Web Log Archives: November 24, 2002 - November 30, 2002
Saturday, November 30, 2002
Making the rounds among snarky godless sex-obsessed bloggers: a conservative christian ministry site called "Fires of Darkness" invites you to send e-cards about pornography addiction to your spouse. The cards come with two basic messages, "please forgive me for being a porn addict" or "I'll help you fight your porn addiction." Due to the bombardment of snarky godless sex-obsessed surfers, Fires of Darkness has temporarily shut down the e-card service, though you can still view sample cards here and here and here. Meanwhile the human torch has created a hilarious parody card. And the Fark message board goons have been creating alternate cards.
Columnist Michelle Malkin, a second-string version of the "virtuecrats" Dan Savage mocks, recently wrote a column criticizing Christina Aguilera for acting slutty. I don't normally link to pieces like this; linking and responding to every single "American culture is a moral sewer" diatribe would be much too time-consuming and depressing. But blogger (and actual published writer) G. Beato has written an eloquent, biting, point-by-point rebuttal to Malkin's column. Beato argues that "nubile 21-year olds who love sex and swear like a longshoreman with Tourettes syndrome are one of the many things that makes this country great." Bravo, what he said. (Link snagged from Slotman, who wonders what Malkin would look like naked.)
The Washington Post covers a Dan Savage local bookstore appearance to promote Skipping Towards Gomorrah.
The New York Post reports that a New Jersey strip club is haunted.
The staff of the Liquid Assets lounge in South Plainfield says a gaggle of go-go loving ghouls invaded their burlesque hall after the club's owners spotted an otherworldly image on a security video last summer. Paranormal investigators who have examined the video claim the strip-house specters may be the spirit of a dead dancer or the souls of Prohibition-era gangsters. . . . Club workers also say the ghosts have filled the club with more boo than boobs - by moving around beer bottles, tossing the bar's soda gun in the air and brushing up against people (although none of the dancers, yet).
The author dutifully contacted paranormal debunker Joe Nickel for a balancing quote: "Science has not validated a single ghost image." Nickel frequently writes for Skeptical Inquirer, one of my favorite magazines, where he has recently debunked Fisher's Ghost ("Australia's most famous ghost") and the "light orbs" that have supposedly been photographed around crop circles.
Matt Goyer visited an Amsterdam live sex show during his European vacation. One of the performers asked for volunteers from the audience . . .
Madeleine Murray profiles young Australian writer Lucy Lehmann, who recently published a sex-drenched first novel called The Showgirl and the Brumby, set in the rural Central West.
A British Army recruiting team found a novel form of body modification among Fiji men — many of them have sewn marbles under the skin of the penis, apparently to heighten sensations during sex.
More traditional Weekly World News fare: "The truth about Area 51 has finally been laid bare. Contrary to popular belief, the mysterious Air Force base isn't a repository for downed UFOs -- it's a nudist camp for the nation's top military brass!"
British department store Ethel Austin has agreed to stop selling black lacy bras in sizes for girls under ten after a flurry of complaints. The smallest size had been geared toward six- and seven-year-olds. This article notes near the end, "The row comes just months after catalogue store Argos withdrew G-strings for nine-year-olds following complaints." I couldn't find the original stories in the British press, but the Weekly World News ran an (apparently all true) article recapping the Argos g-string incident. The Guardian ran a couple of commentary pieces.
The Federal Trade Commission has reached a settlement with a billing company over a porn dialer scam. "Automatic 'dialer' software was being downloaded from teaser adult Web sites, sometimes by kids, causing the charges to be billed. Once the dialer software was downloaded, the FTC said, it disconnected the consumer's modem from its usual Internet service provider, dialed an international phone number to Madagascar and reconnected the modem to the Internet from an overseas location. The line subscribers then began incurring charges on their phone lines for the remote Internet connection at the rate of $3.99 per minute."
The producers of the Girls Gone Wild videos won a federal lawsuit filed by a girl who went wild and flashed her breasts to a cameraman three years ago.
An Indian man has designed what is thought to be the world's first condom-shaped motorbike, which he plans to ride around the country to promote safe sex. Ananova has an amazing photo of the bike, which looks a lot like the Oscar Mayer weinermobile, only smaller, pink and with a reservoir tip.
Surveys of American sexual behavior over the last two decades show an increase in "men [who] say they are having sex with other men." The researchers note that "whether that trend stems from an increase in same-sex activity or an increased willingness to report it remains unclear" (Daze guesses mostly the latter). The surveys also show an increase in overall respondents who "said they believed homosexuality was generally not wrong."
Wednesday, November 27, 2002
MetaFilter has a thread about college newspaper sex columnists.
Italian mad scientist/fertility clinic director Severino Antinori claims that the world's first cloned human baby is due in January.
Condom maker Durex has released its annual international sex survey. Among other findings, Durex ranks countries by the average number of times per year their residents have sex:
|
|
France, 167
The Netherlands, 158
Denmark, 152
Canada, 150
Great Britain, 149
Germany, 147
Yugoslavia, 147
South Africa, 146
Austria, 144
Norway, 144
Poland, 141
|
|
United States, 138
Sweden, 136
New Zealand, 135
Belgium, 130
Finland, 129
Malaysia, 121
Taiwan, 121
Spain, 121
India, 116
Thailand, 112
Singapore, 110
|
The Durex website has the full report in PDF, with statistics on safe sex, contraception, first times, common fantasies, etc. Brad Pitt and David Beckham were named sexiest male celebrities, Jennifer Lopez and Angelina Jolie the sexiest female celebrities.
Kentucky sex shop owner switches to selling bibles after religious conversion. "Braithwaite, with tears pooling in his eyes, said God persuaded him to close the shop, burn $10,000 worth of sex toys and open the bookstore in this mountain community made up largely of conservative Christians."
Two stories about polygamy. A group of women are pursuing a class-action lawsuit against the Mormon polygamist colony Bountiful in rural British Columbia, where they claim they suffered sexual, physical, psychological and spiritual abuse in forced polygamous marriages. The woman spearheading the lawsuit cites cross-border trafficking in girls for arranged marriages between Bountiful and polygamist communties in Utah and Arizona. . . Meanwhile, the Salt Lake Tribune covers a talk by a former polygamous wife to several hundred students at Weber State University. "Joseph blames monogamy for societal problems such as adultery, divorce and broken homes. She considers herself an advocate for plural marriage, although she was careful not to push polygamy on the students. Instead, she urged them to be open-minded about alternative lifestyles."
Tuesday, November 26, 2002
Adam Clymer at the New York Times reports: "Information on condom use, the relation between abortion and breast cancer and ways to reduce sex among teenagers has been removed from government Web sites, prompting critics to accuse the Department of Health and Human Services of censoring medical information in order to promote a philosophy of sexual abstinence."
AP writer Paul Wilborn reports that San Fernando Valley's porn business booms despite poor economy.
Bob Pool covers a neighborhood squabble on a tony Los Angeles cul-de-sac where one homeowner has been regularly renting out his house for porn video shoots. "Mainstream filmmakers say they pick neighborhood backdrops because of the architectural style or the type of trees growing there. Adult-film production crews apparently like the modern interior look of the Smiths' house, which the owner said can be filmed so that it resembles such settings as a corporate boardroom or a nightclub. The home's secluded and opulent backyard swimming pool is also an attraction."
Monday, November 25, 2002
From Aftenposten: "A clothing store in downtown Oslo decided on an avant-garde window-dressing display to welcome in the Christmas season. Borrowing a few inflatable dolls from the condom specialists next door, the shop staged an unorthodox display. One doll is dressed as Santa from the waist up. The other is on its knees in front of Father Christmas, with its face buried under Santa's red velvet gown. A sign proclaims: 'Santa Klauz is coming soon!'"
The soon-to-be-incredibly-famous cowgirl ponders the future of blogging.
Catlin Gunn continues her insider series about stripping at The Guardian. This installment is a bitter screed against men who visit strip clubs, whom she calls repulsive, leery, needy, hostile, angry, creepy, dysfunctional, bloated, sagging, pathetic, deluded, and exuding a "faint fishy reek" and "fetid breath." Gunn is especially revolted that men with wives or steady girlfriends would visit her club.
I don't doubt there's plenty of underlying hostility between female strippers and male clubgoers. Not every stripper memoir has to be upbeat and empowering. But this level of unmitigated hatred says more about Gunn than about the men watching her, who are probably more varied and less monstrous than she makes them out to be. If a friend of mine told me all this, I'd urge her to quit the stripping job for her own peace of mind.
Indiana University officials say they will wait to view Shane's World 32: Campus Invasion before deciding whether to take legal action against the filmmakers or disciplinary action against participating students. (Multiple viewings will likely be required, with much freeze-framing and slow-motion.) Meanwhile, a Bloomington "adult novelties" store is already getting "20 to 25 calls a day asking about" the video, which hasn't been released yet.
The Montgomery County (Texas) library review board is returning two sex education books to circulation. The library pulled the books — It's Perfectly Normal and It's So Amazing, both by Robie Harris — from the shelves earlier this year after religious conservatives complained that the books promote tolerance of homosexuality and abortion.
Entertaining Cleveland Scene article about Safer Sex Night at Oberlin College. "The annual event was initiated by a student organization in 1991 as a reaction to the college's timid handling of the AIDS issue. But over the years, it has turned into a celebration of sex for sex's sake. There's a table in the student center with free condoms and information about STDs, and every hour, organizers offer a demonstration on safer-sex techniques, but the atmosphere is more fetish ball than sex ed."
The Debbie Does Dallas nostalgia craze spreads to Alabama, where "two high school football players were ordered to attend an alternative school for nearly three weeks for having sexual relations with a female student in the team's locker room shower" while two other girls stood lookout.
Sunday, November 24, 2002
In his latest spot-on satirical column, "Crotchless Panties Of Doom: The Victoria's Secret fashion show and the end of tasteful humanity as we know it," Mark Morford belittles both the TV show and the groups who protested it. "Perhaps merely calling such bitter attention to the entrely vacuous VS show gives it a power and an authority and a TV rating far out of proportion from its true influence, its fun cheeseball appeal, its fleetingly hollow sexiness. Perhaps scantily clad multimillionaire supermodels flaunting a socially constructed notion of idealized beauty for an hour isn't the gravest threat to women's rights and mental health since the invention of the tube top and/or 'Baywatch.' Possible?"
Retro Crush has scanned two classic Madonna pictorials from Vanity Fair and Vogue in 1992, both photographed by Steven Meisel.
Neal Pollack on The Bachelor: "But to me, the show's unique appeal comes down to this: Who among us haven't dreamt of being made love to in a cheesy pre-fab Aspen condo by an intellectually-stunted, socially-coddled mama's boy?"
Grrl.com has a gallery of sleazy pulp fiction paperback covers with the breathless back-cover blurbs transcribed below. (Link snagged from Six Different Ways.)
