What's up with this? The idea that certain things have to be done between people? Or that certain things cannot be allowed to happen, because of some otherwise-insignificant fact? Like, one I learned from an unnamed female source, "Do not sleep with a guy if he owns any music by 'Yanni.'" Well, I immediately take offence to that, because I like Yanni. And is there something wrong? It is great music (to fal asleep to.)

     Or that guys are always thinking about sex. Well, ok, so we think about sex a lot (I do), but not all the time. I am perfectly content with having female friends, in which the possibility of us 'hooking up' is zero. Maybe it's just me though. sheesh.

Damn it people! Just leave it be!

     I'm sure that there are many girls out there who like to camp as much as I, and that there are the same girls who want to have fun and improve themselves and their world in the same way I do. So the BSA would be an optimal place for them to do so. Unfortuneately, I don't want them in my organization. I believe that teenage guys and girls should not be camping together. It just has too many problems. And the same for adult women. I don't mind them being involved with the troop (some of my friends' mother's are called "mom" by many people), I don't think that they should go camping.

     Homosexuals are not allowed in the BSA becase "A Scout is Clean" and "Moraly Straight." I will henceforth ignore the former, becaue I think gay people can be "clean." Straight, however, they cannot be. I know a few gay guys, and believe them all to be good, if not great, people. I don't want them to be in the Scouts, however, NOT because I think they'll touch little Jonny, but because I don't want little Jonny growing up, wanting to be like Mr. James. And I don't think that is right.

1)  Become a Christian.

2)  Become a Boy Scout.

3)  Become a Sigma Chi.

4)  Date Stacy Estrada.

     Being nice: I once had an acceptable deffinition of what a gentleman was, but I've since lost it, so I won't define that. But being nice is easy to define; or at least ot give examples of: Opening the car door for my date; opening a door at school for the teacher with full arms, helping a guy pick up the papers he dropped everywhere when he tripped, and even giving him a hand up; correcting Seth's paper before I finish mine. Other examples include tact, table manners, chivalry (see below), generosity, volunteering, and good-natured helping out. It doesn't need to be as dramatic as saving a baby from a fire; just as simple as moving to one side in a narrow hallway.

     Wimachtendienk, Wingolauchsik, Witahemui.

     Chivalry, I would define, is being nice to other people, not as a responsibility, but as an honour. So please see the above definition about what being nice is.

    This guy, a Scouter who worked at the District level in WLACC, was talking to me about camps. It was his first time at this camp we were at, though he had been getting paychecks from the council for five years. The several of us in the conversation eventually came around to the point that the council is/was/might be thinking of selling some of the campgrounds it owns that are closer to L.A. He mentioned that that is the best place for camporees; a wilderness campground that isn't 4 hours away.

     So I brought up the point that I had just run a camporee in a lot next to a church in the middle of Riverside, less than 20 minutes away from any troop's meeting place. Attendance had nearly trippled from last year, to over 300 scouts and scouters. And then I re-emphasized the fact that it was in a field next to a church, not at a wilderness camp.

     He said, with great air of himself and with a superior attitude, that his camporees have 800 scouts, and that it gets bigger every year. I reiterated that it could still be done somewhere other than a council camp; to which he responded: "But do you know how much paperwork I have to do for those outings?"

     Good God, I could have killed the man.

     I calmed down, wanting to say, (but witholding it due to the fact that I didn't want to go into a 10-hour long discussion on the subject), "So what? It's not about you and your paperwork. It's about the scouts, how much fun they have, and how much they learn. It's your job to make sure they do that; not to complain about letting them do that."

     I wish I would have said it.