Web Log Archives: May 11, 2003 - May 17, 2003
Friday, May 16, 2003
More positive reviews of Reefer Madness in Business Week and The Onion.
The BDSM documentary Beyond Vanilla opens today at Quad Cinema in New York (which gives it about 8500 fewer screens than the other big leather film opening this weekend). Dennis Lim in the Village Voice gives it a negative review: "behind-the-curve . . . cheapo project assembles an array of talking-head sexperts . . . The cheerful how-to aspect ("cut and file your nails!") adds to the sense that the whole thing seems to have drifted in from some late-night infomercial netherland." Dave Kehr in the New York Times calls it "at once as luridly prurient as a Jerry Springer show, as pedantic as the driest documentary on the Learning Channel and as goofily mystical as anything to be found on a California public-access cable station." Read more at the film's official homepage.
Daze pal Byron Beck wrote a snide capsule review of Beyond Vanilla last fall when the film played at the Portland Lesbian Gay Bi Trans Film Festival. "Golden showers. Fisting. Fire and knife play. Perhaps they should've called Beyond Vanilla something more fitting, like Scream IV. Still, this informative and at times gag-inducing flick tells you more than you'll ever need to know about the fetish world of bondage, domination and S/M. What it doesn't tell you is why the folks who practice this stuff are so damn ugly." A few weeks later he reviewed his hate mail.
The "Net Prophet" columnist at the Sofia Echo turns his attention to sex on the Internet. "Among the obstacles: convincing my editor-in-chief that people are having trouble finding sex sites on their own; promoting sites that won't forever label me as that weird guy with a little too much time on his hands; speaking of such things without forever alienating the paper's readership; and, perhaps the biggest impediment, retaining my focus long enough to actually complete an entire column on the matter."
Britain is updating its sex laws with the new Sexual Offences Bill, replacing some 19th century laws still on the books. The new approach sounds very sensible: strict laws on child abuse, rape and nonconsensual acts generally; equal rights for homosexuals and heterosexuals; leave consenting adults alone.
Thursday, May 15, 2003
Mazoola passed along this bizarre banner ad.
Because everyone knows Einstein was hung like a horse.
Kitty goes shoe shopping! Or as the cowgirl put it when she sent Daze the link, shoe & foot fetishism w/bukkake.
By the way, the cowgirl is looking for a sugar daddy because she maxed out her credit card paying for breast implants or something like that.
Apartment House Wrestling was a fetish magazine devoted to catfights between women in bikinis published from 1973 to 1983. Now someone has revived AHW as a webzine. The first issue issue is up and free, though future issues will presumably be for subscribers only. The site also offers reprints of pictorials and stories from the original magazine run.
(Link snagged from Geisha asobi.)
Making the silly blog rounds: Shoe Size - Penis Size Conversion Table. According to this chart, my penis is 8½ inches long, which, uh, sounds about right. Yeah, pretty accurate, uncanny really. Give or take a few inches.
From Metafilter: Kelly gets a photoshop makeover. Before and after.
The ShanMonster writes about her experiences posing nude for artists and art classes, which is "not glamourous work". As humorous counterpoint, she also collects pulp paperback covers and french postcards depicting artist modelling as wild and sexy.
Mary Loeffler, a senior at Wheeling (Illinois) High School, painted a life-size portrait of herself wearing a bright red dress with her left breast exposed. Last week she hung the painting in a glass display case outside the school cafeteria (which I assume is a regular site for student art exhibitions, though this article doesn't say). The Chicago Tribune reports, "Within an hour, administrators asked her to take it down. . . . On Friday, the painting was back on the wall. Loeffler . . . had covered the offending breast with a fluorescent green construction-paper patch—and wore a matching one over her own left breast." The incident sparked student protests and feverish debates over censorship (or in the priggish bureaucrats' term, "age-appropriate art"). (Link snagged from Obscure Store.)
Wednesday, May 14, 2003
Salon today has a review of Reefer Madness and an interview with Eric Schlosser.
There's surprisingly little Matrix slash out there. The only really smutty stories I could find were "Xhale Slowly" (Neo/Agent Smith) and "Zion" (Neo/Tank).
Erica Jong's blithe description of Christina Rossetti's poem "The Goblin Market" — "a golden lock is traded for forbidden sex with subhuman creatures" — piqued my curiosity. Poets Corner has the full poem online. With a bouncy musical cadence, the poem tells of degenerate goblin merchants tempting two chaste country girls, Lizzie and Laura, with their wares.
Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
"Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpeck'd cherries,
Melons and raspberries,
Bloom-down-cheek'd peaches,
Swart-headed mulberries,
Wild free-born cranberries,
Crab-apples, dewberries,
Pine-apples, blackberries,
Apricots, strawberries; -
All ripe together
In summer weather, -
Morns that pass by,
Fair eves that fly;
Come buy, come buy:
Our grapes fresh from the vine,
Pomegranates full and fine,
Dates and sharp bullaces,
Rare pears and greengages,
Damsons and bilberries,
Taste them and try:
Currants and gooseberries,
Bright-fire-like barberries,
Figs to fill your mouth,
Citrons from the South,
Sweet to tongue and sound to eye;
Come buy, come buy."
Lizzie resists their cries, but Laura sneaks out one night for a taste.
But sweet-tooth Laura spoke in haste:
"Good folk, I have no coin;
To take were to purloin:
I have no copper in my purse,
I have no silver either,
And all my gold is on the furze
That shakes in windy weather
Above the rusty heather."
"You have much gold upon your head,"
They answer'd all together:
"Buy from us with a golden curl."
She clipp'd a precious golden lock,
She dropp'd a tear more rare than pearl,
Then suck'd their fruit globes fair or red:
Sweeter than honey from the rock,
Stronger than man-rejoicing wine,
Clearer than water flow'd that juice;
She never tasted such before,
How should it cloy with length of use?
She suck'd and suck'd and suck'd the more
Fruits which that unknown orchard bore;
She suck'd until her lips were sore;
Then flung the emptied rinds away
But gather'd up one kernel stone,
And knew not was it night or day
As she turn'd home alone.
Damn, those sound like some tasty fruits indeed. The poem is a cautionary tale about the dangers of succumbing to decadent sensual pleasures. (Pomegranate Madness!) But as in most such cases, the sensual description of those pleasures tends to stick in your mind longer than the ostensible moral condemnation.
Naomi Darvell heads to the library to read poetry about masturbation. "I grew up reading the sex-saturated ancient Greeks and Romans so I've always thought poetry and masturbation were somehow akin to each other. Both are solitary, rhythmic activities which have a definite payoff, but each seems to renew itself endlessly, too."
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
CNN/Money previews the upcoming videogame Playboy: The Mansion.
Slipping into Hef's silk pajamas, you'll face the challenges and rewards of building the Playboy empire.
One of those rewards will be building, expanding and living in the Playboy mansion, something that should be pretty straightforward to players of both "The Sims" and world-building "Tycoon" games. As your income increases, you'll be able to add things like tennis courts, a zoo, the famous back lawn and a game house – and extra bedrooms for your guests. Since you're Hef, of course, you'll always have houseguests -- both "celebrities" (such as tennis star 'Borris McEnroe') and Playmates -- and host lavish parties.
To get money to spiff up the mansion, you'll have to keep Playboy magazine running smoothly, changing the magazine to meet market conditions and scoring celebrity interviews. Of course, the gameplay element that will generate the most attention is over-seeing Playmate photo-shoots.
That sure sounds awful. But if they ever develop a Quake/Playboy Mansion crossover game, I'm there.
Oh . . . my . . . god! Paris Hilton exposed in one of the all-time-great paparazzi photos.
Interview with the Cowgirl. Like Susannah, "I don't get e-propositioned very much." Unlike Susannah, I find this very disappointing.
It's official: the "topless mode" in DOA Xtreme Beach Volleyball was a hoax. The Electronic Gaming Monthly website is currently running a "what was our best April Fools hoax?" poll. The choices are:
- Ken you dig it?: Sheng Long in Street Fighter
- Polygon puppies: DOA Volleyball topless mode
- Tall Tails: Sonic and friend in Super Smash Bros.
- I have a humor by-pass. Shove those April Fools up yer jacksie!
Link snagged from the comments section of an earlier Daze item about topless mode, where chatsters have been (and will probably continue) hashing it out for months.
This is hilarious: the Lifetime Movie Title Generator.
Utah has eliminated its "porn czar" position, but it still has a "polygamy czar" who promises more prosecutions soon.
Barton is after polygamists who take adolescent brides or cheat the welfare system, and he has spent the past 2 1/2 years painstakingly cultivating sources in their shadowy world. It hasn't been easy -- he is the state's only polygamy investigator, and there are about 30,000 Utahns living in polygamous families. [...]
Barton also credits the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping with opening some people's eyes to the issue. "Elizabeth Smart was taken as a wife against her will at age 15 and probably sexually assaulted. And the same thing happens every week to Utah girls in polygamist communities," he says. "They are just as much victims as Elizabeth Smart is."
The Attorney General's Office has neither the resources nor the desire to investigate bigamous relationships between consenting adults. Instead, its top polygamy priority has been prosecuting crimes against children. [...]
One former plural wife abhors the taking of underage brides but believes little can be done until key leaders of some polygamous communities agree to condemn the practice. Anne Wilde, who has co-authored a book advocating plural marriage between consenting adults, believes the state's resources would be better spent on trying to prevent polygamous marriages with young girls rather than punishing offenders.
"We're trying to educate our own community [about the issue]," says Wilde, who says only a small percentage of polygamists take underage brides. "To me, the choice of a marriage partner is one of the most important decisions a woman can make in her life. And to have that made for you by an older man just doesn't seem right."
This sounds to me like the right approach. Consenting adults should be allowed to freely pursue poly relationships if they wish. The problem with polygamy is the coercion. If every adult man needs two or more wives, marriageable women are obviously at a high premium; and too many girls born into polygamous communities end up being treated as sexual and reproductive chattel, with no real option to pursue other life paths.
Monday, May 12, 2003
Eric Schlosser, who wrote the excellent Fast Food Nation, has a new book out called Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market. It collects three long magazine articles about different aspects of the "black market" or "underground economy" in America: marijuana, pornography and migrant labor. The Guardian recently ran a news article summarizing Schlosser's research and arguments.
Sam Sifton reviews Reefer Madness in the New York Times, calling all three chapters "fascinating pieces of work" even if the thematic connections between the three subjects seem forced. More reviews:
You can read the first chapter online, the introduction in which Schlosser lays out the argument that connects the three articles. Schlosser's two-part Atlantic Monthly feature on marijuana is available here and here. The pornography chapter, focusing on the career of Reuben Sturman, was recently excerpted in The New Yorker; that piece is not available online as far as I can tell.
Remember the sex shop owner in Kentucky who was born again, threw out all the porn and leather and three-hole dolls, and turned the place into a Christian bookstore? Is anyone surprised that the new business has flopped?
Teen opera-pop sensation Charlotte Church kisses and tells about "how she lost her virginity in a night of passion with bad boy lover Steven Johnson." The short version: "It was fantastic."
