Web Log Archives: October 06, 2002 - October 12, 2002
Saturday, October 12, 2002
David Steinberg weighs in on the new Museum of Sex in New York. Interesting observation: "It's no accident that the primary lens through which MoSex views sex is that of history rather than art. Its founder and chief financial benefactor, Executive Director Daniel Gluck, feels that the image that erotic art raises in people's minds is essentially cheesy. Gluck would rather teach the lessons of sexual history than offer the more nebulous perspectives to be gleaned from exhibitions of sexual art."
Dawn Olsen does not shy away from the label "dildo enthusiast."
I own a dildo. I like my dildo. I use my dildo - and as soon as I become an expert at my dildo proclivities - I will be considered a dildo enthusiast.
I will begin collecting them in an effort to raise my status in the dildo enthusiast community. I will consult experts, I will go to dildo conventions that have a wide variety of dildos on display with instructors demonstrating how to properly pack, load and maintain your dildo.
I will register my dildo with the Dildo International Constituents Society. I will be a card-carrying member of the Latex and Lubed Brigade.
DICS – “Defending your right to get fucked.”
This is apparently a joke at the expense of blogosphere gun enthusiasts who don't like being labeled "gun enthusiasts," but the post and comments are hilarious even if you (like me) don't get the original reference.
Friday, October 11, 2002
The kids will love this: Halloween pimp costumes. (Link snagged from Aberrant News.)
AP wire story: "An Alabama law banning the sale of sex toys was struck down by a federal judge as a violation of the right to privacy. 'The fundamental right of privacy, long recognized by the Supreme Court as inherent among our constitutional protections, incorporates a right to sexual privacy,' U.S. District Judge Lynwood Smith Jr. said Wednesday. He said the state did not prove it has a legitimate interest in banning the sale of sex devices for use in private, consensual relationships between adults."
The Los Angeles obscenity trial of porn producer Max Hardcore ended with a hung jury. It's not clear yet if prosecutors will retry the case.
The blogosphere is in a tizzy after Andrew Sullivan endorses Christina Spears for Senate.
Florida prosecutors are trying to shut down a Tampa-based website that allows prostitutes and clients to exchange information and set up meetings. "On bigdoggie.net men trade information about finding prostitutes, what services each woman provides and how to avoid getting busted by vice cops. Prostitutes use the site to advertise and exchange e-mails among themselves about customers who pay well, who are kinky and who are vice officers. In June, authorities arrested the owner of the Tampa-based, international Web site and a dozen women accused of using it to advertise their $300 to $700 call girl services."
The owners of bigdoggie.net, which calls itself "the biggest, most respected, Escort Resource site on the net," are fighting the charges on free speech grounds. Their lawyer says: "Web sites tell how to make bombs. Web sites tell how to make methamphetamine. That's the whole nature of the First Amendment. It's the exchange of information." The article continues, "[defense lawyer Larry] Lirot compared bigdoggie.net to High Times magazine. The publication features stories about how to grow marijuana, opinions about legalizing pot and reviews about the quality of marijuana from different countries and states. All of those activities are protected free speech, even though marijuana is illegal, Lirot said." The lead detective on the case doesn't buy the analogy: "High Times doesn't sell [marijuana]. High Times doesn't put pot growers in contact with pot buyers."
A judge had originally ordered the site shut down pending trial, but the owners of bigdoggie.net defied the order and kept the site active. This week, another judge ruled that the site can keep operating for now.
CNN covers the crackdown on scantily clad betel net vendors in Taiwan. A local official says the edict requiring female vendors to cover their breasts, buttocks, and belly buttons was needed for both public decency and public safety. "Hospital records show that many male drivers have been so distracted by the betel nut girls that they're run into telephone poles."
Lara Riscol is back at Alternet with a piece on how the abstinence movement has glommed onto Miss America's triumphant victory as the ultimate virgin-slut morality tale.
The Greenpeace guide to environmentally friendly sex. (Thanks, Eric)
Mark Morford waxes gonzo on those high school cheerleader competitions that ESPN airs in off hours. "This is Britney on speed. This is Mary Kate and Ashley shot out of a gun straight into your fragile nerve core. This is powerfully sexual and physical movement and weirdly mesmerizing body energy entirely, tragically divorced from actual female sexuality, some horrid breakdown, a spectacular and all-American display of going-through-the-motions without having any idea what it means to move the body in such a way. And lo, it is strange."
The Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle has dropped Leonard Nimoy from its upcoming fund-raiser because his new art photography book, Shekhina, contains images of naked woman posing with Jewish ritual items. More.
The Economist looks at the British adult entertainment industry's more respectable public image and newly formed trade association. "As the industry has been legalised, so it has grown up. These days bits of it look much like any other business. The trade association has hired a professional lobbyist, and hopes to commission academic research to back its push for consistent, evenhanded regulation and tougher enforcement. Its members accept there is plenty of room for more consolidation, efficiency and competition. Margins are huge, the market murky. The industry hopes its products, like contraceptives in the past century, will become cheap, reliable, and unremarkable."
From the classical music site Andante: "The mystery of how some New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (NZSO) supporters were confronted with pornographic texts instead of song titles when they accessed a promotional CD was solved yesterday when a Christchurch student fronted up to police. . . . The man, who is a keen concertgoer, had taken the CD to his girlfriend's flat to play on her computer. When the software produced a blank track list to be filled in the man entered the misleading titles without having any idea that as he did so they were being transmitted to a U.S.-based website and from there back to other computers." More.
More analysis of the new Visa regulations for billing services used by many adult website operators.
Thursday, October 10, 2002
More highlights from the early Daze:
Wednesday, October 9, 2002
Noah Shachtman at Wired reports: "The Internet stalker terrorizing the porn business confessed his sins yesterday to the FBI. But the G-Men took no action against Brian Sullivan, who swamped the inboxes of adult industry bigwigs with bigoted slurs and stomach-turning tales of murder and torture." Earlier story here.
Gian Sachdev at Philadelphia Weekly reports on bizarre campus protests against an appearance by Annie Sprinkle at Temple University.
Sarah Bayliss reviews the inaugural exhibition at New York's Museum of Sex. "Those who pay the museum's steep $17 admission fee looking for lowbrow kicks will be disappointed, as much of what's on view is devoid of exposed flesh. The displays also have an oddly static feel, perhaps because they are small, often with reproduced images. Observing 1950s photos of well-oiled beefcakes, grainy stag films, or posters of melon-breasted Vargas girls among mute museumgoers is a decidedly unerotic experience. There's a reason why some of this stuff is usually viewed in private."
Daze Reader is two years old today.
Tuesday, October 8, 2002
Check out these photos of pornstar/nerd Asia Carrera "geeking out" and fixing her computers. (Link snagged from David Chess.)
Visa has imposed new strictures and fees on third-party billing services used by Internet porn sites, which has many adult webmasters very angry. Companies like CCBill, Epoch and iBill are basically middlemen who handle the credit card billing and subscription processing for pay-site operators who don't have their own credit card merchant accounts. Some of the new guidelines are reasonable consumer protection policies in response to credit card abuse in the Internet porn industry. But many adult webmasters accuse Visa of gouging small businesses and abusing its near-monopoly position. Read Heather Corinna's outraged response at her online journal.
Visa's new rules could lead to a shakeout in the web porn industry. They won't affect the big pay-site operators with dozens of sites and millions per year in revenue. And they won't affect the webmasters who run free sites and make money by sending traffic to the big pay-site operators' affiliate programs. The new rules will mostly affect webmasters who run small pay-sites, which includes the more creative sites run by individuals and serving particular niches. Most of these sites aren't all that lucrative, and the new guidelines and fees may push some to close up shop, which would leave the Internet porn landscape blander and narrower.
Rowan Williams, slated to become the next Archbishop of Canterbury, recently declined to sign a statement opposing sex outside marriage. This long BBC article takes a fascinating look at the church's evolving attitude towards sex and marriage over the last few centuries.
Nerve has an interview with Irvine Welsh and an excerpt from Porno, his new novel.
Monday, October 7, 2002
The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra gave away 8000 copies of a promotional CD, but some recipients who tried to play the CD on their computers "found that when the track title listings came up they had been substituted by pornographic descriptions of sex acts." Apparently a prankster had submitted the alternate track titles to Gracenote, the online CD database that some media player software automatically searches to find and display track info.
Disturbing Time feature about an abstinence-only sex education program called Worth the Wait, which uses scare tactics like showing students graphic photos of diseased genitals. Debra at Pursed Lips calls it "the old driver's ed car-crash-and-cadaver/scared straight approach to teaching kids about sex." This sort of program doesn't simply promote "waiting"; it promotes a visceral aversion to sex and the human body.
Liz Langley blasts abstinence-only sex education, and offers some alternate advice to young people forced to listen to "sex equals death" abstinence propaganda in school.
Odd metaphor of the day, from Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (part IV, chapter 1):
The prince rejoiced in health exceptional even among princes. By gymnastics and careful attention to his health he had brought himself to such a point that in spite of his excess in pleasure he looked as fresh as a big glossy green Dutch cucumber.
From Time: "A quiet battle is raging over the Bush Administration's plan to appoint a scantily credentialed doctor, whose writings include a book titled As Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Then and Now, to head an influential Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel on women's health policy. Sources tell Time that the agency's choice for the advisory panel is Dr. W. David Hager, an obstetrician-gynecologist who also wrote, with his wife Linda, Stress and the Woman's Body, which puts 'an emphasis on the restorative power of Jesus Christ in one's life' and recommends specific Scripture readings and prayers for such ailments as headaches and premenstrual syndrome."
The New York Times has an interview with Grady Turner, executive curator of the Museum of Sex.
At Hoot Island, Wyyrd provides an updated guide to "the bases" with an expanded set of baseball analogies. Last week, Wyyrd reviewed some under-represented niches in online porn, like Yu-Gi-Ah.com ("Women who love collectible card game collectors!") and HotWetMitosis.com ("teen nympho cells divide like there's no tomorrow!").
Sunday, October 6, 2002
The reverse cowgirl rips into an MSNBC columnist who mentioned her blog but declined to link to her in a prissy, condescending piece about "cam girls" and "porn blogs." That is not to deny the existence of sometimes intelligent writing at MSNBC, but Daze Reader chooses not to link to such Columns.
Kythryne Aisling and Tim Adams have launched the webzine Sex on the Edge, with feature articles, advice, fiction, poetry and galleries.
Adult Video News reports on Thursday's proceedings in the Max Hardcore obscenity trial in Los Angeles. The jury watched excerpts from the Extreme Teen series produced by another company, for comparison purposes in evaluating whether Max Hardcore's videos are outside California's "community standards." The trial resumes Monday for closing arguments and the beginning of jury deliberations.
In a hilarious riff on Banned Books Week, Reason editor Jesse Walker belittles the "failure of the censorious imagination" revealed in this year's list of most-challenged books. Catcher in the Rye and Heather Has Two Mommies again, ho hum — Walker suggests some less obvious choices for the book-banning busybodies that require a little interpretation.
Green Eggs and Ham, meanwhile, is a thinly disguised account of homosexual seduction. In this kiddie favorite, "Sam I Am" (that is, "Same As I Am") tries to persuade the narrator to "eat" green eggs and ham. Anyone who has traveled in the Spanish-speaking world knows what "eggs" are. The ham, of course, is a long, phallic sausage, perfect for "porking" someone. The protagonist repeatedly denies any interest in the offer, but Sam persists, proposing that he join him in any number of locations, positions, and kinky arrangements. ("Would you, could you, on a boat? Would you, could you, with a goat?") Finally, our hero gives in, just once—and discovers that he enjoys fellating breakfast after all. Sam has made a convert, and the legion of God-Fearing Heterosexuals is diminished by one.
(Link snagged from RiShawn Biddle.)
