"More than 140 million women in the world are condemned to feel nothing." Link to post at Ads of the World, more scans on kuteev's livejournal. Campaign by Contrapunto BBDO, Barcelona. The ads are for a group called AMAM, Association of Women against Genital Mutilation, who have run some very provocative PSAs before, too. Link to AMAM website (Spanish). (thanks Susannah Breslin)
Susannah Breslin interviews the 57-year-old scat video producer who is at the center of what may be the "most extreme obscenity trial in U.S. history." Of note: he compares himself to Picasso, Mozart, and Kafka, and does not consider his work to be pornography.
Snip from her intro:
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post entitled "The 2 Girls 1 Cup Defense," focusing on the case of Ira Isaacs, a Los Angeles based director of coprophagy and distributor of bestiality films who was indicted last summer by the Department of Justice's Obscenity Prosecution Task Force for various obscenity-related offenses. Not long after that post went up, I got an email from Mr. Isaacs himself. He said if I wanted to interview him, I could. So I did. That interview is now online at Radar Online: "But Is It Obscene?"And snip from her Radar interview:
RADAR: How did you get started making these movies?Link to Radar piece, and here's the post on Susannah's blog with more out-takes and background. (Photo, via Radar: Getty Images). [Ed. note to Susannah: you win at internet dumpster-diving, dude. Seriously.]
IRA ISAACS: When the Internet was happening, I wanted to enter it in some way, and I wanted to do something different. In the past, you needed a lot of money and people to make a movie. Until video cameras were invented. Then the Internet was a big breakthrough for distribution. So, I started making a lot of money with these fetish shock videos. I was distributing shock art films from Europe.What do you mean by "shock art films"?
You talk about art? What is art? Art is what artists do. If it shocks you, it's art. One of the things art should do is make you think and question things. Shock art has always been something that has been a very popular thing through the 20th century and the 21st century. People used feces as shock art. There was a guy who shit in a can and sold it for the price of gold. [In 1961, Italian conceptual artist Piero Manzoni canned his feces in 90 tins and sold them for the price of their weight in gold.] So, the Internet allowed me to be an artist, to reach a lot of people. It allowed me to be on the edge, to do what I would never do as a fine artist. If you're going to paint, you've got to compete with Picasso. If you want to write a great classical music piece, you're competing with Mozart. I would never write anything like Kafka's The Trial. If I was going to make a mark, I was going to do it in some extreme shock way.
Previously on Boing Boing:
The internet dumpster-divers over at Fleshbot found a real gem today. Link (NSFW).
Susannah Breslin wrote a piece for Salon today about the apparent suicide of the so-called "D.C. Madam," Deborah Jeane Palfrey.
When her 76-year-old mother, Blanche Palfrey, called 911 just before 11 a.m., the emergency operator asked if her daughter was still hanging from the rafter. "Yes," said the madam's weeping mother, who had regularly accompanied her daughter to court the month previous, "I can't move her. I'm 76 years old."Breslin interviewed three women who are currently documenting online their past and present lives as sex workers, and asked for their thoughts.
Another sex worker I spoke with, who writes online about her call girl experiences but requested anonymity for this story, was pained by the news of Palfrey's death as well as the related older news of the death of University of Maryland professor turned call girl Brandy Britton, 43, who killed herself in January 2007 while awaiting trial on prostitution charges. Britton was a one-time employee of Palfrey's; after Britton was found hanging in her living room, Palfrey pronounced, ironically: "I guess I'm made of something that Brandy Britton wasn't made of."Link. Image: Reuters.The call girl I interviewed was struck by the emotional stories behind these public deaths. "The first thing I thought about was the incredible isolation that both of them probably felt," she said. "Because you're doing something that's perceived to be so morally wrong that you're immediately outside society, as a prostitute or a madam. You've got this secret life or a compartmentalized life, and then to be pushed out there and villainized -- I can only imagine the incredible isolation they must have felt."
As a sex worker, she went on, you live a "double life." A madam whom she worked for before she went freelance was intensely paranoid, "crazy," prone to anxious late-night phone calls. "It got to her. She would call me up and panic, thinking they were out to get her. It was the psychology of sex work, the fear of being outed."
UPDATE: details of Palfrey's suicide note released: Link. (thanks Susannah).
A friend at Fleshbot writes...
Link to Fleshbot post (nsfw). Shown here, the, ah, polar bear theme room inside the Big Sister brothel.Prague's Big Sister internet-enabled brothel has long been high on our list of travel destinations ever since our globetrotting siblings at Gridskipper first bought it to our attention a couple of years ago. (But only from a sociological perspective, you understand, not because we want to boink our way to international notoriety via the dozens of video cameras set up throughout the establishment which broadcast the goings-on to tens of thousands of the site's subscribers.) Short of going to Prague or coughing up a $40 monthly membership to join the website, the best way to see what Big Sister is all about is photographer Hana Jakrlova's Big Sister photodocumentary project...
Every time I think I've seen it all on the internet, someone informs me that I have not. Evidently, there is some population of folks online who take visceral delight in gazing upon poorly-photoshopped images of pinups being squished alive by pythons or elephant trunks. NSFW, some include hand-drawn bodily fluids being squeezed from helpless modelbodies. The only thing that could make this crude cropping any sexier is a li'l drop shadow and some emboss. Mmmmm. Link. (thanks, Reverse Cowgirl)
Link to video and photos on artist Danilo Pascuali's fine arts blog. In some, the figure is clutching a rosary or crucifix. (thanks, Reverse Cowgirl!)
Link to post. Image: Sergey Kovalenko.And perhaps most interestingly, Isaacs and his lawyer, he says, intend to pursue an unprecedented legal defense. The 2 Girls 1 Cup defense, that is.
Isaacs explains:
"'What it is, is, there's videos all over the internet of millions of people watching this [Two Girls, One Cup] video, and it's a shock video, and people record their reactions...' '[T]he idea is, millions of people are watching this video about girls shitting in each other's mouths, vomiting in each other's mouths, and they are not, I think, obviously looking for prurient interest to masturbate. People are trying to shock themselves, because in today's world, everything is shock on TV... People need a lot to be shocked these days... What I've done is, I think, really shocked people, and I think that's why the federal government is on this case.'"
While it remains to be seen how the 2 Girls 1 Cup defense will play out in court, Isaacs is right about one thing. In the 21st century, adult videos may be more hardcore than ever before, but so is the American public's taste for it.
Previously on BB:
* Feds hand eight-count obscenity charge to porn producer
(about a related but different case, a more recent obscenity case involving porn producer John Stagliano).
Or as Wired's Threat Level put it, porntrepreneur John "Buttman" Stagliano was busted for "selling adult content to adults." If convicted, he faces a possible prison sentence and up to $7 million in fines. The eight count obscenity indictment was issued this week, and the Department of Justice released details in a press release before handing down charges to the defendants.
Three pornographic films are mentioned in the DoJ papers:
* Milk Nymphos
* Storm Squirters 2
* and Fetish Fanatic 5, which features the porn performer Belladonna.
So, women squirting dairy products out their butts, and Belladonna hosting some sort of enema party? Oh, BFD, DoJ, as a nation do we not have more noble battles to wage?
BB pal Reverse Cowgirl wondered aloud over email,
I just wonder about the meetings, at the DoJ, OPTF, and AOS. Was it like, say, a Tuesday, and one agent's like, we need to go... FOR THE SQUIRTERS. And then, was one other guy like, YEAH, AND MILK.Also worth noting, the Belladonna movie box cover displays this sage advice:
"If nothing else, you ALWAYS do your enemas before going out to party!"Adult news site XBIZ had this quote from Stagliano's attorney, Al Gelbard:
"The charges are what they are; I disagree with them politically and morally,” Gelbard said. "It's a waste of the government's resources. We're very confident that we'll prevail at trial." ...And Richard Abowitz at the LA Times managed to pry a comment from Stagliano himself, against his attorney's advice:
The charges are real and something bad could happen. But I look at the world with wonder and amusement, especially when it comes to the government. I am hoping this will result in a bump in sales for the films. It is all films I distribute and not a single one I directed. I wish my 'Fashionistas' had been chosen. The films are hard, but I have real artistic ambition. I wonder how closely they watched? I am surprised the government, with the war and the economy, has time for this.Over at AVN, Mark Kernes posted a piece titled "Stagliano Indictment Raises Unique Questions Regarding Minors' Internet Access," in which one attorney argued that the case is "a set-up for a titanic battle over two major constitutional issues" -- and old laws involving "indecent telephone messages."
One charge, however, that hasn't been seen before in a case involving adult material accessible from a Website is under Chapter 47 of the United States Code, Sec. 223(d), "sending or displaying offensive material to persons under 18."Fleshbot has a related post (NSFW), with links to the DVDs in question -- which adult stores are said to be yanking off the shelves as I type.That section reads, in pertinent part, "Whoever, in interstate or foreign communications, knowingly ... uses any interactive computer service to display in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age, any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication that is obscene or child pornography, regardless of whether the user of such service placed the call or initiated the communication; or knowingly permits any telecommunications facility under such person's control to be used for an activity prohibited by paragraph (1) with the intent that it be used for such activity, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."
(thanks, Reverse Cowgirl! Image: Luke Ford, via Wikipedia.)
Today on Boing Boing tv, a glimpse inside the "Miss Hooker 2008 Beauty Pageant," the creation of artist Natalia Fabia. Nine glamorous punk pinups compete for the title, showing off such diverse talents as egg frying, fantasy whistling, and yo-yoing. Who will win? No actual prostitutes were harmed in the filming of this episode, just metaphorical ones (as in "we all sell ourselves here in Hollywood.").
Link to BBtv post with discussion and downloadable video. (Special thanks: Angelique Groh, and David Pescovitz)
Link to NYT story; Jalopnik has pix and video.The tabloid newspaper that broke the story of Mr. Mosley’s Chelsea session, The News of the World, described it as “a depraved Nazi sadomasochistic orgy,” and said Mr. Mosley had paid the equivalent of $5,000 in cash for the five-hour session.
In a video the paper posted on the Internet but later removed, two of the women wore black-and-white striped robes in the style of prisoners’ uniforms. The video showed Mr. Mosley counting in German — “Eins! Zwei! Drei! Vier! Funf!” — as he used a leather strap to lash one of the women.
“She needs more of ze punishment!” he cried in German-accented English. One woman appeared to search his hair for lice while another called off items on an inspection list. Mr. Mosley, naked, was bound face-down and lashed more than 20 times.
Link
Arse Elektronika 2008 -- "Do Androids Sleep with Electric Sheep?" -- will take place at San Francisco's Ft. Mason Center. September 25 thru 28, 2008.Taking up where the successful conference in autumn 2007 left off, this year's Arse Elektronika stands under the motto "future" -- and the ways in which the present sees itself reflected in it. Maintaining a broadened perspective on technical development and technology while also putting special emphasis on its social implementation, this year's conference focuses on Science and Social Fiction.
The genre of the "fantastic" is especially well suited to the investigation of the touchy area of sexuality and pornography: actual and assumed developments are frequently depicted positively and approvingly, but just as often with dystopian admonishment. Here the classic, and continuingly valid, themes of modernism represent a clear link between the two aspects: questions of science, research and technologization are of interest, as is the complex surrounding urbanism, artificiality and control (or the loss of control). Depictions of the future, irregardless of the form they take, always address the present as well. Imaginations of the fantastic and the nightmarish give rise to a thematic overlapping of the exotic, the alienating and, of course, the pornographic/sexual as well.
In order to intelligently contextualize the abundance of queries that are involved here, this year's conference will be structured around three day-long discussion panels, each devoted to a specific theme. The impossibility of fitting many of these issues and relationships into such neat categorizations is not only accepted, but also encouraged.
Link (via JWZ)The report goes on: "Although mating has never been observed in giant squid, it is thought that what happens is that the male injects his sperm packages into the female's arms. The process is likely to be a fairly violent affair as the female is probably not that keen on being injected. This is a problem for the amorous male as females are normally a third bigger than they are.
"But males get round their inferior size by being endowed with a particularly long penis, which means they can inject the female without having to get too close to her chomping beak. The male's sexual organ is actually a bit like a high-pressure fire hose and is normally nearly as long as his body - excluding legs and head.
"But having such a big penis does have one drawback: it seems that co-ordinating eight legs, two feeding tentacles and a huge penis, whilst fending off an irate female, is a bit too much to ask, and one of the two males stranded on the Spanish coast had accidentally injected himself with sperm packages in the legs and body. And this does not seem to have been an isolated incident since two of the eight males that had stranded in the north-east Atlantic before had also accidentally inseminated themselves.
Calpernia Addams is the star of the subversive new competitive dating show "Transamerican Love Story" -- following on Mark's post, this seems like an apropos moment to point to her hilarious how-not-to video about rude questions transgendered people are often asked. The video's a little long, but it's full of great material, and highly edumacational. Thumbs up.
When you're done with that -- brace yourself, whore, you're about to get a stunning. (thanks, Andrea James!)
According to Tabermann, the purpose of such vacations would be to prevent relations from disintegrating and the spouses from drifting apart.LinkDuring the seven days, couples could devote themselves to each other ”both at an erotic and emotional level” and ”find their way back to the path of love in order to find the wellspring of love again”.
Some MPs suspected that the proposal might discriminate against single persons, but others said that a love vacation would be the privilege of all, even the singles and the single parents.
She's been gathering letters from hookers and johns, and today she explores what we might learn from them about Eliots. Snip from Susannah's Newsweek piece:
One letter in particular may offer a window into the mind-set of a man like Spitzer. It came in the form of an encrypted e-mail from a state investigator. Professionally, he was dedicated to enforcing the law. Personally, he was in a relationship with a woman with whom he hadn't had sex in years. He'd been seeing prostitutes since 1991. In his encoded diary he recorded his encounters. "1 dot is oral, 2 dots is vaginal sex, and 2 connected dots is anal sex. In the event that someone questions the dots, they are associated with good or bad days: no dots are normal days, 1 dot is a good day, 2 dots is a great day, and 2 connected dots is the best day for that week." For him, sex for money was sex without strings, attachment, or guilt—a transaction.Link.But for some it's the financial transaction itself that is alluring. In the first letter I received I heard from a successful twentysomething who described himself as "attractive and ambitious." He had a girlfriend—"a wonderful woman"—but there was something about the act of paying for sex, he confessed, that turned him on. "I find the idea of paying for sexual acts to be erotic," he confided. For some men, especially those who are seen as particularly moral or righteous in their public lives (think of all those fallen preachers), part of the appeal is the fact that it is illegal and a moral transgression in their eyes.
In related news, here's a piece about the amateur R&B singer and pro sex worker who brought down Spitzer. And here's her MySpace page.
Male starlings with the highest levels of endocrine disruptors in their bodies also possessed unusually developed high vocal centers, an area of the brain associated with songbirds' songs. Scientists have previously shown that estrogen drives HVC development; its mimics apparently have the same effect.These are the same chemicals that turn fish into hermaphrodites, btw. Link (via KottkeAccordingly, the polluted male starlings sang songs of exceptional length and complexity -- a birdsign of reproductive fitness. Female starlings preferred their songs to those of unexposed males, suggesting that the polluted birds could have a reproductive advantage, eventually spreading their genes through starling populations.
The French organization Unef, which apparently advocates for student housing, ran this funny and rude ad that was reported on in the English edition of Der Spiegel.
Link,
Link to Der Spiegel article
Jaded by the sight of what it deemed "run-of-the-mill" orifices, the nation's pornography-saturated populace released a statement Monday demanding a new bodily opening to leer at. "At this point, staring at an anus, vagina, or beckoning mouth has become so commonplace that it is no more titillating than ogling, say, the human elbow," the statement read in part, its list of demands specifying that the new orifice, wherever its location on the body, must be concealed by some sort of clothing or shroud during the majority of the day, so that the viewer grows more eager for its eventual revelation when its covering is seductively removed.NSFW Link (via Kottke)
Susannah Breslin writes,
Ellen Forney is a Seattle-based artist, cartoonist, and illustrator who has a new book out, Lust: Kinky Online Personal Ads from Seattle's The Stranger, from the boys at Fantagraphics. (Her last book, I Love Led Zeppelin, was nominated for an Eisner.) Lust brings together three years worth of Forney's "Lustlab Ad of the Week" series in which she creates comic works inspired by real ads that appear in the Stranger's personal ad section: Lustlab. For the second installment of Fast and Dirty, I interviewed Forney about what it's like to bring the secret fetishes of Seattle freaks to life. Buy your own copy of Lust here.Read Susannah's interview with Ms. Forney here.
Writer and sex worker Melissa Gira Grant is now contributing to Valleywag. Here is an excerpt from her first item about a sector of the Silicon Valley economy that is rarely mentioned in tech biz publications (unless, say, some high-profile exec is caught in a transaction):
# Search sfbay area -> sby -> services -> erotic. Keywords you're looking for: "college," "tuition," "arrangement," "daddy."Link.# When you find a few likely prospects, email them. DON'T mention money or sex. Follow any instructions she's included, e.g. send her your phone number. She may ask you to confirm who you really are and where you work. She's not a cop -- she's a contractor. You can have her call the front desk at your workplace and ask for you. She'll say she's your "trainer" or something.
2. Robots do not want to have sex with you. Are you listening, Japan? I don’t have a clever comparative simile for this, because frankly you bags of meat will fuck bicycles if they’re laying down and not putting up a fight. Just stop it. There is no robot on Earth that wants to see a bag of meat with a small prong on the end approaching it with a can of WD-40 and a hopeful smile. And don’t get me started on that terrifying hole that squeezes out more bags of meat.Link
2010LinkFollowing the Supermod Doll's success, Pygmalion introduces Supermod Series II, a line of sexbots with motion-triggered vocalization -- moans, screams, and dirty talk. The bot also has "Inheat Inside," a new behavior engine designed by a leading primate biologist, which makes the bots' movements, expressions, and iris dilations even more powerfully seductive. Demand for the bots grows, but their high price continues to limit sales.
Later in the year, Pygmalion introduces the Supermod Pornstar line, in a cross-marketing and licensing partnership with adult video producer Digital Playground. The new line of sexbots are realistic, laser-scanned replicas of Jesse Jane and other leading porn actresses. Tagline: "You've watched me; now fuck me."
A reclusive bot-owner commits "double-suicide" at his home in Los Angeles, hacking his bot to pieces with an axe, then shooting himself in the heart. The story makes national headlines and draws attention to the high suicide rate among sexbot users.
Botboy, a successful chain of Japanese doll clubs, opens 15 branches in the U.S. and Canada. The company also launches Botboy magazine, a monthly celebration of sexbots and the botboy lifestyle that features lavish erotic photography, plus fantasy fiction, sexbot advice and maintenance tips, and the latest in sexbot technology. The magazine is a hit, and proves to be a popular ìgatewayî for non bot-users.
The 1st annual International Interdisciplinary Conference on Sexbots and Social Upheaval takes place in Rome, Italy.
Previously on Boing Boing:
• Interview with author of Love & Sex With Robots
• Real people who have (un)real relationships with Real Dolls
• One slightly used RealDoll for sale
• Real Doll sex toy maker has an anime doll
• Real Doll photography
• Nerve.com "Science" experiment: sex with a RealDoll
• Video of ultra creepy animated dentist training robot
• Japorn anime cosplay and living-doll erotica, part two: Kigurumi
• Supreme Court denies Alabama women mechanically induced orgasms
LinkCity law said it is illegal for any two animals to have sex in public within Dibble city limits.
It's also against law for them to relieve themselves in public even if the animal is fenced in on private land.
Flickr user Aqui-Ali has posted a long-exposure shot of a couple having sex on a bed, a kind of erotic blur representing a great deal of energetic movement.
