Web Log Archives: September 21, 2003 - September 27, 2003
Saturday, September 27, 2003
OK, this has been linked everywhere already: The Unsexy List at Nerve snarks off "fifty genital-retracting people, places and things." Some are very funny and right on target.
Lord of the Rings. The movies are fine, but did you know that if you read the trilogy three times in a year you actually get your virginity back?
Drinks with "sexy" names. Bar patrons who order a "screaming orgasm," "sex on the beach," "blow job," or "long slow screw against the wall" are 77% less likely to get laid than the ones drinking beer. Wonder why.
Kim Cattrall. We’re all for women retaining sex appeal after forty, fifty, sixty, or whatever. What we are not for: actresses displaying their identity crises by wearing bright green minidresses to the Video Music Awards while snarling supposedly seductive things about 50 Cent.
On the other hand, using three of the fifty slots to put down Nerve's dating service business competitors is really lame.
"How to have sex in San Francisco" is a useful if mistitled survey of sex-oriented clubs, arts venues, annual festivals, stores, classes and info hotlines.
Felonious females fellating their way to fellas' wads. Wai Wai warns that gangs of female pickpockets are "seducing men and stealing their wallets just as they have lured them into a relaxed mode."
AFP reports, "Singapore is slowly emerging as Asia's gay entertainment hub, with a slew of gay-friendly clubs, saunas, restaurants and fashion outlets appearing in the city state over the past three years." The CEO of a "leading regional gay website" is quoted as saying, "Gays enjoy the entertainment scene of clubbing and shopping, so Singapore has the potential draw for such tourists. Singapore's previous image was a conservative and strict society where you get caned, you cannot chew gum and jaywalk, but people are now hearing how fun it can be."
Industry lawyer Lawrence Walters argues that everyone in the porn business should be worried about the federal obscenity prosecution of Extreme Associates. "If history is to be any guide as to what to expect in the future, it is likely that the feds will start prosecuting extreme, fringe, fetish material, and slowly work their way towards more acceptable forms of alternative erotica, like BDSM, interracial, facial, or even Gay material. The nation's Obscenity Czar, Andrew Osterbaan, recently pointed out that even producers of 'mainstream' erotica are not immune. . . . The feds often pick specific issues and venues in the attempt to establish precedent in their favor. The Extreme Associates prosecution may be one of those cases. As noted earlier, the government could be starting with the fringe material and working its way to mainstream erotica. According to one Justice Department official, 'There is no particular behavior that is off the table.' Along the way, this approach could be calculated to establish precedent favorable to the government to assist in prosecution of the more mainstream material."
Friday, September 26, 2003
Business Week reports on Acacia's recent successes in enforcing its contested streaming media patents. Last Friday the company used a court injunction to shut down a network of 42 pornsites run by Go Entertainment, which quickly relented and signed a patent licensing agreement with Acacia. According to Business Week, more than half of the 39 sites sued by Acacia have now signed agreements. Other companies are still fighting back, however. Homegrown Video has filed a countersuit against Acacia charging unfair trade practices and abuse of the judicial system. The countersuit accuses Acacia of making "knowingly false and/or misleading statements about the systems and methods covered by its patents. . . . Relying on (the companies') perceived lack of sophistication in patent matters and perceived lack of financial resources to defend against unfounded patent infringement suits, Acacia has engaged in a pattern of conduct designed to create an atmosphere of fear so as to force (the companies)…to pay royalties rather than defend against objectively baseless patent infringement suits." Investors seem to think Acacia is winning the war — the company's stock price has more than tripled over the last month. (Background on the Acacia patent lawsuits in our full coverage section.)
Naomi Darvell recently surveyed the sex blog scene at Clean Sheets.
"Two Monkeys" is erotic shadow puppetry at its finest. (Streaming video in Windows Media Format, frequent buffering interruptions over dialup. Link snagged from Reploid 9.)
Monday, September 22, 2003
Audrey Van Buskirk at The Stranger discusses the new Seasonale birth control pills, which allows women to have periods only four times a year.
If you're like many of the women I know, your first reaction may be that this new drug sounds like too much messing with Mother Nature. But the truth is, if you're already taking the pill, you're already messing with Mother Nature--just without the benefit of not bleeding. The reason why the 16 million American women currently taking the pill still have monthly bleeding is a complicated mess involving the Catholic Church, earth mother feminists, and just plain ignorance about how the female body works--ignorance that's spread by some pretty intense weirdness when it comes to discussing the existence of Aunt Flo.
Doctors with patients suffering from painful periods, anemia, and other period-related disorders and women planning honeymoons or outdoor adventures have known that by skipping the inactive pills in the 28-day packets, they are less likely to bleed. But many more women, even those who have taken birth control pills for years, are unaware that their bleeding is arbitrary and unnecessary--and unnatural. What's natural is for women between the ages of 16 and 45 to be not bleeding because they're pregnant or breastfeeding (or both) nearly all the time. Giving birth is the primary biological goal of the female body and without modern contraceptives women would be having a lot more babies and a lot less bleeding. Women in 1900 had around 150 periods in a lifetime; women today have closer to 450.
Tamara Wieder of the Boston Phoenix interviews David Loftus, author of Watching Sex: How Men Really Respond to Pornography.
Sunday, September 21, 2003
The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has acquired a painted ceramic plate depicting a man's head made up entirely of male genitals, thought to have been made by Italian Renaissance ceramicist Francesco Urbini in the 16th century. The piece is considered "a rare example of bawdy Renaissance art which survived the suppression of later, more prudish, generations."
The inscription reads, "Ogni homo me guarda come fosse una testa de cazi," or "Every man looks at me as if I were a dickhead."
Councils voice concern over new sex craze. "Dogging, the internet-driven craze where people take part in sexual acts with strangers at isolated locations, has prompted local authorities to review security around parks and well known lovers lanes. Couples and singles on voyeuristic missions are using the internet to arrange meetings in car parks and spots in country parks all across Scotland. . . . The Sunday Herald has found that meetings are being arranged at at least 20 locations across the country from Inverclyde to Edinburgh, St Andrews to Irvine, with over 23,000 people in the UK having signed up to internet sites that advertise and arrange rendezvous."
