Web Log Archives: March 30, 2003 - April 05, 2003
Saturday, April 5, 2003
Fox News anchor David Asman has asked Vivid pornstars to sign autographed photos for our fighting men in Iraq. Cowgirl reports, you decide.
Brilliant Terminator/Jane Austen crossover fan fiction being created by denizens of rec.arts.sf.written.
"Indeed," said the man (whom Patience could not help but think of as made of clockwork, though he manifestly was something far stranger), "I speak of these things not merely because of the way that I am made, though indeed a machine should do that which it is made to do, but because I have found that I have developed, through our many conversations, a feeling of that which is proper, both within the bounds of your society and without; and being that I am, here, a gentleman, I find that I am also bound to behave as a gentleman would, and indeed, Lady Patience, I must warn you that this Mr. Connor is a man of less than sterling character."
Patience was quite taken aback by this sudden expression of personal concern, so unlike the measured rationality of the Mr. Terminus that she had come to know and depend upon, and so for several moments she sat quietly, simply looking upon his earnest, if overly regular, countenance, before she had quite decided upon her reply. "Sir, your concern for me is noted, and not entirely without my appreciation, but you are most forward and presumptuous to offer advice in such a matter, in which you cannot have any interest and which is, therefore, entirely between myself and Mr. Connor."
(Link snagged from Boing Boing, who got it from massive.)
Assorted arts and culture links:
The Sun profiles the latest buxom kickass videogame heroine. "If you've had a Lara fun with Miss Croft but are now desperate for a new woman to play with - then meet the gorgeous Jennifer Tate. The saucy cyberbabe looks set to send pulses racing when her new horror adventure PRIMAL is released. . . . But bad news guys, she's also got a boyfriend called Lewis so your chances are virtually nil."
Florida police arrested Joe Francis, creator of the "Girls Gone Wild" softcore porn video series, for filming several underage girls in a motel room. According to this AP story about the arrests, "Police said they found video to confirm that Francis told the 16-year-old to say she was 18 when he filmed her baring her breasts on video." The Smoking Gun has details and the affidavit.
Daily Mail & Guardian: "British defence giant BAE Systems is backing human trials in South Africa of a Russian-designed radiation machine touted as a radical new treatment for HIV/Aids. . . . The machine is supposed to use electromagnetic radiation to damage the ability of the HI virus to attack the CD4 blood cells that are crucial to the body’s immune system. But scientists have raised serious doubts about the likely efficacy of the radiation treatment, with respected international Aids researcher Slim Abdool-Karim dismissing the idea as unworkable." Something about the phrase "Russian-designed radiation machine" doesn't inspire confidence. But I think it's pretty cool that there's a respected international Aids researcher named "Slim."
The artist who created those vagina paintings had her account suspended by eBay. But she sells paintings and accepts commissions from her home page. She also explains her working methods: "I use pre-primed canvas panels and acrylic paints. Lying on my back and using brushes of different sizes, I apply the paint around my shaved vagina and onto my inner thighs in whatever pattern and colors strike me. Once I get the paint on the way I like it, I lift my legs up and spread them open as wide as I can. Then I press the canvas panel against my vagina and the painted area around it, transferring the paint to the canvas."
Friday, April 4, 2003
The North Dakota state Senate voted 26-21 this week to keep the state's anti-cohabitation law on the books. The nineteenth century law says a man and woman may not live together "openly and notoriously" as if they were married. Being discussed on Metafilter. Meanwhile in Oklahoma, Zyness O'Haver and Sallie Warren got married after living together for 77 years.
Mark Morford asks, Is sodomy patriotic?
Thursday, April 3, 2003
Sundry Friday freakiness:
All snagged from the mondo excellent Coolios.
Chirpy by John Goras is a mindblowing 12-minute animated film (available in streaming Windows Media or Quicktime). Go watch it now. We gonna get freaky, bird. (Link snagged from Six Different Ways.)
Egyptian authorities continue their aggressive persecution of gay men. Undercover agents have been using gay chat sites to lure men into meetings, then arresting them. The case of a Lebanese man living in Cairo entrapped and arrested this way has drawn international attention. More. (Link snagged from Banana Guide.)
Wednesday, April 2, 2003
Susan Block wrote about videogame nude patches a while back, then revisited the topic recently.
While we're on the subject, G Is For Giantessophile.
Long, entertaining feature article by Ron Rosenbaum about Sex Week at Yale in the Atlantic Monthly. There was no Sex Week when I was there, but that was a long, long time ago.
At Maxcat's Giantess Realm, voluptuous giantesses roam the earth, towering over city streets and puny humans. (Click "Main" for the photoshopped galleries; the rest is pretty clear.)
The images at Maxcat's are much larger and higher-resolution. (Link snagged from Geisha asobi.)
Videogame company Tecmo launched a preemptive crackdown on "nude patches" for the XBox game Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. Adopting the music industry's "treat customers like criminals" approach, Tecmo administrator recently posted a threatening message on the company's user forums: "We're watching you very closely! Please do not post things that infringe copyrights and other legal issues. So far we're tracking one suspect, anybody care to be the second? Please do not post anything about Nude Patches and other hacked information or you will be punished to the fullest extent of the law." No such patch exists for now, but several XBox hackers have been working together and sharing information to build one.
Daze reader "seb" passes along links to three DOA Xtreme Beach Volleyball nude screenshots: one, two, three. These could be evidence that "topless mode" really works (doubtful), the result of a working "nude patch" (maybe) or good photoshop jobs (most likely). Earlier Daze items about DOA nudity here and here.
The New York Times Sunday Magazine has a great interview with R. Crumb and a gallery of drawings by Crumb of his wife/muse Aline modeling various designer fashions. (Click "Slide Show: The Muse" in the sidebar to see the drawings.) Excerpt from the interview (L.E. and R.A. are the interviewers):
RA: You're basically a connoisseur of the female bottom, right?
RC: Yeah. Definitely.
LE: That's why you moved to France. It's more about derrière than poitrine there, right?
RC: France? French women have no hips, no derriere, nothing.
RA: So what are you doing there?
RC: Aline lured me over here to get me away from all the big-bottomed American women. That's where the biggest keisters in the world are -- America.
LE: And guess what -- since you left, they're even bigger.
RA: Hey, you've never been to Cuba, have you? Some would argue the biggest keisters in the world are there.
LE: Or Disneyland.
RC: I've heard that about Cuba. I should go there actually.
Tuesday, April 1, 2003
A porn distributor is offering to send free x-rated videos to U.S. soldiers and veterans (though the recipient would have to pay shipping and handling charges, which renders the gesture all but meaningless). Some cultural conservatives are angry. This Minneapolis Star-Tribune article notes the familiar outline of the story: "Someone on the cultural left does something outrageous. The usual suspects on the cultural right respond with sermons. A late-night comic or two turns this into punch lines." But the article also quotes an exchange of letters between a Florida pastor and the porn distributor.
Pastor: "Do you realize that one of the reasons the radical Islamic movement so dislikes America is because of its tolerance of pornography? What kind of support will our troops find in Middle Eastern countries if the soldiers are seen as porn-starved trigger jockeys? Your effort will give new life to the allegation that we are not a nation of character, but instead of carnal compromise."
Pornographer: "With all due respect, if I were to change anything I did because the 'radical Islamic movement' does not approve of it, then I would have to forgo most of my beliefs in a free society, my way of life in a free society, and together, we would be forgoing the freedom of people who live in this society."
Advantage: Pornograsphere.
British tabloid The Sun has posted the full-length Lil Kim cover photo from One World, in which she wears a red burka pulled up around her shoulders to reveal her nearly naked body. If you want a copy, that's the place to get it.
Former employees want to save the Mustang Ranch from demolition and turn it into a museum.
Dudes duped by Net damsels in 'distress'. Wai Wai reports on a sleazy con run through online personals.
Recently in the Weekly World News:
Nudity is this spring's hot new fashion. "Even jaded members of the French fashion world were taken aback when avant-garde designer Renault Reno unveiled his latest fashion design -- total nudity. Other than a tattoo of his 'RR' logo on the left buttock of the models, they wore nothing. And the trend is catching on with the youth across the country." Very funny, especially the part about knockoffs.
America's running out of supermodels. "'In the 80s and 90s, there was a surplus of supermodels,' notes fashion expert Gustav Gallows. 'But the original generation of supermodels is fading, and there are no new ones coming along to replace them. In a very short while, the supermodel as we know it may become extinct.'"
They wouldn't print it if weren't true.
Debra Hyde reviews the second edition of The Lesbian Sex Book, originally written by Wendy Caster and revised by Rachel Kramer Bussel. "Updated entries reflect the changing times. New entries like BDSM, body modification, fisting, and packing reside along side older entries like basic female anatomy, orgasm, 'the first time,' and romance. Sex practices and gender politics extend to anal sex, polyamory, and trans identities. The book tackles emotional and lifestyle issues as well through topics like rebound relationships, children and family, ex-lovers, loneliness, and cultural differences (to name a few). Adding her own imprint to the new edition, Kramer Bussel included two of her personal favorites, phone sex and spanking, in the book." Elsewhere, Jean Roberta reviews the new edition at Technodyke.
Monday, March 31, 2003
The Tennessean: "A bill that would ban the showing of 'dirty movies' in limousines, vans and other vehicles if they could be seen by people outside the vehicles appears doomed because of questions about its constitutionality."
The Good Old Naughty Days is a compilation of French pornographic short films produced between 1905 and 1930, recently discovered in someone's attic and restored by the National Cinematheque. It opened in New York this past weekend, and will open in Los Angeles in late April; those of use who live in between will have to wait for DVD. Some reviews:
Regarding the clunky American release title, Kehr notes, "For the record, the program's more flavorful original title was 'Polissons et Gallipettes,' which roughly translates as 'Bad Boys and Somersaults.'"
Kate Manning reviews four recent books about interracial love, sex and marriage in America. (Annoyingly nosy LA Times registration required.)
Berkeley history professor Thomas Laqueur recently published Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation. Sharon Lintz interviews Laqueur about the book at Nerve. (First question: "So you wrote a big book about jacking off.") Earlier this month, the Chronicle of Higher Education held a live online colloquy (sort of like a chat session with better spelling) with Laqueur. Some reviews of Solitary Sex:
Sunday, March 30, 2003
Ralf Vulis, photographer of 100 Naked Girls on a Chair, and Jon Ortiz, designer of the Tongue Chair, should really consider working together. (Via the Cowgirl and Uffish.)
Debra Hyde chronicles the history of sex blogs.
A 65-year-old German pensioner died in Spain after experiments with a homemade sex toy went badly wrong. The pensioner had applied the electrodes of an adapted voltmeter to his genitals, and he died from a heart attack triggered by the electric shock.
A recent fashion show in Beijing shows young Chinese designers getting as revealing and loopy as their European counterparts.
Click through to The Sun for larger, higher-resolution versions of these images. (Link snagged from World Sex News.)
