Web Log Archives: September 29, 2002 - October 05, 2002
Saturday, October 5, 2002
Things not to do naked (Flash).
A Korean company is marketing a shower attachment product called Purity, described here as a Vagina Washing AntiBacterial Rod.
Dawn Olsen launches her own blog dating service.
List at McSweeney's: Bad Things That Will Happen When You Masturbate.
MSNBC concludes its series on online dating with a look at law enforcement efforts against online escort services. Much of the article deals with Florida prosecutors' case against a site which facilitates communication between prostitutes and clients and features reviews, rankings and message boards about prostitutes in different areas.
I wasn't familiar with the site in question, but it sounds like a good system. It keeps both negotiations and sex acts off the streets; allows prostitutes to work more independently without pimps or madames; and makes the whole process safer for everyone. So why are police and prosecutors wasting time and resources on victimless crimes involving consenting adults?
The New York Times has yet another article about college sex columnists.
Advocates for making prostitution legal, safer and more humane have declared Saturday International Day of Prostitutes' Empowerment, a response to the International Day of No Prostitution declared recently by anti-prostitution groups. (Link snagged from La Di Da.)
Friday, October 4, 2002
Another embarrassing email gets forwarded around and escapes to the Internet wilds. Trevor Luxton sent this email to friends boasting about a chance sexual encounter while watching football on TV.
Last night I was all geared up for a night in front of the telly watching football, having a ruby and a couple of beers while Jo's still away. Suddenly I get a text from Laura my mates ex which says I'm coming round because I need to see you.
So she comes round and we get chatting about all sorts of stuff and then we start kissing a fondling (as you do). Then I find my self sitting in the arm chair with a beer in one hand remote in the other, West ham on the box and Laura on her knees sucking my piece...
Then the phone rings and it's Jo who was bored at the airport...
So now I've got my beer, Laura sucking and Jo chatting to me on the dog…when Laura stops sucking looks up at me winks and whispers "say hello to Jo for me" and then gets back to the job in hand...
Am I the worst boyfriend in the world or what?????
Luxton has since been suspended from his job at a London bank.
CBS News investigates the business of smuggling and selling counterfeit Viagra.
Wired previews the Museum of Sex, which is again scheduled to open this weekend in Manhattan.
Did you know that Carl Orff's Carmina Burana is full of sex? I didn't until reading this item in the Austin Chronicle about a Carmina Burana singalong being performed at a local Baptist ministry.
But we've got to wonder if the Riverbend [Church] folks are also deserving of kudos for pushing the boundaries of churchly tolerance of artistic espression ... or are they, perhaps, unaware that much of the story of Carl Orff's masterpiece has to do - obscured by Latin or not - with boozing and betting and the vigorous debauching of maidens? That it's a multipartite pagan screed in favor of fleshly vice over spiritual virtue? That the activities it so lustily promotes are probably not What Jesus Would Do unless He was already bombed out of His mind on one too many Gethsemane Coolers?
David Paul Jobling gets in the spirit with an exuberant review of a performance by the Sydney Symphony.
With lyrics like I bear my back under your assault and Behold, welcome and longed-for spring brings delight back, the meadows glow with rich flowers, the sun makes all things bright.(and) Hawker, give me rouge to make my cheeks red, so that I can invite the young men to welcome love.(and) Complying soothes me, refusing casts me down... Ah yes, fornication and a whole lot of drinking! The poor, the wealthy, the boys the girls... it's Mardi Gras!
This is the hot, lascivious, gut stirring stuff that wet dreams are made of. If you can get to see this monumental piece, go for it. No need to drop an ekky before you go, the wonderful Simon Kenway and his glorious wild things will take you there, raw unadulterated, seethingly sweet, unsafe sizzling, Orff your face sex.
The program notes for a performance in Pennsylvania earlier this year provides some good background.
The poems on which this secular cantata is based were written by thirteenth-century goliards (goliards were undisciplined posse of students and vagrant clerics whose lustiness and lack of respect for authority set their music apart from the troubadours who entertained the upper classes with songs of courtly love, and knightly adventure). A large portion of goliard song manuscripts was discovered in 1803 at the Benedictine monastery of Beuren in Bavaria (near Munich). In 1847, Johann Andreas Schmeller edited and published a number of these under the title Carmina Burana (Songs of Beuren). Orff chose to select only the poetry text from this book to set to the cantata and set them to original music. The poems mingle Christian piety and pagan hedonism in a spirit of simplicity and unselfconscious directness intrinsic in medieval thought of morality. Celebration of uninhibited pleasures of life, love, sex and bawdiness are prevalent.
These sound like my kind of monks. Another good overview of the cantata's racy content is available at 'Carmina Burana' - Drink, Sex and Mediaeval Monks.
The couple arrested for having sex in St. Patrick's Cathedral to win a radio contest were apparently on a daylong public sex spree accompanied by the radio show producer. Prosecutors claim in court papers that the couple engaged in sex acts "at several public Manhattan locations" that day, including the FAO Schwarz toy store and the sidewalk in front of the Carnegie Deli.
Kitty Bukkake describes watching American Bukkake 10 while listening to NPR in a brilliant, hilarious piece entitled "A Bukkake Home Companion." (Link snagged from Reverse Cowgirl.)
Thursday, October 3, 2002
The Daytona Beach city commission has passed a law banning thongs and bare female breasts in public. The new law is aimed at restricting public revelry during spring break and Biketoberfest, and might also be used against the city's strip clubs.
Adult Video News reports on Wednesday's sessions in the Max Hardcore obsenity trial in Los Angeles. The judge dismissed one of two counts after the prosecution rested its case.
From the Weekly World News: Swiss mad scientist Dr. Henrik Schenkel believes there's an alien implant in Jennifer Lopez's butt. "My research leaves me no doubt that there is an alien implant deep in Miss Lopez' hindquarters, most likely inserted during a UFO abduction. It must be removed for study with the utmost care - and only I know how to extract it."
Rose at Sex-Geek defends the practice of pussy shaving against those who "deride pussy-shaving as merely a chore that women do to please their immature men."
I love a shaven pussy, for two reasons. One, you can see it! When I go to the gym, say, and am walking around naked with a lot of other naked women, I am aware that if have shaved recently, my vagina lips can be seen by anyone walking towards me or even standing next to me. . . . Another reason I like to shave is that I can feel my pussy without interference. Running my hand over my smooth mound makes me happy. Whenever I shave it, I find myself visiting it constantly just to hang out. It's for my own sensual pleasure.
(September 30 entry; you may have to scroll down.) Great piece by one of my favorite online writers.
Scientists have called into question the "big feet, big meat" theorem. A study published in the British Journal of Urology International claims that shoe size is not correlated to penis size.
Dozens of British stars have contributed to a celebrity bra and bikini auction to benefit Breast Cancer Care. Kylie Minogue donated "a skimpy black mesh bra with pink straps from her own lingerie range," while Ursula Andress is offering "a copy of the white bikini top she wore as she emerged from the sea in the classic scene from Dr No." (Link snagged from World Sex News.)
Adult Video News is covering the obscenity trial of porn producer Max Hardcore, which began this week in Los Angeles. "The second day of the Max Hardcore trial ended at 3:45 this afternoon, after the jurors had just finished watching the first scene of the video around which the City's obscenity charge centers: Max Extreme 4. And while it may be too early to estimate the reaction of the jury to the evidence, the fact that one alternate juror viewed the 'offending' tape while leaning back in his chair, with his feet propped up on the back of the chair in front of him, probably bodes well for Hardcore."
I, for one, find Max Hardcore offensive. His vengeful, misogynistic brand of porn seems designed to prove the Dworkinites were right all along. But I hate censorship far more, so here's hoping the jury sets Max free. The Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages ran a good feature article about Max Hardcore in 1998 surveying his career, style and appeal.
Wednesday, October 2, 2002
Leslie Earnest looks at the
skyrocketing cost of weddings as "more people of modest means have been springing for ever more lavish ceremonies." . . . Elsewhere, Margaret Berry continues her "Don’t Be Rude" series at The Morning News with a cautionary guide to the more common wedding etiquette missteps.
Oh! my! god! Oliver Willis has photos of Britney modeling Versace at Milan Fashion Week.
Fascinating article on the erotics of type, including an illustrated history of pornographic typefaces using human bodies in letterforms. (Link snagged from Jerry Kindall via Flutterby.)
A Hollywood studio is preparing to shoot Wonderland, a film about dead pornstar John Holmes and his involvement in a brutal 1981 mass murder. Val Kilmer will play Holmes. Won't this basically be a remake of the second half of Boogie Nights, only with real names? And why do they keep casting gorgeous actors as the obscenely ugly Holmes? Coming soon, Johnny Depp in The Ron Jeremy Story.
A study on current trends in "malicious code" on the Internet identifies porn "dialers" as a major problem. "These change the number used by dial up connections to expensive premium rate lines. Such programs, which are regularly modified by their creators and pose legal problems for AV firms. By adding detection for the programs (which don't load without user interaction) the vendors could be accused of restraining trade. One man's malware is another's useful utility." Not all dialers are ripoffs of this sort, but I would recommend never using them.
From the Observer: "Scientists last week revealed they had successfully tested a nasal spray, PT-141, that sent 'healthy, normal women' into states of high sexual arousal. 'The crucial point about PT-141 is that it directly targets the brain's arousal centre,' said Dr Carl Spana, president of Palatin Technologies.... Now the company hopes to market PT-141 for humans in two or three years though Spana stressed Palatin's main target was people with sexual problems: men with impotence and women with low arousal."
Reason columnist Jacob Sullum criticizes the "bluenose busybodies" who are pressuring hotels to stop offering pay-per-view porn.
Tuesday, October 1, 2002
Carol Queen offers advice on how to host a sex party.
The Sun offers a glimpse at the hot new fashions on display at Milan Fashion Week. "So that’s what they mean by a double-breasted jacket!"
Carol Lloyd profiles the Center for Sex and Culture, founded eight years ago in San Francisco by Carol Queen and Robert Lawrence.
It sounds so quintessentially San Francisco: a library, archive, workshop space and community center about sex where busy little interns scurry around getting credit toward their doctorates, visiting scholars probe historical detritus about the dildo and curious laypeople read up on how to have a full-body orgasm. Then, at night, the place transforms into a venue for "social events" -- parties with a purpose, sex-positive performances, lectures and workshops.
And who better to head the many-limbed venture than the city's most salacious multitasker, Carol Queen? A sex educator, author, former callgirl, party thrower, performer and possessor of a Ph.D. in human sexuality, she has been a fixture of San Francisco's sex-positive movement for decades. With her cat-eye spectacles, matter-of-fact demeanor and vintage fashion, Queen resembles a librarian -- but one who has long since let her hair down.
Much of the article follows Queen and Lawrence's ongoing search for a permanent location. The Center's library and archives are presently stashed away in storage lockers, and events take place at rented locations around the city. (Link snagged from Flutterby.)
Michael Barrish writes about stumbling across photos of his ex-girlfriend having sex on a porn site. But don't bother googling the ex's nom de porn — this piece is fiction. In a more recent entry (also fictional?), he responds to an email asking "whats the web site where yer ex is at, i wanna see those naked pics." Great stuff. (Link snagged from Uffish Thoughts.)
Oliver Willis is backing Christina Spears for Senate.
Scottish media scholar Brian McNair examines the increasing mainstream acceptance of pornography in an op-ed piece for the Scotsman. He touches on a range of political, cultural and academic matters, and argues that a society's acceptance of porn goes hand-in-hand with women's rights, gay rights and sexual freedom generally. "Indeed, far from causing an increase in sexual violence or misogyny, the expansion of porn coincides with huge improvements in women’s and gay rights in the West. Those places in the world where porn is banned or most tightly controlled, usually for religious reasons, are also those where women and gays are most brutally treated." (Link snagged from World Sex News.)
Monday, September 30, 2002
MSNBC's series on online dating continues. Jane Weaver looks at how new technologies will change online dating. "Over the next few years digital daters will be able to connect almost instantly to a potential partner through cell phones or other wireless gadgets, watch video clips or listen to someone describe his hobbies." And Mike Brunker looks at "adult" or "alternative" personals sites, where the focus on setting up sexual encounters or finding people with similar sexual tastes is more upfront.
The New York Times has a long feature article by Lynn Hirschberg on the whole sordid Bob Crane story, entitled "Sitcom, Murder, Pornographic Web Site. Now, the Hollywood Biopic!"
Julia Scheeres reports that porn spam is getting raunchier, with references to rape, incest and bestiality becoming more common.
Two Oakland police vice officers were arrested at a San Leandro brothel for allegedly soliciting prostitutes while on duty.
Among Japanese female fans, Turkish star Ilhan Mansiz has taken over the title of world's sexiest footballer. Wai Wai reports, "English superstar David Beckham's boyish good looks and ball skills tantalized and titillated an enormous swathe of Japanese womanhood during summer's soccer World Cup. But Becks' obviously happy marriage and fatherhood cost him some of his allure as women realized it was highly unlikely they'd ever be delivering the Manchester United midfielder a header. Enter Turkish playmaker and delectably single Ilhan Mansiz. It's no Istan-bull that this Young Turk has become the darling of those gals who like a little beefcake with their soccer balls. And, just as Beckham sparked a World Cup boom, Japanese birds are all out on gobbling up Turkey's soccer stud famous for his baby face and samurai hairstyle in whatever form they can get him."
Sunday, September 29, 2002
The much-hyped opening of the Museum of Sex in New York was pushed back from yesterday to next Saturday due to construction delays.
Daze Reader is nearing its second anniversary, and I've been browsing the archives. Select items first posted in the early days:
