don't support any policies that might help the new mother better care for this child she didn't want to keep.

Twice-damned are those pro-life women who avail themselves of the option to abort, and then seek to deny it to others. Sadly, they are not all that rare. Perhaps a few of them rethink their stance on abortion as a result of having one, but it appears that most of them do not. They are hypocrites, and particularly vile hypocrites at that. And as for those who will never get pregnant and hope to trap others in pregnancy, i.e. male pro-lifers? The less said, the better. I'm trying to avoid wank, so let's not get me started.


Three: raising children is one of the most important jobs out there, and the consequences for failing at it are frequently harsh, and occasionally dire -- one kid whose parents fail him on things like teaching right and wrong can adversely, even catastrophically, affect many lives around him. A lot of people, including myself, choose never to take on this job: some of us, because we fear we couldn't do the job without fucking it up; some of us, because we simply don't want that responsibility. And yet, the pro-life moment wants to force this job on women whenever the opportunity presents itself. And let's be clear, most of the responsibilities will fall on women. Most of the antepartum responsibilities fall on women due to biology; the responsibilities for unplanned children, once born, tend to fall disproportionately on women for sexist cultural reasons, i.e. "a woman's place is in the home (with the kids)."

I've said far more than is necessary on this point -- properly summed up, it can fit neatly on a bumper sticker. "If you don't trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?"


Four: there are two stereotypes often invoked by the more rabid pro-lifers. One is that of the woman who, the moment she becomes pregnant, has an abortion as casually as you or I might throw a piece of chewing gum in the trash once it's lost its flavor. The other is that of the abortionist who rubs his hands with glee at the thought of killing yet another baby, cackles diabolically, and perform abortions one-handed because he's using his other hand to jerk off.

The people who actively propagate this kind of blood libel for political purposes need to die in a fire while wearing gas masks. (Why the gas masks? To make sure they die from severe burns rather than asphyxiation.) The people who believe these stereotypes need to give them up, because they are total fabrications.

What if I propagated a stereotype of a God-bothering rabid pro-life misogynist who jerks off while thinking of all the dirty whores who got what they deserved when they died from complications of back-alley abortions? The pro-life group as a whole would condemn my claims as bullshit, right?


Five: a lot of pro-lifers are not only against abortion, but are also against any form of sex education, and against most forms of birth control -- certainly, they oppose all the effective forms of birth control. Both of these measures would actually reduce the need for abortion, but many pro-lifers oppose these measures. If you are pro-life, even for the best of reasons, and you wonder why most people who are pro-choice think that your agenda is more about punishing women for having sex than protecting the unborn... this is one of the reasons.


So, for those of you who are pro-choice: remember this day proudly, but do not get complacent.

For those of you who are pro-life: I'll see you in the trenches.

(A few of you are my friends, and pro-life. I respect your viewpoints, but I'll still see you in the trenches.)

Recently, I had to explain to someone why I distrust Fox News.

Some of you know that I'm a musician, and that I use a computer to write music a lot lately. Therefore, I deal with digital audio editing a lot, and know what it sounds like when it's done. This isn't a supernatural talent or anything -- any of you could hear pops, hiccups, or overlaps in a recording just as easily as I could. I've just had more practice.

Before I transfered from one store to another, the boyfriend of my boss liked watching Fox News, and would occasionally do so on the demo TVs at work. Occasionally, I'd hear signs of edits, and eventually, I decided to start looking up what was being edited. This was fairly easy -- if you can remember the name of the person being quoted, and the exact words of one phrase in a speech, Google will generally find it pretty quickly.

Most of you will not be surprised that I found dishonesty in their use of editing. In fact, on one occasion, Bill O'Reilly blasted a left-wing congressman, claiming that he was a total crackpot. He played an audio excerpt from that congressman's speech, and yes, even a damned librul like me would have agreed that he sounded like a crackpot... except for a fraction of a second overlap. Then, O'Reilly said, "here's what we should do instead..." and proceeded to offer a completely reasonable suggestion. When I looked it up, I found that the congressman had made the reasonable suggestion himself, and that O'Reilly had stolen it. Then, he (or his tech-monkeys) edited the congressman out of context to make him look like a crackpot.

I was pretty excited by this. I intended to wait until I got home, and send it to... I dunno. Daily Kos for a start, probably, and then I'd find more places to post it from there. Imagine my disappointment when I discovered that a certain rat bastard named Al Franken beat me to the punch!

But... yeah. I do not consider Fox News a viable news source. I consider it right-wing propoganda. It probably says a lot about their credibility that two years later, I no longer even remember what the issue was, only that Fox News decided to distort it so blatantly.

Which leads me to one of those times where I question my own beliefs.

Most of you know about Gonzales v. Carhart, even if you don't know it by name: it's the case in which the US Supreme Court upheld a ban on "Partial Birth Abortion." Most of you also have rather strong views on that. Up until lately, I didn't actually give it much though. Where most pro-lifers saw a barbaric practice being put to an end, and most of my fellow pro-choicers saw the first step toward a return to the bad old days of back-alley abortions and bloody coathangers, I saw the Supreme Court tossing a purely symbolic bone to the Religious Right... in this case, a very tiny bone with no meat or marrow on it.

As I understood it, for all the controversy it caused, the decision had negligible effect on abortion as it is actually practiced -- it would create more problems for deliveries involving infant hydrocephalus than for women seeking abortion. (Given a choice, most women seeking an abortion tend to do it early enough that the result looks like a spot of blood, not a gruesomely dismembered premature baby. Gruesomely dismembered preemies just make much better propaganda. Contrary to pro-life rhetoric, most women do not have abortions as casually as I would toss a banana peel in the garbage, especially late-term abortions.) I was also under the impression that the limits imposed by the court were themselves so narrow that any doctor still wishing to perform an Intact Dilation and Extraction could work around them fairly easily.

I'm not saying that the decision was a good thing. It's stupid, paternalistic, and an intrusion of Law into aspects of Medicine which a doctor and a patient should be allowed to decide for themselves -- I won't argue that it isn't. But a victory for Randall Terry and his ilk? No. Granted, the pro-lifers are trying to make abortion illegal one baby-step at a time, but if this is their notion of a victory worth celebrating, all of their great-grandchildren will be dead of old age before they've made any significant progress.

At least, that's what I thought until today. It seems that I'm not the only person who holds this viewpoint. Unfortunately, I read it here, which means that I'm going to have to research my own views more fully and see if they stand up to further scrutiny. I realize that even a broken clock is occasionally right... but that doesn't mean it's any less creepy when it happens.

Getting over a cold at the moment. Yeah, another one.

As a result, I'm getting to know an old family recipe for dealing with colds: one part honey, two parts lemon juice, two parts brandy or whisk(e)y, and six or more parts boiling water. The stuff is great for dealing with the symptoms, and tastes much better than Nyquil. (And I'm guessing, since thalwen concluded I was sick just from knowing that I was drinking it, that it's not exactly an obscure "old family recipe.")

For the last year or few, I've been getting over my general distrust for alcohol. This distrust owes to a lot of teenage drinking, back when I was a self-destructive asshole. (The incident I remember most clearly from that time was when I went up to a football player, drunk, and told him I'd been fucking his girlfriend, and that she said I had a bigger dick than he did. This got me into a fight, and made me very suddenly persona non grata to the girlfriend, who up until that point liked me a lot. That was a turning point for me: I didn't touch alcohol for years after that.)

For a while, I've been discovering, to my delight, that I'm actually not a bad guy drunk. I'm also discovering that I don't have to get drunk -- I can stop at "slightly relaxed," while the honey and lemon do their job.

Which brings me to a rant about colds. Why are all colds the same?

I had a cold in August: congestion, runny nose, head full of cotton, you know the routine. Another one in October: congestion, runny nose, head full of cotton, and so on. And another cold now, and you guessed it: congestion, runny nose, head full of cotton, ad nauseam (figuratively).

If I were the sort to believe in God, I'd claim that this was laziness on his part. Why can't we have colds that do more unusual things? Maybe a cold that rotates all our color perceptions sixty degrees on the ol' color wheel: we'd see yellow instead of red, green instead of yellow, cyan instead of green, blue instead of cyan, etc. Maybe a cold that reverses our sexual orientation (and wouldn't Jerry Falwell go crazy over that!) Maybe a cold that made our skin break out in purple Hieroglyphics or something?

But noooooo! Every time we catch a cold, it's the same damned symptoms!

(Don't mind me. This is my third cold in five months. I swear, I didn't used to get them anywhere near this often!)

This just in: Alexander McQueen has a fetish that involves pissing on models' heads!

Well, no. This is kinda old news. I'm bringing it up now because I hinted at it in this entry. Some of you will already have seen this; I've just polished it a little and posted it here.

But anyway, old news or not, McQueen has a piss fetish, and now, I'm pulling out a runway and a cheesy commentator to prove it. All models provided by Firstview; all costumes provided by McQueeney, mostly from his 2000 Fall Collection. Just let me get into character here...

		To the left is Florinda. Or maybe Lucinda. I'm not sure exactly what her name is, but whoever she is, she's looking rather fetching... if your notion of fetching involves having just gotten your ass handed to you by your prettier stepsister in the Grimm's Faerie Tale Outdoor Mudwrestling S&M Olympics. What a grudgematch that was! Her opponent had been fed up with doing all the housework for so long that she started attacking Flor... Luci... whatever... before the bell rang! They never even stripped down to underwear, which is against Grimm's Faerie Tale Outdoor Mudwrestling regulations, which meant that Cyn was disqualified! (Cyn was also arrested after authorities realized that the holes in her victim's dress were stab wounds.)
		Next, it's Dempsey. Oh, he put such work into this faaaah-bulous piece. Or maybe he just ate too godsdamned many figs. Figs, with a magnesium citrate¹ cocktail chaser. (I would like to take this moment to remind you that projectile diarrhea is bad. See a doctor if you suffer from addiction to laxatives. Help is available.) Magnesium citrate, like magnesium sulfate (milk of magnesia), is a laxative. You've seen the advertising campaign that tries to encourage you to think of milk of magnesia as "mom," right? Well, if magnesium sulfate is your mom, then magnesium citrate would be a really bitchy aunt who pays you a visit and spends three hours denigrating your housekeeping and parenting skills, followed by raiding your liquor cabinet and guzzling every drop of good liquor you possess as if it were water, followed by beating the shit out of you in a drunken fit while shouting insults at you that would make a sailor faint. ( Click here for more cruel mocking! )

Lately, I've been amused to discover just how many people do vanity searches, and just how well-connected people on LJ are.

A week or two ago, I invited a guy to bed, in jest. He discovered it yesterday, and commented on it. (In the unlikely event that you're reading this, I apologize for singling you out like that. However, I stand by my original statement that nindada was right, and you guys are "a group of judgmental twats" -- I do not apologize for that.)

About a month ago, I pointed out that a rather popular writer on LJ, who was already known for being  unstable  a passionate writer, had finally snapped. Another friend commented on it about a week after I did. (Permission to link? Thanks.) At the time, I predicted that in six months, this friend would also be attacked by the aforementioned writer. I was way off -- it didn't take one month, let alone six. I feel safe in guessing that if I had not banned said writer from my LJ, I'd be duking it out with her too. (As I said back in that post, I have never tried to stir shit up in her LJ, and I insist on that same courtesy from her.)

A bit further back, I got sick of the ongoing feud between shadsie and millyfan, and said some rude things about one of the participants in this entry. (The feud is infamous at Godawful, Fandom Wank, and in Trigun fandom; I'm sure it's unknown outside those groups.) One of the innocent bystanders in that feud was then directed here by a mutual friend. Short version: willow_one started what could have been a very interesting discussion, and then the two feuding parties proceeded to shit all over it.

Hell, I got one of the moderators from cf_hardcore coming in out of the blue and commenting in my LJ, once!

So, a while back, I decided to use LJSeek on myself, just out of curiosity. I'm relieved to discover I'm not internet famous or anything, but I did get meta'ed once. (Apparently, someone thought that when I said "Stop worrying about Fandom Wank, you paranoid narcissists!" it was worth quoting.)

Ah, people on the internet. Like Santa Claus, in a way.

They know when you are sleeping.
They know when you're awake.
The know when you are fucking good
and when you masturbate!

Happy Holidays, guys. (I'll be trying to contact and visit a few friends I know in meatspace -- I have gifts!)

FlameGod develops a bit of maturity...

Sooooome-one on my f-list mentioned having heard a Gordon Lightfoot song for the first time in years. As I remembered "If You Could Read My Mind," it was one of those simple, yet lovely, songs, and way back when I first heard it, it bored the shit out of me. (Hey, give me a break. I was ten!)

I just found it online, and listened to it a couple of times. It continues to be simple and lovely... and it's no longer boring. If anything, it's more lovely -- it almost hurts to listen to it.

(Sorry. I've just got a bit of my wayward teenage years caught in my eye. Don't mind me.)


...but that bit of maturity soon goes away.

I'd like to dedicate this work in progress to swtalmnd and elfscribe5, who inspired it; to a kindly sprite I won't name, who made it possible by e-mailing me the original song; and to Janet Jackson, a great dancer with a wonderful sense of humor. (I hope.)

Surfin' on the internet, readin' nasty plots.
Readin' 'bout two gentlemen really gets me off.
...that's right, I admit it.

(CHORUS)
Slashy slashy boys, written just for me!
Oh you slashy boys.
Slashy slashy boys, subtext is king!
Oh you slashy boys.

You say you'd rather be with girls, I know that this is true.
In all the stories that I've read, men get so far with you!
"He's just a friend?" Uh huh, I know... say...

(REPEAT CHORUS)
Slashy slashy boys, written just for me!
Oh you slashy boys...

(Do not even think of following the links in this LJ entry while you are at work.)

A few months ago, I wrote a piece on fashion. Therein, I mocked this dude named Alexander McQueen, and his complete lack of taste. Granted, I know relatively little about fashion, so I'm perhaps not the most qualified to criticize him. Perhaps if I were less ignorant, I'd understand how making clothes that look like children vomited on them after a night of trick-or-treating made him such a huge fucking success.

Anyway, I shared this piece with quite a few people, and it seemed to go over well. And when I was showing it to a few of them, I wondered out loud why it was that it was women being subjected to the indignities of "clothing" that looks like shit, has no practical use, and is completely unwearable by people who don't have perfect bodies. (You know, "perfect" as in "practically impossible for the average person to attain in real life.") Well, I just got an e-mail from a friend who remembered that conversation. He provided a link, too.

I need to learn not to shoot my mouth off so often.

Several years ago, I worked in a bookstore, and race was a touchy issue there.

My manager was black, as was the assistant manager. I am not merely white, but freakin' pale. (I almost got signed up for sensitivity training because the assistand manager and I had the same name, and I called myself "the other white meat" to distinguish between me and him. Yes, you read that right. I was almost written up for saying something un-PC and possibly hurtful about myself.) And because the bookstore was in a mall in "an urban neighborhood" (their words, not mine), they tried to make the bookstore's stock appeal to said neighborhood.

In other words, it had an unusally well-stocked "African American Interest" section.

All by itself, this was not the cause of the conflict between me and them. That started when I ordered a bunch of books by Octavia Butler. The manager saw me reading these books, and decided that the store needed some of these for the shelves. I was overjoyed -- she is a terrific writer, in her own way as disturbing, haunting, and insightful as Philip K. Dick; where Dick's writing drips with paranoia, Butler's work drips with alienation, and like Dick, she likes pushing people's buttons.

The manager and I only got into an argument when he insisted that her books were to be put in the African-American section, with me arguing that Butler belonged in science fiction with all the other science fiction writers. Then, well... things turned ugly. You all know I have a bad habit of shooting my mouth off by now, right? Well, I made some ill-advised comments suggesting that he was supporting segregation, and to be frank, I have to give him credit for not sacking me on the spot. (Fortunately, I did not discover the brilliance of Samuel Delany and Tananarive Due until I was working elsewhere -- it would have led to repeats of this same argument.)

Sadly, he won this argument. I won the next one, but only because it was obvious he'd only looked at the title of the book before deciding where to put it: Soul Music, by Terry Pratchett.

So, why am I bringing up years-old history like this?

I just got an e-mail from a friend, titled "Too bad you don't work at █████████ anymore!" And as I read her e-mail, I laughed. Honestly, it would never have occured to me that a book about the pervasive belief that black men have big dicks might have been written, and yet, here it is -- all 224 pages of it. For all I know, Hung could be an insightful and provocative read. It's just as possible that it could be crap. Either way, it made me think of my old manager and laugh.

Lemme tell you a little about my life. Don't worry, there's actually a point to me boring you to tears like this.

In my earlyish teens, I had to put up with idiot peers claiming that my lack of sexual experience made me less than human; the word "virgin" was thrown around as an insult. Then, some kind-hearted (and very horny) college girl took me to bed for the first time (and several times after that), and released me into the wild. Before long, I had a reputation for being good in bed. (I don't mean to boast when I say this -- keep in mind that, in Junior High and High School, all it takes is being willing to slow down, and kiss a lady below the neck, to be considered good in bed.)

Given the social setting, this meant that I was a god -- unfortunately, it meant that I was sleeping around for all the wrong reasons. This fucked with my head badly enough that when I came back to my home state, I decided to abstain from sex for a while, going so far as to pretend that I was still inexperienced. This meant that the schoolyard taunts came back, and somehow, they stung even worse for my knowledge that I'd been such a stud a short time prior.

Then, I graduated from High School, ironed out my sexual ethics, and figured that everyone around me had outgrown that stupid "look at the poor virgin, let us mock him" bullshit, as I had. I was sleeping around, as I chose. Other people were saving themselves for marriage, as they choose. We could respect each other, if not agree, right?

Whoops, I guess not!

(I'm sure this movie is completely different from this impression I've gotten, but at the moment, I'm not happy about it.)