Internet Porn and the Big Bang that Wasn't

Dear God,

I need to talk to you about porn.

You see, on November 1, Philip Baruth of Vermont Daily Briefing said he would be posting a "bold and courageous series" of naked pictures of me. Delighted at the very idea, I called him. I suggested that we do the photo shoot at the plant today (Sunday).

I got to the plant early to chose a location. As I waited for Philip I got all kinds of vain ideas, like I would be famous some day like the actress named Vanessa from High School Musical whose naked photos were (unfortunately for her career, it seemed at first) found on the Internet but then that story had a happy ending because everyone, even Disney, rallied in her defense and now she's signed her contract for High School Musical 3. I was thinking that, when my nude photos get "discovered," I might get offered a starring role in a musical of some sort, too. I don't know why, but a singing version of The Day the Earth Stood Still struck me as a possibility. (Remember that old movie? A visitor from another planet comes to tell us that our profligate and irresponsible use of the atom means that, as a race, we are aggressive, paranoid and dangerous to ourselves—and must be "helped?" Insert scary music here. There's got to be at least a walk-on in that movie for me.)

Anyway, all caught up in my fantasizing, I drafted the obligatory, apologetic press release for when people get outraged about my photos.

Vernon, Vermont. Dateline: November 5. [See, that's Monday, 'cause as a professional spokesman I know never to try to sell a new idea on a weekend. Continuing:] These are art photos and it is unfortunate that I have been misunderstood. I'm sorry.

Eventually, Philip arrived at the plant, and he had a whole photography crew with him! They had strobe lights and cameras and they'd brought a big athletic towel for discreet draping. We called each other "Dude," which let me know that things would be on the up and up. I went behind a tree to change.

But for some reason Philip and the dudes never made it through security.

Which is actually kind of reassuring, now that I think of it.

You see, most nuclear power plants have at least two security checkpoints. And just Friday, a worker at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generation Station (it's near Phoenix and is the nation's biggest commercial plant) got stopped at one of his plant's checkpoints, where the guards discovered a bomb in the back of his pickup truck.

So wow, Lord. I guess it's good to know that our security systems in Arizona and Vermont work.

Anyway, "No" means "No" when the guard saying it has a semiautomatic. So the dudes and I left the plant grounds. We went over to New Hampshire and down to that fair state's banks of the Connecticut River, thinking we would take the nude photos with the Vermont Yankee plant as a backdrop. Frankly, I didn't much like this idea so I wasn't disappointed when it collapsed. I mean, it had already been done by Remy Chavalier, whose nude photos of environmental activist Isabel Vinso made the front page of the Reformer.

Bummer, though. You see, ever since this week when Philip posted a few of the Chevalier photos, every guy who owns a point-and-shoot has been down at the river, and every pretty girl in town who wants a Disney contract has been waving and shouting, "I want to be an environmental activist, too!" The river bank was crawling with them!

So that's why I want to talk to you about Internet porn. See, we couldn't get even a private square inch of river bank space, so Philip got upset and cursed, and one doesn't normally see that kind of behavior in a liberal blogger.

"I mean, how tough can it be to take a &8%$# nude picture of a PR guy?" he wailed.

Now, God, I am most definitely not gay and I have absolutely zero idea about Philip's orientation. But I do think Philip is beautiful when he cries. So what could I do? I told him to go home and have a snack and a nap and I'd email him some pictures. Then the whole darn bunch of photographers down on the bank of the river started to cry and they were beautiful, too. Then the girls started to cry. Ditto for them. The sounds of wailing were so primordial and the visions of sorrow and distress so rapturous that I told everyone I'd email them pictures. Right away, they dried their tears and put on their clothes and left. I did, too.

But when I got back to the office I realized that the crew had taken the large athletic towel with them. This meant that whatever photos I took of myself would be kind of hard-core. I'm a private guy, and that goes way beyond what I'll do for my singing career. So I thought I'd just download some shots of naked men from the Internet and use Adobe Photoshop to crop off their heads, because in shots like those it's not the person's face that matters.

And then I emailed them to Philip and all of the river guys and girls. And then security showed up. And so I'm left wondering, Lord: Why am I such a sucker for tears? Also, Lord, why can't I get the specter of yesterday's bomb, the Palo Verde Nuclear Generation Station, and the people of Maricopa County, Arizona out of my mind?

Thanks, Lord,

Fake-Rob