Hi, Uh, You're Retarded. Here's Why:

So today, these people on campus were petitioning to get a few anatomy and biology experiments to switch from real animals to computer simulations or videos.

Firstly, videos!?! I will learn so much better now that I'm watching some guy I can't even ask questions to about the little rabbit I'm cutting open so I can stick electrodes into. SO MUCH BETTER. I will know exactly how the tissue resists the knife and how hard I have to pull. I can then later apply this experience from watching someone I don't even know cut open something to the first patient I have to operate on. That patient will surely have the best surgery in the world and will later thank me for completely saving his life. Seriously? A video?

Secondly, a computer simulation?!? You hand any college student a computer program with catchy graphics and the ability to cut things open, and they will liken this experience to playing XBOX with friends. This becomes a video game. There is no respect for video games! I totally want a doctor cutting me open after learning anatomy through a video game. This doctor will be "trigger happy" and cut just a little too much and a little too deeply, but it doesn't matter! I'm not a real person because the computer simulation has conditioned the doctor to be completely okay with it and treat it like a game. Yeah, he will be the best doctor ever and I will thank him for the best surgery performed on the face of the earth and he will cure cancer because of how awesome his surgery skills are. IT WILL BE AWESOME. Seriously? A video game?

Thirdly, Mrs. Jahr, my Biology teacher back as a freshman in high school made us write out a contract to respect the dead fetal pigs we were dissecting. She talked for two days before the dissection about how we have to respect the pigs and that everything we did was for knowledge and if we mutilated the pigs in anyway, we were in so much trouble. Yeah. Our group really wanted to see the brain. We dug it out. It was squishy and did not survive coming out of the skull. But we respected that pig more than it would have been respected if the mother pig had not been butchered so that someone might have some bacon. It was so respected that even without being born, it lived a fuller life than its mother.

That is the kind of doctor I want performing surgery on me. I want the doctor to have gone through enough work with dead or living organisms to the point where anything put on the operating table is treated with more respect than one would normally treat their family.

Now back to my story:
So these people were trying to collect signatures to support PETA's complaint against the "unethical" treatment of these rabbits. The school paper today had an opinion article on this topic. The guy who wrote it had really looked into this topic and made known that there is an entire branch at ASU for research on the ethical treatment of research animals. Anyone handling animals in research are required to submit a lot of paperwork, to go through training on proper handling, and any experiments on animals are sent to a board of faculty and community members for consideration. If there is a more humane and equally effect alternative, the experimentation is denied. This is for every experiment. Obviously, if there were something as effective and more humane, we'd be using it already.

But these people would go to tables where students were eating lunch and ask if they wanted to sign a petition to stop experiments from cutting open bunnies (cute bunnies!) and sticking electrodes into their heart while they were still alive. All the girls would sign immediately thinking they were super special and saved some really cute cotton-tailed bunnies. Major pathos going on. The guy got over to my table. I am fairly immoral. I don't care about the bunnies. I don't care how cute they are. His ethos approach did not get to me. Well, the school would be saving money on it. I think this is a necessary experience any medical expert needs. He talked about necessary as implanting pacemakers or something that would better human life. I still thought this was essential to becoming a qualified practitioner. He left, moving on to easier signatures.

Firstly, these butchered bunnies are under heavy anesthetic. They feel nothing, are in no pain or distress, and pretty much show no sign of life until you get under the skin. They are not asleep; not really. They are completely unaware.

Secondly, bunnies and all mammals are fairly similar. Our bone structure is made of the same bones, of mostly the same shape. Our circulatory system would also be similar.

Thirdly, I'm paying a lab fee for my BIO 188 lab. This covers the frogs that we will be dissecting soon. I'm sure the anatomy students pay a lab fee to cover the rabbits. This cost, in no way, affects the tuition of other students.

So anyways, this entire thing has made me realize just how much I hate people like this. I don't want to fall into the moral standards you all set for me. I like being who I am, immoral and all. I like having no need to stop and wonder if I can live with myself after something. I love who I am. I love all the mistakes I make, all the shit I fuck up, and all the experiences I've had: good or bad. I'm grateful for all the lessons I've learned and all the people it took to teach them to me.

I'm inherently selfish. I was talking to myself this morning and somehow got to talking about being faithful. I told myself I wasn't worried about it. Why? Well, we're satisfied with our current setup, and I fucked up once, so he can fuck up once. Somehow, this all led to telling myself I'm just not worried about it because it's probably not going to happen. I couldn't decide why I knew that, but I guess it's an arrogant and selfish thing to think. Well, it's just a part of the complex mechanism that is me.

-Forever Me
Scarlet Bloodmoon

Thirteen

College is easy. I've been doing well on the exams, meeting some new people, hanging with some old people, all that good stuff. There really isn't much to talk about, which I guess is why I haven't posted since last month, but yeah. I wrote a 5 page paper on abstinence-only education being inadequate. Did you know that the federal funding for this fiscal year does not include any for abstinence education? That being said, we are finally not wasting any money on teaching kids crap and lies about their bodies. Yay! Yeah...

Bought a pack of the new Trojan condoms. Haven't tried them. Eh. They look weird on the box. Tip is like super=-inflated. Yeah.

Started hardcore monitoring my Basal Body Temperature. My mom told me she wasn't able to keep up taking her temperature every morning. I win. A few weeks later, this lady on the campus advocating Natural Family Planning congratulated me on not taking hormone pills. Too bad she had hardcore Catholic literature about how BC pills are evil. Gross.

Um, I had a dream a little bit ago that pretty much made me laugh when I woke up. One of my exes had told me they still loved me. I almost reflexively said "I love you too," but I paused like halfway through and stopped. Instead, I said "I don't love you" or something along those lines. It felt very therapeutic when I woke up. Like, I'm glad my dreams finally agree with the rest of my consciousness.

We are learning about drugs in Psychology right now. It's kind of silly. That's pretty much it for what I've been doing...

-Pain in the Form of Healing
Scarlet Bloodmoon

P.S. - Tried the condoms. That time, I was super easy. It might be the condoms, or it might have just been that time. No idea. It didn't look as weird on a penis as it did on the box, so that's a plus.