Sex in the city 

We're all adults here, right? I mean, there aren't any minors reading this column, are there? If so, they should cover their eyes before they read any further, because this week's Shredder is all about s-e-x, which spells trouble to more than a few people around here, all of whom probably stopped reading before they even finished the headline, so I guess we don't have to worry.

I see sex everywhere I look these days, and I'm not just talking about those fuzzy TV channels I have to squint at because I'm too cheap to pay for good cable. It's at school, it's at work - it's even at church, a place filled with people who usually don't like to talk about it, despite the fact that just about everybody was doing it in the Old Testament. Sex goes all the way back to the beginning, when Adam and Eve first figured out how all their parts fitted together and started making little Cains and Abels. Look it up, if you don't believe me, and while you're in research mode, take a gander at xxxchurch.com, which touts itself as the No. 1 Christian porn site, presumably in the world.

Now before you go getting your Bible in a bunch, keep in mind that the web site isn't what it sounds like. I found that out the hard way after I looked it up myself on Oct. 9, which Atascadero First Assembly Church said was National PornSunday. I've heard of Good Friday, but PornSunday sounded even better than good, and the church was advertising it with a big billboard and a phone number, which isn't answered by someone named Kitten or Bunny. Take my word for it.

PornSunday turned out to be something more like AntiPornSunday, which I think is a bait-and-switch sort of maneuver. Of course, so is porn, when you think about it with your brain instead of your privates. I mean, I've never met anyone in real life who really lived up to the pictures and promises in any of the magazines I've read - strictly for the articles, by the way. Adult magazines have plenty of stimulating information, and I'm talking intellectually. So if you ever see me browsing in the adult section, I'm doing it for my mind, and what are you doing there anyway in the middle of all that smut, you pervert?

And while I'm on the subject, why is it that things that have to do with sex tend to be called "adult activities?- You've got adult movies, adult hotlines, and adult bookstores.

There are lots of things adults do that kids should - or can't. Booze isn't called "adult sodapop.- Driving isn't called "adult traveling.- It's about as senseless as male nipples. Just ask Steve Diamond. About the adult thing, not the nipple bit - though I'm sure he could talk your ear off about those, too.

Steve, I recently heard, is under fire from Grover Beach again, this time simply for being alive. There are some other details, too, which seem to involve suspicions that he's operating a sex shop despite the fact that he's been told not to at some point. There are laws that govern how much "adult material- a shop can carry without being considered a porn palace, and Steve seems to have been walking that line ever since a federal judge ruled that the city could legally order him to pack up his oversized novelty penises and get out, which would probably prompt Mayor John Shoals to declare a public holiday. Steve's been appealing ever since, but in the meantime, he's tried to get his ratio of merchandise just right to be considered a normal store that doesn't jeopardize Grover Beach's moral character.

Steve, have you considered opening up shop in the Santa Maria Town Center mall? There's enough open space, and they've already got a Spencer's, which probably pushes the line as much as you.

While I was clucking my tongue at Grover Beach's collective Puritan impression, I came across a report that Cal Poly was saying that Greek men are more likely than other men to rape women. At first I thought the school was taking an unusually decisive racist stance, until I realized that by "Greek,- they meant "fraternity,- and then it all made sense.

Some frat boys were offended by the blanket statement from the housing staff, and some people waved around the school's low rape statistics, but you know and I know that scads of sexual assault goes unreported, and that there are more fraternities in these here United States than the few at Cal Poly. Just look at UCSB. Fraternity members from there come up here all the time to party, and they're probably all rapists, skewing the statistics against saintly San Luis Obispo.

I'm not being prejudiced. Well, okay, maybe I am. But, to be fair, I also know that Cal Poly dorm officials tend to act without thinking too hard, sometimes citing "the housing department- as their source for facts and figures, as if the people in charge of collecting rent and keeping order in the campus dorms are also some sort of encyclopedic think tank.

I don't have anything against fraternities, but I also don't think that their members' reputations of humping anything that moves just popped out of nowhere. I've seen, firsthand, at many a frat party, how guys act when they're drunk. They leak wherever they want, they get into fights, and they put their arms around underdressed girls to keep them warm, and then slowly lead them somewhere more private. A lot of guys tend to act like this in general, especially when they're around other guys, which is basically what a fraternity is: a bunch of guys acting like guys around other guys, only more so.

You can't argue with statistics, but you can argue against the Cal Poly Housing and Residential Life staff, which seems to basically have used its flier to paint a big red target on campus Greeks, point at them, and say "misogynists.- There are better ways to disseminate information about insemination, but I can't think of any at the moment, especially because my TV reception seems to be clearing up.