Now you can just sell the exploratory rights online to a complete stranger.

Many may remember last October when the 20-year-old Brazilian student Catarina Migliorini sold her virginity off to the highest bidder (A Japanese man identified only as Natsu) in an online auction for a whopping $780,000.

Wow! Don’t get me wrong, she’s hot. Really hot. But would I (Assuming I wasn’t happily married, of course) shell out upwards of 3/4 mil to hit that?

I’m thinking! I’m thinking!

At the same time, 23-year-old Alex Stepanov, pimped his purity for  $2,600 (That’s it?) to Australian woman who went by Kasandra Darlinghurst.

Initially, the whole thing was intended as a full-length documentary project called “Virgins Wanted”, by Australian filmmaker Justin Sisely. That was the plan. Now, with all the buzz these auctions created, Sisely has decided to go in a different direction with his project. Get ready, people. Virginity for sale may soon be coming to a screen near you as the plot of a reality television show.

There’s a reality show for everyone nowadays.

That’s correct! Sisely is now promoting Virgins Wanted as a reality TV series. He says he’s already getting at least 50 emails a week from virgins who don’t see the need to give it away for free as well as from people who don’t mind paying to venture into unexplored territory. Add to that the over 500 videos auditions he’s received from virgins around the world (Who knew there were still so many virgins around?) and it’s easy to see why Sisely thinks he’s sitting on a gold mine.

How real is the prospect of this reality show coming off? Very real. Contracts are signed and the debut of the project is set for the MIPCOM entertainment trade fair in Cannes, France this October. Hope you’re ready.

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Even with the fact of being here my whole life, it never gets easy to watch. The heart dropping sense of hopelessness never fades. Even if you live here and have never been through a tornado, as Oklahomans, you feel as if you do every single time one comes around. It’s engrained in all our lives. It can literally turn your world upside down. We know what to do after the storm too. You hold up your neighbor. You hurt as they hurt. You become the others crutch so you can help them get to the other side of all tornadoes: healing.

I have been through a few tornadoes. None that was a direct hit to my home but a couple that were within a few miles of me. That sounds pretty far to pretty much everyone except those that live here. When a storm can reach over two miles in diameter, those “few” miles become pretty important.

I was at work about 20 miles from Moore when it came through a few days ago. My wife, even further. When I heard it was headed for Moore, I shut down and was glued to my phone. My parents live just outside of Moore. I have friends in Moore.

I got home that Monday evening and started watching the news. I didn’t know the magnitude. At work I watched the weather on my phone to see how bad my drive might be. Even when you are used to these things, you never really expect what they can produce. I walked into my living room that evening where the TV was telling me about 250 mile an hour winds. A destructive path of 30 square miles. Showing bloodied people walking in the streets. Children wet and muddied from head to toe. Family pets scattered across the debris. Cars on top of cars. Shards of wood impaled through curbs.

Through cement.

Then comes the news that to this day I still think about. The elementary school that was flattened with many children unaccounted for under concrete.

You hope for the best news possible but you also at the same time understand that the very worst news is about to be reported. The very worst.  And you grab whatever you can find for crutches.

Every time I think about it, I find myself holding on to something. A chair, the wall. Something. You don’t have to be directly involved with anyone in that school for your heart to drop. You need to simply have one.

One reason for this emotion may be in relation to the fact that we will soon be bringing our own baby into a world where you simply can’t protect them at all times. Imagine you are a parent of a student they can’t find and authorities won’t let you near the place you dropped them off that morning because it’s too dangerous to try searching yourself. Imagine it.

When the moment comes to call a search and rescue mission into a search and recovery for a class full of 3rd graders, life doesn’t make sense anymore. You can’t process that with any sort of sensible intellect. It’s impossible to do.

But somehow you do. Somehow you learn to process it. It may take a long time. But eventually you do. The human spirit is funny that way.

I saw a story on Facebook that was being passed around of someone trying to find this little girl. Not sure if it was her uncle, family friend, I don’t know. I shared it on my page. His words were in such a manner that you could read his fear. You could sense his desperation. I found out today that she didn’t make it. She went to school and didn’t make it home because of the weather. I’ll never understand it.

But I have to believe in something bigger. I have to believe in the strength of devastated parents that will find the will to make steps to recovery. I have to believe in the amazing strength of a state that has had its legs taken out time and time again, but stands tall. Always tall, even while on crutches at times. And I do. I see it every day.

We will soon see all the destruction carried away. Lives rebuilt from the ground up. It’s different here in Oklahoma because we know that whatever comes at us next, we each have an entire state to hold us up.

For us,  Oklahoma isn’t just where we live. It simply means something more.

* I want to thank the boss for letting me come back and share something on my mind that’s pretty raw and personal. It means a lot to step a foot back in the Sprocket house.

Come in. We’re the ones with the chalk board.

In a state that is getting a lot of attention for it’s Weiner’s lately, there is a ray of hope for you less-than-endowed men. On July 20th, King’s County Bar in Brooklyn, New York is ready for you to show them what you don’t got and award you some cold hard cash if you measure up… or don’t as the case may be. This may be the only time you’re asked to “just lay them out and measure them already!” and be glad to come up short.

According to an interview with The New York Post, bar manager Aimee Arciuolo said she thought up the idea for the contest after an interlude with a gent sporting less than average (we’ll get to that in a moment). She feels it’s time to show a little love to the little guy. “They work much harder than the others.” she said. This sounds familiar. Just me?

Competitors will don sashes, swim wear, and evening wear. There will also be a tighty-whities round complete with water gun hosing down by the judges. Contestants will face a Q&A session and talent segments. It’s not clear if those talents have to pertain to the subject matter usually at hand. There are currently only 3 entrants, so if you’re confident in your conciseness and will be in the Brooklyn area on July, 20th it’s time to step up.

Some guys have run into Mr. Gym Cock before. He’s hung like a water polo pony compared to most, but realistically he’s the same size erect as most guys. He’s intimidating as hell, but for the most part Wikipedia tells us that when it’s game on he’s likely average. So before you decide you’re sure to win, let’s look at the facts.

Seriously, it was 10 inches before, baby. For real. This measuring tape is defective.

“Measurements vary, with studies that rely on self-measurement reporting a significantly higher average than those with staff measuring. However, the mean of an erect human penis is approximately 12.9–15.0 cm (5.1–5.9 in) in length. Flaccid penis length is a poor estimate of erect length.” Ha… self-measurements. Ha.

“When compared to other primates, including large primates such as the gorilla, the human penis is largest, both in absolute terms and in relative size to the rest of the body.” So there’s that.

If you’d like to enter the contest, you’re welcome to e-mail spb.brooklyn@gmail.com. Tell them where you heard about it. We promise not to look. Okay maybe. Alright, if we know you’re entering we’re definitely going to look. For sure. For educational purposes. Obviously. Happy hour runs from 4-8.

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Yes, yes, Mr. Weiner has decided to run a second time for the chance to be Mayor of New York City. After an unsuccessful bid in 2005, Weiner remained as the representative from New York’s 9^th Congressional District until… well, until he decided to publicize his privates. In 2011, Weiner, who was and is married to Hillary Clinton’s former top aide, thought it might be fun to send sexually explicit photos and messages, to several women.  These photos, we are told, were of Weiner’s weiner at full salute. At first he denied it was him, then he said his Twitter account was hacked, and later he was quoted as saying, “maybe it did start being a photo of mine and now looks something different or maybe it is from another account” Yep, that’s got to be it.

Every day, the story grew. And while the public might have bought it had it been one woman, more and more kept popping up. Totally deflated, Weiner admitted to the photography and resigned.

Weiner has now announced he is in the running to become the new King of New York. The decision to go all in must have been a hard one to make. He has just released a video announcing his intention, and his wife in perfect political spouse fashion, is seen standing erect next to her man. However, it seems the airing of the video may have been a bit pre-mature, as it was quickly pulled out off the internet.

It’s a long road between now and the election. Will he win or won’t he? In light of his past performance, let’s just wait for the climax and see if Weiner flops again.

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Last week, a Republican judge in Collin County, Texas inserted his own conservative political views into a child custody case but broke up a family for the second time.

Carolyn and Joshua Compton officially divorced after 11 years of marriage in 2011, although Carolyn filed in 2010. The initial divorce agreement did not stipulate whether Carolyn or Joshua Compton could co-habitate with someone else. The Compton have two daughters, now aged 10 and 13. The judge overseeing the Compton’s case since 2010, is Judge John Roach of McKinney, Texas. Carolyn Compton began living with her girlfriend, Page Price, in 2010, without quarrel from Joshua Compton.

Although Joshua Compton rarely sees his children, he attempted to gain custody of them in 2011. During that hearing, Judge Roach, himself, inserted a “morality clause” into the Compton’s agreement forbidding Carolyn Compton from having anyone she is not related to “by blood or marriage” in her home past 9:00 p.m. if the children are present. Same sex marriage is illegal in Texas, so by law, Compton cannot live with Price if she wishes to retain custody of her children.

The ruling last week forced Page Price to find a new place to live within 30 days or Carolyn Compton faced losing her children to part-time father, Joshua Compton, and his sudden wish to enforce conservative Texas law.

Judge John Roach has refused interviews but did state during the hearing last week that his ruling was “gender-neutral” and “in the best interests of the children.” Since no one ever interviewed the children and there is no evidence that Carolyn Compton and Page Price’s relationship was distasteful to anyone but Joshua Compton and Judge John Roach, feel free to call the Judge a liar.

In Florida, 17-year-old high school student, Kaitlyn Hunt, began dating a 15-year-old teammate on her school’s basketball team. No one complained, including the her girlfriend’s family until Kaitlyn turned 18 and the family had her arrested. Hunt was charged with a felony—”lewd and lascivious battery of a child 12-16 years old.” The girl’s parents also succeeded in getting her expelled from school by appealing to the school board after the school and a judge refused to grant Hunt’s mother, Kelly Hunt Smith a request.

These selective prosecutions expose the draconian approach to laws around the country toward homosexuals. Indian River County Sheriff Deryl Loar claimed that the case had nothing to do with the fact that Kaitlyn had been dating a girl. “If this was an 18-year-old male and a 14-year-old girl,” he said, “it would be prosecuted in the same way.” Sure, feel free to drop “liar” on the Sheriff, too.

The thing about laws is they’re not black and white like the colors they’re printed in books. In the Texas case, a Judge put his conservative politics into a divorce case and ultimately broke up a family that became stable AFTER the divorce of opposite sexes. Chew on that one, anti-gay marriage people.

In Florida, while that law is quite a law and Kaitlyn Hunt faces the possibility of being labeled a sex offender because her girlfriend’s parents learned how to google, the Sheriff and soon a Judge in a conservative county may make a teenage romance criminal, and ruin a girl’s life.

While gay marriage seems inevitable as twelve states has made it so and six others have the shot to do the same in 2014, the real problem is how some, with hate in their hearts that are in authoritative positions, are discriminating against homosexuals. This all sounds like the 1960s, doesn’t it? During that decade, dozens of state’s Jim Crow laws including the illegal marriage of people from different races, were changed with the blood of thousands on the hands of bigots.

The ACLU is already on the side of Compton and Page. Those two children may see another relationship torn asunder, not by the failure of their parents to get along, but because one Judge decided “lifestyle” trumped family. Internet superheroes “Anonymous” have already leaped to the defense of Kaitlyn Hunt. After Anonymous’ victory in Steubenville, Ohio helping bring football playing rapists to justice, I’d put money on Hunt not becoming a sex offender. Now, if Anonymous could stop using the f word that rhymes with Bob Saget on so many posts, I’ll be happy.

Hypocrisy is heckuva thing. While the conservatives involved in these two cases shout concern for the welfare of children, they’re breaking up a family and making a criminal out of a normal teen-aged girl. It’s easy to see why that side is losing so many arguments.

What if the great bogeyman of the twenty-first century, Al-Qaida, or whomever American paranoia has deemed the most dangerous of Islamic mischief at the moment, suddenly fizzled out?

What if we no longer had to really give a shit about what happens over there, at least not in any real sense–not in the real sense that most Americans, when they actually do give a shit–do?

I’m talking about severing America’s–and the rest of the world’s–dependence upon petroleum, and all of the nastiness that has gone along with it for just too long.  That horrible, complicit nastiness you have to swallow every time your SUV swallows a big load of gasoline?

All of the atrocities we don’t want to think about, commited by them, and by us.  The exploitation, the having to pretend that it’s ok to torture people because they do it, too, and because you have to do it if you want to protect the rest of the world, or at least the continuation of what happens over here.

Take away all of that economic dependence and banish any feel-good-feel-bad-let’s-all-pull-together-and-pretend-that-it-feels-good-to-pretend-that-we-really-want-democracy for an area in the world most Americans would probably be comfortable just nuking back into the Paleolithic.

Just imagine it were possible to close all doors on everyone else, to turn our backs on the plight of the greedy fucking masses, and just prosper.  Or be unfettered in running the great American Dream into the ground, without having to answer, plead with, or bomb the shit out of, anyone else.

With money and greed, and on our own power.

Then imagine we didn’t have to think about windmills (we aren’t, most of us anyway, Dutch, after all), and organic farming, and separating out our garbage into recyclable and non-recyclable, dumping paper into plastic and sealing it away with a ton of diapers per family each year, sealing it all up into one great mountain range of landfills and thumbing our nose at the “theory” of global warming.

Then imagine that the oil will never run out.  You can dump fossil money shots into your car any time you want, because it’s as plentiful as water.

Well, guess what?

In the May 2013 issue of The Atlantic, it would seem that the brave new world I just described above is already dawning.

In so many words, we no longer have to worry about any of those things.  There is no longer any real economic incentive to go green (if there ever was).

There is no longer any reason to worry about what happens in the Persian Gulf–or, for that matter, Israel.  And we no longer have to care about renewable energy, because nature has already buried enough chemical stuff in the oceans and the ground below us to last us FOR-EVER.

That’s forever with a big “fucking” slapped down right in the middle of it.

It is time, folks, to sit back and just appreciate and enjoy the fracking and methane hydrate harvesting and whatever they discover next.

An endless supply of accessible fossil fuels.  While the rest (or rather some) of us have spent the past twenty years or so getting educated on what exactly each one of us can do to save the planet (or rather us) from climactic disaster, oil prices going through the roof have pushed some pragmatists, in the pursuit of happiness and the almighty dollar, to find a solution to the matter.

And that solution, folks, is more of the same.  It’s better living through chemistry, that mantra of the 50s and 60s, and it will ensure that we don’t have to do a damn thing about any of that shit any more.

With the newest ways of ripping fuel from the Earth pushing into high (and government-subsidized) production, there really is no limit.  The title of the Atlantic article is What If We Never Run Out of Oil?, and, according to MIT economist Morris Adelman, we’re not going to.  Or at least we’re not going to run out of the next CO2-producing equivalent.

And what that means, in the broader perspective, beyond political and economic dependence on a region whose instability has benefited us more than democracy in the area ever could, is that you can forget about the environment.  If not enough people cared before, now at least they have a good reason not to.

Tornadoes?  Hurricanes? No more ice caps?  Polar bears?

It really doesn’t matter anymore.  Because science, inevitably, will save us, too.  Feeling good about making things better has, quite frankly, never been an incentive that really got the ball rolling on anything.

I’m sure someone will be able to give me an example, but I can’t think of a single one, not in the past hundred years or so.  Perhaps a reader will enlighten me.

But my point is this:  going green no longer makes sense.  The people with the wherewithal – the money and the clout – are just going to ensure the preservation of the status quo.  And that, ladies and gents, has nothing to do with making the world a safe place to live.  For anyone.

Mind you, this is not a case of “you can’t solve it so why bother.”  It’s just one world citizen saying, finally, that I’m changing course.

I’m going with the guys I read about in Freakonomics 2 (“Global Cooling”).  We’re never going to stop the world from getting warmer, they say.  But we may have a shot at cooling it down.

I hear they’re making these huge refrigerators.  You drop them off the coast of Florida and hope for the best come hurricane season.  I’m willing to bet you could get a ton of people out to watch that, and make a good deal of money in the bargain.

People like technology.  They don’t like compost.  It’s just too damn icky.

So who’s with me on this?

Image Credits:

“Terrorist,” zurijeta / 123RF Stock Photo; “Tornado,” solarseven / 123RF Stock Photo; “Polar Bear,” isselee / 123RF Stock Photo

The new St. John’s Mercy– Joplin, MO

“And where are you from?” Even two years after, I grimace before I respond. It used to be I would say I grew up outside of Joplin, MO, and people would give me that blank look of non-recognition, and I would then jump into my diatribe about Southwest Missouri and the Four State area and the Ozarks and eventually end up tying it to Branson, about 80 miles away. After May 22, 2011, I got the low, breathy, drawn-out, “Ohhh.”

This is usually followed by some variation of, “How many people did you know that died?” Mostly, those questions are phrased carefully and are often vague, but the intent is the same—did I know anyone who died?

The answer is yes, but the part I am so terribly thankful for is that my family and friends were not among the casualties. I know many more that were not so lucky.

So, I guess you can imagine when I read Jennifer Rowe Walter’s post yesterday evening, her words resonated with me in more ways than you can imagine. We played Twister, too. We are armchair meteorologists, too. We knew which friends had basements and which ones had storm cellars and which ones had crawlspaces, too. Tornados were an everyday part of life. And when she said:

“Going forward, this event will probably come to define us to people who have no other frame of reference for us. Oklahoma will forever equal “that terrible tornado” in the minds of people who will probably never come here or really know any of us personally.”

I knew exactly what she meant by that simple statement.

The new Joplin High School.

But– and this is a big but– let me tell you Okies something. The storm will not define you for long. The destruction will not always be the mental image that presents itself when people think of Moore. It will be that way for the immediate future—for the first few years– but it will fade. It can and will be replaced with the images of a resilient people, with rebirth and rebuilding; it will come to represent heroism and compassion and community and what it means to be a human being who has faced adversity. It will come; it has to come. It is this way—has to be this way– for New Orleans, for the Jersey Shore, for Joplin, and now… for you.

Moore, Oklahoma (and all the surrounding communities who are helping)—you are in our hearts. You are in our thoughts. The storm is all we see now—but we will see more and more of YOU with each day that passes.

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According to a new report, people are actually getting a new face for the book of face…

Time reported last week that social media is leading to a spike in requests for plastic surgery; if you check my profile or Google me or link me in, sure I want to look good, but am I willing to go under the knife for that? Apparently some people are saying yes.

A survey of the American Academy of Facial and Reconstructive Surgery reports that social media activity may be driving an uptick in plastic surgery requests.

The survey polled 752 board-certified facial plastic surgeons on the trends in cosmetic surgery. This year surgeons are seeing a 31% increase in plastic surgery requests as a result of how people wanted to present themselves on social media… so what we have been writing about for years in a half-joking way (see here) is now actually backed up by statistics.

While some plastic surgery is reconstructive and/or needed, 73% of it is purely cosmetic, a sharp increase over even one year earlier.

People are getting Botox, facelifts, boob jobs and nose jobs to look good online. Sure we live in a very visual world, and looks matter more than they should, but dont we think this is going too far?

This is not anti plastic surgery; surgery is totally cool if you want to do it for yourself, and can do it safely.

And sure, I have looked at pictures of myself on Facebook and thought I should get on the damn treadmill, but to think I should go have surgery? Facebook is supposed to make you feel connected and involved, not insecure and miserable. Hopefully people will get more confident, or just smarten up…

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Oklahoma, herself, is known as Tornado Alley. The flatness of her land and the warmth of her climate allow the Sooner State to earn both of it’s nicknames. A twelve-mile stretch of Southeastern Oklahoma, near Oklahoma City, is ground zero for the most harrowing images anyone has ever seen.

Plaza Towers Elementary School, on the south side of Moore, looks like a World War II war zone. The brunt of an, as for now, F4, tornado hit the school while classes were in session. When the news anchors said “75 children are trapped inside”, Hell became reality for the rest of the country watching the horror in America’s heartland.

The death toll is at 92. At least 20 of those are children. Plaza Towers Elementary is a mound of rubble that rescuers are stilling pulling bodies from. Twenty-four of those initially reported 75 children are still being searched for.

Later today, I’ll walk into my 8-year-old daughter’s Elementary school for an end of the year second grade party. Knowing that dozens of parents will not be able to do the same, and in some of their cases, much worse, is knee-buckling emotionally.

This will be the fifth time Moore, Oklahoma has done this since 1999. There’s no way they’re “used to it”. Regardless of their history of tornado outbreaks and the amount of time, money, and resources it takes to help them rebuild, Moore can’t be “used to this”. Two years ago, the same set of tornadoes that killed 191 people in Joplin, Missouri, hit Moore as well. The leviathan that ripped open their town was wider than a racetrack is lone and traveled faster than the cars on it. It gave them little to no warning. Even the largest hospital, Moore Medical, was wiped out.

You have to think, when these children recover, will they ever believe that there’s not a a monster under their bed, in their closet or outside their window?

Hell on Earth exists for Oklahoma and parts of Kansas, today. All you can do is pray, hope, and cheer for Oklahomans and Kansans to survive.

How You Can Help Oklahoma:

You can help by donating online (https://donate.salvationarmyusa.org/) or you can text STORM to 80888 to contribute $10. You can also call 1-800-SAL-ARMY.

Of course, you can also reach out to the American Red Cross.  You can text “red cross” to 90999 from your phone to donate $10.

You can also donate online (https://www.redcross.org/donate/index.jsp?donateStep=2&itemId=prod10002), or donate by phone at 1-800-RED CROSS.

The Red Cross is also suggesting giving blood at your local hospital or blood bank.

I am the eye in the sky looking at you… and I’m hungry.

We’ve done it again world! We’ve pushed another species to the point where they start finding ways to push back. Go ahead Europe, take a bow. I’m giving you credit for this one. You’ve made the vultures mad. Now none of us will ever be safe again.

We’re all familiar with the vultures of cartoons and spaghetti Westerns. They are vile disgusting creatures that feed on rotting carcasses. Anyone that’s been out in the desert on a horse with no name without any water, or in my case, in a bean field sweating profusely wondering if I might die before the day is done, has had that moment where they see a bird in the sky and wonder if their time is near.

Recently, a woman hiking in the Pyrenees mountains of France, took a tragic misstep and fell 1000 feet to her death. In the 40-50 minutes it took for the helicopter to find her body vultures had picked her bones clean. This is not an exaggeration for sensationalism. They literally left only bones, clothes, and shoes.

While definitely stomach turning and tragic, this is just a small part of a bigger story. It’s an all too familiar tale of populations of animals left with no other choice but to adapt to a changing environment. As quoted in an article for Daily Mail, Grahame Madge, European bird of prey expert at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said: “We are seeing three-figure vulture flocks over Belgium and Holland. These birds are fanning out across Europe in search of food.” Let’s set that at a minimum of 100 vultures with wingspans ranging from 7.5 to 9.2 ft, circling, hungry, and looking for a little dinner.

Where has their traditional food source gone? It’s gone the way of disease. As fears over spreading Mad Cow disease mounted in Europe, farmers have been forced to burn their animal carcasses. The food supply has become so scarce that vultures are attacking live animals, including full sized cattle. Farmers are now requesting approval to shoot Griffon Vultures, a protected species, to safe guard their herds.

Don’t let this be you.

Think about THAT next time you’re out wandering in a pasture alone, as we’re all wont to do from time to time. That cow is a hell of a lot bigger than you and they aren’t scared of her. Watch yourself. You know how wild cats will go for the slowest, weakest, wildebeest? I recommend that if you’re going to treat yourself to a little backpacking across Europe that you include a lot of speed training pre-trip. Stay with the pack. Don’t get cut off. Remember, take someone slow and tasty with you. You don’t have to be the fastest. You just have to be faster than the slowest guy.

I understand that the PETA people are busy fighting for the rights of house pets, cute furry animals, and spiders, but perhaps they should focus on finding a way to keep us all from being eaten by vultures. Maybe that’s sort of important.

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