Web Log Archives: August 11, 2002 - August 17, 2002
Saturday, August 17, 2002
Don't tell me you've never wondered what Yoda's penis looks like.
The Timothy Plan, "the largest pro-life, pro-family, Biblically based mutual fund group, employing a specific moral screening criteria designed to avoid investing shareholders' money in any company that has a pattern of contributing to the moral degradation of society," has divested its portfolio of Wal-Mart stock over the retail chain's "anti-family promotion of pornography." Specifically the fund group is angry that Wal-Mart stocks "pornographic magazines" like Cosmopolitan in checkout lanes. I guess these folks won't be investing in the upcoming Daze Reader IPO.
Good Salon piece by Trisha Posner, author of This Is Not Your Mother's Menopause, about how menopausal and post-menopausal women can maintain sexual desire without hormone treatments. "Forget the pill-pushers -- the best way for older women to stay sexually interested is to keep having sex." (Link snagged from Inflatable Sheep.)
YNOT has a roundtable interview with five women who work in the Internet porn industry.
ZD Net has a longer article with analysis of RealNetworks' plans to add porno to its subscription service RealOne SuperPass. Can the company move into porno distribution without sparking a backlash? This article reviews past forays by Internet and cable TV companies. (Beware the full-page pop-up designed to look like a 404 error page.)
Friday, August 16, 2002
Nicholas Kristof blasts the Bush administration's consistent hostility toward international programs to improve women's rights and living conditions. "The central moral struggle of the 19th century concerned slavery, and that of the 20th pitted democracy against Nazism, Communism and other despotic isms. Our own pre-eminent moral challenge will be to ease the brutality that kills and maims girls and women across much of Africa and Asia. Alas, this summer President Bush is putting the U.S. on the wrong side of the battle lines."
RealNetworks is considering adding adult programming to RealOne SuperPass, its multimedia subscription service.
From the New York Daily News: "A man and woman having sex in a vestibule at St. Patrick's Cathedral - a sleazy prank broadcast live on the shock jock Opie and Anthony radio show - were arrested yesterday after an usher spotted them, police said. . . . The sexual high jinks at the city's most well-known sacred site came on the Feast of the Assumption, one of the Catholic Church's holy days of obligation." More.
Assorted articles about last weekend's Internet porn trade show in Florida (the first three from local newspapers, the latter two from industry journals):
DVD review in Clean Sheets: "Connoisseurs of whips-and-chains cinema, rejoice! Radley Metzger's sadomasochistic masterpiece, The Image, is finally available on DVD. The transfer is magnificent, the action is uncensored, and the intensity is unparalled." Excellent! Time to throw out my scratchy, washed out, censored, modified-to-fit-your-screen VHS copy.
Thursday, August 15, 2002
The New York Times Home & Garden section has a delightful feature on John Waters' apartment in Greenwich Village.
Seattle's two major daily newspapers, the Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer, are refusing to run advertisements for the film Sex And Lucia. The film won awards for best director and best screenplay at the Seattle International Film Festival in June, which the Times helped sponsor. A newspaper spokesperson says, "We are not accepting ads for the film. It does not fit in with our policy on what we consider to be adult entertainment but we are not passing judgement on the film itself."
Sally Vincent talks to Irvine Welsh about his new novel Porno.
Pornography, it seems, became the new rock'n'roll while Welsh wasn't looking. "It's massive," he says, then, lest he has understated the massive massiveness of massive, adds, "Fucking massive." First he knew of it, he sauntered into one of the old Edinburgh dives to see a few old mates, expecting to find the place as he'd left it, the punters all popping Es and bopping around in a sweat haze, and found himself the only man with his clothes on in the middle of some kind of huge, gonzo sex orgy. It seemed that while his back was turned, everyone he knew had gone through a process of disinhibition that had passed him by. All the old clubs are now sex clubs. You don't go back to your place for more drugs and loud noises any more, you go back to your place to get your kit off, shag everyone in sight, film everyone shagging everyone in sight, then sit about watching the film of you shagging everyone in sight from your last night out.
Damn, I have to visit Scotland sometime soon.
Katharine Mieszkowski explores the phenomenon of "crush sites", which allow users to send anonymous "secret admirer" email messages, whose recipients are then encouraged to visit the site and try to guess the sender's identity. Not surprisingly, some such sites are little more than email harvesters designed to generate spam rolls. Mieszkowski plays detective to track down the secretive owner of the worst offender, CrushLink.
From The Onion, America's finest news source: Wedding Enjoyed by No One But Bride
Good account of Tuesday's arguments in the Sex.com vs Verisign trial, during which a three-judge appellate court panel is trying to decide VeriSign's culpability in a fraudulent transfer of the domain seven years ago. Doesn't sound like things are going well for Verisign.
During Tuesday's hearing, the judges seemed to cast doubts on VeriSign's claims that it's not responsible for turning the name over to Cohen after receiving his forged letter.
Judge Alex Kozinski wondered how VeriSign's DNS database of domain names was any different from a stock certificate, which he said connects an owner with some property.
David Dolkas, an attorney at Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich, the firm representing VeriSign, said that if the judges were asking "is the DNS database somehow representative of an ownership right, the answer is no."
"Why not?" Kozinski replied. "Why isn't that exactly what it is?"
Brunching Shuttlecocks quiz: Are You Horny?
Many British doctors are embarrassed to talk with patients about sexual side effects of illness or medication. One female patient says, "I was 26 when I had the [back] surgery and didn’t think I’d ever have sex again because no one would give me constructive advice. Sex would cause me excruciating back pain for days. I’d ask seemingly serious specialists for advice on sex and they would be amused and start cracking jokes. I felt as if I was watching them audition for a Carry On film. Another common reaction would be excruciating, toe-curling embarrassment, which made me feel ashamed for having asked." (Link snagged from World Sex News.)
Legendary exploitation filmmaker Doris Wishman died last weekend at age 90. Film Threat has a short obituary. "Wishman's career spanned the entire history of exploitation - she made 'nudie cuties' in the early 60s, violent and lurid 'roughies' in the mid 60s, 'sleazies' in the 70s and even a cheapie splatter film in the 80s. Wishman's films have gained a new audience in recent years amongst cult film fanatics who are drawn to the director's unique visual and narrative style." More about Doris Wishman:
Psychotronic clearinghouse Something Weird Video carries several Doris Wishman films, and their online catalogue has cover art and fun descriptions for each title.
Wednesday, August 14, 2002
The Washington Post has an interview with gynecologist Elizabeth Stewart, author of The V Book: A Doctor's Guide to Complete Vulvovaginal Health.
Michael Ninn has created the first completely 3D computer-generated porno, entitled 2FUNKY4U. Film Threat sez, "So for all of you that keep one hand down your pants while playing videogames, this film is gonna be for you."
Wai Wai headline of the week: Stalkeress in cuffs after used pantie bait goes smelly
Wired looks at Sex.com's lawsuit against Network Solutions for helping a conman steal the domain with forged papers, then refusing to rectify their error.
Parody ad by Oliver Willis, America's new humorist: Britney switches to Mac.
The downside to email filtering software: legitimate emails often get filtered out because they include verboten keywords. "Some 1,000 different e-mail sites recently bounced 2,500 copies of one TidBITS [e-newsletter] issue because it included a reference to Viagra, Engst said. Other words that have triggered rejections of TidBITS issues include cherry, keystroke, blonde, Napster and undress. In other cases, combinations of words and graphics have caused the newsletter to be mislabeled a virus."
Daze's hometown of Austin, Texas, has no law against bare female breasts in public, and topless sunbathing is fairly common at the city's main swimming/sunning venue, Barton Springs. There's also a great nude beach called Hippie Hollow a few miles from town. All very civilized, if you ask me. Austin American-Statesman columnist Jane Greig recently complained about the topless sunbathing (what about the children?) and encouraged fellow prudes to lobby the City Council. In a later column, she read through her mailbag and belittled anyone (except herself) who actually cares about this issue. And she weaseled out of her earlier advocacy ("Want to change the law? Contact the City Council and let your feelings be known.") by claiming that she was merely "providing information, not a call to lobby the council." The local alt-weekly reported on plans for a playful public protest of Greig's anti-breast initiative, and later ran a discreet photo of the sparsely attended event.
Monday, August 12, 2002
The French Interior Minister has proposed deporting non-EU prostitutes. Many longtime Paris prostitutes are angry over the influx of Middle Eastern, African, East European and Chinese prostitutes over the last few years. Debate over prostitution policy "has filled the front pages and editorials of French newspapers for weeks." This article summarizes the various positions and also surveys prostitution policies and debates across Europe.
A conservative member of Parliament, Francoise de Panafieu, is advocating a "tolerant" approach, including the reopening of Paris's famed brothels, which were shut down just after World War II. And Socialists, mainly in the Paris city hall, are advocating a crackdown on all forms of soliciting and the eventual elimination of prostitution. Socialists have called prostitution a form of "modern slavery."
Generally speaking, the debate is between "abolitionists," who want to stop prostitution, and "regulators," who say prostitution will always be around and should be recognized and controlled. A similar debate is underway all over Europe. Some countries, such as the Netherlands, have made prostitution a fully legal and recognized profession, with brothels open to public inspection and prostitutes enjoying the same legal rights as other workers. At the opposite end of the spectrum is Sweden, which under a 1999 law goes after the client by making soliciting for sex illegal, punishable by up to six months in prison.
Michel Houellebecq's latest novel, Platform, is now available in English translation. It generated intellectual controversy in France (which isn't really that hard to do) for the main character's endorsement of sex tourism and hostility toward Islam. Jason Cowley in the Observer gives it a rave review. "[Houellebecq's novels] are also full of provocative, often comic attacks against left-liberal orthodoxies, against Islam, against capitalism and against any idea of progress. Reading Houellebecq (pronounced Wellbeck) is like being caught up in a tropical storm: you are blown away by the ferocity of his imagination. Like the great Louis-Ferdinand Céline, whom he closely resembles, Houellebecq is a grand, scabrous renunciator."
Good feature article by David Crary: "With sexually active students on their campuses and the Vatican unswervingly opposed to premarital sex, America's Roman Catholic colleges face difficult choices on such sensitive matters as condom use and unwanted pregnancies."
Also in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Katharine Mieszkowski attends Ladyfest, a funky women's arts festival. "With more cancan than oratory, it makes being a revolutionary, feminist, firebrand superhero, well, fun."
In the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Annalee Newitz talks up the upcoming festival movie Want, "one of the most horrific, sad, and true depictions of the dot-com boom. . . . Want's main character, Trey, is a programmer who inhabits a surreal world of psychotic branding, marketing droids, television addicts, and transgressive, Web-based sex. Moving in grainy fast-motion from computer screen to computer screen, Trey is unable to network with anyone except in the context of business relationships. Even when he jacks off with a woman in a chat room, his eyes wander up to watch the price index in the corner of the screen."
Tiger Woods dismisses the supposed nude photos of his girlfriend Elin Nordegren circulating on the Internet as bogus. In a statement posted at TigerWoods.com (which requires registration for most content), he writes, "Apparently, some nude photos are making the rounds on the internet that some claim are of my girlfriend. Although she has done some swimsuit modelling, she has never posed nude, nor does she have any intent to do so." Check out the supposed nude Elin Nordegren pics for yourself here.
An exciting trend in blogland is the serialized blog novel. Oliver Willis, America's new humorist, has launched a blog novel entitled Sex 'N' Crime at Salon's blog section.
Wrigley Field bleachers flasher photo at fan site Right Field Sucks. (The site name comes from a common chant by the cool kids in the left field bleachers during dull stretches of Cubs games. But this flasher is standing in the right field bleachers . . .)
Nude gardener wins another round before the Pennsylvania Superior Court. You go, cranky old man!
Scientists believe they've found the G-spot and figured out how it works.
Sunday, August 11, 2002
Blogger Dawn Olsen discusses the issue of fuzzy nubs vs. hairless muffs here and later here. "So why is it, that vast numbers of women in porn and in adult magazines are all closely shaven to the point of looking like non-matured girls? . . . Why do we want to see women robbed of their signs of sexual maturity?" Entertaining comments follow both posts.
