balltap.

Maybe you already noticed this on my Click 4 Happy page.  Maybe not.

But seriously, my local news spent their time collecting data for this report!  Speaking as a soon-to-be Journalism major, that is simply awesome.  Unfortunately, I cannot add much more than than The Chicagoist already did.  And really, at this point, it’s all over the Internet.  Why?

Because after airing the first report, which you just watched, they did a follow-up report.  With a real, unshadowed source!

(Unfortunately, I could not find video of this except on WTHR’s website – click “Ball Tapping Part 2.”)

Now, I could easily go on a journalistic tangent here.  I’ll spare you that.  What I’m more intrigued by, actually, is WTHR’s assertion that swinging a motherflipping socket wrench at someone’s junk is “ball tapping.”

Admittedly, it’s been a while since junior high.  But as far as I remember from all those wonderfully awkward years, a “ball tap” was more of a flick to the balls.  Effectively done with two fingers.  There was no punching.  There was no kicking.  There sure as hell wasn’t any freaking socket wrench involved!  At some point, we can no longer assert this activity as “ball tapping.”  At some point, it just becomes assault.  As in, that person isn’t playing a game.  They’re actually engaging in a criminal activity.  And you would find very few other individuals, even at that awkward stage when smacking another dude’s sack is somehow not homoerotic, that would consider a socket wrench as part of their ball-tapping arsenal.

I almost feel really bad for this Jacob Arend kid.  WTHR essentially took a serious assault story and totally misused it under the ball-tapping category, when it’s obviously much more of a disturbing case than a flick to the boys.  I really hope he and his father understand that this isn’t merely some extension of a weird game that adolescents play.  Somehow, I get the feeling that WTHR instigated this whole misinformation campaign with their first segment (the one embedded in this post that suggests kicking someone in the groin is “ball tapping”), this family saw it and for whatever opportunistic or slightly misguided reason approached WTHR about it, and Channel 13 just ran with it from there.  Now frightened parents everywhere are fearing for their childrens’ urinary tracts.

My point is – clearly, there is a line where ball-tapping becomes something far more malicious.  I mean, if somebody bends it like Beckham on the opposite pole of the rectum (that rhymes!), that is not ball-tapping.  That is pure douchitude.  If somebody swings a socket wrench…that’s assault.  Let’s make these distinctions clear.  It’s bad enough that WTHR exposes ball-tapping as an epidemic.  Now they just classify all gradients of the act as exactly the same thing, when clearly we need to be far more concerned about some instances than others.

And because of this, whenever Jacob Arend applies for a job, he’s going to get Googled and revealed as “the boy whose urethra was scarred from something that was clearly beyond ball-tapping.”  Which is totally unfair to him, I think.

learning.

Because the Hundred Years War is clearly Ancient History.

Seriously, I posted this because for some reason someone commented on it on my Photobucket account. The comment? I quote: “haha.” That makes me feel good inside. One, because I didn’t even know Photobucket had comments, or anyone outside of this blog could see these DRAWRings. Two, because the last comment I got, on Mostly Junkfood, called me a “fagot.” And I would rather be considered comical than a “fagot” (though it’s probably a combination of both, right?)

Also, higher learning. Yeah.

I feel like I’ve received very little in terms of enlightenment out of my collegiate experience. Yeah, I still have a semester left to go. Yeah, it’s just my Bachelor’s Degree. Yeah, Joni loves Chachi. But my point remains.

I probably owe it to my high school experience. Almost everything I needed to know for college, I learned by, if not in, high school. Hell, some of it I learned in middle school. Arguably even grade school. I was absolutely shocked to arrive at college as a wide-eyed, clueless little freshman and discover that some people still didn’t understand the concept of writing in essay form. And that, in college, professors actually spent part of lecture discussing how to write in essay form.

Um, isn’t that a skill you pick up in, oh I don’t know, fourth grade? At least sixth or seventh?

Point is, I realize in retrospect that my high school education was quintessential to my collegiate success. I aced college without trying. Sometimes, I actively challenged myself to see how much I could bullshit and still get an A. The answer: a lot.

I don’t mean to sound cocky, or as if I beat the system. It’s just, in my experience, undergrad really doesn’t amount to shit. I guess it will satisfy some employers. Or I hope. But academically, it was an absolute cakewalk, and I think that’s a combination of my experience going into college being on the high end and the average student’s experience being on the low end. Calculate the formula, and I’ve got a lot of low expectations that aren’t at all difficult to surpass.

(And I mean seriously, you think I’d have notebooks full of doodles if any of this were not true?)

ALL THAT SAID, my secondary point is that I still don’t know shit. Academically, sure. But mostly about life. I realize that now more than ever. I don’t think a lot of other undergrads do, yet, but I’m sure they will after graduation. Anything I can do to take in advice or wisdom from people who do, I’m open to that. It hasn’t been until the last few years where I’ve started to really listen to my parents. I suppose that’s cliche, but I find it true anyway. They know a lot. Too much, sometimes, especially about hardships. And the more I can absorb from them, the better I figure my chances are.

So in honor of these revelations, I think I’ll skip my afternoon class and enjoy an afternoon at the park. Maybe I’ll draw or write. I don’t know. I’m feeling SAUCY!

(And I wonder why anonymous people call me a “fagot”!)