Current mood:	amused
Current music:	Aimee Mann - Frankenstein (4:27)

alcohol, porn, and $50
You know those things you read in the city paper? The little ads that say "smoke marijuana, make money" or "are you between the ages of 21 and 35, and do you drink socially? we'll pay you to drink!"

I responded to one of those. It was about alcohol consumption, claiming they'd pay you $15 an hour to drink. I called and left a message with my telephone number, and much to my surprise they called back.

When they called, they asked various questions about my physical health and sexual history. As it turns out, they wanted me to participate in a study where they would give me some amount of alcohol (in order to achieve a particular blood alcohol content) and then show me erotic videos and test my response to the situations. For all of this, I would be paid $15 an hour.

Sounds too good to be true? Well, sort of. Here were the catches:

Catch #1: You have to wear an erect-o-meter (technical name: plethysmograph) which is essentially a rubber band connected to a bunch of wires that measure the circumference of your member. As if in some kind of grade school joke, we had to cycle through 4 different plethysmographs. The reason was--and I quote the researcher--"I keep getting a negative reading". Ha. Ha. Anyway, once the faulty connection was found and replaced, and I crossed over that ZERO circumference problem, we could proceed.

Catch #2: I was in the control group, which meant that I ended up not getting any alcohol. Instead I had to drink 3 pint glasses of orange juice (no vodka included) in 9 minutes, and repeatedly take breathalyzer tests despite the fact that they were guaranteed to show 0.00. This tedious procedure was to ensure that the only variable in the study was the alcohol content, not how much time you spent blowing into a tube. I like orange juice as much as the next guy, but...

Catch #3: The porn was terrible and cliche, including the bad-quality music with Casio-keyboard-preset drum beats. I was given the instruction to try and become as aroused as possible (although apparently other subjects were told to try and repress arousal as much as possible)...and it wasn't too easy, given what I had to work with. Being in a lab didn't help.

The funniest bit, actually, was the calibration video. While wearing the erect-o-meter, they had me watch a nature video narrated by a guy who looked like Ernest Borgnine...it was all about the life cycle of the arctic tern. I was cracked up by the idea of being aroused by that video. So I kept laughing hysterically...thinking about people who would get stimulated by watching these birds and who would have no response to the human sex. I can only hope that the erect-o-meter took notice of my laughs and recorded them as stimulation...

All in all, a very interesting way to spend my morning, and I'm $50 richer. Afterwards, I walked around the UW campus (which I had never really done) and ran into jclawshe, and we discussed Oscar Wilde & the ethical dilemmas in "A Picture of Dorian Gray" at his office hours.

UPDATE: someone's life may hang in the balance of this blog entry!