BSA Merit Badges

Friday October 20th 2006 01:57 PM PST

in my home town the boy scouts were more of a sons and dads club than anything else. Well at least in my troop at that point in time. We were the only troop in town that actually went backpacking, and for some reason that made us a little more hard core than everybody else. Its really funny thinking about it now.

But i do remember a couple dads that were very serious about boy scouts. There was one in particular that had a boy scout manual from his own father's era. Every time one of us would complain about the requirements for rank or a merit badge, he usually pull the old manual out. He'd proceed to look up the "old" requirements for the same rank or badge, and then recite them to us. We'd promptly shut the fuck up, cause we were shocked that they had to work so hard for the stupid badge.

I heard today that the MPAA is using its almighty power to create a new Boy Scout Merit Badge to teach the evils of Piracy. Some of the proposed requirements focus on visiting a working motion picture studio and seeing how things work. This should make scouts aware of all the people that are being harmed by piracy.

AND here's the funny part. The merit badge is said to look like a big fuckin circle C. Now here comes the rant...

There already is a merit badge to teach scouts about cinematography. Holy shit, you'll never guess whats its called...

CINEMATOGRAPHY! Isn't that unbelievable?

If you want to promote film making, then you should really promote the fundamentals of the cinematography badge. The requirements of this badge are a fuckin joke. It really needs to be made into a badge that you've gotta work for. IMHO the cinematography badge is on about the level of basketry. (if you don't know what i mean, ask somebody who was a boy scout) It really could use some help from the MPAA to make it a little more meaningful. ALSO, if you want to make a entire badge that focuses on piracy, dont you think it should look like a fuckin pirate flag? I mean cmon, there were a couple badges that i honesly didn't even want to put on my sash cause they looked so fuckin stupid. Now the MPAA wants to put a fuckin copyright sign on uniforms. FFS.

BTW the material they're trying to add to the merit badge curriculum (if you want to call it that) is already in a number of merit badges. Specifically the LAW merit badge. Check out requirement 11b and 11c.

that was disorganized and just came out all over the place. I don't think i had a point really other than i think using Merit Badges to teach MPAA Beliefs should really be avoided. But then again, i'm sure the MPAA is giving the Boy Scouts a lot of money. Well we'll have to forgive them. We always forgive people with lots of money.