I am a regular blood donor at the local blood center. In my home town, I even received a commemorative "gallon" pin. You get that for donating a gallon of blood, just not all on the same day.

Yesterday, I went to the local blood center to donate. Lately I've been donating specialized products such as plasma or "double red".

Double red donations are when they put you in a special chair equiped with a hospital-style television and then they make you watch Oprah while they extract your blood, spin out the red cells in a centrifuge and return the rest to your arm. They collect twice as much red cells as during a regular donation, so "double red".

When you donate double red, you get double tee shirts. We always get a free shirt when we donate, and you get a special additional shirt for double red! They make the best gym shirts!

Yesterday, I went in, filled out all my paperwork, had my temperature and blood pressure taken, and then was deferred! And for what? Low hemoglobin. Imagine my horror!

I felt so bad. I haven't been taking my iron pills because they cancel out my thyroid pills. And then my hair falls out. Being older is a precarious balancing act of pills and supplements and hokey folk remedies.

So, they gave me an olympic-themed "champion donor" shirt and sent me home.

I'll eat some steak and try again next week.

Today I was flipping through the channels and came across Viva La Bam on MTV2 or whatever channel offers that drivel.

I've never cared for Bam Margera or his gang of idiots, but assuming that today's episode was newish, they seem to have gotten meaner and dumber.

Today's episode had them locked overnight in the Mall of America. Bam violently pushes his mother onto a mattress in a Select Comfort mattress store, and then proceedss to beat Don Vito or whatever the fat guy's name is with a pillow while Don Vito rides around on a handicapped-type scooter. Soon after, Bam lowers the security gate on the mattress store door, locking the mom, dad, and Don Vito inside the store, while he and his cohort decide to sleep over in a sporting goods store.

I mean Bam is hitting Don Vito hard about the head with the pillow and Bam is enjoying it. It looks like it actually hurts Don Vito (although the idiot lets this happen). Bam shoves his mother so hard onto the mattress that it takes her a moment to smile. The meanness exhibited when combined with the look of joy on Bam's face is disturbing.

It is the kind of look that I imagine the teenaged boys in Florida who were recently arrested for beating homeless people to death may have displayed. It was completely disrespectful, not because it was done to an elder (more on stupid elders in a moment), but because it was done to anyone (or anything) at all.

Bam's mother and father, as well as Don Vito, are complete idiots and are examples of the kind of people who place money above everything else. What kind of people would put up with being hit, be the butt of pranks, etc. all on national television? And for what, a few dollars? A few hundred thousand dollars? How does one place a dollar value on respect and dignity anyway?

So perhaps I should just change the channel.

Sure, except this sort of stupid, extreme behavior keeps spilling over into other areas of my life. Like the news. See, I don't think that showing impressionable teenagers that being rude and disrespectful towards any life form is a good idea. Most kids that act like the idiotic Bam Margera will never see a dime for it, will never sell their series to MTV or anyone else. They are much more likely to see the inside of a prison cell. Sort of like those homeless-beating teens in Florida. The ones that never caused anyone any problems. Where did they learn that it is okay to beat people?

And furthermore, what is so interesting, extreme or cutting edge about sleeping in a tent in a sporting goods show, even with the accompanying bass-heavy music?

I hope that American young people are smarter that this and that Bam Margera fades into oblivion in the very near future.