The country with one of the worst population problems has banned all condom advertising. China’s State Administration for Industry and Commerce has banned advertising for condoms since 1989 under regulations that prohibit “any products meant to cure sexual dysfunction or help improve people’s sex life.”

It seems like a simple measure to aid in their population explosion. You think they would give them away in school. (Wait, only American’s would do that.)

But now there is another problem that has cropped up. An HIV epidemic is now gripping the country. Just last year there was a 67% increase in HIV cases.

Come on, just give the man a jim hat!

I’m back from vacation and I wish I was as refreshed as I feel like I should be, but I’m not. (Ok, I’m not sure what that sentence means.) Special hugs and kisses to Taranis for keeping this site running strong whilst the other Llamas were off.

I did stop by Taranis’s way for a great lunch at J. Alexanders though I’m not sure how much J. Alexanders liked it. I think a few pictures survived the melee and I am adding them to my next update of the Llama Tails that should be done in a day or two.

A few strange observations on/during my trip:

On the way down we saw a sign for an upcoming tunnel that said, “Class One explosives prohibited.” That made me wonder, what type of explosives are permitted? What if I had an assload of Class two?

Clearwater isn’t the cleanest of cities. The suburbs are nice, but downtown is pretty rotten. While exiting a bar after a few drinks we had to play footsie to avoid stepping on the cockroaches that evidently control downtown after hours.

Clearwater was founded by the Scientologists. Evidently the city council, school boards and such are all run by the Scientologists. There is now a growing anti-Scientology movement afoot in Clearwater. I saw as many anti-Scientology bumber stickers as pro.

While in Florida we drove to Tampa twice, and even drove through it on our way home. We passed the Bank of America Plaza each time. Eerie, huh?

It’s been a long time coming, but here it is. This little interactive music clip reminds me somewhat of some of the Bill Plympton cartoons where objects morph into others and things are not always what they seem.

Have Fun!

The first question you ask is “How does this happen?” How does a 15-year-old boy fly a Cessna into a building in Tampa? The second question you ask is “Why did this happen?” Why did the boy not only kill himself but in his suicide note declare that he sympathized with Osama Bin Laden?

These questions likely will never be answered. I imagine it happens something like this. A lonely, troubled 15-year-old boy watches footage and commentary of the attacks on the World Trade Center for almost a constant 3 months. He latched on to the idea that he could get some of the attention he must desperately want. After all, he’d been taking flying lessons. There were some pretty big buildings in town. And in the whirlwind mind of someone under the constant strain of depression, it all starts to make sense.

It’s a sad story but not one that should surprise us. It is the internalization of outward influence that we see in lots of teenagers. This internalization can be a positive thing as well as a negative one. For instance, if some teenager finds comfort and expression in the art studio of his high school. His work gets some recognition and he internalizes that pride and respect. It bolsters him and perhaps saves him from the darker side of his psyche.

We will never know exactly what caused this boy in Tampa to do what he did, but I think that we all have a good idea. Our modern society demands quite a bit from us and gives next to nothing back. How can we expect our children to deal with that without a little guidance and help?

It seems that someone other than us has been reading the site. The folks over at CoolStop have chosen us as the Best Cool Site of the Day on Saturday. They even posted a mini-review of the site.

This recognition comes at a great time as we have some big plans for the site, including some new functionalities and a redesign. However, we will strive to keep bringing you the content and writing that we hope are the main reasons you visit our site.

Thanks again to the folks at CoolStop. They have a great directory over there that indexes many of the great independent content sites on the web. You should take a look.