Daze Reader

Weblog Archive: January 29, 2006 to Feb 4, 2006

Friday, February 3, 2006

http://www.dazereader.com/24000935.htm Dateline Dublin: Floozie in the Jacuzzi finally given new home.

The Anna Livia statue and fountain that once stood in the middle of O’Connell Street in Dublin is to be relocated to a site beside the River Liffey.

It will end an ignominious period for the famous work which has spent the past four years in a crate in a council depot in Raheny.

Anna Livia was erected in O’Connell Street in 1988. It was named after Anna Livia Plurabelle — a character in James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake.

But it became a target for litter and graffiti and drunken revellers frequently dumped washing up liquid into the fountain at weekends — covering the street in froth and foam.

Graffiti on such lovely public art is appalling, but the foam revelry sounds like fun and perfectly in spirit.

Risqué, rhyming nicknames for public sculptures is apparently a Dublin tradition. Others include "the tart with the cart", "the hags with the bags" and "the stiletto in the ghetto".


Tuesday, January 31, 2006

http://www.dazereader.com/24000934.htm Many state legislatures have sought to restrict highway billboards for sexually-oriented businesses. It's a tricky job, since that pesky constitutional right to free speech thing extends even to the owners of ugly roadside XXX Adult Super Barns. And how exactly do you identify sexually-oriented businesses in legal terms? Check out this latest attempt in Oklahoma House bill 2831 (link goes to a Rich Text Format file).

“Adult cabaret” means a nightclub, bar, restaurant, or similar establishment in which persons appear in a state of nudity in the performance of their duties; [...]

“State of nudity” means any bare exposure of the skin located on the body of a person below the armpits and above the knees.

The absurdity and presumptuousness of redefining a word ("nudity") which already has a perfectly clear meaning are impressive. By this new and improved definition, any employee wearing shorts or a skirt, or showing a bit of bare midriff or open back or cleavage, would be considered "nude". Most restaurants and coffeeshops I've visited recently would be classified as "adult cabarets" under this bill. (OK, maybe that's not a representative sample, since I tend to seek out places where the baristas show off their lower-back tattoos while making my latte. But still, this classification of "adult" seems overly broad.) (Link snagged from The Agitator.)


Monday, January 30, 2006

http://www.dazereader.com/24000933.htm Daze Reader sure has sucked lately. Our quality assurance team is working on it, I swear. A long overdue redesign is in the works. Daily posting will resume. And I've invited a guest blogger, someone whose writing I like but who doesn't usually write about sex, to class up the place. He'll be along soon.