So until our imminent demise, I think now’s a good time to stand back and take a good long look at why today’s youth are a bunch of punks. When I say “youth,” I mean “people who have not yet fully grown body hair,” because I’m twenty-two, and while most consider that young, I feel I am old enough to know that, unlike my teenage years, I don’t know everything in the universe. I have trouble with math, so the secrets of Creation may be a bit out of my reach.

Getting back to the point, technology has steadily grown to the point where any idiot can turn on a computer, use a word processing program, and hurl the computer against the wall, because it locked up and they didn’t save their work because they’re still an idiot. Children today are growing up with computers, and as technology pushes the boundaries of what computer owners can do right in their own homes, it becomes clear that children will eventually learn how to launch nuclear missiles from their laptops and end life on Earth.

Technology is becoming easier and more interesting for the mild mannered Joe, who can now, with just a few clicks of the mouse, be on the FBI’s most wanted list. There are a lot of crimes you can commit with a computer. Music downloading is a good example. In my day, if you wanted to copy music, you would have to acquire a “compact disc” (I’m spelling it out just in case the full name of a CD is forgotten by now) and record its music onto a “cassette tape.” This resulted in music recording that was so laughably bad that no one cared what you copied, because you sure as hell would never listen to it again.

Nowadays, Internet users can download songs for free in the form of “MP3s,” which stands for “mighty pain for three.” MP3 downloads are a pain in the rear for three types of people: those who own the rights to the song and are losing money because of piracy, FBI agents who are beginning to realize that their dream career in federal law enforcement puts them up against four-hundred pound sweaty computer geeks, and people with narrowband connections, which makes downloading music take as long as a glacier shift.

Kids can easily download music off of the Internet and listen to it until a SWAT team fires teargas through their bedroom window just before the crackdown. But that’s not all they can do. Kids have access to millions of web pages of information for schoolwork, so you can bet that they’re going to steer clear of those. They have unlimited access to online shopping; parents can wake up one morning and find an African elephant eating their trees, because little Suzy got a hold of Mommy’s credit card.

Most importantly, kids have unlimited access to porn. The pornography industry is unique in that people will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on pictures of people. Naked people, yes, but if you think about it, most people would never pay money for the personal pleasure of looking at pictures of people who have their clothes on. The key part of the equation is the clothes part, or the lack thereof. I once heard that eighty percent of all websites deal with pornography. Not that I would know personally, of course, but I can only imagine what’s out there. Don’t check my Internet history.

Pornography is everywhere on the Internet, and kids can easily get their grubby little hands on it. Not that I think twelve-year-olds and pictures of naked women don’t go together. Guys, if you try to tell me that you never tried to look at nudy photos when you were entering your teenage years, then you have about as much credit as a talc-level Visa card. When I was eleven, I discovered, or rather had solid evidence that, women were naked under their clothes, and I liked looking at them like that.

My first adult magazine was Playboy. Almost every boy’s first magazine is Playboy. The magazine is so ingrained in American culture that the law of statistics supports this claim. Everybody knows Playboy; it’s mainstream’s nudy show. I still remember the feature Playmate being Diane Parkinson from The Price is Right fame, and though she was way older than me, I liked her more than my friends. The magazine was a mystical portal into a world that was unknown to me, a world that I would have to some day be a part of: the world of the grown-ups.

The adult magazine represents a limited look into the world of adult sexuality for pre-pubescent males. It’s the first “adult” thing that they experience, not counting nudity in R-rated movies, which, while also very important to pre-pubescent males of all ages, doesn’t glow with the same spirit of smut. Possessing a porn magazine is a rite of passage, a chance opportunity that has to be seized when it comes and provides intrigue and excitement once processed. It’s also a source of absolute terror the likes of which Al Qaeda could never hope to produce.

The biggest risk about having a porn magazine when you’re under eighteen is getting caught (not that your parents finding out about your “extracurricular activities” is good at any age). Some parents think that it’s the most horrible thing in the world that their little boy learns that women are naked under their clothes, and looking at them is a nearly unforgivable sin. Parents prefer to wait until their boys grow up to be men (defined as getting out of the house) before they start learning about sex, which they shouldn’t have anything to do with until marriage, and even then should never be enjoyed.

I’ve had a long-standing theory, sprouted by Dave Barry, that when a baby is born, the parents get exceedingly stupid in order to care and love something that bellows to them at all hours of the night, demanding some unknown appeasement, which is usually the desire to puke on someone. In the process of stupidification, a lot of data goes up in smoke. Take your parents, for instance.

A lot of sultry details about their relationship were burned out of their memory banks the moment you popped out, especially the story about how your parents met on that drunken night at the club when Dad was the horse and Mom was the leather-clad cowgirl, with the part about what object played the role of “whip” immediately deleted. Absorb that image for a while, and if you haven’t mercifully impaled yourself with your mouse, read on.

All of the good aspects of sex are immediately eradicated in your parents’ heads. This is so they can, with a straight face, get upset with you about being interested in sex when you get older. Even though your parents likely went through what you did, they refuse to ever acknowledge it. As far as they’re concerned, they have no idea how you discovered this awful sex thing and they can’t believe you would even think about getting involved in it, you delinquent.

That’s why hiding an adult magazine is such risky business. It’s tangible evidence that you’ve discovered sex and like it, and you’re hiding that fact from your parents. What else are you going to do? Walk into the living room, preferably with the family priest visiting, and loudly announce that you found a stack of Penthouse magazines in your dad’s closet and you intend to thumb through every one of them because you just found out you like naked women?

Of course not! You’re going to sneak those magazines, one by one, until they all disappear, like magic. Dad won’t question this, because by the time he goes to look at them, they’ll be all gone, and he’ll figure Mom found his stash and wasn’t too happy about it. Since there is no sign of trouble from her, he won’t even think of asking what happened to them, lest he risk spending another night on the living room couch.

If you get caught, it’s always extremely awkward. Your parents (Mom) will likely hold the magazine up over her head and yell at you like you just lobbed off your sister’s arm for no good reason, shaking it (the magazine) furiously. You’ll have no excuse, because you’re scared and twelve, so you’ll try to either blame it on a friend or act like you feel horrible about it, like it was an accident that Mothers in Chains was under your bed. You’ll never say “Mom, I like seeing those women naked and I don’t see anything wrong with it.”

The thing is, this would be the best defense in the world, at least in principle. The only retort to that question is either that it’s wrong or illegal. You can simply respond that you can’t help what you feel and it’s not hurting anyone anyway. Your parents will ground you twice as long for being right, but in the end, you win in principle, and that’s all that matters. Keep that in mind when you seek out a replacment magazine.

This growing experience is now made obsolete by the Internet. Now, kids can simply run a search and find not only pictures of naked women, but also videos and sounds of naked women, men, and pigs doing things that would make Hitler cry in horror. I, for one, think this is inexcusably despicable. It’s way too easy!

Oh sure, you can install monitoring software and check Internet history, but let’s be reasonable here. For one, you are too stupid to know how to work any of this stuff. Your children are way smarter than you are when it comes to technology, and even if you have the best security in the world (from the distant future, the kind that actually works), I’m sure your kids will either find a way around it or find your Secret Code to deactivate it. If they can figure out your favorite flavor of edible underwear, they can figure out your passwords. And if you don’t write them down, you’ll forget, and then nobody will get any smut.

So kids have it way too easy when it comes to gaining pornography, and I think we shouldn’t stand for it. I urge all parents to get rid of their computers immediately and replace them with an Apple Super Drives. In fact, get rid of your hi-definition televisions, your cell phones, your Playstation 2s, your MP3 players, and your DVD players. Instead, kick back and watch an episode of your Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles tape on your wood grain coaxial TV set, pop in a Quite Riot cassette, take the rotary phone of the hook, and get ready for a game of Super Mario Brothers 3 after the show is over. I’m sure your children will appreciate what you’ve done for them, probably in the form of an abusive retirement home down the line.