Leaping Lohan! Lindsay’s a Bunny.

By Tatiana von Tauber

Lindsay Lohan has posed for Playboy for a whopping $1 million. Ah. Bravo. Not only is this a smart financial move for someone of her failure, it’s also a good career move because these days, being naked and/or sexual is the ticket to increased sales and stardom, temporarily at worst. A rather typical female critique of Lohan’s Playboy spread due out on newsstands Dec. 15th sits on Yahoo’s OMG titled “Lindsay Lohan Playboy cover leaked online”. The author expresses a sarcastic and sickened tone for Lohan’s actions. Sadly, it’s what I’d expect from a female who clearly doesn’t seem to understand and/or respect the distinct difference between Playboy and Penthouse past their covers.

The author referenced that if things don’t work out for Lohan from Playboy she can always go to Penthouse. They are not the same representation of pussy and the assumption that any woman would naturally go from Playboy to Penthouse is pure ignorance and insult. Perhaps the point was to throw Lohan under the bus but by doing so, the author also threw eroticism under there too and that’s just a mean girl thing to do.

I could understand and agree with a derogatory tone for Lohan considering her history but it was for Lohan via posing nude so in essence, the author so elegantly tore up the beauty of eroticism itself and used Lohan as her example only to compare her to other actresses who used their bodies to get ahead: Drew Barrymore, Joan Collins,Charlize Theron, Sharon Stone and Marylin Monroe.

The small list of women here are women who have, however, truly come out on top* so how has their nudity actually diminished their feminine and human value as suggested by many anti-sexually free women to justify an attitude that Playboy and of course eroticism and porn (because mistake number one is placing them in the same category) is basically what desperate actresses and wannabes do to get ahead?

The above video introduces Dominika, a Czech Playboy and Maxim model. I photographed her naked a couple weeks ago. She’s a petite, demure young girl, self-conscious in between shootings but extremely professional and very good at knowing her body to help produce some very sexy photos. I’m pleased. She’s pleased. Client pleased. Everyone comes out satisfied.

This was a job, something she chose to do for whatever reason and it involved her perfect nude body but the moment the lights turned off or the camera was put down, she put on her robe and protected her personal naked self. You see, when you’re on camera, you’re an actress. You have to be to do this kind of work. I’ve photographed many Playboy models and many real women and the common theme for the nudity, the desire for it whether it be for personal reasons, for a man or for money, these women like and/or want to feel sexy and show it. They want to express it.

I’ve watched some of these unfairly judged nude models begin their own companies in once eastern block countries with money they’ve made while traveling the world, an opportunity only their body was able to offer. These young women have made a better life for themselves by using the one thing people want and that’s nudity, sex or some form of either. Really, what people want is eroticism because that is the pulse of life. I don’t understand what is so wrong, bad or dirty about Playboy posing. I think it’s celebratory. It’s a give and take, as life should be and I find too many women just don’t get the point about sex and eroticism and objectivity. There’s too much fear, religious underpinning and/or insecurity looming in feminism, still.

The female body is beautiful and while Lohan is a lost soul and I hope she gets on the right track, and I deeply hate Hollywood ruins beautiful faces, she just made a million bucks. I don’t know about you but I’d gladly take my clothes off for a million dollars. In fact, I’ll take indecent proposals too! Sexual morality and judgment are a waste of time and potential pleasure in a life that is so damn short it takes death for us to remember it.

I love the “leaked” cover of Lohan on Playboy. It’s very, very sexy and shows her as elegant and I will be purchasing the issue. Lohan needed the makeover and I hope her inner self makes a similar jump. The thing about Playboy is that it’s still got style and elegance and class and eroticism in its pages. Some spreads are cheesy ( I still don’t know why you guys like that cheesy shit) but when celebrities come in, the work is usually different and stunning. Cindy Crawford, the iconic supermodel photographed by the late fashion photographer Herb Ritts and Aussie supermodel Elle MacPherson’s spreads were quite beautiful in recollection of past issue’s I’ve seen from the top of my head.

These weren’t desperate women. These were intelligent women using their sexuality and bodies to better their lives and those of their children. If women can’t deal with their own bodily and sexual beauty, then I suggest becoming a nun.

Playboy has helped create stardom for many kinds of women but more importantly, Playboy through Hefner, has managed to give the world the erotic elegance so missing from the dirty sex the Internet brings. I like that. It would be good if American philosophy on beauty, sexuality and eroticism had a little makeover in the elegance department as well.

* OMG author noted Marylin Monroe died of a drug overdose and implies MM wasn’t really “on top” but her eroticism is stronger each decade so the author fails in her point. Isn’t the jury still out on murder vs. overdose?

This is why you’re fat (Pizza Edition)

By J. DeVoy

Congress, in its infinite wisdom, is effectively trying to make pizza a vegetable so that it can be served even more frequently in school lunches.  Is that even possible?

Republicans have added provisions into a spending bill that would have the following effects on existing USDA laws and regulations:

• Block the Agriculture Department from limiting starchy vegetables, including corn and peas, to two servings a week. The rule was intended to cut down on french fries, which some schools serve daily.
• Allow USDA to count two tablespoons of tomato paste as a vegetable, as it does now. The department had attempted to require that only a half-cup of tomato paste could be considered a vegetable — too much to put on a pizza. Federally subsidized lunches must have a certain number of vegetables to be served. (source)

Amy Dawson Taggart, director of the group Mission: Readiness, said that these proposed changes “would effectively categorize pizza as a vegetable in the school lunch program.” (source)

The republican rhetoric of not limiting the choice of children as to what they eat is disingenuous.  First off, what choice is there when an absence of legislation will produce the cheapest crap that the market will eat – which tends to be stuff like pizza and french fries?  Moreover, children are legally, if not practically, incapable of making good decisions.  Perhaps Johnny has a fast metabolism, or is living in a brief fitness bubble between 14-18 when he plays three sports.  Once that ends and he enters The Real World, it will be much harder to break his unhealthy eating habits, which will manifest in the form of the Freshman Fifty.  And for women, well…

That said, many people choose to let their health take a backseat to other priorities as they get older, such as their careers and families.  While I don’t necessarily agree with that, I respect it, because they are adults and it is a choice they have made – whether affirmatively or by omission.  In contrast, school lunches are essentially poisoning children with this crap as a default position, assuming that the parents will step in if there are any problems with the school-provided food’s nutritious sufficiency.  Based on a totally random and non-scientific sampling of people I see pushing strollers on a regular basis, this is a very bad assumption when made writ large.

I know that someone in the comments will inevitably protest that not ALL pizzas are unhealthy.  Yes, there are whole grain pizzas that use olive oil and goat cheese, with heirloom tomato slices and basil leaves as toppings.  Unfortunately we’re talking about children and public education, so I don’t think there’s any dispute that we’re considering pizza of the greasy cheese-and-pepperoni variety.

In America’s twilight, it has entered a phase described by The Thinking Housewife as The Age of Pizza.  This sounds delightful, if you’re eight years old.  For adults and everyone else, though, it is a living hell from which pizza cannot be escaped.  At family gatherings, office functions, law school events, and any meeting where undergraduates are present, there is pizza.  Even within politics pizza is inescapable, as it is precisely where THE Herman Cain made his fortune.  Pizza has become the default nourishment for the dead-eyed soul.

There is, however, one redeeming point to the ubiquity of pizza.  It is the gift of the Baby Boom generation’s cynical desire to put pizza on anything – pizza chips, bagels, hot pockets – and make it available morning, noon and night, for a profit.  Baby Boomers can lift high the pie of sloppy sauce and refute the allegation that they never gave anything valuable to subsequent generations.  Sure, your student loans may carry interest in excess of 7%, and all of the jobs you went to college – at the Boomers’ urging – to obtain may have evaporated so the Boomers’ quarterly earnings could have been a few points higher; but dammit, they gave you pizza in the schools, and everywhere else, at the expense of all other choices.

H/T: Bronan the Barbarian

Vaginal Obsession – TSA, you’re doing it wrong

If you had to create a chart of the things I like and the things I don’t like, vaginas and the TSA would clearly be at opposite ends. The vagina is truly a wonderful thing, when properly cared for. Your mileage may vary depending on diet, grooming, genetics, and a host of other factors. But, in general, vaginas are a wonderful thing.

The TSA is not a vagina. It is not even vagina like. Even though it is run by a bunch of twats, it can’t even get close to being in the vagina zone when it comes to coolness.

I’ve never hidden my hatred for the TSA.  When I go through security, I always opt for the pat-down, and I make sure to make it difficult for the agent. Why? Because when I was in basic training, they taught us that it is our duty to make captivity as difficult for our captors as possible. I harass TSA employees when I see them in public, reminding them in grocery stores, theaters and anywhere else I find them that they are low forms of shit, and I advocate that we all do the same).  They are only doing their jobs? Well so was John Demjanjuk.

As much as I hate the TSA, I must admit that we have something in common: We both got a thing for vaginas. Of course, I prefer mine to be over the age of consent — the TSA harbors no such prejudices. Nope, not at all.

But, if I may be so pompous as to declare myself qualified to offer instruction on how to care for and attract vagina — TSA, you’re doing it wrong.

The TSA’s latest victim is prominent feminist blogger Jill Filipovic, of Feministe fame.  Ms. Filipovic recently took a trip to Dublin and, upon arriving, found a note from a TSA agent who’d discovered a vibrator in her luggage:

“GET YOUR FREAK ON GIRL” (source)

She reacted in a way that was noticeably un-second-wavy of her — with a sense of humor. She wrote:

Total violation of privacy, wildly inappropriate and clearly not ok, but I also just died laughing in my hotel room. (source)

The TSA’s reaction to this incident was predictable, given how it responds to terror threats: Namely, it enacted a remedy that will never be useful in the future. The screener got shitcanned.

But, is that really what anyone wanted? Filipovic has as much right as anyone to demand that this TSAsshole lose his or her job. Nevetheless, she did not call for the agent’s head. (She admirably dislikes Coldplay more than she dislikes this Agent).

It’s easy to scape-goat one individual here, but the problem with the note is that it’s representative of the bigger privacy intrusions that the U.S. government, through the TSA and other sources, levels every day. The invasion is inherent to the TSA’s mission, regardless of whether a funny note is left behind — the note only serves to highlight the absurdity of all this security theater. (source)

Filipovic went on to write that she is pleased that the TSA took the issue seriously, but firing one person who made a dumb mistake really misses the whole point.

I get no satisfaction in hearing that someone may be in danger of losing their job over this. I would much prefer a look at why ‘security’ has been used to justify so many intrusions on our civil liberties, rather than fire a person who made a mistake. (source)

Instead, the TSA seems to treat this as an isolated incident — or a failure by one of its drones. Meanwhile, the actual issue, which Filipovic tried to make us think about, is lost in the guffaws over the gooey gewgaw.

After we get done chuckling about Filipovic being anonymously told to “get her freak on,” I hope that we can think about how the TSA’s Freudian field day with our reproductive organs demonstrates the absurd nature of its very existence, the failure of its mission, the lie that it represents. It hasn’t got a damn thing to do with keeping us safe. I wish that we could think about how you should never try and have an agency devoted to such a high-falutin goal like airline safety, when you staff it with low-grade morons who are not fit to reproduce, let alone do anything else. Anyone who even wants that job must be a twisted, broken, loser; the kind of person who has lamented their loss of power ever since they left third grade and had to return the “hall monitor” sash to the principal’s office. Next time you are at the airport, just try detecting any intellect in the TSA agents you encounter. You will fail in that task. That alone should tell you that the agency has no reason to exist. If the job were actually important, we would never hire people who are this desperate, stupid, or lazy, to try and do it. And, when you give a powerless idiot a little bit of control, that misused power will find its own center, and that center is apparently our ‘nads.

Filipovic’s experience is no mere outlier. Take the recent tale of Amy Alkon — my client. The TSA only pried into what Ms. Filipovic inserts in her vagina; in Amy Alkon’s case, the TSA actually went up in there.  Repeatedly.  Four times over.  Naturally, Ms. Alkon did not like this and used her free speech rights to express her outrage over the event, shining the light of truth upon the TSA’s misdeeds, and calling the agent’s actions “rape.” Filipovic herself reports that even the FBI would agree with this assessment.  Unlike Filipovic, Alkon did not (so far) find out that her tormentor was fired. Ms. Alkon received a demand letter for $500,000 from Thedala Magee, the TSA agent with whom she had her little run-in. (Well, from her lawyer, but you get the point). 

It might have been undignified for the screener to scrawl a note about Filipovic’s sex toy – but unfortunately, that seems to be where the bureaucracy got hung up, and the real discussion about civil liberties got swept under the carpet — again.

Nazi-named Kids Taken From Parents

Heath and Deborah Campbell named their kids Adolf Hitler Campbell, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation, Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie. They drew national attention when they asked a New Jersey ShopRite to prepare a swastika birthday cake. This, naturally, prompted the state to consider whether the Campbells were fit parents. An appeals court today held that they should not regain custody of their children. (source)

No love for nazis around here, and I certainly do not think that reproduction should be a right. The Campbells, pretty clearly by my standards, would be good candidates for forced sterilization. Not because of their political views, but just because the world population has now hit 7 billion, and the vast majority of them are incredibly stupid and causing the devolution of the species into a feces-slinging, filth wallowing sack of protoplasm — Homo Walmartus. The Campbells are a good example of this, and in a perfect world they would not have been permitted to spawn.

But, I am still deeply troubled that an existing family can be dismantled by the state at all — let alone because the parents have deeply unpopular political views. The article on the Campbells states that the court found “sufficient evidence of abuse or neglect existed because of domestic violence in the home.” (source) It seems, from reports about the family, that the home is completely screwed up beyond all recognition, but it certainly seems that they were targeted for their views. Good people may say “good, nazis suck.” But, when we make exceptions to general principles because we hate nazis, we’ve opened the door to the second exception, and from there the third, and so on.

This is COLUMBUS DAY!!!

Pick another day, Crybabies!!!!

This is COLUMBUS DAY.

I’d like to invite anyone whose name ends with a vowel (Persians excluded) to raise their hands, extend their middle fingers, and flip off the Native Americans, the hippies, and everyone else in the International Association of Crybabies who has a piss and a moan about Christopher Columbus.

This is not “indigenous people’s day,” it is not “la dia de la raza” and it isn’t frigging “wear a beret, listen to Joni Mitchell, and wear patchoulli day.”

To the “Native Americans” who have a beef with Columbus Day — suck it. First off, it isn’t as though you sprang from the goddamned earth in Foxwoods. You’re immigrants too. You just wandered across ice to get here. We took boats. You were here first? I give a fuck?

There was a war. You lost. That’s how it works. That’s why the Celts wound up living in Ireland, Scotland, and every shitty rain-soaked crag in which they could cling to life — because they lost wars. That’s why nobody speaks Gaulish or whatever Vercingetorix spoke. They lost the damn war.

Sorry you crybaby fucks. That’s what happens when you LOSE A WAR. Trust me, the Italians know how you feel. We suck at wars. We used to be awesome at them. That ended some time around 400 A.D. Italians are the Chicago Cubs of warfare. (But you’re the Padres)

Tons of us came here to get away from the consequences of being really shitty at fighting wars. It worked out for us. We gave the world the thermometer, barometer, piano, electric battery, nitroglycerin, eyeglasses, the radio, and The Telephone.

We turned ghettoes into neighborhoods where people would kill to have a studio apartment. (Yes, I know that is the Gays’ job now, but it used to be ours) We taught the mayonnaise-faces what good food tastes like. We gave America 39 Medal of Honor recipients. We gave America Filippo Mazzei, John Basilone, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Bruce Springsteen, Vince Lombardi, and Gino the Ginny. You know what their middle names are? “Fuckin” that’s what.

We gave America its NAME for chrissakes.

You know what America gave us in exchange? A holiday. Good enough for us.

And you know what? America didn’t even give it to us, we took it. You know why? Because at the turn of the last century, Italians and other Catholic immigrants weren’t exactly what you would call “welcome” here. Yes, they used to lynch Italians too. So, the Catholics and Italians started organizations like the Knights of Columbus as a way to band together against the bigotry they encountered. They thought that by choosing Christopher Columbus as their symbol, it would show that if an Italian “discovered” America, then as Italians, they belonged here.

So you assholes can run your little left-wing crybaby agenda on any one of the 364 other days. I don’t give a damn if you managed to get every crap stained woodstock love child, fucking peruvian flute band, and liberal academic to weep with you as you look at the pollution on the highway. This is our holiday, and you can kiss my ass if you have a problem with it.

Don’t get me wrong. I generally have nothing but love for my Native American brothers and sisters. I think that they got a crappy deal. I’m with them when they get pissed off at the completely racist Cleveland Indians logo, and I don’t think you should call a team “The Redskins” if you wouldn’t call it “The Jigaboos” (yes, its the same damn thing). I think that America DOES owe the Native Americans a little something — and it ought to be something better than the right to build casinos. We owe them respect, help, and dammit, we ought to put a hell of a lot of effort into preserving their culture.

This guy is actually SICILIAN.

But you know what, Tonto? If you have a beef, its with the damn British, the French, the Spanish, and the white-bread assholes who kicked your asses. Lord Jeffrey Amherst gave you the smallpox infected blankets, not Al Pacino. You picked a fight with the wrong people, because the Italians never did jack to you. So get the fuck off my holiday.

Personally, I don’t know why we’re all down on the Conquistadors anyhow. Leonidas killed 20,000 ill-equipped, poorly trained, forced-to-fight losers and we call him a hero for the ages. A couple hundred Spaniards kick the crap out of an entire empire of human sacrificing, child-raping, savage nutbags who make Jerry Falwell look sane, and we think it was an awful sin?

Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 and then your lives started to suck. Boo hoo frigging hoo. The Conquistadors followed Columbus and took all the gold. Yeah that sucks. I got news for you, your lives sucked before Columbus got here.

You know what else sucks? When you screw with our holiday.

So here’s the deal. Take out the calendar. No, not that stupid Mayan one that is going to be worthless next year, the REAL calendar.

You want a holiday? Be my guest. Pick any day on the calendar except October 31, February 14, March 17, January 1, or July 4. I don’t even care if you want Christmas, but picking THAT will be a marketing nightmare.

You know which day would be an awesome Indigenous People’s Day? How about the Friday after Thanksgiving? Most of us have the day off anyhow. The pilgrims wouldn’t have survived without your help. So, the day after Thanksgiving, as we’re all resting up and glad that we have four days in a row off, we can thank you. Thank you for saving the Pilgrims’ asses. Thank you for basketball, and chewing gum, and chocolate. Thank you for potatoes and tomatoes. Thank you for the windtalkers. Thank you for really cool art. Thank you for whatever the hell else you did for us. Thank you for not stabbing every person in a Cleveland Indians shirt. Thank you for not setting off bombs at Redskins games. Thank you for being pretty damn cool about one of the most royal screw jobs in the history of mankind.

But most of all, thank you for quitting your damn bitching about Columbus Day.

Too Sexy for Crisp Skin?

By Tatiana von Tauber

Too sexy for some head?

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) thinks this chicken is just too sexy for anyone to see, “downright offensive” in fact. 

“When I saw it I just couldn’t believe that an editor of The New York Times would find it acceptable,” PETA’s founder and president Ingrid Newkirk told The Atlantic Wire. “It’s downright offensive, not just to people who care about animals but almost to everyone. It’s a plucked, beheaded, young chicken in a young pose,” she said. (source)

Newkirk went on to call it “necrophilia.” I think PETA needs a sense of humor.  This is brilliant from every angle!   

The best parodies / derivative uses always involve muppets

By J. DeVoy

This is the trailer for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.  It was a popular book, so naturally I neither read nor cared about it.  Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame scored the movie, which includes a cover of Led Zepplin’s Immigrant Song, performed with Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Never to be outdone, Disney promoted its Thanksgiving offering, The Muppets, with an advertisement spoofing The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’s, titling it “The Pig With The Froggy Tattoo.”

Perhaps internet memes and user-generated content have come full circle to influence the muppets’ formal marketing.

Still, it’s not quite as good as this classic:

Planet “Fitness” Sucks

By J. DeVoy

Planet Fitness is a joke and a toilet.  Ostensibly a gym, its policies ban deadlifts and other “unapproved lifts” (i.e., the exercises that accomplish anything), its locations do not have squat racks, it traffics solely in equipment fit for an old folks’ home, and doesn’t have dumbbells going much above 50 lbs, if at all.  And why would it? It’s a “judgment free zone” – whatever that means.  Yet, its advertisements seem quite judgmental themselves.

Isn’t that hilarious?!  Someone with the wherewithal to build his body into something massive through diet, exercise and use of supplements is an amusing comic foil against the skinnyfat-to-waifish mongrels who are the denizens of this “gym.”

The judgment goes father still, though: Planet Fatness has a device called a “lunk alarm,” which screams and flashes when someone drops a heavy weight, grunts, or actually exerts effort.  Once the alarm sounds, then comes the onslaught of scorn for fit people from the Reddit commenters and, um,”Rubenesque” figures using the gym.  From Wikipedia:

Planet Fitness has a device called the “Lunk Alarm” at all of its facilities. [...] The “Lunk Alarm” sign has a spinning light, and sounds like a tornado siren. The sign also defines a “Lunk”, and it reads as this: “Lunk , n, [slang], One who Grunts, Drops Weights, or JUDGES”.

Had enough?  It gets better.  Not content to do a disservice to its members by lying to their face about the efficacy of their workouts and lack of “judgment,” Planet Fitness ensures the chains of bondage will never be broken by force-feeding its members, like the ducks that make delicious foie gras.  Planet “Fitness” gives away truckloads of Tootsie Rolls to its members, also tempting them with bagels and, get this, free all-you-can-eat pizza on the first Monday of every month.  That’s right, why limit yourself to peddling shitty, ineffective workouts when you can compound the damage with junk food!  EliteFTS puts it this way:

Imagine that I’m a drug dealer and you’re addicted to crack. You want to get clean but I keep dangling crack rocks in your face, telling you that “No one will judge you.” It’s going to be pretty hard for you to break that addiction when I keep fueling it, isn’t it? Even if I didn’t give you any crack, I’m certainly not helping you overcome your problem. Planet Fitness does the same thing, but instead of crack they throw pizza and candy in front of their clients’ faces.

There are a bunch of different workouts out there that suit the needs of different people.  A marathon runner doesn’t need to do Rippetoe or the Texas Method of weight training.  Similarly, a football player doesn’t want to speed bike 20-30 miles a day.  The common theme, though, is that an effective workout requires effort.  Sacrifice.  Pain.  Planet Fitness, however, perpetuates the bullshit of helicopter parents and mendaciously tells its customers that they’re beautiful just the way they are and they can change if they think about it, no pain or sacrifice needed – and there won’t be any judgment!

Everything Planet Fitness stands for is a lie – but it’s a comfortable one that its customers desperately want to believe in, using it to wrap themselves and their mediocrity with its comforting falsity.  Sweating and puking and wanting to die sometimes is part of looking good.  In fact, that level of sacrifice is requisite to do anything well.  Telling people that won’t be needed to look good is false, but could be excused as puffery to support a business.  But lying and telling people they won’t be judged – and taking steps to remove that pesky specter of another person’s superiority, or even worse, realistic criticism – is just damaging.

This blog is a veritable catalogue of America’s pussification.  Whiners sue for baseless defamation claims, and scurry like rats when they realize the courts, as well as the public, might punish them for spewing utterly unsupportable bullshit.  Wimps surrender their freedoms because some bureaucrat told them they should do so in the name of “safety,” and, hey, everyone else is doing it too so what the hell.  And, apparently, congenital losers are created in the gym by hack companies such as Planet Fitness, which exacerbate America’s many health problems while claiming to alleviate them.

Do you know who Ruth Orkin is?

By Tatiana von Tauber

Ruth Orkin's "American Girl in Italy"

Recognize this photo?

Ruth Orkin photographed it in the early 50′s after meeting another young woman, Ninalee Craig (the model) in Italy while traveling solo.  Together they attempted to capture the experience of traveling alone in Italy. 

Some have claimed this photo is a symbol of harassment.  While Craig claims it’s a symbol of having a “wonderful time”  (source), I think it’s more a symbol of the kind of power feminine beauty has in Italy – and not much has changed in 60 years.  In Germany guys don’t make gestures, in America construction worker comments have killed the romantic potential but in Italy and in France, there still exists a “romance-worship” to the female.  With that comes a level of sexualization, sure, but when placed into the correct context, it’s a turn on rather than any symbol of harassment.  This photograph is a compliment.

By default of existing we are looked at.  Where some see judgment other see compliment.  If more men weren’t afraid of being accused of sexual harassment when none was intended more women might enjoy the compliment of a whistle or two.  Attention isn’t always comfortable but no attention for too long makes for an old, bitter maid.

Photoshop

Every girl should be required to go to a “what photoshop does” class by the time they are 10 years old. Either that, or news publications should be required to either use non-shopped images, or they should at least have to label the things.

I’ve actually done this job… a hell of a long time ago. I must admit that even then it made me sorta sick — and this is coming from a guy who isn’t exactly getting invited to parties by Jessica Valenti or Ann Bartow.

Grady Judd, at it again, in America’s Wang

By Marc Randazza

Following a three-month-long investigation of Theresa and Warren Taylor – Theresa being better known as “Kimberly Kupps” – the Polk County sheriff arrested them both on charges of promotion and distribution of obscene material.  The crime?  Creating pornography in their own home, then selling it both on their paysite and the popular distribution site clips4sale.com. (Source.)

Sadly, this is par for the course in Polk County.  The same Polk County where Philip Greaves, then living in Colorado, was indicted on obscenity charges for writing a book concerning pedophilia.  Let’s not forget the 15-year-old who was suspended from using the bus for three days after he passed gas on it.  And then there was the antique store owner who was charged with obscenity production for taking nude photos of willing participants – even if, at first blush, child porn charges may have been more appropriate.  Maybe I have Polk County all wrong and this is all the doing of dedicated gestapo fuckhead Sheriff Grady Judd.  But then again, Polk County is home to all the drooling, meth-addled retards who keep electing him.

It would be comforting to write this off as another Judd-ism, write a blog post about it, and put the incident behind me.  I don’t even live in Florida anymore; to hell with the place.  This case, however, goes too far.  Consenting adults, in the sanctuary of their own home, filmed themselves having sex — and by all accounts, the content they produced was pretty vanilla (e.g. no fisting, no watersports, no extreme bondage or BDSM, etc.).  In addition, the couple wasn’t exactly rolling in dough from this venture: by available reports, their porn activities brought in $700 per month. (Source.)
Enough for a few nice meals, sure, but not enough to finance a credible criminal defense.

Never one to let common sense or the First Amendment to come between him and a camera, Judd went to the press shortly after these arrests. Fox 13 had the initial interview.

“We want a wholesome community here, we don’t want smut peddlers,” Judd said, “and if they try to peddle their smut from Polk County or into Polk County we’ll be on them like a cheap suit.”

[...]

“They should heed the warning: If you engage in creating or selling obscene materials we are going to lock you up, and we enjoy that,” he said.

The profundity and wisdom of Judd is matched only by Yoda himself.  The last time I checked – I’m only a First Amendment attorney – “smut” is not a prohibited form of speech, much less a recognized category of speech.  Child porn is not protected by the First Amendment.  Nor is obscenity.  Smut, whatever the hell it is defined as, is protected by the First Amendment, as is everything not falling within the child porn and obscenity exclusions.  I’ll refrain from picking the low hanging fruit pointing out the hilarious irony of a peckerwood inbred like Judd mocking a cheap suit.

To Judd, this is a big game. He “enjoy[s]” when he can “lock you up.”  He’s not going to let a few founding principles get in the way of getting his jollies.  After a perusal of my prior coverage of Polk County affairs, I realized I’d left something unsaid that I want to say right now.

Grady Judd: fuck you.

And to the people of Polk County who enable this kind of bullshit for decades on end, fuck you, too.

When I’m not blogging, I’m busy running a law firm, Randazza Legal Group.  You may have heard of it; I have the privilege of defending bloggers, decorated war veterans and porn companies from attacks on their free speech rights.  I do not represent Mrs. Taylor or her husband.  I will, however, be making a donation to their legal defense fund.

I encourage everyone else who values free speech to do the same.  Inability to pay should not be a barrier to justice, especially in a case like this where the fundamental right to free expression is at stake.  Making only $700 per month from their adult business operation, Judd probably just expects the Taylors to roll over and plead guilty – quickly.  They shouldn’t, and we shouldn’t let them.  I do not know if this will be the case, but it’s time for someone to end Grady Judd.  Not to beat him, to ruin him.  To bescumber his legacy and make his name forever synonymous with the worst, most oppressive kind of home-grown terrorism that he’s inflicted onto the people of Florida, deserving though they may be, for decades.  I want him to have a forced, miserable retirement, and his children to quickly – in hushed shame – change their last names when he dies, to forever bury the shameful association.  It is long past time for Judd to be forced into the outhouse where he spends most of his time secretly thumbing through a crusty Fredericks of Hollywood catalogue from 1977, panting while doing so, forever. (Proverbially! rhetorical hyberbole ftw.)

Peter Murphy should have stayed in retirement

I owned every Bauhaus album on vinyl back in the 1980s. I am the target demographic for his new album. However, this interview guarantees that I wouldn’t buy his warmed over dreck.

“I’m not ashamed to claim that I’m the last and only star,” says Murphy, now 53, speaking by phone from his adopted home of Istanbul, Turkey. “I totally believe that. That’s how I live my life. People should witness it while I’m still gorgeous enough.” (source)

Jesus, what an asshat.

If that doesn’t turn you off, the sample from the album ought to make you barf.

Tribute to motherhood

by Tatiana von Tauber

I’ve been a mother for 13 years now and I’ve changed my mind about it. I used to fear it until I got the hang of it and then somehow I liked it. Of course, in the absence of thought during the like stage I decided to have another baby in my mid 30s. Yes, good ‘ol sex got in the way. I love my children and the meaning of family; however, motherhood is extremely exhausting and with 2 teens and a 5 year old I’m finding challenge in the once manageable balancing act of career and motherhood.

I’ve been thinking about it recently because I lost that balance by moving back abroad. The rhythm was good until it spun too quickly and I fell off. I’ve gotten back up but I see feminism from primarily a “mommy” perspective.

Being a mother changes the deepest set views of what it means to be a woman and to want a career. I’m deeply grateful to what women have done for our freedom to express our womanhood – femininity – and capability but the older and wiser I get the more I love the fact that my husband works and I’m the artistic “trailing” wife (in the expat world) and mother.

Often we don’t give enough credit to mothers. Our society bangs us with the idea that we want children and family but when we have them it’s not always the roses promised but no one usually gives the hardliner truth. Parenting is damn hard and don’t judge it until you have a crack at it. I learned that while I’m thankful for the choice of having babies, it’s a full time job in the sense of constant awareness. My brain hurts. It’s reality we often sweep under the magic carpet.

The energy to create is not equal to the energy to clean up

It’s possible to balance it all but keeping that balance takes a lot of energy and eventually something gives. Women have proven they can have their cake and eat it too but I’ve found that it resembles more of the cake in your face scenario. American mothers too often forget to stop and smell the roses along the way. Like marriage, family is a “for better for worse commitment”. The most common challenge women face is a loss of identity.

My biggest wish this Mother’s Day is for women still searching for that “me” under the “mom” title is to find themselves this year by exploring who they are as women, the dreamers who had visions of self-experience without diapers, teen attitudes and parental responsibility. Redefining that through the transformation of motherhood is the best reward motherhood has offered me. I’ve grown beyond my expectations because I had to. It was part of maternal survival.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Weekend read: “Compliment & Cuddle”

By J. DeVoy

Just in time for the weekend, controversial pickup writer Roosh has finished his seminal work Compliment & Cuddle: The Nice Guy Method to Making Love.  It’s free, online, and can be read in an hour at most.  Like all of Roosh’s work, it will shock and offend the uninitiated and willfully blind, especially with its adolescent tone, and amuse everyone else. (Don’t say you weren’t warned.)  In each of the five parts, you will learn to curb your masculine desires to be your own person and enjoy your life in an effort to become an appropriately sensitive, groveling 21st century man who begs for affection.  Important tips include treating any girl who looks at you like a celebrity, spending lots of money on her right away, and to fall in love — a.s.a.p.!

All five parts are available at the following links:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

I find this project hilarious in a painful way; while I am not the most practised student of Roosh’s particular style of game, Compliment & Cuddle is a comprehensive guide of what not to do.  Even when you have a girl in a relationship and the heavy lifting of attraction-building is done, one can still feel her slip away and lose interest by taking things seriously, as impromptu meetings at a shitty bar where you talk about the time you got arrested in college and drank an entire bottle of gin with the band Pigface become dinners where you listen and conduct a conversation about some important issue in her life.  To the extent C&C can be heeded as a cautionary guide, it is a valid one.  Being a calculated puppy-kicking asshole won’t get you anywhere, either.  But utter indifference and a triumph of self-concern confer a man with the keys to obtaining all the frivolous relationships he could want.

Tsunami jokes are approved of on this blog – Post your own!

Just another day in the land of the thin skinned mewling pussies as Gilbert Gottfried is fired from being the duck voice on the Aflac commercials because he posted jokes about the Japan earthquake/tsunami/meltdown/holyfuckingshitmess to his twitter account. (source) This is the same Gilbert Gottfried who spawned the “raped and murdered a girl in 1990″ humor genre. This is the same Gilbert Gottfried who made jokes about planes crashing into the Empire State Building 3 weeks after 9/11. This is the same Gilbert Gottfried who delivers The Aristocrats joke like none other.

And now Aflac is shocked that the guy might not have the same lilly-white-ass sense of humor that Americans require now that we’re the land of “everyone has a right to never be offended?” Who in the hell did they think they were hiring?

People are losing their minds that Gottfried joked about the worst thing to hit Japan since karaoke. I got hate mail about my “Tsunami in San Diego” post. To all of them, I say this: “get fucked.” If you don’t like a joke, here’s what you can do — don’t laugh. However, don’t whine about it if you think the joke is “tasteless.”

Maybe it is.

Jokes about Michael Jackson, famine, 9/11, rectal cancer, the holocaust, Karen Carpenter, The Kennedys, racism, sexism, children being molested, and illegal immigrants are all tasteless. And if you claim you’ve never laughed at one, then you’re either a liar or you have a stick so far up your ass that you may as well remove it by pulling it all the way out through your throat. Tasteless just means “holy shit, that’s inappropriate and likely to make someone feel badly.”

Yeah? So what?

One of my best friends, Anthony, taught me that Pain + Time = Humor. That’s why people sometimes react to a tasteless joke with “too soon?” (which makes the joke all the funnier). That’s also why I make jokes about Anthony’s miserable divorce from the screeching nut-case harpy from hell that is his ex wife. Is it tasteless? Yeah, they made him uncomfortable at first, but laughter is part of the healing process.

When we make “inappropriate” jokes, often we make them because we see a wound. Laughter is a great salve. It makes us feel better about shitty things — especially when those things are gaping chasms of pain. We have a miserable legacy of racism in America. Meanwhile, Lisa Lampanelli makes me about piss myself laughing — and I am not alone. I saw her in San Diego recently where she picked on each and every person she could approach, Blacks, Jews, Asians, Midgets, the Handicapped… nobody was sacred, and everyone laughed. Why? Because after 400 years of fucking up, some of us are ready to laugh at the past. Law professors writing articles about critical gender theory, most residents of San Francisco, and the full membership of the International Association of Crybabies won’t be laughing with us, but fuck them. The rest of us don’t need them.

Do you think Gilbert Gottfried really doesn’t care about the people in Japan? Do you think that any human could look at the videos and photos and not feel some of the joy drain out of their veins? We all feel it. Gilbert Gottfried too. We all feel for the kids who got ass-fucked by priests. We all feel for people who die of starvation. We all felt it on 9/11. My best friends standing around me felt it when they loaded me into a helicopter to rush me to the hospital after a skydiving accident, yet they could not resist making jokes about it even as it was uncertain whether I’d walk again.

Some of us deal with painful events by doing humor algebra. If Pain + Time = Humor. Then Pain + Humor = The Perception of Time.

No matter how painful something is, the day comes when we can laugh again while thinking about it. If some of us like to feel better sooner by ingesting the pill of humor, in order to give us the emotions the mewling crybabies may have in a few years, then fuck you, crybabies if we’re better adjusted than you. Or hell, maybe we-of-the-inappropriate-joke are more poorly adjusted, and we need this crutch to get through the otherwise-insanity-inducing horror. In any event, I will not condemn anyone for making a “tasteless” joke about a tragic event, but I will give the big middle finger to anyone who has a problem with it.

I thank Gilbert Gottfried. I thank him for making it possible to laugh when thinking about Japan right now. There’s not a fucking other thing I can do about the disaster there. Being able to laugh at an inappropriate Gottfried joke makes me feel better and it harms nobody. So fuck you, if you have a problem with it.

So in honor of Anthony’s divorce, the Japan Tsunami, and 9/11, please post your most “inappropriate” and “off color” jokes in the comments.

The only topic I won’t let you joke about is rape (which is never a laughing matter, unless you are raping a clown).