Poor Alfie Patten. He’s the British tabloid sensation, who became a baby-faced baby daddy at the ripe age of 13 after having unprotected sex his girlfriend, Chantelle Steadman. Controversy erupted when two other classmates stepped forward claiming to be the baby’s father. But Chantelle was like, ‘Hell no! Alfie took my virginity and there’s nobody else!’ And then Alfie took a DNA test just to prove those assholes wrong, but then it turned out he wasn’t the father after all. And he was disappointed.

When I was Alfie’s age, I always performed safe sex, alone in my closet. But apparently, masturbation isn’t what it used to be. Now kids skip right to raising families. Babies having babies, yo.

Meanwhile, masturbation is treated like a gateway drug. Not too long ago, we had a Surgeon General who got shit-canned for saying jerking off was a good alternative to risky sexual activity. Conservatives went completely nuts, like she was telling kids to go sniff glue instead of smoke crack.

Jonas Brothers’ purity rings. The Pope condemning condoms. The federal government funding abstinence only education. Can we have some sanity here? Where are the Christians that embrace God’s one true original birth control — anal sex?

But then again, have you seen some of the alternatives that scientists have been coming up with lately? Such as, say, an implanted switch that can turn your balls on and off like a tv remote. That’s right, an on/off switch for your nuts that can be activated and deactivated remotely by a doctor. According to its founder Derek Abbott,

“It will be like turning a TV on and off with a remote control, except that the remote will probably be locked away in your local doctor’s office to safeguard against accidental pregnancy or potential misuse of the device.”

‘Probably’ locked away? ‘Potential misuse’? Dr. Frankenstein, do you not see the problem here? I don’t think I could ever copulate knowing that somewhere somehow someone might have a remote control to my balls. Or that it might have accidently gotten mixed in with the remotes for my doctor’s TV, Wii and garage door. No, if there’s going to be a remote to my balls, I’m going to be wearing it around my neck like one of those LifeCall pendants.

I also ran across this New York Times article about yet another study claiming that circumcision reduces the incidence of certain STDs. In this case, removing part of your penis lowers your risk of herpes by 25% and HPV by 35%. Now, let me just say as a proud member of the circumcision club that while I’m all for lower incidences of STDs, it seems like cutting off a part of your penis, instead of wearing a condom, is a touch on the drastic side. I mean, if you really wanted to reduce your exposure to STDs by 100%, you could have your entire penis removed. And to illustrate my point, I’ve created a graph:

This is definitive proof that the relationship between STD incidence (y axis) and the amount of penis you have removed (x axis) is inversely proportional. I expect to see an article in the Times trumpeting these findings.

I’ve heard people describe the gym as a “meat market.” In my own experience, it’s more like window shopping. Sure, look at the merchandise, but don’t even bother touching cause you couldn’t afford it anyways. Also, it’s wrong to touch strangers. And I’m pretty sure the vast majority of people at the gym aren’t for sale. It’s a bad analogy, but what I’m trying to say is that when you’re grunting and sweating and there are all these pretty people around you sweating and grunting, you might think to yourself,

“Self, now I know what all these people look like when they’re having sex. Also, I really wish I wasn’t wearing my sister’s shorts with these black socks.”

And you’d be right: you look completely ridiculous. The point being, you might look around and see all that toned muscular flesh, pumping and gyrating all willy nilly-like, and you might be tempted to get all up in that. But you can’t. Because on your best day, you’re wheezing on an elliptical machine like a total pussy, while the guy to your right is bench pressing your body weight as a warm up. (FYI: I’m not talking about myself. I have really really big muscles.)

Case and point: last week, after I was done using the elliptical, which is a great machine for those of us who have worn down our knees from years of sitting, I went to stretch. As I was doing the butterfly stretch, I looked over and noticed a lady. She may have been wearing a black tank top and tiny black shorts, but I don’t notice those kind of things because I’m not superficial. We made eye contact and then both looked away. Then began an epic game of eye dodgeball: she looked back at me, I looked away, then I looked back at her, she looked away, I looked back, she was already looking, damn, I quickly looked away, is she still looking, lemme check, damn, busted again. Pretty soon, my thoughts moved from “Hey, I think this girl is checking me out” to “Is she looking at me because I’m looking at her? Or is she looking at me because I’m wearing boxers underneath my sister’s shorts?”

I forgot the point of all this. And I don’t really have any advice as it pertains to scoring at the gym. But I do have one piece of general advice: do not blowdry your junk in the locker room. I don’t want to see your loose scrotum skin flapping like the sails on a double-masted schooner (I had to look that one up). And most of all, I really don’t want to feel the warm air splash in my face as it ricochets off your Chuck Berries.

Any questions?