Archive for 2008

I Kissed A Girl

by Amelia G : July 26th, 2008

When the feminist publications like Feministe and the rock publications like AntiQuiet, and the news overlords like MSNBC all agree on something, it is safe to assume the topic is something as definite as the sky is generally blue. In this instance, pretty much everyone agrees that famous homophobe Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl” video is a lot like a tremendously sucky version of a Girls Gone Wild set up.

More than a decade ago, Jill Sobule sang a bouncy tune, of the same name, about a woman who is titillated and unsure and excited about the new experience of having kissed another woman. Neither video shows a lot of lip-locking because both were intended for MTV airplay and, as a society, we tend to still view same sex kisses as potentially unsuitable material for kids. I think there will come a time when the idea of two women kissing being scandalous is as quaint as the idea of two people with different ethnic or racial backgrounds kissing is now. Massachusetts, where gay marriage is legal, recently had to work on their legislation because they had some old laws on the books to prevent black/white couples from other states from using Massachusetts to legitimize their otherwise illegal unions.

Because progress really can and does happen on so many fronts, the lameness of third wave feminism never ceases to disappoint me. If Katy Perry thinks it will turn guys on to tell them that she had a dream about kissing a girl, but, like, ew, not that she’d ever really do that . . . well, it probably will turn guys on.

Most guys I know, who would freak if their girl made out with another guy, think they will be just fine with it . . .

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Full season two preview vintage clothing photo gallery on BlueBlood.net now, courtesy of AMC.

(Image Courtesy of Blue Blood)

Must have felt grim when updating Netflix. Romper Stomper #1. Swapped in 4400. We came to wreck everything, and ruin your life. God sent us.

Who Watches the Watchmen Movie?

by Amelia G : July 24th, 2008

I loved the Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller film adaptation of Sin City. It was an aesthetic triumph. I recently re-watched it when Forrest Black and I went clubbing in Portland with DJ Mohawk Adam and Sin City is still fun when re-watching it on a large screen in a goth-industrial nightclub.

Truthfully, the actual comic book Sin City turned me off though. Frank Miller was instrumental in getting me into comics with his Dark Knight re-envisioning of Batman in a much grittier world. But, when I got to the part of Sin City where the chick is all freaking out about how the bad guy made her watch while he ate her hand, I just rolled my eyes and pretty much gave up on reading comics. I didn’t mind giving Sin City a chance to entertain me as a movie because there was no fond memory of a book it could destroy.

The other major factor in me becoming less satisfied with the comic book medium was that I read Alan Moore’s Watchmen. Watchmen is the most perfect comic anyone anywhere has ever done. It is hauntingly emotionally beautiful, vividly memorable, philosophically and politically insightful, and still a great action tale. Once I had read Watchmen, nothing else in the field could really compare.

Because Watchmen was an important work, I feel like it is news that the trailer for the long-rumored Watchmen movie has been released. I post it here, if you’d like to view it.

It has been widely reported that author Alan Moore is not happy with the film adaptation of his seminal graphic novel. If it turns out that Alan Moore in fact does not like it, then I will personally almost certainly avoid seeing the movie.

Yes, I know Alan Moore should not have taken the movie . . .

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Famous Astronaut Confirms Alien UFO Visits Are Real

by Amelia G : July 23rd, 2008

Okay, this is just plain awesome and entirely made my day. I am mostly familiar with Kerrang! for being the well-written and well-photographed hard rock magazine which used to cover a lot of the bands who played Taime Downe’s late lamented Pretty Ugly nightclub in Los Angeles. Apparently, on the other side of the pond, Kerrang! also does radio and television and such. One of their on-air personalities is Nick Margerrison who does a show called The Night Before.

I’m not sure what astronauts have to do with hard rock, but I guess MTV’s early call sign video interlude involved the moon landing, so maybe it all just fits together in some secret cosmic way. At any rate, Nick Margerrison was interviewing astronaut Edgar Mitchell, on Kerrang! Radio, when the famous astronaut casually pointed out that life definitely exists on other planets and aliens have visited earth. The obviously usually-smooth Nick Margerrison is kind of like ha, ha, wait are you serious? He sort of sputters and says wow a lot, while waiting for his interview subject to admit he was kidding.

Astronaut Edgar Mitchell: “We’re not alone in the universe at all . . . The UFO phenomenon is real, although it’s been covered up by our governments for some time.”

On-air personality Nick Margerrison: “I’ve had crazy UFO nuts before, but I’ve never had Dr. Ed Mitchell, the 6th man to walk on the moon, a respected scientist in his own right, announce to me that we’ve been visited by aliens from other planets and they definitely are out there and there’s no debating it . . . I’m just wondering if I’ve stumbled on astronaut humor and in a couple minutes you are going to . . .

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Any of my Los Angeles pals a big Spaced fan?

Spaced Comes Out on DVD Today

by Amelia G : July 22nd, 2008

A long long time ago, in a land far far from here, I found myself in abrupt need of a place to live. After approximately five years in Connecticut, my parents convinced my lovelorn and underemployed self that I should come stay with them for a while in part of Northern Virginia which is really a suburb of Washington, DC. I think they maybe thought I would get into some kind of government work, which, in a way, I eventually did for a while. But one of the problems with being a prodigy is that you are never quite on the same playing field as everyone else. I graduated from college without being legal to drink in America. When I got to the DC area, I thought I might apply to work for the FBI. I liked the idea of a job which required intelligence and education, which also involved learning how to use all sorts of weaponry and getting paid to stay fit. Only I did not meet their minimum age requirement. I signed up to take the GMAT for entrance to business school, but my father was pissy that day and wouldn’t drive me. After getting into an accident years prior, I was not on their insurance, so I couldn’t drive myself. I often wonder how different my life would be now if I had just figured out how to put together the seventy bucks or whatever a cab would have been and taken the test. It hadn’t seemed like the sort of activity I could have asked a friend to help with in the early morning.

The sort of activity I could get a ride to was generally a science fiction convention or a punk show. There . . .

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Dancing Toddler and the Future of Art in America

by Amelia G : July 21st, 2008

So why would a video of a mildly overweight toddler dancing badly receive 518,448 views on YouTube? It immediately comes to mind why a toddler dancing very well might be popular. It immediately comes to mind why a spectacularly cute toddler dancing badly might be popular. I wish this were not the case, but it also immediately comes to mind why a grotesquely overweight toddler dancing badly would make for a popular YouTube video. No, this toddler is not related to any star of stage or screen either.

The answer is that the video is controversial. The child’s mother Stephanie Lenz videotaped her kid attempting to dance to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” which was playing on a nearby boombox. Universal Music Group, which owns the copyright for that portion of Prince’s catalog asked YouTube to take the video down because “Let’s Go Crazy” could clearly be heard on it and they felt this infringed on their copyright. YouTube took the video down and that would have been the end of it, except the EFF took on the mom’s case

So Stephanie Lenz and the Electronic Frontier Foundation sued Universal for wrongly asking that the video be taken down. Today, Ars Technica, a site about the “art of technology”, posted the latest in a whole series of interesting articles on the case and its implications for all video makers. The short version of what went down is that Universal defended by claiming the EFF was using the court system to bully them out of their rights and using meritless lawsuits to further their own agenda. This is ironic for so many reasons, I don’t even know how to start to enumerate them, so I won’t. The way everything shook out, judges determined that, yes, the EFF can bring a suit . . .

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Rachel Kramer Bussel Banned from Flickr and Vimeo

by Amelia G : July 22nd, 2008

Rachel Kramer Bussel has a new collection of stories out. This Cleis Press anthology is called Spanked: Red-Cheeked Erotica. Rachel is an extremely accomplished anthologist of erotica and a vocal enthusiast of spanking.

Although Rachel’s books sell well in their category and she generally has a couple of them charting on Amazon, she hoped to increase her visibility and sell more copies of Spanked. So she commissioned an outfit called What That Noise Productions to make her a book promo video. She posted the video to a number of sites and Vimeo and Flickr both removed it. Although the subject matter is a bit naughty perhaps, there is no nudity or anything like that in the video. At the time of this writing, Vimeo had simply responded to her queries by telling her she violated their terms of service. Flickr had not responded at all.

I know, from personal experience, that Flickr seems capricious at best. There is some truly terrible photography on Flickr, of some extremely explicit material, posted purely to promote quite pornographic sites. I spent a lot of time browsing Flickr before making Blue Blood profiles on there. I was very careful to precisely conform to the way other regular posters placed their photographs on Flickr. The BlueBlood.com profile quickly grew to have more than three thousand friends. Flickr sent a warning, but they refused to clarify what exactly Blue Blood was doing that wasn’t fitting with the Flickr community standards. Eventually, after failing to answer multiple emails from us, Flickr deleted the entire BlueBlood.com account, despite the fact that clearly thousands of Flickr members liked what Blue Blood was posting there just fine.

When someone polices unevenly, it is always difficult to discern the reasons for sure. I don’t know if Flickr . . .

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I need a brilliant Flash designer for a series of small top quality projects. Anybody here do Flash or know someone who can do a really killer top-end pro job? (Obviously this is paid gigs.)

Most of the time, I feel ready to take on the challenges of . . . well, pretty much everything. But some days I just feel overwhelmed, without a lot of situational change. Some days I know which things I wish were not the case, but they don’t totally get to me. Other days, I just feel frustrated and overwhelmed. How about y’all?

Rest of free cute boys and more pics gallery on BlueBlood.net.

(Image Courtesy of Blue Blood)

She has various pets I have photographed. Although they do not appear in this picture. My friend L got a puppy and I plan to play with it soon. Rest of free Trash Factory Devil’s Point gallery on BlueBlood.net.

(Image Courtesy of Blue Blood)

Full Hooters Ritual Gallery Here

(Image Courtesy of Blue Blood)

(Image Courtesy of Blue Blood)

I should really go get some dinner and then get some work done.

The project I am working on is difficult and I think I’m procrastinating and making my own job harder by looking at things I can reasonably expect to irritate me.

My friend Sabrina had killer chicken at our book club meeting and I just got the info on the place to get it from her. Going to proteinate now.

Do you procrastinate with irritation?