The picture's jerky...
At
Fleshbot, you find a world of porn that is at times a long way from the standard sucknfuck stuff you can easily find if you're so inclined (it's a long way from stealing your dad's jazz mags - things are so easy for the kids of today, hey?).
Look away if you don't like to see, erm,
dicks and that, but these links caught my eye.
Seethrough sex. You have to wonder how this guy managed to convince his models to pose for him.
The average blowjob. In a weird synaesthesia, this picture captures the feeling of 76 blowjobs all rammed together. It's about as queasy as that sounds.
The drugs do work. You'll have a "that must be a banana" moment. I'm not sure what the message is, beyond that the guy has too much time on his hands.
Tonight, darling, let's do the squid. I simply cannot imagine having 69 *favourites*. Last count, I only knew seven, and two of them only involve a raised knee.
High five
1. List five things you'd like to accomplish by the end of the year.
So long as I'm living and breathing still, I will be happy enough just to get there. Getting published would also be nice but hey, one thing at a time.
2. List five people you've lost contact with that you'd like to hear from again.
If I've lost contact with them, I don't want to hear from them again.
3. List five things you'd like to learn how to do.
Move in harmony with the chi, write ska, write code that does something new (or something old in a new way), stay calm, market.
4. List five things you'd do if you won the lottery (no limit).
Buy a house, go to China, live a life of leisure, create something of value, relieve those I care about of some of their cares.
5. List five things you do that help you relax.
Drink, write, think, shite. And breathe.
Screen gems
Often when scanning the reviews of a movie, you feel they're not telling you what you need to know, such as "does anyone smoke inappropriately?" or "does anyone use profane language?", so that you can keep your granny from going or make sure you're not showing the vid if she's visiting (unless your granny did not actually become bereft of intelligence, wit and nous at the age of 70). Now I've found just the place. Check
this review of In the cut. For me, it's enough to know that it's directed by Jane Campion and stars Meg Ryan in a less fluffy role than usual and I'm thinking "no fucking way", but if you need to avoid seeing people smoke, these people make sure you know what to expect.
My favourite part is "The serial killer obviously has a bad attitude", followed closely by "A moderate amount of ominous music plays in the film" (I am imagining a family coming out of the Odeon, Chickpea, and the mother saying "well, I don't mind the gratuitous violence and sex - in fact, that's what I pay for - but that fucking ominous music is going to give me nightmares).
But I'm not knocking these people. They're providing a service far more valuable than the fawning arsekiss that Jonathan Ross thinks passes as a review. I'm all for presenting positive images to kids... and keeping them away from ominous music.
And anyone who can describe Neo thus: "KEANU REEVES plays "the one" who's been chosen by the freedom fighters to battle and overthrow a world where machines use unaware humans as sources of energy. He fights various villains, briefly uses profanity and has sex with Trinity."
is something of a comic genius, even if they don't know it.
A matter of taste
Is taste wholly subjective? I don't think so and neither does this guy in this
excellent discussion of what "good taste" is and why it should be indulged. I find it particularly pertinent because he asks why anyone should bother improving when everything is equally good.
Why indeed? The Emins and Hirsts of this world, because they seek to be without any means of comparison, rob themselves of aspiration. Maybe it is only a personal thing to me, that desire to reach a
height. Maybe the height is only real for me, because of my cultural and personal circumstances. Maybe I think I don't like it because we all wear knickers, but don't all think them worth displaying. Maybe.
But looking at the guy who having seen van Gogh's swirly paintings copied the idea in the
van Gogh Museum, I couldn't help feeling that, had van Gogh never existed, this guy's painting would never have made it into a gallery (the painting in question is not on the website, but it's an excellent site giving a real insight into the painter and his life). It lacks that something that makes
this something very special.
For me, there is no comparison to be made between Emin and van Gogh.
One has a tremendous talent for self-publicising and none whatsoever for art; the other is the opposite. Of course, the former is what counts in today's world, but while I acknowledge that, I do not celebrate it, and what is more, I do not pursue it. I may be frustrated in achieving my goals, but while it's true that I am only trying to achieve them for myself, what will it matter?
On Prinsengracht
Sometimes when you visit a place, you gain your own insight. You learn about the place things that only you know, because your experiences have been peculiar. In other cases, you don't gain much from it. You make a name into a place, but your understanding of it is not particular. This is of course all the more true for the well-worn places.
By the corner of Utrechtestraat and Prinsengracht, in Amsterdam's Grachtengordel, sitting in the children's playground that covers the space that was once a market, the lights coming on and dusk smothering the street, I wondered how many had seen the same scene playing out before me. Not the precise scene, I thought, because that woman on her bike with her child in the basket had not been in precisely the same place the night before or any other night, and that child, pushing one smaller from the slide, he might never have visited this playground like me, might be a stranger too. It strikes me that I could look at the same experience in two ways: either that I am doing the same as others, walking the same path, or that I am having a distinct experience, that the difference in the details is what counts.
What does that say to me? Only that our understanding of life should never be thought clearcut, that there are often different ways of looking at things, even for ourselves. Surrendering the possibilities of vision we have for dogmatism, while it does increase our sense of security, seems to me to diminish the richness of our lives just a little.
Zenella, meanwhile, played on the swings. It's all new to her.
A flaneur's wild dream...
Those who complain about the congestion charge in London had best hope I never become mayor (a distant prospect, I know, even if I did live for years in a village two miles from the place that bore Dick Whittington).
Mayor Zen would pedestrianise the lot, and build a network of trams. It's only really when you visit places where public transport works that you see its possibilities.
The innovation of Brisbane's busway, or the bike-friendliness of Copenhagen or Amsterdam might seem dreams to the beleaguered London commuter, but is it not one of the least likeable characteristics of the English - their lack of desire to look beyond the day in hand, to dream, to aspire?
Who would suffer from a scheme to make the C-zone carfree? Not the commuter, who could use trams or light rail to get to work, taking pressure off the overburdened transit systems we have now. Not business, because deliveries could be permitted at certain hours. Not the inhabitants of the Smoke, which would become definedly less smoky. Car owners, yes. Mothers on the school run, yes. But you know, you could just walk. You could slow down, adjust the work-life balance, breathe. We could all breathe.
Sigh
Take five
Late, but not never:
The Friday Five postponed to Monday!
1. Using one adjective, describe your current living space.
Cramped. I yearn for the wide open spaces of Brisbane.
2. Using two adjectives, describe your current employer.
Lazy and corrupt. IOW, a typical corporation.
3. Using three adjectives, describe your favorite hobby/pasttime.
Spunky, funky, monkey.
4. Using four adjectives, describe your typical day.
Early, boring, tired, stupid.
5. Using five adjectives, describe your ideal life.
Free, peaceable, loving, awed, quiet.
In poor taste
New Order sound like a troupe of clowns honking away in their clown car going around and around the circus ring with no hope of ever stopping throughout the apocalyptic mess that is Blue Monday.
This is from a
review by a bot that hates my taste in music. He hates yours too and can't wait to demonstrate it.
Five alive
The
Friday Five
1. What food do you like that most people hate?
I adore brussels sprouts. Especially when done in butter and nutmeg. I read somewhere that it is defined by one's genes whether one finds them bitter or sweet. Me, I find them sweet as candy.
2. What food do you hate that most people love?
I hate it when others eat peanut butter. That's curious, isn't it, how smelling it in the jar is wonderfully enticing, but smelling it in a friend's mouth turns your stomach.
Also, rotten things of any kind. It's a rule that'll never let you down: if it's rotten, bin it.
3. What famous person, whom many people may find attractive, is most unappealing to you?
Everyone is beautiful in their own way. Except Jodie Marsh. She aimed low, and by god she struck it bang on.
4. What famous person, whom many people may find unappealing, do you find
attractive?
I don't worry too much about what others feel appealing, but here's my idea of a very attractive woman.
5. What popular trend baffles you?
What popular trend doesn't?
Sniping quango toad
BTW, this blog
google-rules. Not only does it lead the pack, but if you feel lucky, you come straight here! I'm so excited. People write pages of meta details to get the same results, although to be fair their pages have more porn.
I could have chosen a bizarre name, such as
Sniping Quango Toad (it's a, what's it called, when you get only one result on google, nerds value it, but I forget the name), but no, not me, I took on the challenge of the song of teen rebellion, and now I have google-ascended. It's like planting your flag on the Dejamountain (or Mt Google, I suppose).
You may kiss my lordly arse. Or happy finish me if you don't like it.
Eating royal jelly
Everyone's talking about Prince Chuck's denial of the allegations that may not speak their name (readers of
Popbitch know that they involve his valet giving him a "happy finish" to his after-polo massage).
All I want to know is, whose idea was it? Did Chakka one day ask "You couldn't finish one off, could you, Fawcett?" Or did the valet volunteer? There are plenty who believe we should all kiss up to the Royals, but that's taking it a bit far.
Well, it relieves the dreary pofacery that surrounds the Royals. The rightthinking among us know they should all be shot (but we should keep the soldiers in big hats and have someone ponce round in a coach for the tourists), but there's no big drama. Those who like to grovel will always find someone to grovel to.
Postcard from Red
I received a handmade postcard in the post yesterday. It was from a stranger, who got my name and postal address from a site whose URL I can't give (of course, anyone who wants my address can easily enough find it, but I'm not going to help them).
We so easily become isolated in this world that I welcome means of reaching out. I'm prepared to put a piece of me out there, willing to be hurt because of it.
Of course, no one might want or like that piece of me. It's the risk you've got to take. But surely you cannot hope to love your world - and I do - while insulating yourself entirely from it.
Index fingers the bad guys
While I'm in the mood for posting things that are wonderful, have
this, which is similar to the piece that appears in the Observer magazine each week (along with Nick Cohen probably the only things worth buying that paper for).
Okay, okay, that last was a lie. If I hadn't bought the Observer this Sunday, I would have known nothing about a
writer so pretentious he makes me look workaday.
I got a foggy notion
I'm suddenly thinking of the excellent VU song (not the wonderful
Paula singing backwards, but the equally wonderful sixties drugsters).
That's because I've noticed the also excellent
Absurd Notions has started up again (albeit infrequently - pout). If, like me, you think all comic strips this side of
Love and Rockets are bollocks, prepare to change your mind. If you don't love Notions, you need slapping... often.
Hedunnit
The legal language in
this statement makes what it describes (the Green River murders) almost unreal. I confess nothing more than morbid curiosity made me read it, because,
as I've noted, there's no reason to much care about it, bar in a headshaking "what a horrid world" way.
It's strange that it gives no insight into what possesses a man to strangle even one woman and throw her body into a river, not that having that insight would be of any use to me. (I might write a thriller but I can't see myself writing the serial-killer type book - that type of book bores me.)
Water colours
Creative photography usually leaves me cold. I think of photography as most effective as a documentary tool, or illustration, decorative but not particularly meaningful in itself. But this woman's
photos appeal to me on all sorts of levels. They describe the limits of eroticism, the limits of beauty (by which I mean how beautiful you can make yourself). The photographer - her own model - gives herself piece by piece (and over the course of enough photographs would give herself totally) but gives nothing of her identity. It is a curious conflict - to know someone extremely intimately but to know them not at all. You can't do that with writing (would you want to?) nor, I think, with any other kind of art.
Do it till you drop
Still, there's hope for Dr Zen. This
game old bird is getting more than Catherine Millet, despite her creaking bones.
It's one of the last taboos, we often hear, that old people are sexual. It plays on our fears that our parents might, erm, do it. Or have ever done it. (The picture has now formed, hasn't it? And nothing you do can dispel it.)
For me, it's one of those things that I have no problem with people's doing, but I don't want to read about. Or watch. Or gawd forbid, take part in.
Other people's news
The
Soham trial begins with the fanfare that is customary for the big murders. Remember Them, screams the Sun, which strikes me as odd.
My only acquaintance with the victims is through the media, and I only know them as victims. In this role, I'm hardly likely to forget them, so widely was their abduction and murder covered. It would be a poor memory that wouldn't place their names without any need of prompting.
The Sun is not of course asking us to "remember them". It's suggesting we become outraged all over again. That outrage is driven by fear. We are to believe that the murder of children implies that we live in a bad world and we should fear for our own children. Of course it implies no such thing. It says no more than that there was a nutter in Soham. There being a nutter in Soham does not mean there are any in Tooting. Why should I believe otherwise? (It would be different if there were a spate of unconnected child murders around the country, maybe.)
The lie that news sells us is that it concerns us what happens elsewhere. It does not. I mean by this that it is not something that affects us. We might be concerned, if we choose, about starving children in Africa, but it has no bearing on our lives. We only realise it is happening because it is reported.
Distinguishing what really concerns us from what merely arouses our curiosity is a difficult task, because the media, whose interest is in blurring the distinction, and the government, whose interest is in having us believe our interests and those of the sections of the community it serves are the same, work hard to make it so.
I don't care that two girls were killed in Soham last year. It has no meaning to me. It would be ridiculous to suggest that I should worry about what happens to other people's children, when I do not know the people, nor will I ever. Why ought I to care when they are killed when no one would think I should were they to break a leg, to fail an exam, to be battered by their parents? (Two children each week die at the hands of one or both of their parents.) I couldn't even find Soham on a map. I don't care either whether the guy on trial is convicted. I do care that he will not receive a fair trial, but that is another question for another time, although it doesn't seem
clearcut.
The decline and dotage of Dr Zen
The days of staying up till four on the lash are long gone, I reflected as I awoke, head in my paper, on the living-room floor at ten last night (my only excuse is that I had been watching the football, and the European Champions thing is very dull).
The only thing I mind about ageing is the physical deterioration, the gradual draining of energy, the increased need of recuperation after the least exertion, the body's impaired ability to repair itself.
A few years ago I ruptured a disc in my back in a Tibetan restaurant in
Kodaikanal. It was Mrs Zen's birthday. I won't be ungallant enough to tell you her age, but she is a month my senior.
You wouldn't think southern India could be chilly, but it was, and I sneezed. That was enough to do the damage. If I forget to exercise I am condemned to low-back and sciatic pain
I am convinced, although without any backing from medical science, that when younger the disc would have repaired itself. It feels as though my body lost its optimism around the same time I did. Gradually, it has stopped bothering with its parts. It is saying, let's face it, *you* don't care.
I know that I am not distinct from my body. I mean, intellectually I know that. Philosophically, I'm no dualist. But in my heart, I feel the separation, just as, I think, we all do. Your body can feel like a foreign land; exotic sometimes, frightening sometimes, hostile even.
I am not complaining. Mrs Zen's mother has been diagnosed with cancer of the breast. Her prognosis is good, but still the word alone is enough to frighten any of us. It is the ultimate in betrayal by your own body. It must be kept within perspective, though. Mrs Zen's mother has a 90 per cent chance of cure, but I have none – in five years her cancer might be long gone, but my disc will still be ruptured, the jelly insides oozing out, oozing till my last day.
The decline and dotage of Dr Zen
The days of staying up till four on the lash are long gone, I reflected as I awoke, head in my paper, on the living-room floor at ten last night (my only excuse is that I had been watching the football, and the European Champions thing is very dull).
The only thing I mind about ageing is the physical deterioration, the gradual draining of energy, the increased need of recuperation after the least exertion, the body's impaired ability to repair itself.
A few years ago I ruptured a disc in my back in a Tibetan restaurant in
Kodaikanal. It was Mrs Zen's birthday. I won't be ungallant enough to tell you her age, but she is a month my senior.
You wouldn't think southern India could be chilly, but it was, and I sneezed. That was enough to do the damage. If I forget to exercise I am condemned to low-back and sciatic pain
I am convinced, although without any backing from medical science, that when younger the disc would have repaired itself. It feels as though my body lost its optimism around the same time I did. Gradually, it has stopped bothering with its parts. It is saying, let's face it, *you* don't care.
I know that I am not distinct from my body. I mean, intellectually I know that. Philosophically, I'm no dualist. But in my heart, I feel the separation, just as, I think, we all do. Your body can feel like a foreign land; exotic sometimes, frightening sometimes, hostile even.
I am not complaining. Mrs Zen's mother has been diagnosed with cancer of the breast. Her prognosis is good, but still the word alone is enough to frighten any of us. It is the ultimate in betrayal by your own body. It must be kept within perspective, though. Mrs Zen's mother has a 90 per cent chance of cure, but I have none – in five years her cancer might be long gone, but my disc will still be ruptured, the jelly insides oozing out, oozing till my last day.
True confessions
When someone
confesses a dirty secret, it doesn't matter whether it is true or false. If true, you are having an insight into the rankness that festers in the ordinary; if false, you are peeking into the corner of a person's imagination. (I mean, who would think that Duran Duran would even
want to
shit on her chest or want to stalk women,
buying a telescope so he can watch them from the bushes and pretend they're his girlfriends?
Some of it is also sad. But hey, that's life. Hugs to y'all now.
The naked truth
A thing I enjoy as I wander the web is to look at the nude photos that women attach to their webpages. (Well, duh, don't all guys, I hear you saying. But I'm not talking about trawling the web for wankfodder – there are sites for that, and like most webwalkers I know where they are.)
It shouldn't surprise me that people want to share their photos – after all, some share
what is so personal that you doubt they even tell it to their closest friends (and yet will give it away to the whole world) – but it does a little.
Often, the nudists (if I can call them that) have a better cut of blog than normal.
This one has an astonishing amount of detail about a woman who is, after all, only in her early 20s, but she's interesting enough (her photos are a nude set she did for a
lesbian porn mag - *whispers* yes mum, they do).
This is a woman whose good heart and openness touched me and whose blog I read every week. Still, she's prepared to show you her tits, which I'm not sure whether it's a good thing or a bad thing in a person.
I am not leering at gorgeous women. People who post their pics to the web are rarely gorgeous, nor are they clever enough with the camera or imaging software to make themselves so ("gorgeous" in
its narrowest sense). I'm interested in the body, of course, more so recently. But I'm far more interested in the vulnerability and forthrightness of these women (men would not interest me – because I have no means of understanding what I'm looking at when I look at men, no cognitive machinery, rather than for any reason of their not being beautiful). I'm not interested in nude photos of the famous, nor in women getting their kit off in a film (who can really get excited at that sterilised sexuality?)
Germaine Greer, no stranger to going nuddy herself, has written
a book, with a TV documentary to go with it, about the nude boy in art. The programme was interesting enough (the book, though, I think I'll skip - Dr Greer does a lovely op-ed but over the length of a book she begins to resemble the aunt who doesn't get the hint on Boxing Day) but I wonder whether it's true that classical art sexualised the boy. Can people not be beautiful without instilling the urge to fuck them? Or am I just being all When Harry met Sally about it, and are we consumed with lust when confronted by the shapely?
Comment by "I want $$$"
Never saw comment spam before I saw
this. This is a guy who gives writing prompts (you know "Did you ever go on a holiday you hated? Do you remember your first time? Blah de blah"), so I suppose his URL gets around, but this is pretty low.
Maybe it's just me, the last to learn about a world where people really will go to this end for a dollar. Can nothing in this world, though, be about anything else?
Twat
Don't ask me why, but I love
this blog. It made me giggle, even if it's a well-trodden track.
I think it was "Let's face it girls, all men are twats, but Quarsan takes the biscuit and here's his reward. "
Well, he may be a twat (and if you look at his blog, you'll probably agree), but he at least has the sense to go with this bird.
