Daze Reader

Weblog Archive: December 11, 2005 to Dec 17, 2005

Friday, December 16, 2005

http://www.dazereader.com/24000920.htm The Italian government has officially proposed new taxes on the porn industry, which Reuters slyly calls "one of the country's few vibrant industries". The budget amendment would impose an extra 25% tax on income from pornography and a value-added tax of 10% on pay-TV porn charges.

It could be worse. Dow Jones news notes, "In 2002, France's conservative government slapped a 93% tax on profits from sexually explicit movies as part of an anti-pornography drive."


Thursday, December 15, 2005

http://www.dazereader.com/24000919.htm Michigan artist Sue Long has created 100 painted ceramic penis sculptures. Her exhibition "The Penis Project" is on display at the Creole Gallery in Lansing. The Penis Project Online has an extensive gallery, plus an artist statement, reviews and price list.

The penes are beautiful and whimsical. They come in a variety of shapes and arousal levels and personalities, with titles like "Spanky" and "His Highness" and "Thrill Drill". Some wear capes, some walk around on legs.

Sue Long, The Penis Project Sue Long, The Penis Project
Sue Long, The Penis Project Sue Long, The Penis Project

Long's artist statement disappointed me.

In film and the media, women’s bodies are exposed, exploited and paraded around like cattle. It makes me angry. I have to ask: Why are women’s bodies exposed and not men’s? My intent with this exhibit is to try to equalize the experience of what women are subjected to on a regular basis.

So the idea was to subject men's bodies to a spiteful exploitation in order to even the score? In graduate school it was a truism that the artist's stated intention was irrelevant, at best one interpretation among many. I take some comfort in that idea here. If the artist really wanted to make me feel degraded by seeing penises paraded around, and thus ashamed at my enjoyment of images of women's bodies, then she failed completely. And yet I love the art.


Wednesday, December 14, 2005

http://www.dazereader.com/24000918.htm Unique artifact for sale on eBay: Cthulhu Dildo Cthozy. "A new evil who will keep your tentacle warm while he waits for the stars to align."

Cthulhu Dildo Cthozy

(Via Warren Ellis via Boing Boing.)


http://www.dazereader.com/24000917.htm The sex worker memoirs genre is hot the world over. A Brazilian call girl named Raquel Pacheco, alias Bruna Surfistinha (Bruna the Surfer Girl), has quit the biz and become a best-selling author.

Her book, “The Sweet Venom of the Scorpion: The Diary of a Call Girl,” is a vivid account of the three years that the 21-year-old Pacheco spent selling her body for money. Written in the slang of a middle-class teen-ager from Sao Paulo, it is part diary, part blog and even offers how-to tips for readers looking to spice up their sex lives.

In truth, Pacheco was already flirting with fame before her book. Lonely and eager to vent, she started writing about her experiences with customers in a blog that became so popular it was profiled in several Brazilian magazines. These days the site (http://www.brunasurfistinha.com/blogs/) rarely focuses on sexual escapades, but it still gets about 20,000 hits a day. It was the blog that drew publishers to Pacheco, who had boasted on the site that she was writing a book.

Bruna the Surfer Girl is a great call girl name. Scorpion venom doesn't sound all that sexy; a local idiom, I suppose. (This Reuters article was reprinted by several news sites. I linked to the Pakistani paper because they ran a large photo. Here's another nice photo of Raquel/Bruna. Yahoo used a library photo of a different Brazilian prostitute.)