Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

Comment threads and flame wars can douse the fire in any flamer (update: March 12, 2010)

Friday, March 12th, 2010

I have often heard people refer to being online as “mental masturbation.” If there’s one area that validates this view, it has got to be the “Comments” section in any entry, posting, rant, or news article. Whenever the topic of transgender surfaces (fark.com or cnn.com are good peanut galleries: witness CNN’s Steve to Susan comment section), otherwise well-behaved, god-fearing Christian men ejaculate in a hot, torrid, sweaty spurt of teabags, pumping one intolerant comment after another, right in your face in a non-stop funtime load of steamy, stiff, pent-up rage that just won’t quit. I guess that’s bound to happen when all those images of hot guys with tight pants everywhere, on the football field, on all the loaded bases, bucking on a bronco riding that bull with a strap around its family jewels like it was yours, driving you to the edge of sanity, like a left-turning Nascar stud in that Alabama sun, then driving out the stadium, following orders from policemen in uniforms with big black nightsticks and handcuffs wearing boss shiny boots, all built up inside, ready to explode in a sparkling tizzy of frustrated sexual mania….where to find relief? Church is still two days away for Jebus’s sake!

To quote Holly Johnson: “Relax. Don’t do it. When you want to …”

But you know something? I have also heard people frequently jest about going online for porn. I think when these guys (and girls) get hot and bothered, “porn” for them, is the online comment thread section. It has often been debated whether actual graphic porn encourages sexual aggression OR reduces it, acting as a pressure valve. You know what all the guys do when the moment they flip their switch right? They roll over, bleat for momma, and saw lumber peacefully like they’ve got three hippie vegan bumper stickers across the rear caboose. It depends on the society you live in. When it comes to transphobia and homophobia, Western etiquette encourages its civilians to keep their opinions to themselves when out in public. That’s a good thing; however, the pressure is really building up inside.

So what better place for them to vent than in the privacy of their own homes? Especially after all the rented gay porn has been handily consumed. The feeling of relaxation arrives and before you know it, the snoring follows. Everyone goes home happy. So I say, don’t let the cyber hate drag you down. Let em’ go crazy at home if only it will help remind them that the next time they are out in public, they are supposed to be ogling the “other” girl over there. Not here.

The Opposite of Wallflower (update: March 02, 2010)

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

What is it? Everyone debates, but there is no consensus. Mixer, extrovert, showboater?

Yet everyone knows what a wallflower is. I was just having a conversation with the bf the other night about how women tend to be wallflowers. It may sound traditional, and in some quarters, it may even be frowned upon. It would seem that society gives more leeway to women for being wallflowers. For men to be wallflowers, they would be seen as “queens” in the gay world, or socially-impaired in the straight world.

I know I come across articles where interviewed guys say how cool it is for the girl to be the aggressor once in a while, that it is nice for the girl to make the first move. I can sympathize with that. But I am surrounded by traditionalist books chock full of 1950s advice articles. I think it’s okay for the girl to be frightened little creatures, especially in settings where it’s a male-oriented domain. I too, see men who are wallflowers as a tad high-maintenance. I guess that’s what happens after years of soy energy bars, Starbucks Buttofuccocino and Sarah McLachlan mp3s on the IPod.

Trust me, if you are a guy who is after a girl, another tgirl, or even a guy, the bottom half always likes to be pursued. As much as people kick and scream about the perks of modern egalitarian order, there’s nothing quite as sexually arousing as a man on the prowl. He gets kingpin respect, no matter how much he’s not all that. Even though society ladies today flip gangsta signs and get out of confession booths without panties on, a man is still defined by his actions, a gal by her helplessness, or inaction.

Among girls, when they see a fellow sitting there waiting for the women to come to him, the first thing out of our scandalized mouths is, “who does that bloke think he is, a chick?” As a person who has pursued others decades ago – and seen how easy it is – I myself think, this guy is either a princess or he’s lazy as sin.

To be fair, in the game of the hunter and the hunted, what women lack in physical aggression, they more than make up for in signals. I guess it’s the guys who know how to read them that become the first ones past the gate. I think one needs to make the distinction between a wallflower and playing hard-to-get. A wallflower is just too shy to make the first move. Playing hard-to-get is pretending you are unobtainable even after the first move has been made.

Jay Leno Returns to the Tonight Show (Update: March 2, 2010)

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

Jay Leno returns, Coco the tale of two chimps

Too long for a tweet, too short for an actual entry. Sorry! Will post a real entry later today.

Despite what gossipers are saying about Leno being the meanie, I do wish him well. But if I was someone who got caught in the pageantry leading up to last night’s triumphant return (and I just tuned in to see Coco’s last night several weeks ago, then compared it with Jay’s first night back, I would most likely have said, “This was what the hoopla is all about?”

I like Jay. I think he’s a pro. He can definitely get the standard laughs – one’s you don’t have to work too hard to get. But his routines definitely have a “ghostwriter” feel about them, as if he didn’t really roll up his sleeves the night before to knock them out. So last night’s installment was, well, very predictable, and very safe. And let’s face it, at the end of a long work day, maybe audiences want something predictable before they retire to bed. Maybe naked Max Weinberg in the sex offender’s outcast tents in the backwoods is not an image you want to have before you drift off to sleep, seven hours away from the next work day.

And whenever I get puzzled by the massive conservative votes on poll day, I always need to tell myself, “there’s 48 states between here and California.” Edgy humor about Jewish therapists and masturbating bears may not exactly work with someone who lives in Wyoming and had to put down a Grizzly in the backyard earlier that day.

Still, the return was anything but triumphant. Jamie Foxx was over-the-top in his professional fawner for hire, paid to rouse up the audience. Check’s in the mail. Lindsey Vonn demonstrated why athletes never quite made the leap over to the entertainment world: The audience had to chant U-S-A, U-S-A over her travel-worn voice to keep a viewer from falling asleep, country singer Brad Paisley’s neo-C&W act sealed my suspicions.

When we were driving back from North Carolina, we listened to the present roster of C&W music on the radio. (It was either that or church sermons) We just couldn’t believe how many songs repeated the same images Ad nauseam. By the time we reached Virginia, we were pulling our hairs out: OKAY, OKAY, WE GET IT! YOU’RE A MAN! YOU RIDE A STEER, YOU DRIVE A TRUCK! YOU LIKE THE LADIES! YOU DRINK WHISKEY! YOU GIVE A GOOD BLOWJ- wait, back up one right there Hoss.

But if there’s ever a lineup that screamed “targeted demographic,” it had to be Leno’s Tonight Show v.2 They know who their audience is: Red States people. And who’s tonight’s guest? Sarah Palin.

Keeping in mind that Palin’s appearance opposite Shatner during Conan’s watch was generally seen by his fans as one of the highlights of his 7 month residence, when Leno announced Palin as guest will be her first time ever on the Tonight Show, whatever few Coco supporters who were open-minded enough to give Jay a chance, are gone by today.

Federal Agencies to “Investigate” Death in Seaworld? (update: Feb 25, 2010)

Thursday, February 25th, 2010


The tragedy was horrible, and saddening. I kept quiet and let every one else do the commenting. But today, I see that two agencies have been dispatched to investigate this death. Come on now. Dwindled taxpayer dollars can be put to better use. I’ll save these agencies the trouble with my congressional hearing-style PowerPoint chart:

Group Under Investigation: Human Beings Killer Whale
Official Category:
(Homo sapiens)
(Orcinus orca)
Best Feature:
Plastic surgery, botox, collagen, face tuck for genuine smile
"looks" like it has a "cute smile" even in the middle of killing penguins
Track record:
500, 000 years of intermittent surge killing for ego
11, 000,000 years of steady killing for survival
Training:
signs up at self-defense dojo to learn hand-to-hand combat
attacks whales in the ocean
Past time:
watching large killing machines perform cute stunts
playing frisbee using 600 lb sea-lions before ripping them to shreds
Certificate authority:
The Holy Bible
Teeth
Most notorious killer:
locked in Colorado ADX Florence Supermax Prison
ALL
Roaming ground:
Planet Earth
Tank about 10 times the size of body (proportionately for humans who don’t have a friend name Dorothy: living in a closet for the rest of your life)
Present Occupation:
incarcerate wild animals for viewing pleasure and profit
help the sale of tickets and hot dogs

Any questions?

Don’t make me pull out the Frog and the Scorpion Story.

As always, it is NOT OK for PETA to contact this blog poster.

Feline Please! More Non-News (Feb 19, 2010)

Friday, February 19th, 2010

The great golfer has spoken.

Is it even necessary? All the crocodile tears are purely in the interest of sponsorship kickback dollars. The spokespeople who rush to his defense knows he is a big draw in the golfing circuit (even more so now that our celebrity, sensational-thirsty public wants a peek at this notorious sideshow).

But what has happened really? As far as I know, it’s just some dude who got fame, and feels he needs to occasionally take the edge off with 12 ( maybe more) Caucasian women, preferably blondes only. The New England Journal of Medicine has recently shown, in a correlative study about the palliative effects of blondes, that fair-maned white women who have no history of running and swinging golf clubs at the same time, and have not been thrown off Southwest Airlines, may or may not reduce stress by up to 35%. Is that a crime that calls for a public apology? How is it even news what someone does in their private time? Isn’t that what blogs are for?

That modern opiate that replaced religion- daytime talk shows – has given us this inalienable right to love a celebrity we don’t even know, or randomly judge some stranger. I think Tiger Woods should just go up to the podium and announce “gangbang at my pad tonight at 10.”

I am actually more scandalized that Tiger’s speech pre-empted my daily serving of WordGirl and Captain Huggy Face. How dare he!?


The I-Generation: Glass Adults (update: Feb 16, 2010)

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
Jokes.com
Jeff Cesario – Boxing
comedians.comedycentral.com
Joke of the Day Stand-Up Comedy Free Online Games

I was driving around with a few friends on President’s Day, and we were talking about strange boxing idioms. I asked them to explain the boxing slang “glass jaw.” I knew what it meant, but seeked confirmation and possibly etymological enlightenment. “It basically means your jaw is fragile.”

Of course, I started thinking about the kids of today, you know: the I-Generation. I am against hitting a child, but I see nothing wrong with taking disciplinary measures (ie. grounding, privileges revoked, community service, stern lectures, schoolday breakfast tomato juice without vodka). A great part of what forms our sense of morality begins in our childhood experiences and how we were dealt with at home. We are taught that improper acts result in consequences: when we break the rules, we are accountable. The I-Generation, being brought up and ruled with a velvet fist, will probably need to text message KGB about what “patience” means. They wouldn’t even understand the concept of “working for something.” It’s love on demand, Ugg Boots on demand, justice on demand.

Unfortunately, the I-Generation is being raised by granola-munching, feel-good, the child-is-the-customer-is-always-right, Radiohead-listening babyboomer moms and pops who handle their kids with kid-gloves, and put their children’s friends’s tweeting about their cool parents as the No.1 priority in successful parenting. Snow on the ground? “stay inside, you may catch H1n1. Besides you won’t be able to text-message if you get frost-bite on your finger-tips.” There’s no way you can even time-out a kid in the corner of the room anymore. It’ll lead to “separation anxiety and guilty complex depression.” If the young ones throw a tantrum and go on a bender wrecking the house? “We’ll have to see about signing Bobby up with therapy and look into the possibility of the presence of Bipolar, Obsessive Compulsive, Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder and getting meds for him.” The comedian Dennis Leary once reminisced about his childhood, “therapy meant a smack in the head followed by “now go mow the friggin’ lawn.”

I once overheard this at a music instrument store: “Now, Jimmy, this is the very last Marshall Stack Mommy buys you for this month.” The kid was 11.

It makes me wonder what I-Generation kids will grow up to be. Glass Adults probably. At the slightest deviation of a daily routine….perhaps they accidentally got out of bed on the wrong side or the local Starbucks ran out of Venti Mocca Latte Frappucino, they’d be rushed in to therapy, followed by a cat-scan, MRI with ECG and a valium-cialis cocktail. A satellite going down, resulting in a dead 3G connection for 3 minutes is a guaranteed panic jihad.

Just browse the articles of your online news sites. Headlines like Children’s Fitness Levels Continue to Decline; Today’s Kids are Weak and Unfit, Many U.S. kids have chronic health problems: study are not uncommon.

Is it any wonder that each successive, over-pampered generation is getting weaker, while the health care industry is booming?

Needless to say, healthcare professionals recommend treatment. I vote for a healthy kick in the butt to knock them into queer street.


Funny Games: A Ralph Lauren Catalog Gone Awfully Wrong (update: February 4 ,2010)

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

When I heard there was going to be an U.S. remake of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, I rolled my eyeballs and said “Here we go again.” When I heard Haneke was going to be in the director’s chair, it made me think twice. Haneke is probably my favorite living director, and his interviews are just as interesting as his movies. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t spend a few moments thinking about something he has said.

For fans of this German filmmaker’s oeuvre, it’s a logical decision to bring his most scathing commentary on society’s thirst for violence to the American audience, who pour millions of dollars into revenge fantasies in the box office year after year. After all, cruelty is perfectly acceptable as long as it’s directed towards the bad guys.

In the reiteration of the original Funny Games, the title has taken on richer, more complex dimensions where the movie viewer is being toyed with. Haneke is certainly no stranger to these games, as his “actual money flushed down the toilet” scene in The Seventh Continent (1989) had audiences screaming and fainting in the cinemas. The setting of a well-to-do American family in a vacationing home – though identical to the original “Funny Games” set, now looks like page after page of a luxury designer label catalog. Think Ralph Lauren and the whole Gossip Girl fetish for the Hamptons.

Given Haneke’s enlightening theory of the 19th century tradition of storytelling (audience are manipulated to align absolute good vs absolute evil) anachronistically being kept on life support by Hollywood and escaping Jewish intellectuals during WWII, there’s echos of the whole upper-crust, old guard mystique being constantly resusitated in the fashion world by the likes of Karan, Lauren, and Calvin Klein.

Haneke often cites the works of Leni Riefenstahl during the Nazi regime as a cause for an innate distrust of cinematic manipulation as propaganda. In the simplistic Hollywood order, fair, blonde, blue-eyed (remember, the eyes are the gateway to one’s soul) tend to be the noble hero, and the dark shadowy figure the villain. Here I can’t help thinking of Quentin Crisp’s observation of the perpetual fascination the Jewish male has for the Teutonic goddess.

Happily, Haneke smashes all these systems in both his original and the remake of Funny Games.

Now let us all pray Ron Howard can take a hint and box up his rights to a remake of Haneke’s Caché and tuck it in some dusty storeroom next to the arc of the covenant.


10 Things I Still Can’t Figure Out (update: February 2, 2010)

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Cultural Imperialism at its most effective: Asian Eyelid Surgery. Parents give it to their kids as birthday presents as early as 15. Proponents say it’s merely “corrective.” I bring your attention to the dyed hair, blue contact lenses, and lightened skin in the AFTER picture.

1. ) Asian Eyelid Surgery. To this day, I still badger people to explain exactly what Asian eyelid surgery is. What is it supposed to accomplish? I call this the liquor-in-a-brown-bag syndrome. Just because you put an elongated bottle in a brown bag, do you really think all cops are instantly fooled? That he’ll miss the smell of booze on you, that you are stuttering and stumbling on the streets, and that you have no pants on?

2. ) Why do so many trans girls have multiple girl names in their female names? Is it the male mentality of more being better? More female names= more feminine. So it’s like a Chevy Big Block 572 V8 with a Holly Six pack carburetor of girly. You’d be a dude if you were merely Rachel Bilson. No. That’s like the Yugo of chick. You have to be Rachel Ann Tiffany Flowers or Sarah Elizabeth Isabella Silk. She is all XX on the chromo-dar.

Funny thing, I don’t hear of Female-to-Male trans bois calling themselves Jonathan Harry Jake the Snake Pummel or Joshua Matthew Christopher Allman. If whipping out your femme name and gauging its length with a ruler against other tgirls’ namesize is any measure of femininity, I really need to overcompensate for my brawny ways: I better start making plans to change my name to Brittany Grace Lisette Angela Santa-Maria Amatullah Sameera Al-Maalik Goldstein III.

3. ) Why do Asians love food with bones in it? Whenever I try it, I end up leaving the restaurant hungrier than when I came in. More calories burnt than consumed. Are they trying to drown out the surrounding noise? As a child I never understood the toothpicks that were freely available after dinner. Now I know it’s to remove chunks of tendons that were stuck in between teeth when food was vacuumed through the mouth at 8-10 hp.

4. ) Why women think dumb men in tv commercials is hilarious, but the reverse would constitute sexist misogynistic, oppression resulting from the systematic patriarchal post-feminist machinations of male chauvinism.

5. ) How white collar people can still take each other seriously and get work done when the word “synergy” continues to be used in boardroom meetings.

6. ) How blue or green eyes always evoke the cliched “the eyes are the window to one’s soul” but the Godfather of Soul is James Brown and the two biggest soulful artists are Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder.

7. ) Why so many sports fans have no problems expressing their homophobia while they hang out with a bunch of men getting drunk, hugging each other, and cheering a bunch of other men in tight pants patting each other’s butts.

8. ) Why the folks who find transgender women so hilarious and deserving of public taunting are the same people who fail to see anything peculiar about Wendy Williams.

9. ) Why we could exist in silence while in transit for hundreds of years, but now we can’t even cross a busy intersection without fondling our combo bluetooth I-Phone IPad GPS Kindle Book Auto-Atomic Diaper changer.

10. ) Why many animal-rights and human-rights activists see no problems with employing violence or portraying violence towards other human beings.


How Did Librarians Get Their Reputation (update: Jan 22, 2010)

Thursday, January 21st, 2010


Me in my cozy little library. Click on the pic for a higher resolution shot

Whenever I go to the public library, I wonder where it is that librarians get their notorious reputation. If you ask the typical guy, he’ll tell you it’s the whole “removing the spectacles and undoing the tight hair bun” fantasy. Somewhere underneath there is a wild child waiting to unleash. It sounds like something you would read in Maxim, FHM, or at the very least, Penthouse Forum.

No, I’ve always thought it was something more insidious. In order to appraise the full arsenal of all the weapons hiding behind the staid book covers – all within invocation with a few taps from her electronic card catalogue – surrounding the written word’s gatekeeper, all you need to look up is de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom, Michel Houellebecq’s Platform, Bret Easton Ellis, Shannon McKenna, crime fiction, Spillane, not to mention bodice rippers and nonconsensual romance novels, – because hey, if the assailant looks as hot as the guy on the front cover…it must be ok, right? Whatever!

Here’s my all time favorite evidence of just what librarians are really hiding behind that boring facade. Witness, Henry Miller’s classic Tropic of Capricorn. One paragraph here is worth its weight in a dozen truckload of adult magazines.

Valeska was generous, but the cousin was a softy. If she came within a foot of a stiff prick she was like putty. An unbuttoned fly was enough to put her in a trance. It was almost shameful the things Curley made her do. He took pleasure in degrading her. I could scarcely blame him for it, she was such a prim, priggish bitch in her street clothes. You’d almost swear she didn’t own a cunt, the way she carried herself in the street. Naturally, when he got her alone he made her pay for her highfalutin’ ways. He went at it coldbloodedly. “Fish it out!” he’d say, opening his fly a little. “Fish it out with your tongue!” (He had it in for the whole bunch because, as he put it, they were sucking one another off behind his back.) Anyway, once she got the taste of it in her mouth you could do anything with her. Sometimes he’d stand her on her hands and push her around the room that way, like a wheelbarrow. Or else he’d do it dog fashion, and. while she groaned and squirmed he’d nonchalantly light a cigarette and blow the smoke between her legs. Once he played her a dirty trick doing it that way. He had worked her up to such a state that she was beside herself. Anyway, after he had almost polished the ass off her with his back-scuttling he pulled out for a second, as though to cool his cock off, and then very slowly and gently he shoved a big long carrot up her twat. “That, Miss Abercrombie,” he said, “is a sort of Doppelganger to my regular cock,” and with that he unhitches himself and yanks up his pants. Cousin Abercrombie was so bewildered by it all that she let a tremendous fart and out tumbled the carrot. At least, that’s how Curley related it to me. He was an outrageous liar, to be sure, and there may not be a grain of truth in the yarn, but there’s no denying that he had a flair for such tricks. As for Miss Abercrombie and her high-tone Narragansett ways, well, with a cunt like that one can always imagine the worst.

I know the queen of the printed matter has her hand in deciding which title enters her castle. Oftentimes, I can’t help but picture her pronouncements on the donated books for the day: “The Mormon Bloggernacle’s Guide to Sick Skateboard Tricks, Lara Flynn Boyle’s Homecook Recipes Vol. 2, Jean Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers audiobook read by Sean Hannity all goes back on the For Sale table. Let’s keep at least three copies of Tropic of Capricorn around.”

And you know, she knows, what’s inside.


I’m with Coco…the other one. (update: Jan 15, 2010)

Friday, January 15th, 2010


I know there’s a huge “I’m with Coco” (Conan O’Brien vs Jay Leno drama) movement going on right now. What has not made it to the news and the gossip circuit is the fact that people in the 1st arrondissement section of Paris (where 31 Rue Cambon is) has been firebombing NBC affiliates, demanding that they not use the name “Coco” in this ongoing late night wars. “How dare they use the late Madame Chanel’s name. There can only be one!” Never mind that Coco Chanel hasn’t been around all that long. But you know, it’s just like these hardcore fashionista’s demanding everyone conform to their sense of style, when it hasn’t been all that exemplary of late. And I know, they are mostly peaceful people who just want to dress nice, but I don’t see Givenchy fans acting up, not counting that one time Love Hewitt tried to do Audrey.

Besides, doesn’t anyone even care what Coco Lopez thinks about all this, holding the names to two Late Night shows simultaneously? Just because you can get your Pina Coloada’s on demand doesn’t mean you can monopolize the name “Coco” and forbid everyone else to use it. Next thing you know they’ll be stoning people for wearing Abercrombie & Fitch. Now you know why Switzerland has a strict quota on Chanel houses opening in their country. They change the skyline one day, and before you know it, they’ll be demanding everyone spray themselves with No.5. Five times a day.

Oh what do I think about our Coco drama? Oh sorry: I’m with Coco. But the truth is, it’s all about money, sponsorship, and advertising dollars. It’s not about egos. They gave Conan a try, and NBC is getting nervous because his numbers aren’t as good. Sponsors and the almighty American dollar is the only voice that is paid any attention. So the advertisers are probably threatening to pull out unless they get a proven brand back on. The economy is still bad, and everyone wants immediate results. I have been around long enough to watch Carson, Leno, and even when Conan first took over Letterman. If any of you were around to see it and if you can recall, Conan’s first few months on the Late Show was plastered with endless nervous giggling and missteps. But he recovered. And made it what it is today.

Filling the shoes of the Tonight Show is a greater feat than taking up the Late Night Show. If NBC gives Conan more time, he’ll comfortably find a niche for himself and make it his Tonight Show. The audience will return. I understand someone of Conan’s originality will not want to merely duplicate Carson or Leno. Also remember O’Brien’s years of service to NBC as a writer for SNL. I like Leno too. It’s just unfortunate that the media has to turn it into a polarized story, because there’s nothing more sensational than one group of people being pitted against another.

Personally I think Joel Godard was Conan’s lucky talisman. He didn’t go out to LA with him, and now those superficial LA types have turned Coco’s life topsy turvy. NBC displayed remarkable myopia in their gunshy handling of O’Brien’s ratings. Sure, the more mature viewers out in the midwest may find his humor quirky and frat-like, and of course, low ratings transfer to advertising dollars. But guess what? Ten years from now, when all those frat boys are at the peak of their earning powers, they’ll be following O’Brien in another network station.

The few Leno viewers who are watching today, will have passed away.