notes from underground

flaxendandelion @ 2009-12-26T14:07:00

2009-12-26T03:07:47Z

"According to the study, the couples with the best chance are those where a woman with a superior education marries a man who is five or more years older than herself."

flaxendandelion @ 2009-12-24T11:39:00

2009-12-24T00:39:46Z

This is gonna be a long ass summer.

flaxendandelion @ 2009-12-23T18:37:00

2009-12-23T07:37:58Z

Felt like posting this. No particular reason.

(A half truth. I googled 'beetlejuice' to confirm whether his stripes were vertical or horizontal because I just bought a prison-striped dress.)

flaxendandelion @ 2009-12-22T18:29:00

2009-12-22T07:28:59Z

That is one cute dog. Too bad its owner fucked us over on health care (like anyone with a brain knew he would).

In lighter news, Vote Surrealist.

And remember, there are no guns in the snowball fight.

flaxendandelion @ 2009-12-22T17:49:00

2009-12-22T06:49:18Z

New York the unhappiest state

More important, might contentment be overrated? Seriously, isn’t restlessness, even outright discontent, often a catalyst for creativity?

We’re from the Harry Lime school. If you’ve seen the film classic “The Third Man,” you will remember that character’s admonition: “In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance.

“In Switzerland they had brotherly love. They had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

flaxendandelion @ 2009-12-22T15:22:00

2009-12-22T04:22:27Z

If you need some cheap laughs to get you through the early part of the week. I'm not sure what's funnier, her blurb or the comments.

this is why I can't have daughters...you may remember her as the leading lady in Drake’s “Best I Ever Had” video. In her first post, she recalls how she dropped out of med school to jog slow motion in rap videos

Also from the library: Borges' The Aleph.

Turns out Van Gogh is not coming to NGV until June. I must have misread the Age a few Sundays ago. Oh well. There's always the fashion exhibit and the recent acquisitions.

I have to admit, I'm really feeling that Jay-Z and Alicia Keys song.

My SLR will not work, goddammit.

flaxendandelion @ 2009-12-19T23:37:00

2009-12-19T12:37:37Z

Turns out my girlfriend from work had my friend/music mentor as a lecturer early last year. She couldn't stop giggling at finding out we both knew him. "He's the WORST lecturer. You'd come into class and he'd be sitting in front of the board sitting like this." [hunches over table with hand over face] "He must be a huge stoner."

...yah!

Wish this damn headache would go away already.

Have a soiree I'm hosting tomorrow, spent the night preparing for it and trying to find a .pdf of a highly obscure title that goes for almost $1000 on ebay. No dice.

Last day of work for the year tomorrow. Finally.

flaxendandelion @ 2009-12-18T23:25:00

2009-12-18T12:25:46Z

Ok the weather is shit, I work tomorrow so can't do anything morally questionable tonight. More Tiger Woods.

I am Tiger Woods from TWoods

Tiger Woods Voicemail Slow Jam - watch more funny videos

Non-Tiger, but just as funny. And real too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6Mdp7ieR2A

flaxendandelion @ 2009-12-18T22:16:00

2009-12-18T11:16:22Z

"Oh yeah...yeah he kinda looks like an alcoholic."

flaxendandelion @ 2009-12-18T10:32:00

2009-12-17T23:32:19Z

The 29 year old park ranger with the Americanish accent who said he felt depressed, hopeless, worthless, so nervous nothing could calm him down, and so sad nothing could cheer him up most/all of the time in the past 30 days.

The 50-something bachelor who said he never did school because he played football and picked up pretty girls. Asking my sign, "I've dated a couple of you, you're all highly intelligent."

An answer to my question last week.

The only good thing to come from Ochocinco's actions is that the bulk of what he pays in fines gets passed on to various charities by the NFL.

What's with the Hachi Go hate?

flaxendandelion @ 2009-12-16T10:07:00

2009-12-15T23:07:01Z

Why was there an evangelist named Oral Roberts?

I finally have my result from my first semester class: H2A, 78. Wow. By my calculations, that must mean I got an H1 on my final essay. Nice. But I still want to know how they could calculate it if they don't have the means to give me my essay back.

10am...30 degrees and rising.

Perhaps I'll get a desk for my window after all.

flaxendandelion @ 2009-12-15T22:15:00

2009-12-15T11:15:12Z

It figures that as soon as I face the possibility of a promotion at one job, the other one turns out to be bearable. All shifts are spitball fights and one-ups of wit these days. It started the weekend before last where me and T spent the whole shift flipping each other the bird. Since then it's been all out war. After I dodged all his spitballs or he missed, I collected them and sent him a note, "I have all your balls." I thought I may have offended him but I think he'd quieted down because my laughing at him when he missed offended someone else's respondent. He tells the most offensive jokes anyways.

I'd be lying if I didn't say there was some sexual tension behind it, but paradoxically I'm not attracted to him at all and he's got the brain of a 5 year old and is happily engaged. That his maturity didn't progress beyond primary school is why he's so fun, but I pity the woman who will live with that for the rest of her life.

I had to deal with this ill-tempered battleax on the tram today. The next time I'll throw the insults back. People are just getting meaner and meaner for the pettiest things.

It's going to be 35-39 tomorrow. And windy as fuck. Jesus.

defiling one fairy tale at a time...

2009-12-14T10:17:19Z

I'm sorry, could they have made the first black Disney prince any more of a tool? He looks like Gaston, that knob from 'Beauty and The Beast', with bronzer and a fondness for Battle of Waterloo reenactments.

A Disney prince is supposed to be that dreamy beefcake who'll sweep you up in your arms and love you forever, not the guy in the club who wants to come in your face. This guy wants you to be his personal slip n slide.

He also has a very womanly figure.

Is that a sunflower as his belt buckle?

I also like how both of them have perfect curly/wavy hair. New Orleans had a huge quadroon and octoroon population since slavery times, but this is just damn silly.

Were his face wider, he could almost pass as a 'Thriller' era MJ. Is that a proto-Jheri curl he's sporting? Or is he Puerto Rican?

I suppose 30 years from now we'll get a hip hop animated Disney film.

flaxendandelion @ 2009-12-14T13:36:00

2009-12-14T02:36:57Z

I am sinking in library books up the wazoo, but what the hell, years after a failed attempt, William Gaddis' 'The Recognitions' will be given another go.

flaxendandelion @ 2009-12-14T13:17:00

2009-12-14T02:17:57Z

'Fuck the witch doctor...we'll wait and see.'

-ad

flaxendandelion @ 2009-12-13T23:49:00

2009-12-13T12:49:18Z

I'm a comedian, but in my spare time, things bother me. – Garry Shandling

flaxendandelion @ 2009-12-13T00:13:00

2009-12-12T13:13:20Z

"It cannot be denied that he was generally very unhappy; and he could make others unhappy also, that is, when he loved them or they loved him. For all who got to love him saw always only the one side in him. Many loved him as a refined and clever and interesting man, and were horrified and disappointed when they had come upon the wolf in him."
-Hesse, Steppenwolf

Do you even care you've turned my heart to carrion....

life lessons from porn stars

2009-12-12T07:32:04Z

"He’s (Woods) like the whitest black boy you’ve ever met. His teeth are perfect and he’s the perfect gentleman. He’s beautiful."

flaxendandelion @ 2009-12-11T21:47:00

2009-12-11T10:48:07Z

Sex: The Article

This article exists on a level which is mostly separate from (but hopefully
not contrary to!) the many projects of feminism. If feminism protects the
subject from the *Greater Horror of Rape* then I would like to deploy this
article as a complementary bulwark against the *Lesser Annoyance of Lame Sex
*. This latter evil is usually too trivial to demand the kind of resources
assembled at “Take Back the Night” events, and a wom*n's officer might be
criticised if she were to expend any significant energies in its
eradication. Such a minor threat is best tackled by a wanker like me.

Like corporate elevator muzak or an upward climb through a multistory
carpark, Lame Sex is more of an annoyance than a form of oppression. Unlike
a glass ceiling or an act of queer bashing, Lame Sex is not especially
symptomatic of
patriarchy1ui=1&ik=64434e6869&view=cv&search=drafts&th=125409e9c005f960&ww=1003&cvap=1&qt=&zx=tjclyljvj6fb#125409e9c005f960_1253f9d26fd3ccf8_1253da054eda4526_1253ad9630e6bc01_1253588ff82dcbfd_sdfootnote1sym.
It can occur in any bedroom, whether it contains the starred and stripy
bedsheets of a Lorcet®-popping Republican senator, a deterritorialised
rhizomic collective of hemp-woven items and hand-painted Queer Mutiny
placards, or, as in many cases, the fuzzy handcuffs of a Parliamentary Whip.

What causes Lame Sex in all of these places is not a specific political
situation, but an aesthetic *idea*, a dubious notion, which a person can
acquire from certain types of discourse, and which a discourse can acquire
from another discourse. (Sex can, of course, be Lame due to multiple causes,
and more than one dubious idea contributes to Lame Sex.)

In short, an academic essay has a single point to argue. This essay is not
an academic essay. It fumigates a whole nest of notions.

“I'm not *physical*!”

There are certain people in our society who absolutely detest the idea of
physical attraction. There are, of course, some heterosexual males known as
“sensitive New Age guys” or “men of the 90s” (who, in many cases, are simply
chauvinists who have learnt to be calmer and more calculating). There are
also queers who want to dissociate themselves from the sleazy, sex-obsessed
image which is frequently associated with same-sex and bisexual leanings. To
me, this section of the queer community seems intent on reviving a pre-WWII
epoch whose archetypal gay man was a celibate Noël Cowardly pushover,
sucking (with no small amount of frustration) on a thin cigarette holder,
filling his front garden with a Qin-dynasty terracotta army of atrocious
garden centre cherubs, and writing the sort of greeting-card verse which
somehow won Auden a large
following2ui=1&ik=64434e6869&view=cv&search=drafts&th=125409e9c005f960&ww=1003&cvap=1&qt=&zx=tjclyljvj6fb#125409e9c005f960_1253f9d26fd3ccf8_1253da054eda4526_1253ad9630e6bc01_1253588ff82dcbfd_sdfootnote2sym.
(A certain editor of *Farrago* rejected an article I had written, which
described several sexual experiments I had conducted with other males,
because it was “too physical”.) Finally, there are women who, keeping very
closely to a traditionally feminine gender role, categorically deny that
physicality plays *any* part in their attraction to other people.

To all of these people, physicality is the enemy. They certainly don't want
to carry themselves across as “sluts” (though they seldom question why our
society considers it so shameful for women or gays to behave in a slutty
manner). Physicality has become rather maligned for another reason: physical
things are supposedly superficial. Fucking is viewed as a totally
un-intellectual preoccupation. A large number of people in our society have
no concept of a visceral intelligence or any interaction between the sensual
and the cerebral. Finally, there is a third stigma attached to physicality:
not only is appreciating other people's bodies a superficial practice, but
it is a cruel practice as well, cruel to plain-looking people, cruel to
mousy girls, cruel to boys with pocket protectors. Physicality (supposedly)
creates inequalities whereby the D-cup Debbies of the world are elevated
above the A-cup Annies. We shouldn't, therefore, think physically, but
intellectually.

It's time to refute this bouquet of *id**é**es re**ç**ues*. What on Earth is
an “intellectual” attraction? How can a person be attracted to someone
else's personality? Human beings are not spheres of protoplasmic energy or
artificial intelligences made entirely out of 1s and 0s. Nobody can, as of
yet, read another person's mind and instantly absorb the precise substance
of their thoughts. (Novelists can, of course, create a wonderful illusion
that their novel is being told from the perspectives of multiple characters.
But no novelist has ever read anyone's thoughts but their own.) For a human
being's personality to be accessible to another human being, it must first
be filtered through a subtle sieve of facial expressions, tones of voice,
accents, twitches, and rolling eyes. Before a personality can be sampled by
others, it first has to be performed by various bodily tissues. Having “a
great sense of humour” does not mean having a great comedic mind alone, but
also the capacity to convey that humour physically. Nobody falls in love
with another person by reading print-outs or transcripts of their opinions
and witticisms. Even paralytics (such as the author of *The Diving Bell and
The Butterfly*) inflect their thoughts with physical gestures such as the
rolling of eyes and staring
eloquently3ui=1&ik=64434e6869&view=cv&search=drafts&th=125409e9c005f960&ww=1003&cvap=1&qt=&zx=tjclyljvj6fb#125409e9c005f960_1253f9d26fd3ccf8_1253da054eda4526_1253ad9630e6bc01_1253588ff82dcbfd_sdfootnote3sym
.

(It is also rather premature to assume that Internet dating and cybersex
transcend the above paragraph. Internet users still use emoticons to
indicate how ironic a given sentence may be, and few people communicate
online without trying to find out the sex of the person they're chatting
with. The classic anxiety of Internet daters that the person on the other
end is lying about their age, sex, appearance, or location might be viewed
as a *spectre* of the physical that continues to haunt the blind regions of
cyberspace.)

In this respect, the opponents of physicality hold a very weird double
standard: admiring a person's face is perfectly *intellectual*, but admiring
their cock, pussy, nipples, buttocks, veins, hands, or feet is physical and
brainless. Why is the face any more intellectual or characterful than any
other system of organs? True, the face does convey emotion (though the
sexual organs can also blush, demonstrate their like and dislike for people,
and impart a sense of *sang froid*), but the intellectualism of the human
eye is mostly illusory. Whether or not a person has “piercing” eyes depends
mostly on what sort of iris they have inherited. And yet, an opponent of
physicality would see nothing physical in adoring a dimple or a captivating
gaze, and everything physical in adoring a charmingly shaped pair of labiæ
minoræ or a cutely bent penis.

In the case of gays and lesbians who insist that they are not
*physically*attracted to persons of the same-sex, a peculiar
contradiction emerges. Are
they therefore saying that men and women are mentally different? That they
don't like *cock* so much as a man's undoubtedly more charming *mind*? Ditto
that for women. It is very difficult to maintain that one has an exclusive
interest in persons of a single sex or gender by ignoring physical features
and falling back on abstract ideas of “personality”. As I have shown, even
if a person is attracted to femininity or masculinity, and can appreciate
both biological and transgender fe/males, gender cannot be expressed without
a body and attraction to gender is no less physical than attraction to a
sense of humour. Likewise, I do not believe that a pansexual is a person who
“only cares about personality”, as one pansexual defined herself to me.
Instead I would class pansexuals as people who are not as attracted to sex
or gender specific features (genitalia, hair length) as they are to dimples,
teeth, and other 'neutrally characterful' features. (I do not mean to
devalue the experiences of pansexuals, but rather to reinterpret them
according to tendencies common to all -sexual human beings.)

Finally, appreciating another person physically is not simply a case of
favouring D-cup Debbie. There is more subtlety to physical appreciation than
simply rating people according to societal ideals of beauty. Most of the
women that I'm attracted to are not beautiful according to the same
standards that are used in Hollywood or the fashion industry. This does not
make my attraction any less physical. My current
mistress4ui=1&ik=64434e6869&view=cv&search=drafts&th=125409e9c005f960&ww=1003&cvap=1&qt=&zx=tjclyljvj6fb#125409e9c005f960_1253f9d26fd3ccf8_1253da054eda4526_1253ad9630e6bc01_1253588ff82dcbfd_sdfootnote4symis
sexy because of her amazing resilience, its physical hallmark being a
scar from a motorcycle accident and several tattoos. At other times, I have
been attracted to a *callus* on a woman's neck from regular violin
rehearsal, a young Jewish lady's hook-nose, a second hook-nose with
accompanying elongated philtrum, a spectacularly bristled caprine monobrow,
and a girl with adorable crooked teeth, among other features that would
never end up on
television5ui=1&ik=64434e6869&view=cv&search=drafts&th=125409e9c005f960&ww=1003&cvap=1&qt=&zx=tjclyljvj6fb#125409e9c005f960_1253f9d26fd3ccf8_1253da054eda4526_1253ad9630e6bc01_1253588ff82dcbfd_sdfootnote5sym.
Are these not physical?

Viewing physicality with suspicion leads to Lame Sex in several ways. A
truism which is commonly repeated states that sex should only occur between
people who are madly in love with each other. I personally think that sex
really only needs two (or more) people who are good friends and are
comfortable messing around. Romantic love should not have to be a
prerequisite for intimacy. Anti-physical types live under an artificial
dichotomy whereby all sex is either intensely romantic with sunsets and
sparkling wine, or completely casual (involving public lavatories and
party-and-play invites). Non-romantic sex is often maligned and made to look
animalistic, reckless, and superficial, when it can be a very emotionally
satisfying experience, the satisfaction often stemming from its
non-committal innocence, its refreshing lightness.

Secondly, the anti-physical attitude creates an unfair hierarchy whereby
individuals who favour one set of physical traits are depicted as “sex
obsessed” and “slutty”, while individuals who favour different anatomical
features are allowed to clothe themselves in angel wings and halos. In
Melbourne, this sort of Puritanism is all too common. (It is not surprising
that everyone here is obsessed with Lacanian psychoanalysis, one of the
least sensual philosophies ever devised.) Prejudice against physicality is a
subtle weapon in the arsenal of biphobes and homophobes. Even my pansexual
friend remarked once that she hated the term “bisexual” and felt it was too
sex obsessed. And the angelic attitude towards sex can be damned annoying
for straight people as well (whenever we're not using it to oppress queers).

Porn, its Function and Dysfunction

What is pornography? To both conservatives and feminists, both the pro-porn
and anti-porn crowds, pornography is typically defined as sexually explicit
material. Naomi Wolf, for instance, refers to something called “porn creep”,
a process whereby porn has gradually ingratiated itself into the mainstream,
swimsuits are designed to show more and more flesh, porn stars (especially
Jenna Jameson and Ron Jeremy) are increasingly becoming public figures, and
porn's influence over fashion and everyday culture is growing. Debates about
porn are primarily debates about explicit material (and when some feminists
write about “porn”, they are really referring to *several thousand
films*made in California and starring pouty women with bodies like
baloon animals,
as opposed to *several thousand years* of diverse erotic writing and images
from the time of Gilgamesh and onwards).

I do not feel that defining porn by its content (porn = explicit material)
is the best way to approach the matter. Instead, I would like to propose an
alternative definition: “*Pornography is any material which is used to
erotically stimulate a person's imagination, usually in conjunction with
physical stimulation such as masturbation.” *This is pornography's function
(and I will argue shortly that using pornography “educationally” is
unreliable and dodgy).

Let me illustrate, with a different example, why I dislike defining porn by
its content. Suppose I was asked to provide a definition of “rape”. Would it
be fair to define “rape” as “any forceful sexual act that occurs within a
dark alley”? No. Because the dark alley is a specific feature that only
pertains to *some* rapes. Indeed, a few couples get off on having surprise
sex in dangerous places and engaging in pseudo-rape, so some forceful sexual
acts that occur in dark alleys are perfectly consensual. Though it can be
argued that couples who enjoy dark alley sex are guilty of eroticising rape
(an argument which I do not agree with, because it is logically impossible
to eroticise non-consent *in* *itself* by having consensual sex, though it
is possible to eroticise dark alleys) I believe that a couple should have
the right to enact any fantasies as long as nobody is hurt. A better
definition would be: “Rape is anything that lies beyond the boundaries of a
given person's consent.” Even people who enjoy pseudo-rape have boundaries,
though the reaches of those boundaries may be different from other people's.
A woman who has satisfying sex in dark alleys could still suffer rape in a
nightclub, a workplace, or in her own home.

Therefore, on a definitive level, we should look not at the *what*, but at
the surrounding circumstances, in this case, pornography's function. Not all
of the written and visual material which functions to create sexual
stimulation is explicit or depicts sexual acts. Some women report that the
corset-ripping stories in Mills & Boon novels turn them on and provide them
with masturbation fodder. Indeed, does pornography even have to exist
outside of a person's mind? If a person makes up sexy little stories in
their head while masturbating, does this make them a pornographer? Just as
“endorphin”, a contraction of “endomorphin”, means 'internal morphine' or
the body's own morphine, I would like to coin a new term for sex fantasies:
*endopornography *or *endoporn*.

The real questions that have to be asked about pornography are not “Is
pornography good or bad?” or “Can pornography be feminist?” but “Were human
beings exploited making this piece of porn?” and “Is this specific piece of
porn feminist?”. The porn industry is basically an industry which produces
sex fantasies for people too lazy to produce their own, fantasy being a
component without which sexual pleasure of any kind is impossible. I do not
believe, then, that porn producers who are women, feminists, or lesbians
(such as the makers of *Slit* magazine) should worry too much if their porn
is consumed by males. I would rather use environmentally friendly paper to
print my essays and wipe my arse, I would rather drink Fairtrade coffee, and
I would rather jerk off to porn produced by women in a non-exploitative
environment. The fact that straight males now have a conscientious
alternative to 70 minute collagen shows is a good thing, even if that
alternative was originally intended for lesbians. In a way, the difference
between rejecting all pornography outright and inventing a new kind of
feminist pornography is the difference between not eating burgers because
they have cow meat and inventing a new kind of burger using lentil patties.

Then there is the strange idea that porn is educational, which usually leads
to Lame Sex and might possibly lead to worse things. This folly is committed
by two types of people, porn consumers stupid enough to think that they're
learning something, and feminists who attack porn because “porn tells lies
about women”. The fact that porn tells lies about women is absolutely true,
whether the porn is feminist or patriarchal. Even the photoshoots in
*Slit*magazine are Butler-style parodies, and are intended to make fun
of gender
roles and find radical new ways to turn people on (but not to teach people
about what sex is or how to do it). Porn tells lies about women (...and
people in general, since not all porn has girls in it). Westerns tell lies
about cowboys. James Bond movies tell lies about MI6 agents. As in all mass
produced genre movies, the characters in porn have two-dimensional
personalities. (While detectives are always itching for a mystery and action
heroes are always itching for a fight...)

True, I'm somewhat uncomfortable with animated Japanese pornography, or *
hentai*, where nubile female characters make creepy constipated faces while
being molested by nasty-looking men. But while *hentai* is symptomatic of an
ultra-patriarchal East Asian society, none of the twenty *hentai*
fans6ui=1&ik=64434e6869&view=cv&search=drafts&th=125409e9c005f960&ww=1003&cvap=1&qt=&zx=tjclyljvj6fb#125409e9c005f960_1253f9d26fd3ccf8_1253da054eda4526_1253ad9630e6bc01_1253588ff82dcbfd_sdfootnote6symI
chat to on the Internet believe that schoolgirls should be molested in
real life. Hopefully, Japan will some day develop its own version of *Slit,
*though many non-pornographic Japanese films contain feminist messages (such
as *Karaoke Terror*, where a sisterhood of women takes revenge against
sleazy gang members).

So no porn should ever be used educationally. Men, if you want to learn
about how women see the world, talk to them. If you want to learn how to
please women in bed, consult an anatomy textbook and talk to them anyway.
(The best way to acquire sexual proficiency is to have lots and lots of
partners.) Masturbation can teach a person a lot about pleasing their
partner and knowing when they're close to orgasm. But a porn film or novel
teaches people precisely as much as I learnt at the age of 13 from fantasies
about going down on Kylie Minogue. Real sex is tactile, not visual.

Finally, I would like to announce that I've crossed an amazing threshold in
my life. While I, being raised in Western Australia by an ultra-macho
Spanish father, was once deeply afraid that all queer men wanted to fuck me,
I am now completely indifferent to whether anybody thinks about me when they
masturbate. Even if a person whom I found very unattractive told me: “Hey
Ramon, you feature in my *endoporn* on a regular basis!” I would simply
blush and thank them for the compliment. Used correctly, apathy is blissful.

Pederasty and its Problems

First, in case you make any mistake, pederasty is not pedophilia. A
pedophile is basically any human being who either loves children
romantically, or, more controversially, gets off on child porn or child *
endoporn*. (Not all child porn is produced by exploiting children, mind you,
as erotic fiction and fictional illustrations demonstrate.) I should also
remind readers that not all pedophiles molest children.

[NOTE: I should state now that I think that children are the driving force
of conservatism. Not “procreation”, but cute cute children. The imperative
to protect children causes drug dealers, many-to-most of whom come from
underprivileged ethnic minorities, to be demonised by the media, despite the
fact that nobody has ever sold to a preteen child, at least in the developed
world. Burroughs mentions that, during the 1950s, the precursors of the DEA
were able to spread hysterical stories about heroin (!?!) being sold to
children. How a child can be expected to inject itself with an IV drug is
anybody's guess. More recently, stories abound of evil druggies leaving
needles full of heroin in playgrounds with the intent of killing children,
and one racist urban legend depicts evil “wetbacks” who use the hollowed-out
bodies of dead children to smuggle cocaine into the US. Likewise, the Howard
government wasted $90 million dollars on a child protection filter that one
child bypassed in 15 minutes. And the current Clean Feed scheme by the Rudd
government, which can also be bypassed easily with a proxy server (and is
expected to slow the Internet by 30%), was born out of a stupid conservative
attempt to impress parents. Children are also the driving force behind our
society's addiction to tax cuts. During the 2007 election, I saw *Herald Sun
* “comparisons” between Labor and the Coalition that hinged solely on which
party would make families “better off” (i.e., bribe them the most with money
that could go into funding hospitals or universities). So, childolatry
creates racism (in the form of stranger danger prejudices), fuels the War on
Drugs, encourages censorship, contributes to homophobia (by suggesting that
gays want to rape young boys), lures women into reactionary lifestyles, and
sucks money out of tertiary education. Compared to parents, most pedophiles
are probably quite nice chaps.]

Pederasty, on the other hand, is objectionable to me because, as an ancient
practice where young boys are sexually paired with older teachers, it is
inherently hierarchical. [Note: People often forget that certain types of
homosexuality are so linked to the foundations of our society and its
institutions that they may themselves be considered conservative.] The
hierarchical nature of pederasty has caused its share of misery in the
world. Plato's *Republic*, a proto-fascist text that condemns all forms of
art that do not encourage discipline and social cohesion, was born out of
Plato's sorrow at the death of Socrates, his pederastic lover and
instructor, and his subsequent repudiation of democracy. Certain people in
Ancient Greece held the belief that semen could transfer knowledge from one
person to another. As a result, pederasty was an androcentric institution
from the start. The idea that women could teach or learn from men was never
considered.

But, from the perspective of this article, the worst thing about pederasty
is its aesthetic cliches. Its idea of sexiness is based on a Hellenistic
aesthetic which was considered old news even by artists in the Roman
Republic. Hellenistic sculptors aimed at creating ideal human bodies, which
were natural to the same degree that a topiary or a bonsai tree is natural.
Their statues had no skin defects, bad hair days, flab, or anything else
that throws a spanner in the works of abstract geometry. (W.B. Yeats
mentions somewhere that young people of both sexes would sneak out of their
homes at midnight just to fondle and kiss the perfect but cold bodies of the
statues.) However, the Romans reacted to this Greek aesthetic by developing
Verism, a warts-and-all sculptural style for senators who were probably less
vain and pretentious and wanted *their* faces sculpted and not the face of
some random beefcake.

Modern pederastic art and literature, unfortunately, follows the same
Classical rules of sexiness. Thomas Mann's *Death in Venice* is an example
of this. As a short story, it is so pompous in style that it would have made
an excellent work of comedy, a sort of same-sex Benny Hill show, if Mann had
not taken himself so seriously. Its hero is a puffed-up old codger (most
famous for writing “a massive and lucid” epic about Frederick the Great of
Prussia) who has an epiphany outside a cemetery and feels an urge to visit
an Asian jungle full of tigers, but decides at the last moment to go
somewhere less hectic. Venice will do. He gets taken for a wild ride by an
unlicensed gondolier and has a few other encounters with hotel staff and the
like which would not be out of place in a *Carry On* film (but are described
with deadpan seriousness). Then, he encounters a beautiful bewitching boy,
who is Polish, but for some reason has “a remarkably Grecian nose”,
“ringlets” of “honey coloured hair”, and “almond-shaped eyes”. (Most of
those cliches predate the birth of Jesus.) Herr Codger stalks the boy for a
while and then dies of exhaustion.

The imagery of Mann's story is poorly thought out. (At one point, he
describes a man whose eyelashes are “fiery red”, even though that man is
seen at twilight from a distance of several metres. Nothing looks fiery red
at that time of day. The whole effect feels like a badly superimposed
Photoshop image. Dickens, on the other hand, is a genius with lighting, as
the opening of *Little Dorrit* shows.)

Jean Genet, by comparison, is a gay author whose erotic imagery is fresh and
original. While Mann's depiction of boys barely rivals the descriptions of
Marlowe, Ovid, and Theocritus, Genet does not try to resuscitate dead
imagery. He begins his novel, *Querelle*, by suggesting a “feeling of waves”
and then extends that theme to the bodies of sailors, references to “tough
and turbulent rumps” implying that the sailors' buttocks are moving in a
somewhat buoyant way, like flotsam and jetsam. Querelle, the criminal hero
has “black, strong, hairs” which “create a kind of mist from foot to groin”
while his white sailor suit “envelops him in clouds”. All of this is far
more interesting and innovative than Mann's recycled twinks and Greek
mythological name-dropping. Indeed, neither Mann nor the Greeks cared about
any body hair below the head.

Genet's contemporary, Tom of Finland, seems to me like a born sculptor
forced to become a pen and ink illustrator by the underground nature of his
art. His male figures, while forming a sort of macho median between the
young boys and old men of pederastic art, retain a statuesque rigidity.
Almost every Tom of Finland illustration would look natural cast in bronze
and standing on a pedestal. Also, in any given gay sex scene illustrated by
Tom, both figures have identical sets of rippling muscles, like two twin
brothers in a traveling circus. In reality, the probability of two people in
a same-sex couple having an identical body type and build is quite low. Tom
of Finland's ink sculptures do, however, deviate from the classical ideal in
the size of their penises. Greek statues normally have small genitals to
emphasise the fact that an ideal Greek citizen was not debauched or
sex-obsessed.

We have come full circle back to physicality.

L'envoy

I would like to end by offering my personal opinion on what good sex is, or,
at least the following is *my personal opinion by my own admission*, whereas
everything before this paragraph still feels like a universal truth, since I
am only just ending a marathon, all-night-long writing session, and nobody
has picked apart my ideas yet, including me.

What is good sex? Good sex is not a quickie. Good sex is not breeding. Good
sex is definitely not coercive, though it can wear the mask of evil sex from
time to time. Good sex requires the intellectual ability to construct a
narrative of different sensations, the restraint to oil that narrative with
teasing, the stamina to act it out, and enough sweat to smell and feel like
a human being to your partner. Good sex should start at the top of the body
and work its way down like Tetris in slow motion. It should not begin at the
clitoris. Finally, good sex does not require an ideal body, but it does
require a willingness to turn off the lights.

1 ...though
patriarchy does feed the problem and intensifies it.

2 Stephen Fry is one of the few legitimately intelligent people to live that sort of
lifestyle.

3 It is hard to say how much of a person's eloquence comes from within.

4 Note: a “mistress” is something absolutely different from a “girlfriend”.

5 Actually, one of those features ended up on *The 7:30 Report*. *wink*

6 It
should be noted that at least half of those people are LGBT (B more than
anything else) and enjoy *hentai* for its eccentricity more than anything
else.

*Just for Groupies:*

I would like the following things:

* A functioning MLC Silver Star, so that I can study its clasp mechanism.

* Photos of the interior of the Liberal Party Headquarters on Exhibition
Street. (No top party secrets or anything, just photos of what the building
looks like from the inside and what the offices would look like.)

* Sexual favours (attractive XX-chromosomed females and attractive
transsexuals only).

* Drugs.

* Money.

* Interior images of what Melbourne Central looked like prior to the 2002
renovations.

* Detailed information about where George Calombaris actually buys his meat.

* Detailed information on how long each gay bathhouse in Collingwood has
existed.

* Interior photographs of the Dan Murphy's headquarters in Alphington.

* Anyone who can arrange a threesome involving me, John So, and Mary
Wooldridge is totally welcome.

* Isopropyl alcohol swabs. Preferably at least 4000.

* Gel-roller pens.

* *Papaver Somniferum* seeds and plants.

* Muscle cars.

* Animal carcasses.

* Clearance to photograph Xavier, Camberwell, or Scotch.

* Antique cameras, come to think of it.

* Ektachrome, speeds 100 and lower.

flaxendandelion @ 2009-12-11T20:43:00

2009-12-11T09:43:44Z

I just finished this book in one fragmented sitting (that's ADHD). It is incredible. If you're in Australia, go out and get/borrow it. I'm not sure if this series is published overseas.

D'Alpuget isn't the greatest writer in the world. Her vocabulary is limited for a prose writer who's reached such heights, but still sadly typical for a woman. Her style is suburban and quotidien. Similarly, the depth with which she takes in the world is undergraduate: intelligent, but says nothing new and but skims the surface of what one may know and feel. However, she can tell a good story. I'm torn between divulging what I love about it and keeping quiet so it can be enjoyed without my experience coloring yours. It's kind of inspired me to take up writing a book I promised myself I'd write years ago. She talks about Indonesian puppetry at one point, and it reminded me of a dream I had many years ago that's integral to my book.

I think I like this book for the same reason some people take in Jane Austen novels - the story's nothing meaningful, but it's riveting.

When you have needed someone enough to go mad and plan suicide and murder, your being is tempered by the experience of suffering and gains a modicum of wisdom from it.

flaxendandelion @ 2009-12-11T19:24:00

2009-12-11T08:24:23Z

Caught my eye at the Brunswick St. Bookstore. Mostly theory. I hate theory.

The covers to the Great Ideas series are always always gorgeous. Makes me want to touch them like a Japanese businessman does a stripper. Surely I could've found a better analogy.

The Invisible Committee book I'm really really interested in.

flaxendandelion @ 2009-12-11T19:17:00

2009-12-11T08:17:28Z

Another year, another name change. I feel him. I liked Ochocinco better though.

"I'm not sure how Mr. Goodell is going to take it," Ochocinco said as he held up the jersey.

I finally tried this organic vegan frozen yogurt on Elizabeth St. Lychee-lime flavor. It smelled like shit, but I got through it. Never again. The cup it was in is 'environmentally friendly' and decomposes in 89 days. I'm holding them to it.

Went back to Kookai, got the sample dress in amalfi blue. Read 'em and weep, over $900 worth of clothing for $240.

</a>

flaxendandelion @ 2009-12-10T23:11:00

2009-12-10T12:11:46Z

Man I cleaned house at the Kookai clearance today.

Knit hooded cardigan org. $280 for $35.
The navy wool dress I wanted, org. $130, paid $35.
Red nightie, org $69, $25.
The most gorgeous pink eyelet dress, a sample that wasn't on the nightie table one minute and there the next, undoubtedly in the hundreds, $30. I can't believe I got this. Hope it's not too big, but I compared busts between dresses and it seemed fine.
Olive green blouse, org. $50, $10.
'griotte' colored blouse, org $55, paid $35? I was a little surprised it cost so much.
Black wool skirt (just like I've wanted for a while now), org. $60, paid $30.

I also bought a bright purple blouse for my coworker who's always gushing over my clothes and says I should model (yeah right). She put it on and was glowing.

I may go back tomorrow for seconds, but I may be out of money. Oops.

flaxendandelion @ 2009-12-10T13:40:00

2009-12-10T02:40:03Z

books from the library

herbert read - to hell with culture (i'll either love it or hate it)
hesse - steppenwolf (again)
ellison - invisible man (again)
digital photography book
blake - the complete poems
cambridge companion to blake
emotional intelligence quick book
ginsberg - collected poems 1947-1985
mastering blues keyboard

on reserve
germaine greer - on rage (will most likely love it)
somebody from the same series - on indignation
maybe one other

xmas gifts to self

2010 granta diary (early?)
kookai dress
8gb cf card for that Canon 30D I won years ago
express black pencil skirt
maybe more kookai when I go to their clearance outlet before work today
desk?

flaxendandelion @ 2009-12-10T13:13:00

2009-12-10T02:13:15Z

It's H2Bs so far, and I know the fourth mark will either be the same or worse. I've had a lot to shoulder this semester, not surprising, but I'm still disappointed in myself.

I've signed up for a copywriting class, and with the paranoid-superstitious personality I have, I'm afraid as soon as I've made my plan for the future it'll all go to hell with bad news in my prospects in love/home/work...or all three. I just like bracing myself, that's all. The flip side to this is I sometimes take things for granted and get my hopes up.

Anyways, I can nominate copywriter as my occupation for my graduate visa with a Bachelor of Arts. The class will enhance the nomination as well as employment prospects. I'd like to take a photography and/or graphic design class at some point next year, I don't know how that'll pan out. There's a small part of me that wants to stay for another semester at Melbourne to take a class I want to take, but I'm impatient and want my Bachelor's Degree asap.

But I'm very happy just now because M has texted me back. He must be doing better if he's texting again.