School Has Begun

School has begun. Put on the brakes. Watch for children. The other day I
drove out near Sugar Island to watch the Walleye's in the shallows and saw
a unique sign "Beware of the Children." I am unsure of what they had meant
to say is what indeed they had said. Language is peculiar that way. What
I meant to say is not necessarily what you interpret my words to mean. And
of course, what words mean to me: language that is: my language vis a vis
your language may have completely different reference points.

This leads me to censorship. Already in the first weeks of school the red
flags of media are flying high warning us of the dangerous world that the
internet is. "Red Sky in the Morning / Sailor takes Warning." Once again
we are inundated with the hype of how dangerous the internet is, the metaphors
that lurk around every IP, the graf/x, filez, warez, virii, and other "content"
-- the "raping" of Napster, the MP3 revolution… it gets really exasperating
after awhile doesn't it? This procurement of dangers that are just waiting
to suck in our children while dressed as some innocuous grandmother…

And of course it is our boys who are the danger. Girls need to fear the internet
because of those dangerous boys who pretend that they are something more
than curious boys hanging out in a chat room sharing their views on sex drugs
and rock and roll. It's disgusting isn't it? I think about how it used to
be back in the day as it were, the "old school" you know what I mean sitting
around the malt shop with Betty and Veronica, Archie, Jughead and the gang
talking about serious things like dating, drinking, and. Music. Or perhaps
that generation of Americans who changed the American social landscape: "sitting
in" on the mall in a timely and often heated discussion on getting laid,
imbibing in herb, and the philosophical meandering of Jim Morrison vis a
vis Jimi Hendrix.

"Here I Come to save the day ...

I was a boy inside a dream just the other day

his mind fell out of his face and the wind blew it away

a hand came out from heaven and pinned a badge on his chest

said get out there man and do your best"

And throughout all of this we told Betty to stay away from "those boys",
we warned "Melody" of "those kind of boys" we cautioned Melba to dance with
her friends and not "those boys", and because we perceived girls as empowered
we suggested that Belinda be selective about "those boys."

"Those Boys" I guess are really the topic of this rant and will probably
surface a lot as it does throughout my day. Because what is happening is
more than a censorship  what we we have is an undeclared war -- a war
on boys: for being boys. OK yeah all right I have heard these arguments against
this but boys seem to be the focus of all that is wrong with the internet.
Boys create "boys only clubs" in chat rooms, or by combining their knowledge
on warez sites, sharing their favorite tastes in music through MP3's (the
reel-to-reel, cassette, 8-track of today.) And of course talking about those
all important things like revolution and girls. What we really have is a
generation gap that confuses it's own importance by declaring war on boys.

Let me leave you with this: why is it an affront to feminism for a boy to
put up pictures of a scantily clad woman (yes to ogle, google, and other
deep unmentionables) but it is perfectly acceptable for a young girl to plaster
her walls with Leonardo or the Backstreet Boys?