Web Log Archives: March 02, 2003 - March 08, 2003
Saturday, March 8, 2003
Bigfoot "researcher" Loren Coleman is studying the sex life of the Sasquatch. "He says there are some amazing reports about Sasquatch sex that need to be studied further, including one person who claims to have seen a Bigfoot having sex with a cow. Even stranger: Coleman says there have been at least few cases of adult men who were kidnapped by male creatures and forced to impregnate female Bigfoot creatures." (Link snagged from Boing Boing.)
The "was so-and-so gay?" school of history keeps getting sillier. Was Dracula gay? (Link snagged from Aberrant News.)
Tracy Quan criticizes backward prostitution policies in the United States. "America's prostitution fantasies are also reflected in our laws, which are among the strictest in the world. . . . Although prostitutes in every country face discrimination, the actual exchange of money for sex is not a crime in most democracies."
Al-Bawaba reports that Russian lesbian teen pop duo Tatu are taking the Mideast by storm. "Fans claim their music has become popular among youths worldwide due to the fact that they give their listeners the freedom to express themselves and openly admit that many have a trait of homosexuality in them and should express it freely. Their music had also won the hearts of many Middle Eastern youths who feel repressed due to social pressures and traditions. The idea of two girls demonstrating their homosexuality has also appealed to many Middle Eastern males as being something out of the ordinary. Females who are more bounded by social standards and parental controls felt they could break free from a world that has tied them down." (Link snagged from East West.)
The winners of the first annual Nude Bloggies have been announced. Congrats to all the very deserving winners.
What happens when nude protesters get arrested? Eros Blog has the photo.
The "Girls Gone Wild" company is planning a live pay-per-view broadcast next week from an undisclosed spring break destination. But the mayor of Panama City Beach, Florida, vows to arrest any filmmakers and girls who try going wild in his town.
Aaron at Uppity-Negro.com discusses recent birth control bills in Illinois and Minnesota.
Dirty Fan Male, available on CD and LP, collects dramatic readings of fan letters to pornstars. This page at Trunk Records has three MP3 samples (including "Keeping Sexy With Girls" and "My Big Rising Willie") and GIFs of handwritten letters.
Friday, March 7, 2003
A German artist plans to open a brothel for dogs in Berlin. He explains, "If dogs can't get what they want they get cranky -- just like people."
Can you decode this strange Japanese window sign? (Link snagged from Geisha asobi.)
Internet.com: "A Pennsylvania appeals court has granted an injunction against the enforcement of the controversial 1998 Child Online Protection Act (COPA), ruling that the so-called anti-pornography law violates the First Amendment rights of adults. . . . The COPA was signed into law during the Clinton administration and was intended to make it a crime to place sexually explicit material on the Internet where minors could view it. However, the District Court found that "although COPA addressed a compelling governmental interest in protecting minors from harmful material online, it was not narrowly tailored to serve that interest, nor did it provide the least restrictive means of advancing that interest." (Note that COPA is different than CIPA, the library filters law which the Supreme Court addressed this week.)
Every blog yesterday was linking to a screwed-up Walmart.com page for The Hobbit, but by the time I clicked through the page had been removed. Fortunately for me, quickthinking Dan from Flutterby copied the weird blurb before Walmart yanked it.
On the Battersea Reach of the Thames, a mixed bag of eccentrics live in houseboats. Belonging to neither land nor sea, they belong to one another. There is Maurice, a homosexual prostitute; Richard, a buttoned-up ex-navy man; but most of all there's Nenna, the struggling mother of two wild little girls. How each of their lives complicates the others is the stuff of this perfect little novel. The adventures of the well-to-do hobbit, Bilbo, Baggins, who lived happily in his comfortable home until a wandering wizard granted his wish.
Boxed hardcover bound in green leatherette with gold and red foil stamping, two-color typography, and five full-page color illustrations by the author
Walmart selling Tolkien slash? Or maybe one of those lost alternate manuscripts that Tolkien's son is forever "finding"? No, just the blurb for another book accidentally stuck into the Hobbit blurb. Oddly enough, I've actually read that perfect little novel set on the Battersea Reach of the Thames: Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald.
Debra wrote about sex in videogames last week, touching on Electronic Gaming Monthly and Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball.
The latest Clean Sheets has erotic fiction by Debra Hyde and an interview with Anne Semans and Cathy Winks, friends of Daze one and all.
This Seattle Times editorial supports a state legislature bill which states: "It is essential for the health and safety of the young people of Washington state that they receive medically and factually accurate and objective information about sexuality, pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases." (Link snagged from World Sex News.)
Phil Gallo at Variety reviews Family Business, the Seymore Butts reality TV show on Showtime, and finds it "barely riveting." "The downfall of 'Family Business' is an issue that plagues so much of television: the lack of a compelling character." But Tim Goodman at the San Francisco Chronicle likes the show. "The reason 'Family Business' is riveting isn't because of the full-frontal nudity of both sexes or the glimpses of porn movie moments. It's because Glasser is an interesting and funny guy."
Thursday, March 6, 2003
Good review of yesterday's Supreme Court hearing on library internet filters by Dahlia Lithwick at Slate.
A Catholic priest in Florida lost his job after someone noticed a nude picture of the priest and his parish email address on the website GrayGay.com.
Another shoe company gets raunchy in its advertising: check out these new Puma ads. (Possibly fake, but brilliant either way.)
The April issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly reveals a hidden feature in the XBox cheesecake game Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball ("tips and tricks" section, page 142; not available online). Completing the game with certain characters in a certain timeframe unlocks "topless mode", which allows you to replay the game with those buxom anime DOA babes soaking up the sun sans bikini tops.
However, gaming message board posters at GameInfoWire and GameTalk mostly agree that the supposed "topless mode" is an April Fool's hoax perpetrated by EGM. (The magazine has a history of April issue hoaxes. Several years ago, it hyped a fake Street Fighter 2 character named Sheng Long.) But if you really want to try for yourself, several posters transcribe the method from EGM.
The US Supreme Court heard arguments on Wednesday over the public library Internet filtering law, which an appeals court struck down last year. Free speech, blah blah, censorship, blah blah, what about the children, blah blah blah. More.
Found via my referrer logs: a rollicking discussion of the Harvard giant snow penis affair on the Bust message boards. One poster writes, "this is kind of like a Celebrity Death Match in a sense that you get to watch two hated figures (in this case the asshole frat-boy and the anal-retentive whining campus bitch) go at it! They could make this into the next reality TV show!"
From Marc Brown's photo-tour of Little Saigon (not sure which city): beef penis. Nice that it comes with "safe handling instructions."
Wednesday, March 5, 2003
The current issue of The New Yorker has a fascinating feature article by Eric Schlosser (author of Fast Food Nation) about "the late pornography kingpin Reuben Sturman, who beat prosecution for obscenity for many years, until his eventual arrest for tax evasion." Sturman's Cleveland-based empire covered the seedy, prosaic side of the adult entertainment industry — book and magazine distribution, coin-op peep shows, production of generic hardcore loops and later features — but Schlosser estimates that Sturman made far more money than more public figures like Hefner, Guccione or Flynt. Unfortunately, this article isn't posted at the New Yorker's website. In its stead, the website reprints a 1974 article by Calvin Trillin about "the trial of a theatre operator named Arthur Strollo, who was accused of obscenity in the second degree for showing the film 'Behind the Green Door.'"
Britney fires back at Fred Durst.
Speaking to the British version of Glamour magazine (which named her Woman of the Year), the pop princess, 21, was asked if she and Durst really had a thing for each other.
She replied, "I think him for me, but not me for him." Spears then went on to say, "He's said some pretty amazing things about me. But, um, I think he leaped in too deep, too quick."
Remember when the British Glamour Woman of the Year title used to really mean something?
Anthony Perks, professor emeritus of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of British Colombia, presents a novel theory about Stonehenge in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. Perks argues that the design of Stonehenge was based on female sexual anatomy and represented an Earth Mother goddess.
He noticed how the inner stone trilithons were arranged in a more elliptical, or egg-shaped, pattern than a true circle. Comparing the layout with the shape of female sexual organs showed surprising parallels. Perks believes the labia majora could be represented by the outer stone circle and possibly the outer mound, with the inner circle serving as the labia minora, the altar stone as the clitoris and the empty geometric center outlined by bluestones representing the birth canal.
There's a fine line between clever and stupid, and this theory definitely crosses the line.
I'm strongly pro-choice on abortion. The ability of women to decide whether and when to have children has been a tremendous social advance. But I'm also troubled by the trend in some developing countries of using ultrasound and abortion for the purpose of gender selection, almost always by aborting female fetuses. FuturePundit collects several articles about abortion and gender selection in China, India and South Korea, which has led to young generations with heavily skewed male/female ratios. (Link snagged from Slotman.)
The sponge is back, at least in Canada. A small start-up company in New Jersey bought rights to the Today Sponge a couple years ago. The new sponges went on sale earlier this month through two Canadian websites, and they hit Canadian retail shelves today. The company doesn't have FDA approval to sell them in US stores yet.
Tuesday, March 4, 2003
The PBS documentary series American Experience did an episode on the history of the birth control pill. The companion site at pbs.org has an excellent collection of resources: transcript of the show, feature articles, letters and historical documents, profiles of notable people and events, bibliography, timeline history of birth control, Flash animation explaining how the pill works.
Here's the first site I've come across "devoted entirely to loincloths, breechcloths, and similar-type garb as worn by males in not only movies and television, but in real life also. In addition, drawings and artwork from comics, trading cards and illustrations are also represented along with anything and everything pertaining to the loinclothed male." (Link snagged from Attu Sees All.)
Large gallery of furniture and naked people (all naked women, as far as I could tell). (Link snagged from Attu Sees All.)
A pair of neat little web games for the breast-obsessed: Real or Fake? and Match the Celebrity Breasts.
Monday, March 3, 2003
Available in Japan: Placenta drink and placenta extract pills. (Link snagged from Geisha asobi.)
Last Monday on his TV show, Bill O'Reilly vented moral outrage over the Pony ad campaign featuring pornstars, which he called "using quasi-prostitutes to sell sneakers."
I'm not going to buy anything Pony makes. Because I want to send them a message, that I resent their attempt to mainstream destructive behavior. . . . I am sick and tired of seeing companies pushing bad behavior and justifying it as some kind of cultural freedom.
Oliver Willis wrote a brilliant, hilarious rebuttal (fisking?) to O'Reilly's rant.
Somehow, I don't think that Pony was going after the much-coveted "Indignant Television Personality" demographic. I know it has the same cachet as going after the Puff Daddys of the world, but I just don't see the ratings in a Bill O'Reilly edition of "Cribs".
And Jenna Jameson, one of the pornstars appearing in the Pony ads, also tweaked O'Reilly over the segment.
He claims Pony is 'using quasi-prostitutes' to sell sneakers. I hope Bill understands the difference between a porn star and a hooker. I assume he has done some research on the subject matter, because he requested some of my videos after we finished taping my appearance on his program last summer. I imagine he wanted them for professional reasons, of course.
What a great country.
Widely-marketed pills claiming to give men larger erections can pose health risks. Many such pills contain high doses of the herb yohimbe and the amino acid L-arginine, which can cause hypertension and high blood pressure.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune obituary: "In the 1970s, Ferris Alexander was the reputed pornography king of Minnesota. But that empire crashed when he became the first person in the United States to be sentenced for pornography violations under a federal racketeering law [in 1990]. Alexander, who had been in failing health for several years, died recently. He was 84. A longtime fighter for free speech, he appealed his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the seizure of his assets and property."
Sunday, March 2, 2003
The reverse cowgirl is in New York pitching her TV pilot, and she promises to "audio blog live and direct from the bathroom during TV pitch meetings, sharing the heady experience of what it's like to try and bring more sex to the boob-tube."
