"For those over 30 years old: hooking up is a casual sexual encounter with no expectation of future emotional commitment." So begins another god damn op-ed about wet, wild youngster sex.

Once upon a time a year or two back, the Washington Post employed a terrible journalist named Laura Sessions Stepp, who specialized in writing big feature stories about pseudotrends and things so obvious that you would have seriously considered slapping any actual human being that asked you a question about them. She also wrote an entire book on the crazy youth culture of HOOKING UP, and why kids are all sluts. She took a buyout earlier this year, thank god.

But today, in December of 2008, the NYT has a brand new op-ed by Charles M. Blow (should we take the time for the joke? No) on this very subject. Kids today: they don't date, they just fuck. Mr. Blow has learned about child sex from the trustiest place: a research report, saying kids today are HOOKING UP. Blow me away!

When I first heard about hooking up years ago, I figured that it was a fad that would soon fizzle. I was wrong. It seems to be becoming the norm.

Easy, commitment-free sex—who could help him understand such a thing?

To help me understand this phenomenon, I called Kathleen Bogle, a professor at La Salle University in Philadelphia who has studied hooking up among college students and is the author of the 2008 book, "Hooking Up: Sex, Dating and Relationships on Campus."

Ah. Did not ask a sexy 18-year-old, then. Righto.

It turns out that everything is the opposite of what I remember.

Boys now have vaginas.

I asked her to explain the pros and cons of this strange culture.

Good lord. An alien, an unknown life form from another planet outside of our solar system, has landed an op-ed gig with the New York Times. What a thing. His kicker:

Now that's sad.

Mr. Blow has journalistically violated us, and he didn't even take us out first. We are his whores. [NYT]