Baloney on white, an orange, and 50 cents.

Sound of silver talk to me
Makes you want to feel like a teenager
Until you remember the feelings of
A real live emotional teenager
Then you think again

- LCD Soundsystem, "Sound of Silver"


So I'm sitting in my Photoshop class this evening, and everyone is working away on their projects. The instructor is coming around to everyone's computers now and then to see how we're doing, and when she gets to the student sitting beside me, (a pretty young guy, probably in his first year at college, what with the unmistakable air of 'virgin' wafting from his every pore) she pauses. "Oh good," she says to him. "Your project is a perfect example of what I wanted to demonstrate next."

So she has him save his project-in-progress, and she goes back to her computer at the head of the class to open it in Photoshop on the rather large overhead projection screen behind her. Now, before I tell you what his project consisted of, I should probably tell you what the assignment was.

The project was to construct a Photoshop collage - get a background image, and then add via Photoshop layer after layer of various other images and people into it, making the assembled piece as photorealistic as possible. If your background image was a street scene, then you might start adding images of cars, fire hydrants, and strolling passers-by. That sort of thing. Nothing particularly heady, but there are a few tricks involved to make sure that everything you add looks like it actually belongs there. Those of you who know Photoshop know what I'm talking about, but for everyone else, just follow along and try not to think about NASCAR. You can put your head down on your desk if need be.

OK. So she brings his project up on the big overhead screen behind her desk, and what should Virgin Boy's project be but a big juicy wank fantasy. No pink, mind you, but the scene he'd created was about as close as you get when you're that age. It was set on a beautiful sandy beach somewhere, big blue ocean, palm trees, huge yellow sun in the sky. You know, everything he's never seen before, being that he's lived in New Jersey his whole life. Anyway, he's sitting cross-legged in the center of the scene, and situated all around him is every teeny-bopper princess known to teenaged man. Avril Lavigne. Hillary Duff. Hayden Panettiere. Pre-cokehead Lindsay Lohan. That Hannah Montana broad. Hell, the gay kid from 'Ugly Betty' might've been in there somewhere, too. Kids these days.

I didn't have the heart to laugh out loud, being that the poor guy is sitting right next to me, but DAMN, did I want to. Here you are sketching out your wildest teenagery fantasies in Photoshop, and suddenly BLAM! They're being projected 12 feet high in front of everybody in the class and dissected by a Photoshop teacher that clearly had her sympathy glands removed at birth.

Poor guy. I swear I heard his puberty being stretched out for another year with every minute that passed by. I'm not even sure it could've been worse if his mother had walked in with his lunch right then. In her underwear. And curlers.