I-Prostitute (Unedited)

 I sat on a stool furnished with newspapers in my editors office. I read the below article to a board of three. The reading ended before I read the title "I Am a Plasma Prostitute." And it began shortly thereafter. "I'm sorry, we just can't publish the word prostitute, not on this campus," was the general gist of things. Well, I thought, that's what blogs are for. Every computer a printing press in today's day and age. He who hast ears to hear, hear.

The dusty hot weather dial is cranking up as snow fall slows to only “now and then” for our beautiful springtime Rexburg, and all the boys and girls are starting to show some skin for summer time loving. Skirts shrink up to knee level or lower, shorts remain non-existent, and the T-shirt sleeves crowd the mid-upper-arm all around campus making for a prime situation to meet your special someone. Flower prints, happy plaids, and radiant polka-dots illuminate the world side-by-side with the brilliant greens, yellows, and pinks, of the plasma arm-band. That’s right folks for just 1-3 hours and the little prick of the needle, you can receive up to $30 dollars cash, a cool neon colored arm band, and label yourself a plasma prostitute.

People argue that they are not plasma prostitutes, I argue otherwise.

Prositution: figurative, the “unworthy or corrupt use of one's talents for the sake of personal or financial gain.”

This definition provided by the Oxford Dictionary contains three parts that need to be defined: 1) If plasma donation satisfies these 3 qualifiers, “unworthy or corrupt”  “talent” and “personal or financial gain” then it is appropriately labelled as figurative prostitution. Let us work Backwards from the end.

Personal and financial gain? Easy, they flaunt themselves on the hairy nose of plasma donation. Ask any student with neon colored band and they’ll respond with any combination of the words “college student, poor, money, survival, dates.” $50 for two donations or 4 hours in a week, isn’t much but when it’s all you got it ain’t bad.

Talent? It hides itself within the deep pockets of the donation process. A “natural aptitude or skill,” it does not reveal itself at first glance. As one donor said “You lay down and endure a little bit of pain for an hour and get paid 20 bucks." However, according to the Plasma Proteins Theurapuetics Association, a donor must be above 18 years of age, weigh at least 110 pounds, and be healthy. Also blood vessels must be of a sufficient size. If you do not have these traits then you do not have the talent to give plasma, end of story.

The first two qualifiers being satisfied we are left with one: is plasma donation “Unworthy or corrupt?” To answer this we must answer the questions:  for what is the plasma used? and for what motives is it given?

What is it used for? Bottom line, no fooling around: it is used to administer life-saving therapies and medications to the ill. Victims of hemophilia, Willebrand disease, primary immunodeficiency disease, Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, and sufferers of burns, trauma, and shock all benefit from the curing power of donated plasma. Hemophiliacs run healthy plasma through their veins to help prevent them from bleeding.

For what motive donate?  If your motive is corrupt, then all of the above qualifiers will be checked positive and you will indeed be labelled a plasma prostitute. If your motive is benevolent then you may qualify to be something slightly better. An example from two internet chatters serves to illustrate the former.

“Who here prostitutes their bodies by selling their bodily fluids twice a week for cash? Just curious”

“Ive been meaning to start. How much do you get?”

Plasma prostitute.

By definition paid plasma donation (slightly contradictory) may indeed qualify as figurative plasma prostitution if it is done for self-centered or corrupt motives. You can embrace or deny it.

As for me and my house, I’ll be the first to proudly declare it: I am a Plasma Prostitute. I sell my bodily fluids for $50 a week, and I’m never going back.

In fact, I beg your pardon, I must depart, or I’ll miss them before they close. Tchau.

Outdoor Activities lead students on a river rafting trip down the Salmon River, Saturday. The Salmon River flowed at a high of 18,000 CSF for the week as 36 students and faculty floated down the river digging in to fight through heavy rapids, making the trip the semester’s largest.

The guides and faculty did everything they could “to make the trip as safe as possible” for participants, said Joe Temus, trip leader and volunteer for the Outdoor Activities. To ensure safety the group utilized a two man inflatable ducky, and a two-person river catamaran to float alongside the 4 larger rafts ready to provide care for any mishaps.

The water was cold and murky as logs and debris floated down the river, however the weather provided sun on the summer day.

The 3 larger rafts carried the majority of student participants with about 10-12 people each, and were guided by student volunteers Lauren Perry, Susan Briggs, and Joe Temus, all certified to guide white water rafts. Faculty advisers Morris Christensen and Scott Hurst headed up an 8 man raft and the river catamaran, and Lydia Montour managed the 2-man ducky.

The trip left from the Outdoor Resource Center at 6 pm on Saturday, 25 June, after the students checked onto the trip using their I-cards and and signed a risk waivier acknowledging the potentially fatal risks of white-water rafting, and a short briefing. The group then drove 4 vans across 3 hours of highland plains and the Lemhi River Valley and turned north at Salmon, driving another 30 miles to their put in.

Students gathered their gear and prepared themselves as faculty and volunteers shuttled the vans to the end of the stretch.

“the most stressful part of the trip was the river, which is the way it should be, and it was big and it was fun, everyone was just so happy and stoked it seemed, the water was big, the waves weer ebig and it just kept on copming at you,” said Temus.

Student participants have filled up each of the white water trips this semester.

“We had lots more girl than guy participants,” Hurst noted because, “girls aren’t video game addicts for one, that might be one reason.”

For the future the Outdoor Activities plans to offer expanded trips during the off times, and provide more leadership opportunities to help students to grow. White water rafting on the snake river, star-gazing, and Road Biking every Wednesday came recommended as end of semester activities from volunteers and faculty.

Comments from my roommate Joe: "This has been a great year for rafting, there's a huge snowpack up in the mountains and the rivers have been running longer and bigger than usual.  Unfortunately this also means flooding for others.  Rafting is an activity where if you just rent a boat and hop in the river you can get really hurt, there's a bit of experience and knowledge needed.  We're really lucky that the school provides these kinds of activities so that lots of students can safely experience things like whitewater rafting."

What I learned in DC

Every man is a politician. In the words of former Senator Smith of Oregon, Whether you know it or not, it's all politics.

Some time ago, about 4 years know, I visited Washington D.C., our nations capitol, with my good friend Justin Oldroyd and many others. We ground herbs in the basement of the Smithsonian with an hindu, we witnessed the beauty of the Washington monument, and we were awestruck by an exhibit of foreign art. In parting we realized we hadn't yet seen all there was to see. In realizing our future was parted and I knew we would come again.

This week I returned. I saw. I beheld. I loved. And I know I will come again, next time to stay.



I have a few posts in the making for things I learned on my trip. I hope you will join in me enjoying them as they are posted over the next few days.


GS

Love Bob Marley. Keep Marajuan Illegal.

 The upcoming rebuttal for the rebuttal in the scroll. And yes, I did write this while listening to the best of Van Morrison.

First off, let us not use the vulgar Mexican slang word marijuana, and refer to the material at hand by its proper name: cannabis.

Cannanbis is a tall plant used to produce hemp fiber and as psychotropic drug. Cannabis contains 400 different chemical compounds including psychoactive A9-tetrahydrocannabinol. “11 percent of the US population over the age of 12 uses cannabis annually, including 28 percent of people aged 18-25, and over a third of children in their final year in school.”

The opinion of cannabis and its effects, like many things, swing on a pendulum. It has moved from the widespread international banning of cannabis products in the early 20th century to the rise of illicit drug use by the counter-culture of the 1970’s to the present day trend of legalizing it for medical use. However, as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime stated in a recent study “the pendulum may have swung too far in the opposite direction.”

It has become a somewhat childish trend to argue for the legalization of cannabis because “yeah, dude, we’ve got to protect our rights, man” because Bob Marley was legit and its all about the Love. Lets put the coolness of tie-dye and and dread-locked hippies aside for a moment and consider reality, not idealized philosophical big words.

I offer 5 points against the legalization of cannabis.

One. If cannabis were legalized because it only harms “oneself” then it logically entails that all other similar substances would also need to be legalized, including less-favorable substances such as LSD, cocaine, and heroine.

Two. The presumption that legalizing the drug will undercut and destroy the black market trade of the substance is established on muddy grounds to say the least. Cannabis would likely become purchasable in the local gas station pinned with a sin tax and an age requirement. Why pay the extra price and fake your age when you can just shoot a text to your home-dizzle down the street?

Three. Its a gateway drug. Even though people say its not and nicotine may be a more effective instigator. Allow the DEA to summarize: “since legalization of marijuana in Holland, heroin addiction levels have tripled.”

Four. Lets learn from precedent. Alaska supreme court legalized cannabis use for adults over 19 in 1975. By 1988 the cannabis use for 12-17 year-old Alaskans was more than twice the national average for their age group. In 1990 Alaskan residents voted to recriminalize the use of cannabis. Lets not repeat history.

Five. When you suck back on that bong, you won’t be the only one affected. Locke didn’t mention marijuana. He did mention fences. He would have liked your joint to have a governement enforced fence around it ensure nobody jacked it. However, if when you inhaled your psychotic fumes and then consistently decided to do something foolish, like hop over some on elses fence and steal their big screen TV, Locke would probably have said, “its time for you to give up that weed, brother.”

Brief example. My friend’s Eagle Scout project in a neighborhood park installing benches, of course. One bench went missing. We found our bench in a shady fort on the backside of some nearby wetlands. An empty, over-sized Hawaian Punch bottle lay on the ground with a tube stuck in it for sucking. We took our bench.

But who’s to say, that was in terrible Washington, maybe weed smokers in Idaho do inconspicuous acts of kindness.

All in all this is my argument. That being said and done, if I get to smoke my weed in a pipe, maybe I'll be in.

Keep Rexburg Real.

Where stood six now stand none. And nobody cares. After a week long demolition project, the historic houses on First West rest diminished to barren holes in the dirt. Where wood beams supported structure now rubble supports chaos. Where trees and sidewalk provided shade and comfort now pot holes and uneven ground allow heat and unease. Memories of the past once resided inside homes and now they have defected with the Rexburg wind leaving a vacant nothingness and stagnant air.  Non-existent homes and cast-away histories give way to a mis-guided future.

The owners of the Pines sealed a lengthy negotiation with the various owners of the houses and soon began plans to put in the Hemming Towers. These buildings will provide much needed housing to many incoming students and better yet will keep urban sprawl down by building up and putting parking down, facilitating an easier walk for future students by keeping things compact, all plusses in my book. The trouble at hand here is not the future, it is the past. It isn’t lovely new apartments that are going up, but it is the destruction of the old ones.

I watched one-by-one the houses be torn down. I rode by them daily on my bike for the past 9 months, through the fall snow, the winter snow, and the spring-time snow; i watched the orange iron beast smash in their sides and crumble their facades, and stump-out their insides, leaving only ruined stairs. I watched the trees they said wouldn’t be taken out be fed to the beast as well, their branches and trunks cracking and snapping under its force. I beheld the pretty brick one smolder and burn, a subject to Madison Fire Department’s training. They kept that one around longer, not because it was pretty but because they needed it to train. It was fed to the beast just like all others. Make way for the future. And forget the past.

The trouble here isn’t the future, its the past. How do we know where we are going if we don’t know where we came from? How do we know who we are if we don’t know who came before us? These houses stood as landmarks, monuments to the past. They were marked with the water line of the Teuton Flood on their walls. Perhaps they  even served as shelters for a war veteran or two, veterans whose names are engraved on the sides of that monument that nobody knows about at smith park. Surely they served as the cradle from the world for many good families. And now they will be forgotten.

Without knowing the past we have no sure direction for the future. We will be compass-less, anchor-less. Our culture and Identity are founded on our past. In a world where the unification of global culture increases and interest-based culture skips across nation and state lines, connecting people by mere electronic impulses, we should fight to maintain our geographic and local identity. Leave your mono-tone-earthen-tone fake stone buildings and frozen yogurt for everywhere else. We don’t need it. Give us something new, but give us something that’s ours. Rexburg should maintain its identity, recognize and celebrate its history, and, yes build on it. Innovate, but do not forsake the past. Celebrate in it. Rejoice for it. Learn from it.

In that I close. I beg of you to act. Keep Rexburg Real.

3,000

Woohoo- 3,000 all time views for Loving Rexburg. Yes! Thank you all for your diligent participation in the blog and well placed appreciation of the written word.

Thank you,
GS

Godzilla What, Kraken What.

This is a little didly I wrote up for my POLSC360 Modern Political Theory class. It was a good time. I turned it in late. You might understand it, its written in the style of Thomas Hobbes of Calvin and Hobbes, or rather the political philosopher Hobbes, of the Leviathan of the Book of Job, if that makes sense?

My hands applaude both the President and the dead man, Osama bin Laden. 

The former for acting so righteously as the sovereign of our country and the latter for providing such a perfect example of man in the condition of mere nature. 

As men are oft to disagree and grow angry at the lack of understanding, let us first set aside some definitions to begin on clear grounds.

Bin Laden’s death a half and a week ago represented the collision of two objects in motion: one the bigger object and one the smaller. The bigger object, being President Obama, let us referre to it as Godzilla, and the smaller object, being bin Laden, let us referre to it as the Kraken.

Godzilla as we know is the gorilla-whale super lizard that pillages and torments villages, created by the Japanese to represent the destructive power of the nuclear bombs of the United States. And it breathes fire. This is Mr. Obama and the nation as a whole, characterizing their confrontational, trigger-happy pridefulness.

The Kraken is a gargantuan spider-like squid monster of enormous size that attacks nautical units with its ravishing tentacles of beastly strength. Perhaps better known by its scientific name Micrcosmus it is a fitting representation of Mr. bin Laden and his sneaky submerged, cloak and dagger tactics. 

Hope is an appetite with opinion of obtaining.

Despaire is the same without such opinion. 

A cup is a cylinder with one side open and one side closed of approximately 8 ounces. 

Now that we have these definitions laid out we may begin. 

First I would like to direct attention to the actions of Godzilla as they excite me. Upon receiving the information of the location of the Kraken, Godzilla counseled with his advisors and then went against their will sending in Navy SEALs to do the kill. The maneuver was successful, his risky move playing out well. 

Thankfully, he went and made the decision himself without even consulting the people, or thinking of their opinion. This is one great step towards a more perfect and stable society. Conversely, he was a foole to council at all with his counsel, as this simply slowed down the decision making process and ran the risk of allowing the victim to escape. If he were to counsel with his council he should make it a point to do so with each one-by-one to gain the proper and unbiased opinion from each. As for the people, there is no reason for you to justify yourself to us, just go and claim the power, finish the nearly done job of becoming sovereign and then all your actions will be justified by simply being your actions. Well done on the unilaterall decision and providing a superb outcome, you near sovereignty by institution.

As for the Kraken, all the poor foole really wanted was to not die. And he failed. But almost succeeded. In a true state of nature Mr. bin Laden raged and lead war against the “infidels” of the United States to promote his own survivall. A pawn of the US in the USSR-Afghan war upon completing his mission he turned his violent heart against his maker, the US. As he had done with the USSR he desired to do to us: lure us into a never-ending conflict which eventually lead us into bankruptcy. And he nearly had us, and maybe would have had us if it weren’t for the quick decision of our sovereign. If yet another air strike had been ordered, who’s to say what would have happened.

Mr. bin Laden, as all men, wanted three things. 

The Kraken desired glory. He rallied muslims across the world in holy Ji’ had, compounding a multitude of problems into one and giving them a singular origin, the United States, all to glorify himself as a saviour figure amongst the muslims and also to win glory for his nation. 

The Kraken desired Gain. He wanted to have more than ourselves, more materials, more monetary wealth, more dominance. By luring us into battle he planned to whittle away at our funds, slowly eating them away until they were no more, at which point he would surely have more than us. 

The Kraken desired security. In the end, this was his desire. He was legitimately afraid of the threat western philosophy and culture posed to the sociall and physicall well-being of his society. He lashed out with all of his many tentacles, attacking from all different directions in an effort to over through us. A lack of space, freedom, customs, resources, and all things existed between Godzilla and the Kraken, so they fought.

He got all but the last; security was not obtained for long. He acted within his right of nature and was justified in his action as no covenant was intact between the two parties. Surely there may have been a covenant between the two in the last years of the USSR, but any such covenants had since dissolved, leaving them in a state without agreement, without norms to follow, and so without justice. Anything went in this war and the Kraken lashed out with everything he had. Godzilla, slightly fatigued, at most, from his attacks, finally quit messing around and pulled out his big guns and blew fire down on the beast, withering its skin, and melting its insides until it died. Godzilla victorious.

In a world where scarcity is omnipresent the unavoidable conflict between the strong and the weak crashed together leaving one dead and one alive. 

Now in closing, I would like to address an issue of particular salaciousness. That is the frat boys of GWU. Regardless of ontology, political standing, and beliefs, their reaction to the death of the Kraken was altogether inappropriate. Celebrating the death of another with drunkenness and crude behavior is indecent and uncalled for in any society. I’m not one to draw out many rules and regulations but I feel like the celebration of death by such means is grotesque and wrong on that it is not beneficial to any party. 

 In sum, I am overall quite pleased with these recent events. I thank President Obama for his decisive action which was entirely justified and I would like to see more actions of power like it. Osama bin Laden provided a classic example of Human Nature and their desire to self-benefit. 

Now I ask you all to act. To subject yourselves to the rule of our President, to provide a more sustainable  society and to preserve your own welfare, and to destroy the remnants of evil wherever they may be.