Z - Zoo Fun

When my children were younger, (by younger I mean young enough that they still appreciated their father and hadn't learned how to talk back yet) we would take weekly road trips. I had a job where I worked long hours and didn't see the family much during the week, but I always had weekends off and we liked to spend it on the road. Every Saturday, we would load up the car, head to Huck's to grab some gas station road trip food (mini tacos, egg rolls, sodas, etc.) and hit the road.

Some days, we ended up in a state park. A few times we stumbled onto a small town festival. Other times, we would drive into a big city. Often, we didn't even have a destination in mind when we left the house. We would just pick a direction and start driving. I loved these trips.

One particular Saturday, we decided to head to the zoo. When it comes to zoo trips, we are really lucky. We live in southern Illinois and the St. Louis Zoo is less than 90 minutes away. This is the zoo I grew up going to and it spoiled me for other zoos. It is ranked as one of the best zoos in the entire country, so I always end up disappointed when I am visiting someone in another part of the country and we end up at a lesser zoo. Our zoo is awesome. Suck it, Cleveland.

I was particularly excited for this trip because my kids were at that magical age. Kirsten was two and Christian was six. They would think the animals were the coolest things in the world to get to see. Plus, it was springtime and we had been looking forward to getting out of the house after the long winter.

Once we got there, we headed to the exhibit I always insist that we visit first. THE PENGUINS! I love penguins. I always have. This practice of seeing the penguins as soon as we get there first started when I was a child and I still do it when I go back to visit. After I see the penguins, I don't care where we go. I am happy.

I couldn't wait to share these magnificent birds with the kids and hurried them into the penguin house. As soon as we got inside, I unstrapped Kirsten from her stroller, put her up on my shoulders and turned around to see this:

Chicka-Chicka-Wa-Waa

"OK, let's see what's happening on the other side of the enclosure."

We moved further down to get away from the happy couple and were met with another public penguin porn performance. However, this time it was more like a penguin orgy. There were at least half a dozen penguin couples getting an early jump on the day…and each other. As much as I love penguins, I decided that maybe we should come back later. I don't allow guests in my bedroom to watch without paying admission and since the St. Louis Zoo is free, this just didn't feel right. Plus, I had my kids with me.

We worked our way up the hill to Big Cat Country to take in the jungle cats. My kids lost interest in the leopard pretty quickly because it just sat there.  The panther couldn't be seen, but the tigers were much more playful.

In the very next enclosure, the lions were up to the same thing. My wife commented that the animals seem to be enjoying the springtime weather as much as we were.

About 20 minutes later, we learned that the monkey house was not the place to be right now either. I will spare you the pictures. They are much more graphic.

We left the zoo after being there less than two hours, but in that time we got to see elephants, buffalo, three different species of bear, antelopes and even snakes getting it on. We decided that in future years, we would wait until later in the season to visit the zoo.

I Used To Work In Porn - Part Two

This post is a continuation of the post from yesterday. Before reading, you may want to visit this post to get caught up.

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As explained in yesterday's post, I had accidentally fallen into a way to make money and had started looking for ways to make more. Suddenly, finding myself surrounded by hard-core pornography, I had an idea.

Kids didn't have access to this kind of stuff. Other than sneaking looks at the Playboy's in their dad's closets, this was unavailable to people our age. However, I had access to a lot of it and I was just positive they would be willing to pay.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I found any excuse I could to ride my bike into town. This town was in the city limits and I lived a few miles out. I would go into the abandoned house, load up my backpack and ride back home to put the magazines in boxes under my bed. It took me a few dozen trips to get them all. Occasionally, my friend who found them was available to help me, but most of the time, I was on my own.

The second floor of our house consisted of only the bedrooms of my brothers and myself, so my parents didn't come up there very often. I used this fortunately convenient privacy as an opportunity to start sorting through these adult publications to get them in some sort of reasonable order. Once I felt that I had a decent grasp on my inventory and was familiar with what I had, it was time to find buyers.

I never got caught with anything at school, but there were a few close calls. A bunch of students standing and giggling in the middle of the hallway while crowded around something had a tendency to attract the attention of school faculty. I quickly decided that was too risky. I needed another tactic.

On the weekends, I would load up my backpack and make house calls. I went to kids' houses and showed them what I had. Since, I had paid nothing for any of it, every sale was pure profit. I sold most magazines for five dollars, but I quickly discovered that junior high kids really had no grasp on what stuff was worth and could sometimes sell a magazine for as much as twenty. I could really pull a lot of money by cutting one up and selling individual pictures for a dollar or two a piece.

I know these prices sound outrageous, but a sixth grader would give me anything he could get his hands on in order to have his own picture of a naked woman.

I would go with my parents to a wedding and gather several kids to go outside and see what I had brought. Soon the money would start changing hands. I sold porn to kids from my school, kids from other schools at basketball games, kids I had never met at weddings and anyplace else that I could. Looking back on it, I have no idea how I never got ratted out by any of them.

Eventually, my friend who had originally found all the magazines, decided he wanted a bigger cut of the money I was making. I had been paying him 10% since he was the one who had found them, but did not feel that he was entitled to any more since he wasn't doing any of the work and was incurring none of the risk. However, he did not agree. Finally, he demanded that I give him half of the magazines that I still had or he would inform my parents of what I had been doing. I stood firm and decided to call his bluff.

He wasn't bluffing.

He showed up at our house the very next day and told my mother. Now, he either didn't tell her the entire story or she missed some of the details during the shock of what she was hearing, but when she came to talk to me, she didn't know about the porn ring I was running out of my bedroom. All she knew was that I had pornography in my possession.

When she told me to retrieve the magazines out of my room, I will never forget the look on her face as her jaw dropped when I came down the stairs carrying two large paper grocery bags filled to the top. When I turned around to go back to my room, she said, "Where are you going? We aren't done here."

I sheepishly answered, "There's more. I'm going to get the rest."

My poor mother spent the next couple of hours trying not to look at the dirty pictures as she cried over a burn barrel while ripping them up to toss in the fire. I sat in the house wondering what would happen when dad got home and found out.

I know NOTHING!

When she asked my little brothers if they had seen my magazines, thankfully, they both covered for me. They claimed they didn't know anything about them. They may have just been covering their own butts, but had Mom known that my little brothers had been subjected to that filth as well, I would have been in much more trouble.

I didn't get into as much trouble as I thought I would. In fact, I never heard a word about it from my dad, but my future as a porn empire magnate was over. Being so young, the money I made was not spent on anything substantial. I have no idea how much passed through my hands since it was being spent as I made it. I remember that I always had a soda when I wanted one and I could buy a book or video game for myself if my parents said no. Soon it was all gone and I had nothing to show for it.

I ended up back where I started and had to go back to selling lunch room tickets, but I was smarter than before. However, it would be many years before I would be able to use my new knowledge. Turns out that real life was not like those magazines.

I Used To Work In Porn - Part One

This post inspired by the writing prompt at Can I Get Another Bottle of Whine With My Morning Quiet Time?.  Writing prompt: When I was younger I tried...

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When I was younger I tried to manage a pornography ring.

I know that is a heavy statement. Let me back up and explain.

When I graduated from elementary school and entered high school, I was scared out of my mind. I just knew I would get stabbed the first day. If for some reason I did survive, I would have to spend all my energy dodging junkies, avoiding getting sucked into a gang and practicing to "Just say NO!"

When I actually got there and lived through my first day, I concluded that it wasn't that bad. I was a puny nerd and it was still a bit intimidating, but I was more comfortable than when I first entered that morning. After a couple of weeks, I began to get a feel for the place.

I very quickly began to notice some of the differences from the years before. In junior high, we paid for our school lunches well ahead of time. Our parents could pay for the entire year up front or cover a month at a time. If they were behind, they would get billed and catch up, but high school did it differently.

The high school sold lunch tickets to be presented in the cafeteria in exchange for a meal. These tickets could only be purchased before school or during lunch period from the guidance counselor.

One ticket = one cafeteria meal = $1.

One week's lunch. It all started with this.

Every Monday, my parents gave me five dollars to buy a week's worth of tickets for my lunch. I bought them as soon as I got to school and put them in my wallet. However, not everyone had the foresight that I did. Many students never thought about their lunch until the lunch bell rang. Then they would have to go stand in line at the guidance counselor's office to get a ticket before crossing the parking lot to the cafeteria to stand in line again to get their food. By then, all the best stuff might be gone and they had already lost almost half of the already short 30 minute lunch period.

One day in class, I pulled the tickets out of my wallet to rip one off and stick in my pocket. The bell was about to ring and I didn't want to waste any time. It was pizza day and I wanted to be ready to bolt as soon as I heard that bell. 

A guy in the next row saw my tickets and asked if he could buy one. He had forgotten to get his earlier and didn't want to stand in line and miss the best pizza. So, I sold him one. That caught another guy's attention and I ended up selling all I had, except the one for me. All that meant was that I would have to buy more tickets the next morning. It was no big deal.

The next day, I was asked again if I had extras. I said I did and sold them, but griped that they should plan ahead and buy their own. Once again, I had to stand in line the next day to replace them. I hated standing in that line and vowed that I would not sell any more tickets. It just wasn't worth it. It's not like I was getting anything out of this......WHOA! Wait a minute! What if I could get something out of it? If I made a little bit of money, it would be worth it.

When I was asked for my extra tickets right before lunch the next day, I held my head up and demanded $1.50.

DUMB JOCK: "What? Tickets only cost a dollar."

ME: "Wrong. The guidance counselor charges a dollar, but she doesn't sell tickets in this room. This room is my market and here they cost $1.50. If you don't want to pay it, then go stand in her line."

While he thought about it, the guy behind me decided it was worth it to be able to avoid the delay and lose all that time. He paid me what I asked for, which prompted others to do the same. I only sold four tickets, but that meant I had made a two dollar profit. I used all that money to buy more tickets and keep doing the same. Within a couple of weeks, I was buying 10 to 20 lunch tickets every morning before school. I sold them at a 50% mark up selling out almost every day. I averaged $25 to $40 a week in profits. Not bad for a 14 year old kid.

Like most people, I got a little greedy and wanted to make more money. I tried jumping the price to $1.75, but no one would buy at that price. It hurt my sales which killed my profits and I quickly dropped the price back again. Since I always had extra money, I tried loaning some occasionally. I would buy someone a soda or candy bar if they agreed to pay me back within a week plus a little extra. I even carried a pocket notebook around to keep track of my transactions. However, being a little nerdy guy, I really had no way to enforce collections if someone stiffed me. It never occurred to me to hire a bruiser, so the loan shark game was short lived. I went back to all money up front.

Soon, I lucked upon the knowledge that there was a way to get two sodas from the soda machine when only one was purchased. After school, I stood beside the machine and would offer to get students an extra soda if they paid for one and a half. Sodas were $1. If they put a dollar in the machine and then gave me fifty cents, I would get them two sodas. They got more than they paid for and I made fifty cents per transaction. That added a few extra dollars each day to my profits, but it was too slow. I needed something bigger.

It wasn't long before bigger happened. A friend of mine was wandering around town and decided to go into an abandoned house one weekend. This house had sat empty for well over a year and he just wanted to see what was inside. He discovered a closet full of pornographic magazines. He told me about it at school the next day.

As a 14 year old boy, I was very interested in seeing these magazines and accompanied him to the house the following weekend. I was amazed. There were literally a few hundred magazines of all types. Up to that time, I had only seen a couple of Playboys at a friend's house, but these were different. They were not standard publications. They were not just full of naked women. They were hard-core porn and a lot of them. I had never seen anything like what was in these pages and it occurred to me that most other kids hadn't seen this stuff before either. Remember - this was years before the internet.

Then, the idea hit me like a thunderbolt. Other kids hadn't seen this stuff. I was sitting on a goldmine.

Everything about my little business was about to change, but this post has gotten long enough. I will wrap it up in the next post. I know it seems unfair since I just now finally got to the porn part, but there was a lot of back story.

For those of you who are overly excited and are unsure if you can wait for the porn, I hear that there are plenty of other sites that can accommodate you until then.

Sexiest People Alive

This month, ESQUIRE magazine declared Mila Kunis to be the "Sexiest Woman Alive."

While I have to agree that Mila is a very attractive woman, I don't know how this is determined since I don't remember voting or even being asked my opinion on the matter. Of course, they may have considered me biased since I have a rather strong predilection toward a certain redhead.

On the flip side, earlier this week, PEOPLE magazine claimed that Channing Tatum is the "Sexiest Man Alive."

Once again, my opinion was not sought out in this matter, and I have to admit that I just don't see it. Also, I was not asked for a face shot so the people who decided this could compare all the people alive to make this determination.

While I will admit that 'sexy' is a relative term that will be applied to different people for a variety of reasons, the fact remains that there are a lot of incredibly attractive people who are outside of Hollywood. However, they will not get the recognition they deserve simply because they have not been in a movie covered in layers of make up and filmed at the most beneficial angles after spending hours with their personal trainers.

I challenge my readers to pull their eyes away from the Hollywood spotlight for a moment to take a look at what the 'real' people of this country have been up to this week.

Never mind. I retract my original statement.