Wasting Our Money?

It now costs between 30 and 50 thousand dollars for a college education in these here United States and that's probably an underestimation. It's become as big a money grabber as our medical care, so when I read an item such as this, I begin to feel the fumes of rage rising.

Mich. Students Learn Art of Kissing
Thu Oct 16,10:19 AM ET Add Strange News - AP to My Yahoo!

DEARBORN, Mich. - The challenge wasn't getting students to show up for a lecture given by a kissing expert, it was recruiting volunteers to demonstrate for the group.

Of the 200 students who showed up Wednesday to see author Michael Christian speak at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, just five — three men and two women — were willing to lock lips.

Christian implored those jammed into the auditorium: Who else will volunteer?

And then, a nervous 17-year-old from Eastpointe raised her hand, spoke briefly with Christian and filled an empty seat next to the young man without a partner.

The crowd applauded, and the show began.

Over the next hour, Christian, author of the book "The Art of Kissing," walked the volunteers through techniques and variations on 30 kisses, the Detroit Free Press reported in a Thursday story.

One female volunteer performed a kiss so erotic that an audience member jumped up with a freshly written sign that said "10."

Christian delivers his PG-13-rated show full-time to college campuses across the country. The student activities board at the University of Michigan-Dearborn brought him in for an undisclosed fee.

Organizer Tim Trunzo, a senior from Woodhaven, said he fielded a concerned question or two from students about the propriety of the event, but men and women in the crowd Wednesday left smiling.

Most people know the French kiss (the favorite of men and women, Christian said), but he also had his subjects demonstrate the vacuum kiss (suck the breath from your partner), the butterfly kiss (eyelashes fluttering against another's cheek) and the Trobriand Islands kiss, an aggressive liplock involving the teeth, the hair and the eyelashes.

Christian, a slight man with graying hair who said he's engaged, spoke of tongues, braces, electricity, giggles, first kisses, racing hearts, tears, caresses, earlobes and hickeys.

Most of all, Christian said, he was there to promote the beauty and grace of one of humanity's most thrilling gifts.

"If you do it right," he said, "it feels like your souls are merging."