Texas Sex-Ed Textbooks Remove All Mention of Sex

ducators nationwide were dismayed by the Texas Board of Education’s decision this week to approve four new sexual education textbooks for use in the state’s schools, none of which mention sex, reproduction, or the human body in any way.

“Sex education should be about educating kids to never have sex, as the Lord intended,� explained Carl Lowell, a spokesperson for the board. “It shouldn’t be about giving them pointers on how to break the baby Jesus’ heart.�

Texans everywhere appeared to be eerily on the same page when it came to the topic of the board’s decision, leaving the impression that the entire state may only have one brain, buried deep underground in a Mason jar somewhere for safekeeping.

“It’s simple. If you don’t tell kids about sex, then they’re not gonna have any,� reasoned otherwise sane-looking Austin high-school teacher Reginald Barrow. “I mean, duh! Where else are they going to find out about it, if not at school? Hello? McFly! If we can keep a lid on this thing, we may just be able to save these kids.�

While the textbooks that have been in use in Texas classrooms for the last ten years have frequently come under fire for mentioning that condoms exist, as well as letting the cat out of the bag that you have to be naked to “do it,� the new books have received nothing but support from delusional parents and opportunistic politicians statewide.

“It’s time to strike a blow against the liberal pro-sex agenda,� reasoned Clyde Hamms, some kind of local blowhard. “Texas wants the world to know, ain’t no kids doin’ the devil’s dance here. Texas teenagers are too busy reading bibles and beatin’ on queers, God bless ‘em. Too busy doing the Lord’s work to be fornicating and pornobulating.� After strenuous cross-examination, Hamms admitted to making up that second term.

“Texas teens are too busy having a good time to worry about you-know-what!� beamed Houston-area sex-ed teacher Mandi Smith. “Between sock hops and making your own ice cream at home, who wants to derail the good time by messing with S-E-X? That sounds like something California teens would do.�

“Fuck you, rednecks,� answered California School Board president Arthur Cambridge, when informed of Smith’s remarks.

The new textbooks, understandably light on content due to their inability to even address the stated subject, are mostly filled with stock photography of nature scenes and kittens, overlaid with inspirational Successory-style quotations meant to bolster a Texas student’s assumed Christian faith during the difficult adolescent years. What little additional text the books do contain is made up of fun activities for teens to try as alternatives to sex, including boating, macramé, and skeet shooting. Also included are handy exercises for when you get “that funny feeling downstairs,� like hitting yourself in the nuts with a hammer or slamming a breast in a car door.

Though Texas has long had one of the nation’s highest rates of teenage pregnancy, residents of the highly-religious state insist that those numbers will come right on down once they’re rid of schoolbooks encouraging kids to hump with their descriptions of safe-sex techniques and ways to prevent sexually transmitted diseases.

“Those young bodies writhin’ and copulatin’,� lamented Amarillo high school principal Ed Haste, becoming audibly aroused after calling the commune offices late one night with an unsolicited quote. “It just ain’t right! That stuff should only be in magazines, kept locked up in the drawer under my nightstand, not in our schools. Kids not in sexy magazines shouldn’t be having sex until they’re married, if then!� sobbed Haste, who later admitted to losing his virginity in the back room of biker bar at the age of eleven, a strange non-sequitur considering this reporter had just asked what time it was in Texas.

Unfortunately for Texas, the new textbooks have run afoul of federal education requirements, which stipulate that public-school students must at least have some vague concept of what sex is by the time they graduate high school, lest they be taken advantage of by more savvy classmates and teachers in college. After the filing of numerous lawsuits this week, Texas legislators have begrudgingly called for the printing of an additional sex-related pamphlet to supplement the new textbooks, though even this conciliatory gesture has come under fire from educators outside the state due to an alleged loose handling of the facts.

Among other dubious claims, the proposed pamphlets teach that when a man becomes aroused, his penis swells to the size of a watermelon, often resulting in social embarrassment and death. The pamphlet also claims that after copulation, it is customary for the female of the species to devour the male alive, leaving no trace. This passage was originally written in reference to the praying mantis, but through cleverly positioning of the text next to a photo of Glenn Close from Fatal Attraction, the pamphlet obscures this context. And though the assertion is not as-yet verifiable by science, the pamphlet also claims that each time a young man comes, it makes the baby Jesus weep.

Coming under particular fire is the chapter explaining how teenage sex causes a mutation of fetal DNA, resulting in babies with sharp, dagger-like teeth that burst through the abdomen when their thirst for blood becomes too great to bear. But interestingly, the even more spurious references to large, clawed creatures that inhabit the areas near Texas’ borders, making ever leaving the state an unwise proposition, have drawn little criticism from educators who question the wisdom of allowing Texans into their own states.

week following the Democratic National Convention, and nearly a month after Milwaukee's Green Party Convention, a lesser known third party held their national convention in Athens, Georgia. The Hemp Party, formed in 2002, officially announced their candidates for the 2004 presidency.

It's their first presidential election, but in the air was a sense of excitement, and a familiar odor the commune couldn't quite place. One after another, speakers rose to express their vision of one unified party, to lay out the platform, and to define their four years in control of the White House, all in the convention site of the Athens Holiday Inn off Highway 31.

"We're going to win this, 'cause, I really think we got a chance," declared Hemp Party Consultant Daniel Vincent. "People call me crazy, and you can call me crazy, you know, whatever… but if people just, like, rose up and all voted their conscience and shit, we'd have the White House. And maybe I'm an optimist, man, but I say it could happen."

The party starts at a severe disadvantage, not only as a third party, but a relatively new third party that not only lacks national funding, but has yet to establish themselves with a wide variety of voters. In fact, the party doesn't even have a presence in more than six states, though thanks to chat rooms, word is growing. Even if they don't take the White House, which some would describe as a political and real-world impossibility, they hope to build party support and name recognition through their efforts. Since their nominees will not appear on any ballots, the party said they are putting the faith on word-of-mouth buzz and write-in ballots.

No schedule of events was given out to guests, or even compiled, but a less fascist approach to conventions called on speakers to stand up and "get shit off their mind" when they felt inclined to address the body of 37 who attended from all over the country. Like Nate, the cat with the Bob Marley shirt, he's from Alaska, and hitched down just to be here.

"We are the future, man," said Lindsey DeLila, a party Consultant from Wisconsin. "Not the guys in office now. They're old, and they don't even know their time is over. They got to give up the government, so sooner or later, we have to run the country. I'm so stoked about this I could, like, lose it, right here."

Like many in attendance, DeLila represented former Green Party voters who were dissatisfied with the party being taken over by corporations, or their general uptight nature; other newcomers to the Hemp Party showed up thinking it was something different. But no matter the variety of backgrounds, the greatest excitement of the night came when Party Head Billy "Party-Head" Kinkaid announced their 2004 presidential ticket: Joey "Rooster" Jackson, and his running mate, some guy named Dave who wouldn't reveal his last name.

"I believe the children are our future," said Jackson, stifling a giggle and waving for Dave to quiet down, as his speech stirred the bleary-eyed audience. "Teach them well, and let them lead the way. Because in the end… I get knocked down, but I get up again… yeah, that's it! You know the words!"

Lyric, off-rhythm chanting began, signifying the end of the convention as local authorities showed up with complaints about noise.

Long about this time every year, the days just get too nice to be wasted sitting around the commune offices, modifying my wrist rocket or flinging boomerangs out the window in the hope that they'll hook back into Raoul Dunkin's window for an Aussie Good Morning. When it gets this nice, it becomes imperative to take the day off, but not the kind of weak-assed "authorized" days off that normal chumps take. Nope, Monday I decided it was time for an Omar Bricks Day Off, the kind where everybody thinks you're still at work but you're actually far away, pushing a greased pig in through the back door of a titty bar somewhere.

Now, though it may sound like all fun and panicked strippers to the novice, an Omar Bricks Day Off is actually a complicated undertaking. If word got to Bagel that I was going to fuck off for the day I'd be in some serious shit, because he'd definitely want to tag along and there's no way I was going to have that big sack of weird following me around all day. I somehow ended up at a boat show with Bagel one time and that Zagnut actually tried to buy the convention center, so he could lock the doors and claim ownership of all the boats and people in attendance. How embarrassing. So needless to say, I needed to bust open a big can of covertness, and fast, unless I wanted to spend the day listening to Bagel talk about how he was suing the television show Method and Red for stealing his character.

At first I tried to set up a mannequin at my desk, to fool people into thinking I was actually here but just really bored, but that idea quickly went over like a fat man in a hot air balloon. Every time I left my office to get more stealthing supplies, I came back to find that somebody had mistaken the mannequin for Raoul Dunkin and knocked its head off. After the third time I thought about trying to bolt the head on better, but with my luck somebody would set the damned thing on fire while I was gone, and then my ruse would be up and somebody else would have their whole day ruined when they found out Dunkin was still alive.

So instead I tethered a monkey to my desk and put a Jane Fonda workout tape in the VCR, which sadly was enough to convince most of the staff that I'd made it in to work for the day. It probably would have fooled Bagel too, except the ape went monkeyshit when the tape ended and it couldn't find the rewind button on the remote. I've heard conflicting accounts about the kind of mayhem that ensued, the only constant being that at some point, the monkey definitely ate Lil Duncan's brassiere.

So from what I hear, from that moment the hunt was on, with Bagel stopping at nothing convenient to find out where I'd gone and why I hadn't invited him. That's what I hear anyway, I was at the discus factory by that time, still under the impression that the goddamned monkey was doing his job.

At some point Bagel stopped by my house, jimmied the lock with the key that got melted in there during a hot-doorknob prank last year, and questioned Foghat as to my whereabouts. At which time Foghat passively resisted by pissing out an open window. Great dog.

From what I understand Bagel made his way to the uniform store from there, thinking that was a place I'd go, which was a plain stupid move on his part. I'd already been there earlier in the morning, and that trail was colder than a passed-out hooker on a winter morning. By then I was borrowing Bob Dylan's Jesus jacket from the Hard Rock Café on the other side of town, a move Bagel wouldn't intuit until hours later, when he caught wind of that afternoon's surprise Dylan concert in the park.

I finally gave Bagel the shake later in the afternoon by listing the lost frames of the Zapruder film on eBay; I hear the bidding got up to a quarter-million before somebody realized I had just scanned in the negatives from my trip to the Ferrari museum. Sure, it screwed my eBay rating, but it got Bagel off my ass long enough for me to ride in the Black Power parade, and that was well worth a couple of death threats in my feedback listing.

Even though I never got to the Louvre as planned, the day still ranked as a stellar Bricks fuck-off, and convinced me that I should really do this kind of thing more often. The question is: Would every day be too often? There's only one way to find out.

Bricks off.

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