Links

Things I run across that I find to be interesting, but might not have the time or inclination to craft a fuller post around it. Generally, short little “go here, look at this, isn’t it neat?” posts.

Kids’ ideas about sex

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Sex columnist Dan Savage recently asked his readers to submit letters detailing their childhood misconceptions about sex. The resulting two columns are hilarious…

Part one — the boys:

I was about 10 or 11 when we visited my Aunt Edie. I’d already had “the talk,” and I had a fairly good idea of what “adult” meant. Adult movies. Adult videos. Adult magazines. I was told that my Aunt Edie now lived in an “adult community.” Now, my aunt was a good 80 years old by this point, and I’d met her wrinkly ass at a few family gatherings, so when we got to the (clearly labeled) adult community, I got really creeped out. I asked my parents if they were really supposed to bring a kid in here, and upon more questioning explained my reasoning. After laughing so hard my dad had to stop the car, they cleared everything up.

Part two — the girls:

I went with my dad to visit his best friend, who bred Saint Bernards. While there, I saw this large wooden contraption and asked Dad what it was for. Turns out it was a breeding support, so the dog (who is usually well over 150 pounds) doesn’t hurt the bitch. My dad explained what a mommy dog and a daddy dog do to make puppies. He explained as accurately as a 4-year-old could understand, and I seemed to get what he was talking about. Later that day, we came home and I ran up to my mother. “Mom! Guess what I learned today!” I then proceeded to give a fairly detailed description of what a mommy dog and a daddy dog do to make puppies, followed by the exclamation, “You and Dad should do that!” You see, I wanted a puppy.

(via MeFi)

iTunes: “Dreams” by Cranberries, The from the album Alterno-Daze: 90’s Natural Selection (1995, 4:33).

Google Talk

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A post on MeFi led me to this wonderful little toy: Google Talk.

Use Google talk by entering three or four words below. The system will search for this sentence at Google, find the next word and print that. Than it will remove the first word of the search string, add the found word and repeat. The result seems to be meaningfull sometimes. Other times it is giblish. But always fun.

I’ve been playing with it off and on for a while, and it’s come up with some wonderfully nonsensical stuff. Some sample searches below, with the key words I started with in bold:

star wars Episode I- THE Great) war The Great War: The first World War. II THE Wrath of God by AW Tozer in the News: Journal.

george lucas is the only way to Be Human. A Biography of the singer, s voice.

Osama Bin Laden is hiding in the bushes in the backyard and it was all not politically advantageous or large sums of money.

my breasts are too small to See, with a microscope: by a pathologist. who is a Jew? by Choice and Not a Job To do.

my penis is too small for the TEAM: BY the coaches and the media A Guide to the Internet and the World Wide Web Virtual Library History of Science, and Technology

Other people have had some fun playing with this and posting their results. Some of my favorites:

forever will we think about the recent court settlement between Microsoft and the BAVARIAN Alps.

When you walk through a storm Hold your head up high. AND blow Your Brains Out

Jesus Christ died for our sins. BY his blood we shall be Free from defects in material and workmanship.

Imagine all the people Living for today. Imagine there s no heaven, It’ s easy if you’ have the Blues? ask your doctor, and pharmacist if you are allergic to latex, may also be allergic to other foods, as well, as the Dreamcast? and the PC, but I can t GET no satisfaction? I can t get no satisfaction? I can t get no satisfaction?

Monday, I start anew with dreams big enough to crush a human skull with a bullet hole in the back of the North Wind: by GEORGE

jesus saved me from the MAILING list, for the discussion of the Issues raised by the frequent use of the Internet.

Want to play with it yourself? The author has kindly posted code to embed the toy in a webpage, so here we go…

Google talk a Google Hack by Douwe Osinga

Enjoy!

Costco Caskets?

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This is just silly: in case you’re looking to save a few bucks while shopping for the latest death in the family, you can now pick up coffins at Costco.

No word in the article on whether you get a discount while buying in bulk (handy for the up-and-coming serial killer, I’m sure).

As Prairie asked, can you get any more white trash than this? Me, I’d love to see a shopping list with “coffin for Grandma” sandwiched in between a case of WD-40 and bulk order of breakfast cereal for the kids.

Either that, or just go in and shop for a casket and a bundle of wooden (tent) stakes.

iTunes: “Genocide (Original)” by Euphoria from the album Best of Rave, The Vol. 3 (1992, 4:20).

Crackrats!

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From the wonderfully zany world of IM conversations…

Prairie: (okay, I shouldn’t think this is funny, but it’s cracking me up): Studies find rats can get hooked on drugs\
Prairie: they fed crack to rats

Me: :laughs

Prairie: what did they think would happen?

Me: it’s a little hard to picture a rat with a monkey on its back…

Prairie: giggles\
Prairie: that’s part of what I think it funny about it

Me: crackrats

Prairie: laughs!\
Prairie: “Until now, scientists have been able to prove that rats will take drugs, even eagerly, but not that they’re actually addicted.”\
Prairie: that sentence keeps giving me giggles\
Prairie: and how are the rats getting the drugs?\
Prairie: the conservative, lovely scientists are pushing them

Me: I liked this one –

Me: \” In the French study, rats poked their pointy noses through holes in their cages to trigger injections of cocaine.”\
Me: I think it’s the”pointy\” adjective that does it for me

Prairie: giggles

Me: apparently, the rats with stumpy, blunted noses were less susceptible?

Prairie: haha–no, but they couldn’t get their noses through the bars to get the drugs

Me: or, are they contrasting that to poking their pointy tails through?\
Me: or other pointy bits?\
Me: (kinkycrackrats)

Prairie: laughs even harder\
Prairie: (and EEEW!)

Me: :laughs

iTunes: “Mine (Live)” by Webley, Jason from the album Halloween Special 2001 (2001, 3:04).

DVD driver acquitted

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This originally just went into my linklog, but considering my previous rant, I wanted to follow up on this one. The Alaskan driver accused of killing two people due to watching a DVD while driving has been acquitted.

A man was acquitted Tuesday of charges he caused a fatal crash by taking his eyes off the road while watching a movie on a DVD player mounted on his truck dashboard.

Jurors acquitted Erwin Petterson Jr., 29, of two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of manslaughter. No law in Alaska prohibits operating a DVD player in view of a driver.

[…]

Stein argued that Petterson and his passenger Jonathan Douglas were watching a DVD movie when Petterson’s pickup truck crossed the center line, hitting the Weisers’ sport utility vehicle head-on. Petterson testified he was not watching a movie and that his truck strayed into oncoming traffic when he reached for a soda.

The Weisers died at the scene.

Marty Zoda, Douglas’ former wife, testified that her ex-husband told her the DVD was running when the accident happened, a claim Douglas denied.

If installed as recommended, DVD players will not work in an automobile unless the emergency brake is on or the vehicle is in park. Prosecutors said Petterson overrode those safety measures when he installed an entertainment system including a DVD player, speakers and a Sony PlayStation 2 in his pickup truck.

All my sympathies go out to the families of the people killed.

I stand by my previous rant, too. Pay attention to the road.

iTunes: “Dancing With Myself (Original 12″)\” by Generation X from the album Devolution: Alternative Rock Classics 1975-1985 (1981, 5:58).

New CDC anti-condom guidelines

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Somehow I’d missed hearing about this until just now (the article is a few weeks old), but new regulations from the CDC threaten to yank federal funding from any HIV-prevention organization that fail to limit their efforts to promoting abstinence and refraining from promoting the use of condoms.

Lethal new regulations from President Bush’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, quietly issued with no fanfare last week, complete the right-wing Republicans’ goal of gutting HIV-prevention education in the United States. In place of effective, disease-preventing safe-sex education, little will soon remain except failed programs that denounce condom use, while teaching abstinence as the only way to prevent the spread of AIDS. And those abstinence-only programs, researchers say, actually increase the risk of contracting AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

Published on June 16 in the Federal Register, the censorious new CDC guidelines will be mandatory for any organization that does HIV-prevention work and also receives federal funds — whether or not any federal money is directly spent on their programs designed to fight the spread of the epidemic. (The CDC is the principal federal funder of prevention education about HIV and AIDS, and its head a Bush appointee). It’s all couched in arcane bureaucratese, but this is the Bush administration’s Big Stick — do exactly as we say, or lose your federal funding. And nearly all of the some 3,800 AIDS service organizations (ASOs) that do the bulk of HIV-prevention education receive at least part of their budget from federal dollars. Without that money, they’d have to slash programs or even close their doors.

These new regs require the censoring of any “content” — including “pamphlets, brochures, fliers, curricula,” “audiovisual materials” and “pictorials (for example, posters and similar educational materials using photographs, slides, drawings or paintings),” as well as “advertising” and Web-based info. They require all such “content” to eliminate anything even vaguely “sexually suggestive” or “obscene” — like teaching how to use a condom correctly by putting it on a dildo, or even a cucumber. And they demand that all such materials include information on the “lack of effectiveness of condom use” in preventing the spread of HIV and other STDs — in other words, the Bush administration wants AIDS fighters to tell people: Condoms don’t work. This demented exigency flies in the face of every competent medical body’s judgment that, in the absence of an HIV-preventing vaccine, the condom is the single most effective tool available to protect someone from getting or spreading the AIDS virus.

Flat-out-ridiculous, and not at all helpful to anyone. Yes, abstinence is a wonderful and nearly foolproof way to avoid many diseases and other sex-related side effects. It’s also naïvely optimistic, and is never going to be effectively practiced by the majority of people on this planet.

iTunes: “Real Life” by Tones on Tail from the album Night Music (1991, 5:07).

The mysterious H. John Heinz IV

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Of the various children and stepchildren of John Kerry and Teresa Heinz-Kerry, one has been conspicuously absent from all of the various political appearances and shenanigans: H. John Heinz IV, Teresa’s oldest child. As it turns out, he’s a very private man, doing his best to keep him and his family out of the limelight. A difficult task, I’m sure, especially with the current presidential campaign in full swing.

Still, a few details do surface from time to time, and I’ve got to say that not only does John sounds like an incredibly accomplished and very interesting individual, he apparently also has impeccable fashion sense.

What’s known is this: Heinz IV, 37, is an accomplished blacksmith who trained at Williamsburg, Va., and sometimes wears a workman’s kilt, called a “Utilikilt,” at his forge in rural Pennsylvania.

He fabricates custom-made historical arms and armor, tools and architectural hardware, 10 percent down.

He’s a Buddhist who teaches meditation and who practices the Zen martial art of Shim Gum Do.

He was the founder and funder of a school for teenagers “at risk of not succeeding in life,” as Heinz IV himself once described it. For several years, the school was situated on a 136-acre tract he owns in Upper Black Eddy, Pa.

He cared for his daughter, Astrid, now 4, while his nutritionist wife, Kristann, 34, attended medical school at the University of Pennsylvania.

An artist, he drew the portrait for medallions given to recipients of Heinz Awards, which are offered, along with a \$250,000 grant, in memory of his father, the late Sen. John Heinz III (R-Pa.).

And he sits on the board of the \$862-million Howard Heinz Endowment, chaired by his mother.

[…]

Heinz IV dubbed his made- to-order blacksmith business Herugrim, which in Old English means “fierce in war,” his Web site says. Heinz IV’s forge specializes in medieval-style helmets, cutting tools (swords, knives, axes and chisels), hinges, locks and nails. Most of the hardware he fabricates is for 18th century homes and buildings.

There is evidence that Heinz IV can be generous to a fault. When the Utilikilts team, based in Seattle, showed up for a Pennsylvania festival, they transported plenty of kilts, leather and otherwise, but they had no room for their tent or display racks.

Their Web site says “Utilikiltarian” Heinz IV came to the rescue, fabricating display racks in a four-hour session at his forge.

A festival photo shows Heinz IV smiling and playful in a mock chorus line, with everyone in kilts. For the camera, he coyly lifts his kilt to mid-thigh, far above his scuffed dark workboots and rolled-down socks.

A Utilikilts representative declined to comment, but the company Web site says Heinz IV and his wife “stepped up to take excellent care of us.”

Best of luck to John and his family in the coming months — but at the same time, I’ll keep hoping to see a guy in a kilt show up at some important presidental function eventually…

(via the Yahoo! Utilikilts Group)

iTunes: “White Whisper” by Deep Forest from the album Deep Forest (1992, 5:45).

August 11th is National Underwear Day

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At least, according to Freshpair.com, it is…

Underwear isn’t something we talk about much. For a long, long time it didn’t get mentioned at all, except as “unmentionables”, and it was seen even less. Today, it is very different. Increasingly, women are showing glimpses of bra straps and lingerie under a see-through shirt. Likewise, men don’t worry about keeping their underwear waistbands below their pants. In fact, far from being hidden or inappropriate, intimate apparel now fits snugly into pop culture-through fashion, through retail, through celebrities’ attire, and a million other ways. Even when you don’t think about it, underwear reflects a mood, a personality, a sense of style, a special occasion, and so much more. It’s more revealing than anything else we wear-which may be why it’s so rarely revealed.

[…]

This is the day when underwear becomes not just the first thing you put on and the last thing you take off, but the most important thing you wear all day. Go on an underwear shopping spree to dress yourself. Dress from the inside out.

Call your favorite radio station and tell them about National Underwear Day, and how listeners can go to www.freshpair.com to sign the petition urging official recognition of a day to honor these invaluable but underappreciated undergarments.

Treat yourself to that new thong you’ve been eyeing. Break out your favorite pair of boxers. Take a few minutes to find what’s in your top drawer and revisit your underwear history. Start a conversation around the water cooler. Proudly display a bit of your skivvies for all to see. Don’t be shy about it. Underwear is one thing we all have in common (unless you’re one of those people who don’t wear any).

Ahem. ;)

(via Len)

iTunes: “Theme, The (Hot Tracks)” by Black Girl Rock from the album Hot Tracks 15th Anniversary Collectors Edition (1997, 5:56).

PvP takes on the comic syndicates

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The author of PvP, a webcomic that I really don’t read often enough (though that should change now that I discovered their RSS feed), has decided that the newspaper comic syndication racket isn’t for him. So, instead of giving up all the rights to his strip, he’s going to investigate syndicating it himself for free.

This last year, I was contacted by Universal Press Syndicates about PvP. They know the strip and were very interested in syndicating it as a feature. I would love to see PvP in newspapers and we started talks. I let them know that there were six years of archives available and that I could edit the strips to conform to family paper editorial standards. The only thing I could not do was give up my ownership and rights to my creation.

Under no circumstances would I relinquish my copyright, book deals, merchandise deals, rights to market my strips, etc. If they wanted PvP, we would agree to a newspaper distribution deal and that was it. After six weeks the syndicates returned with their answer: They wanted PvP…all of it. If they could not have the rights to the feature, they weren’t interested. So we parted ways.

But I’ve already become attached to the idea of seeing PvP in the papers, and that’s why I’ve decided to start a new program. In the coming months, I’ll be putting into effect, a program in which papers can receive PVP for free. That’s right, free. They don’t have to pay me a cent for it. I will provide for the papers, a comic strip with a larger established audience then any new syndicated feature, a years worth of strips in advance, and I won’t charge them a cent for it.

Best of luck on this project. From the sound of it, if this is a success, it could be the first step in rather radically changing the comic strip industry.

iTunes: “Love on Haight Street” by BT from the album Movement in Still Life (2000, 6:18).

Do-be-do-be-do me

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This was going to go into the linklog, but it’s so wonderfully bizarre that I figured it deserved a little more visibility.

Debbie Does Dallas — The Musical!

WATCHING a porn film with your colleagues is not the usual workplace practice.

But for a group of Sydney actors rehearsing a new musical, a viewing of the classic 1978 X-rated flick Debbie Does Dallas on Thursday night was all in the name of research.

“There was a lot of fast-forwarding going on and quite a few toilet and drink breaks,” actor Lisa Adam said yesterday.

“But I think we can justify it for character development – and I’ve got to say, it’s the most interesting research I’ve ever done.”

Adam stars as Debbie in Debbie Does Dallas – The Musical, a spoof based on the classic porn film that featured Bambi Woods as a cheerleader who needs to make money through, ahem, sweat and tears to join the pom-pom squad of the Texas football team.

[…]

\”There’s no hardcore sex, instead when there’s a sex scene in the movie that’s when we do a musical number.

“So an orgy scene is done to a tango and a threesome is like a Spanish-style flamenco. The choreographer has tried to make it very stylised and comical, rather than just having people rooting on stage.”

I knew I should have stuck to theatre…

iTunes: “Related Vortex” by X-Dream from the album Spirit Zone Vol. 2 (1996, 8:48).