The other night I was walking home after class, pissed off because I still hadn’t found a date for that weekend, when my old lab partner drove up out of nowhere and offered me a ride.

I couldn’t help but laugh. I had always been curious, and had secretly hoped we’d run into each other outside of class, but the opportunity never came up. Yet here it nearly ran me over. For once it felt like the universe was on my side.

I tried to keep cool and got in the car. I hadn’t noticed earlier, probably because I’d been too busy trying to remember how to talk, but the inside was pretty hotboxed. It smelled like Fruit Loops and I could barely see the clock on the dashboard. After a couple minutes I realized that not only was the time way off, but the numbers were actually moving backwards, which I didn’t know was even possible.

We reached the railroad tracks and sat and waited for the train to pass. It was moving mockingly slow, so we decided it’d be a good idea to turn off the engine.

I couldn’t think of anything to say. There was something romantic about the dirty air and the noisy train behind our awkward silence. I didn’t want to fuck it up.

I told him that it smelled really good, and he laughed and pulled out a half-smoked joint. I handed him a lighter and he pulled the keys out of the ignition. But when he got a good look at my lighter, he crammed it back into my left pocket and told me that white lighters are bad luck.

He sparked up the joint and passed it to me. But the fumes and the touching already had me a little slow. And when he turned on the radio, I somehow got even more dazed.

I took a hit and tried to pass it back to him, but he didn’t take it. He smiled and told me to keep going, that I needed to catch up.

I was surprised by how relaxed he looked. In class he was never still. Poor guy was pre-med, and had an adorable fear of getting B’s. But at night he was loose and happy and even seemed to have developed a set of dimples.

Then out of nowhere he turns to me and says, “Still straight?”

It’s a good thing the air was coated in smoke, or else he would have easily seen how immediately red I got. But somehow, thankfully, the stoner in me took over and realized exactly what he was asking about.

I responded that the joint wasn’t burning straight, that it had a bit of a run on it and that it wasn’t really hitting.

He took it, tossed it out the window, and said he had something better. He pulled out a pipe, packed it and jokingly warned me that it was very potent.

Before he passed it to me, he chivalrously torched the mouthpiece to kill all the germs. He then tried to wipe it off on his sweater, but his sleeve rolled up without him noticing and he ended up rubbing the hot glass directly on his arm.

He was a little shocked at the pain, but then laughed at his mistake. I noticed that it had left an inky smudge on his forearm and, without thinking, I reached over and wiped it off with my thumb.

Outside, the rusty train seemed to have gotten even slower and louder.

I brought the pipe up to my mouth and sparked it up. But, embarrassingly enough, I didn’t do it right and the little bud broke free from out of the bowl and started flying around the inside of the car.

We both immediately started chasing it, but it was too fast and just made us look downright silly.

Still half on fire, it flew around and around and made me even dizzier than I already was. It crashed into the steering wheel and into the windows, all the while leaving behind a floating trail of burning ash.

He finally caught it and crammed it back into my pipe. He clasped his hand over mine, and held the little bud in place with his thumb.

I brought it up to my mouth again, and then torched the bowl and inhaled. I held it in for a little while, and then coughed it out the window.

Outside, the air was cool and quiet and I realized that the train had been long gone.

LEO OCAMPO can somewhat be reached at gocampo@ucdavis.edu.

Sex & Society

A couple of days ago, in the middle of a late-night tampon run, I stumbled across a line of products under the name “Summer’s Eve.”

The shelves in front of me boasted an assortment of vaginal “cleansing” products, including douches, deodorants and travel-size cleansing pads. They came in an array of flirtatious artificial scents, like Sweet Romance and Island Splash.

Turns out, Summer’s Eve came under some pretty heavy criticism last year when they ran a series of commercials targeted at different racial groups. In these ads, talking hands meant to represent each woman’s “wonder down under” spoke in stereotyped white, black and Hispanic accents. These pseudo-vaginas demanded the care and attention they deserved, and encouraged their women to be “BFFs” with their lady-parts.

Most of the negative attention landed on the racial stereotyping presented in the commercials. But what really irked me about these ads, and the products in general, was that the company was shaming women into something unnecessary — even unsafe — under the guise of embracing female sexuality.

First off, products like these lead to the belief that women’s vaginas should smell like … not vaginas. They suggest that the natural scent of a healthy cunt is Tropical Rain, and that anything short of a potpourri purse is desperately in need of some Summer’s Eve “cleansing.”

This is shaming women, not empowering them.

Sure, it’s great to see more open discussion about women’s bodies in the media. But that’s not what this is. On the surface, Summer’s Eve is simply coasting on the wave of trendy sexual liberation. Their website flaunts a “V Glossary,” defining terms like G-Spot and Kegel, and other ads go so far as to call the vagina “the center of the universe.” Unfortunately, their products’ implied messages are not tackling the stigma attached to female sexuality. In a way, they’re actually advocating this stigma in the name of increased sales, playing off of the constant reminders most women grow up with, that their anatomy is inherently dirty and impure.

Besides making women feel ashamed of their pheromones, products like these can also be downright unhealthy. While every vagina has its own unique aroma (influenced by diet, exercise, normal bacteria, ovulation and menstruation), drastic changes in smell can indicate problems. Starting each day with a spritz of Morning Paradise could disguise the strong, fishy smell that usually indicates bacterial vaginosis. Covering up with a layer of Delicate Blossom during your lunch breaks could distract from the malty, bread-like scent that is often a precursor to yeast infections.

Even worse is douching, or the rinsing of the vaginal canal. Despite the claim that Summer’s Eve products are gynecologist-tested, I have never heard any medical professional advise the use of douches. Douching is not only unnecessary; it can be quite harmful, too. For one, douching can dry out, inflame, irritate and even tear vaginal tissue, which increases the risk of contracting STIs.

Douching also messes with the female body’s natural balance. Part of what makes vaginas so fascinating is their ability to self-regulate delicate pH, yeast and bacteria levels. Rinsing the vaginal canal with water or even a “specially balanced” Summer’s Eve solution can disrupt these levels, which often lead to infection.

Even worse, if these infections are present, douching can push them farther in toward the cervix or uterus. This increases the chance of developing PID (pelvic inflammatory disease), a much more serious infection. If a woman tries to use douching as a form of birth control (don’t), she can even put herself at risk of an ectopic pregnancy, which can be fatal if left untreated. Unsurprisingly, the “Vagina Owner’s Manual” on the Summer’s Eve website makes little to no mention of these dangers.

The Summer’s Eve campaigns are irresponsible because they make douching and perfuming the vagina seem like a basic part of female hygiene. Though those trendy talking vagina-hands may seem to tell you otherwise, making women feel ashamed of their bodies to increase sales is not in the best interest of vaginal health. No matter how empowering the message may seem, Summer’s Eve is simply perpetuating the same exploitative body-shaming they claim to be fighting.

MARISA MASSARA should be writing a Chaucer essay, but vaginas are more fun. She can be reached at mvmassara@ucdavis.edu.

The Anarchist

We live in a world full of death, suffering and extreme despotism. There are some hard problems to fix. Some other highly pervasive problems are not so hard. The endurance of hard problems doesn’t need an explanation: We haven’t solved them because they’re hard.

But what is the explanation for the persistence of the easy problems? Well, I think their very existence is proof of a thesis that I frequently supply and that I want to try to further explicate here. People cannot solve problems that should be easily fixed because some powerful institutions do not want those problems fixed. It would reduce their power.

Every institution acts in this way. This is what causes the manipulation of ideologies. The most powerful groups naturally filter information. By coercing information, our actions are controlled and the easy problems remain.

No one is forcing anyone to write anything. The world is comprised of institutions that craft the society to fit whatever upholds their power.

This has two important effects. One — those people who honestly and sincerely hold the beliefs that uphold power will naturally be selected for. Megyn Kelly or Brian Williams, these people really believe the totally bogus stuff that they say. It’s not that the media is full of liars who want to uphold power.

It is full of people who were selected for success because they happened to be properly submissive to the ideology that they were indoctrinated into. Success in news media is the ability to seem critical and feel critical while being really, really not critical. Have you heard of any major muckraking journalists exposing big truths lately? I haven’t.

Second — powerful institutions can exclude or minimize voices that would question the framework in which they address issues. This topic is dealt with thoroughly by Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman. In her book “Breaking the Sound Barrier,” she argues that through sheer volume, corporate media (the media most crafted by elite institutions) drowns out real dissent.

If there are hundreds of web pages and news sites with heavy advertising bombarding people, then the one skeptical page that they come across will seem weird and false. Furthermore, by repetition and reaffirmation, a sort of confirmation bias can be built into people’s thinking.

That is, people are presented with fact X and fact Y by corporate media. Then later, they get fact Z. All three facts cohere nicely, and it all seems to fit. It all works; it must be true! Since X and Y seem true, then this gives Z credence. Since Z seems true, it gives X and Y credence. It is a circular method of self-affirmation. It is an astoundingly effective form of manipulation. Now imagine this type of confirmation bias, not with three facts, but with thousands.

That is the framework of thought imposed upon us.

The underlying idea that enables this can be reduced. The myth of objectivity is as rampant as it is ludicrous. There is no objective standpoint. What is called “objective” is merely the very center of accepting the framework of the elites’ discourse. That center is non-challenging. “Objective” simply means “non-critical.”

People have assumed that fair assessment of facts means conforming to the prevailing assessments. That is a failure. That is not what objectivity is supposed to mean. In fact, eminent biologist Stephen Jay Gould proposed this very idea in the sciences: “Objectivity must be operationally defined as fair treatment of data, not absence of preference.”

The mere fact that news media would choose to report one thing and not another is a statement of preference, a statement of value. Human speech is riddled with implicit value judgments. To think that any report of news could be devoid of preference or ideology is absurd. The myth of objectivity is the most blatant example of Newspeak ideology — anything that doesn’t sound like corporate media is radical and non-objective.

Objectivity is good when it is real objectivity — the fair treatment of data. Ironically, if we treat the data fairly, we will easily come to the conclusion that major media is not really objective, not even close.

Major corporate conglomerates are not going to pay you to undermine worldviews that they benefit from. If you’re a real journalist, then these groups will treat you with hostility. If you are a fake journalist, an intellectual submissive, then you may be in for a highly successful career in journalism.

BRIAN MOEN doesn’t want to offend young journos, but embolden them. He can be reached at bkmoen@ucdavis.edu.