|
|
|
| blog topics links porno |
|
Web Log Archives: September 07, 2003 - September 13, 2003 Saturday, September 13, 2003
The Guardian ran a longer feature on the emancipation statue debate last month. Since Redemption Song was unveiled at the entrance to Kingston's new Emancipation Park a fortnight ago it has prompted a debate that has revisited myths about the black male, scratched at sores about "shadism" and brought to the fore a prudish streak in a country more renowned for taking things easy. Every morning the nation's airwaves and letters pages are jammed with comments that range from the puerile to the priggish and the raunchy to the racial; every evening a permanent crowd of different people gather to point, laugh and engage inbouts of public banter that mix art criticism and sex education. Yesterday a columnist in Jamaica's Daily Observer, Lloyd Smith, described the sculpture as "a rape of our democracy". Another writer ridiculed Renaissance sculptors for being not generous enough. "Just because Europe's classical statues had small penises," argued Mark Wignall, another Observer columnist, "does not mean Jamaica must follow suit." The Guardian article also notes that Cooper had previously gotten flak over "a near-naked and well-endowed carving of Christ." Caribbean portal Afiwi has more on the controversy, including two photos of the statue and a poll. More. UPDATE: More background and another good photo from the Jamaica Observer. This mid-August article deals mostly with the Emancipation Park Trust's decision to keep the statue, which they explained in a full-page ad in the previous day's Observer. And just for the record, "the piece is still incomplete with one of its main features, water falling over the bodies of the figures, still missing." The Trust chairman also threatens legal action against anyone selling unauthorized photos or postcards of the statue: "There are individuals, who, because of the monument's popularity will probably take pictures for the purposes of post cards, etc, similarly to what they would do with popular monuments like the Eiffel Tower."
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani proposed the amendment in 2001, a final volley in what had been his administration's campaign against New York City shops dealing in pornography. It sought to circumvent a loophole under which video stores added hundreds of nonsexual titles to their shelves to narrowly conform to the anti-pornography zoning law. Similarly, go-go bars added floor space featuring everything from sushi to Shakespeare performances. The Giuliani administration called this a sham compliance, saying that the stores or bars still relied mostly on the sexually oriented sales. While the original 1998 law dealt only with the amount of floor space devoted to sex, the amendment sought to close the loophole by letting regulators take into account factors like a store's layout, among many other things, in order to crack down on the businesses. In the decision, Justice Louis B. York of State Supreme Court said that the amendment was not defensible because it sought to alter the content of free expression, which is constitutionally protected. In addition, he said, the city offered no studies or data to make clear that a revised zoning standard was needed. So are these nude Shakespeare performances? Which plays — just the comedies, or histories and tragedies too? Do they turn down the strippers' music when King Lear is being performed at the other end of the club? Thursday, September 11, 2003
Now, according to reports, it has emerged that Lopez paid a visit to her "mystic adviser" the day before the announcement and was told, in a two-hour meeting, not to go ahead with the wedding. In recent months, Lopez has become close to Merle Gonzalez, a follower of the Caribbean quasi-religion Santeria, who lives in a ramshackle wooden house in a run-down Los Angeles suburb. Her influence over the actress, whom she calls her "goddaughter", is immense. Lopez's mother, Lupe, is understood to have threatened to boycott the service if her daughter did not stop relying on the psychic readings of her mentor. The article later presents more cynical speculation: "there is a theory that the couple wanted more time to clinch a deal with a celebrity magazine for pictures of the event. As recently as Wednesday afternoon two titles were still competing with offers of around £3 million."
The vagina has been explored by gynaecologists, sexologists and pornographers, but rarely, if ever, has its every cultural, historical, anthropological and anatomical facet been probed with such exhaustive — and exhausting — dedication. In our liberal era, we think we're all frightfully frank, but the vagina remains a far more taboo subject than we realise. Indeed, what goes on down there is still misrepresented or shrouded. There is still no term equivalent to "willy" that is acceptable for use among children. Fanny, pussy, snatch, cunt: the lexical options only shoot further and further up the rudeness scale. And the full-colour crotch shots that illustrate the book are undeniable shockers, entirely divorced from the images peddled by top-shelf publications that promote a world of trimmed labia and shaven havens in which women resemble pre-pubescent girls. As Blackledge writes, "For many men and women, such cunt caricatures are coming to be seen as a normal view of the vagina." If The Story of V does anything, it drives home the fact that we're stunningly vaginally ill-informed. Is "fanny" slang for female genitals in Britain? In the US it's (very mild, inoffensive) slang for buttocks of either gender.
[Sen. Orrin] Hatch opened the hearing with a short video -- produced by the RIAA -- showing how people using the Kazaa network can inadvertently find files containing child pornography as they search for the latest songs by Britney Spears or videos of the Pokemon cartoon characters. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) also weighed in yesterday with a letter asking U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to initiate a government probe into child pornography on file-sharing networks. According to a sidebar graph in Saturday's New York Times article, "over all file sharing makes up a small and shrinking portion of all reported child pornography." Daze Reader supports law enforcement efforts to stamp out child porn distribution. But using exaggerated, deceptive claims about child porn to advance an unrelated agenda is deplorable.
But while the overexposed couple blame the press for their postponed super-swank nups on Sunday in Santa Barbara, Calif., there's another camp that believes Ben's bootylicious bride has cold feet! As the international media mob descended on Santa Barbara this week, Lopez became livid over the supermarket tabloids' tell-all wedding reports. Whereupon the "Wedding Planner" star demanded her Wedding Planner Sharon Sacks — who supposedly secured confidentiality agreements from everyone working the Bennifer bash — hunt down the offending leaks. The Star printed the entire itinerary — from guest check-in at the swank Bacara Resort Saturday to the informal picnic Monday. The tab said the ceremony was at Santa Barbara Mission at 3 p.m. Sunday followed by a lavish reception — catered by the Four Seasons-Biltmore — at the Frank Caulfield Estate in nearby Montecito. The National Enquirer had tons of deets as well, such as the floral order (orchids, roses, long-stemmed French tulips and Casablanca lilies) and the hissy fit the bride pitched over her headpiece. And did you know that Affleck's middle name is Gaza?
(Link snagged from Cup of Chicha.) Wednesday, September 10, 2003
Thanks to the Internet, mail-order video and DVD rental outlets, plus a general shift in sexual mores, a small but growing number of women are turning up the heat in their sex lives by turning to erotica and pornography. Adult video and toy stores are catering to women with clean, well-lighted places to peruse sexual material and products geared for their enjoyment. Books such as "The Ultimate Guide to Adult Videos," to be released in October by Cleis Press, are aimed at pornography neophytes, especially women, says Chris Fox, publicity coordinator at Cleis. "People don't think of women as porn consumers." And why should they? For many, women buying and watching pornography is still taboo and explodes myths about women's sexuality: that women aren't visually stimulated. That women prefer bodice-ripper romance novels to explicit videos and pornographic photos. That women feel it's immoral or anti-feminist to buy and watch pornography. Psychologists, sex researchers and those who sell pornography say women's interest in pornography has been spurred by changes in contemporary culture, from the privacy afforded by the Internet to the trendiness of sex in TV's "Sex and the City" and other mainstream entertainment.
The recording industry, struggling to curb music piracy, is shining the spotlight on another demon lurking on the Internet: pornography. The industry is trying to enlist broader public support with a campaign intended to show that its nemesis the peer-to-peer networks for swapping files like KaZaA and Morpheus are used not only to trade songs but also pornographic images, including child pornography. "As a guy in the record industry and as a parent, I am shocked that these services are being used to lure children to stuff that is really ugly," said Andrew Lack, the chief executive of Sony Music Entertainment. Give the Times credit for recognizing that this "shock" might just be a cynical ploy, expressing some skepticism and tracking down some facts. That's more than NBC could be bothered with in this clueless scare piece which might as well have been ghostwritten by music industry flacks. The recording industry this week decided to file lawsuits against more than 250 people, charging them with illegally downloading music over the internet. But something else is finding its way into music files hard core pornography and the music industry is calling it a growing problem. No one is claiming that there's pornography in the music files (how would that work exactly?), but rather that filesharing networks can be used to download pornography in addition to music files. Jackie and Catie, like many 12-year olds, are going online for music and finding porn instead. . . . A kid wanting a Britney Spears song often finds her name connected to hardcore sexual content. Many parents dont have a clue. The filesharing software I've used (Grokster and WinMX) allow you to search for specific types of files: audio, video, images, software, documents, etc. Even if you don't specify the type of file, you can see that information before you start downloading something. The possibility of searching for mp3s, thinking you're downloading an mp3, then discovering that you've accidentally downloaded a porn image or video instead is extremely remote. Tuesday, September 9, 2003
One thing I forgot to back up: my email archives. FODs are encouraged to send me email so I can refill my address book. Please don't give your email a subject header like "Re: wicked screensaver" or "WorldSecure2 Server Notification" — that would be kinda funny but counterproductive.
"I just want to wait until I meet the right person," says 16-year-old Lindsey Bocheck. "The world is so messed up as it is. Society wants you to be a whore basically." I don't know about society, but Daze Reader certainly wants Lindsey Bocheck to be a whore. Or a slut. Or someone whose lifelong enjoyment of her sexuality isn't damaged by theocratic weirdo scaremongering. Basically. The Silver Ring Thing's premise is simple. In a confusing world of choice it offers only absolutes: stay pure or else have sex, lose your boyfriend and your self-respect, and arrive at the altar at some unspecified future date as damaged goods. Those are the emotional costs. The health risks conjured up are even scarier, as activists make extremely liberal use of data on the rise in sexually transmitted infections such as chlamydia and the human papilloma virus, a main cause of cervical cancer. The moral perils are scarier still, with dark warnings that the "epidemic" of oral sex has got "out of control". Where exactly is this out-of-control epidemic raging? I'm obviously looking in the wrong places.
Give it to me, don't give it away You're my secret beauty routine Gimme your hot white cum I'm gonna pull you back down between the sheets Face it, one of these days Gimme your hot white cum "So whet my appetite" would make more sense, but all the online lyrics sites read "wet" for that line. Either way, I like her attitude. Monday, September 8, 2003
UPDATE: Trudeau offered skittish editors an alternative original strip in place of the masturbation strip. Do you think he intentionally made the second one unfunny? |
|
