I saw this yesterday, Touch yourself, otherwise I own those babies! Oh, and I'll grope you, harass you and sexually assault you!

Yeah.

Breast cancer awareness never "felt" so good.

This, sibs, is what rape culture looks like!

Hey grope-promoting ass-holes, how about on Prostate Cancer awareness month I wear a shirt that promotes awareness by saying "Lube up and spread 'em for your own good!".

Feel good to you?!

Today I accompanied a friend to one of the most expensive malls in the country - it's a five minute walk from the Uni campus - which is situated in one of the most up market neighbourhoods in Tel Aviv.

Completely unexpectedly, I bought shoes.
I do not simply walk into a shop and buy things on the spot.
It's simply something I do not do.

But for these, I was willing to be spontaneous.
They are, in the words of my father, Zooty!

Add to that, that I tried on pants I haven't fitted into for the past two years and they looked awesome!
I'm feeling pretty good.
In that utterly shallow, I really should be beyond this sort of sizeist thinking, kind of way.

Follow the link! Admire those puppies!

Oh wait.

It really, really is not a fucking conundrum.

The man raped a child, plead guilty, then ran away because the sentencing was too harsh for him (U.S. Appellate Court! Hello!), not that I think there's anything to appeal, or condone or even sympathise with a criminal who decided to do a runner rather than serve the time given him for the crime he committed upon a 13 year old girl.

Is this getting into people's thick skulls?! Obviously not, seeing as there is a fucking petition (No! Tilda Swinton! Pedro Almodovar?!?! *weeps*... just a couple of names at first glance that popped out at me) calling for him to be let go and set free signed by a large amount of people, whose work I admire and inspire me. This is all so fucking Twilight Zone I'm having a hard time articulating it in a manner that doesn't include me tearing my hair out and run screaming through the streets like the "hysterical woman" that I am.

The man, drugged and raped a girl, is also an artist.

*crickets*

What? Is that so bloody hard to imagine? That people who create great things are also morally bankrupt and make no mistake, even if he personally feels guilty (but doesn't really want to sit in jail for it) he still raped a child.

It's really not that complicated. Either the rape of a child is punishable no matter who commits it, or those who are famous, wealthy and part of the artistic Elite are utterly exempt from the laws governing us lowly serfs.

An exaggeration? Please, this is once again a moment in history in which those who "Have" are entitled to get away with espousing the ugliest, most anti-social bullshit imaginable.

And for getting away with criminal behaviour, of course.

Obviously, this is no longer just about Polanski.

The links are NSFW!
I repeat, the links (and possibly this entire entry) are Not Safe For Work!

Via the Ha'aretz article: Can gay porn save Israel's image? which was originally featured in The Forward: Pornographic Stimulus Plan about about Michael Lucas' project called Men of Israel, featuring... well you can guess.

I read about this project back when Michael Lucas was here in Israel and both the queer and mainstream media were hounding him a bit (for different reasons).

I have a problem with this project.
Not the pornography; honestly, so long as the people get paid and aren't coerced to do something against their will... there's not much I'm going to complain about in this context.

My problem is with Lucas' attitude regarding his project.
Allow me a quote from the article:

Lucas claims that his motivation behind “Men of Israel” was not just titillation, but also a counterbalance to lopsided portrayals of Israel in mainstream media. “It’s free PR for Israel, and it’s much better than the PR they’re getting on the news,” he said during a tour of the company’s expansive second-floor offices, with views of the New York Times building across the street. “The reality is that Israel has only one face to people on the street, and that’s the West Bank and Gaza. All people see in the media is a country of disaster. They get images of a blown-up bus.”

Is he fucking kidding?
Promoting Israel as a gay tourist spot is not the way to "counter portray" the Occupation, nor is fetishising Israeli bodies, which honestly, are already grossly fetishised.
Also, can he be more shallow regarding Israel's portrayal in the media,which yeah, is pretty shallow regardless. However, Israel does its best to present itself (unsuccessfully) as a monolith of culture and opinion.

Not to mention this gem:

“I’m not sure the vast majority of his audience know or care about his political views,” [Aaron Hicklin, editor in chief of the gay magazine Out] said.
[...]
That may change with a letter that Lucas sent on August 31 to GoGay[link added by eumelia], Israel’s largest gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Web site, excoriating gay Israelis for staying closeted. “Excusing these pitiful cowards for not coming out of the closet and accepting their façade is only hurting Israel,” he wrote. “By hiding from your reality, you are empowering intolerant disillusioned fanatics.” The idea for the letter came, he said, after Israeli men “started hitting me up on the Web site, inviting me to hook up, then said they’re not out. They’re delusional. They’re cruising this Web site, benefiting from the fights of other people. They think the gay movement has nothing to do with them, that the shooting of gay youths in Tel Aviv has nothing to do with them. What reason is there to be in the closet in Israel in 2009? It’s embarrassing.”

Emphasis Mine.

Is he fucking kidding?
Really, did he just say that in conjunction with the gay youth centre?
I have a lot of respect for sex workers and people who work towards sex-positivity, but honestly.
I'm sorta speechless here.
Israel is not some kind of Queer Paradise.
It's not.
The Tel-Aviv bubble is very much burst when it comes to that.

Israel is plenty fetishised when it comes to militarism and the use of Jewish Israeli bodies is nothing new when promoting Israeli Hasbarah.

Michael Lucas, I don't care that you're a Zionist, or that you use your ideology to fetishise Israeli Jewish men. Seriously, I do not care.
But how dare you criticise and chastise other Queer folk, not actually knowing what it is they have to do in order to cruise in a place where they feel safe, and even consider the possibility that perhaps, due to an overt act of violence against the youth in our community... they might be a bit iffy about being Loud and Proud.

Michael Lucas, you suck and not in the good way.
Get the fuck off my lawn and stop trying to present it as though the manure smells like Axa Deodorant!

N.B. This post is getting flagged isn't it?

Disney now owns Marvel Comics.

I won't lie. My eyes misted over and I felt like weeping for the end of an era.

I'm not a big follower of the industry, any industry, but I do try to keep track of who owns what and what belongs to whom, because I like knowing who is getting my money - I'm slowly getting a taste for things second hand (I'm very much a fan of owning previously owned books) and buying directly from the manufacturer.

Disney is notorious when it comes to Intellectual Property. It was the entertainment Lobby in Washington DC funded by Disney that brought about the current Copy Right Law and the Intellectual Property shenanigans that follow if I'm not mistaken.

Regardless, Disney has been known to persecute and prosecute those they believe use "their" character and "their" ideas for purposes other than Fair Use, and they'll decide what "Fair Use" is.

As I've said elsewhere on this subject, I fear for fandom.

Content wise, I doubt there will be much or any improvement when it comes to the stories, but that we'll just have to wait and see what, if any, influence this union holds.

As some of you know, Israeli cell phone company Cellcom released if not one of the most offensive ads I've had the misfortune of viewing, then at the very least, one of the most cynical portrayals of the Occupation in media for a long time.

You can watch right here, via YouTube:

If you have to ask why this ad is offensive, do not be afraid to ask (I'm not being sarcastic), really do.
It may not be overly apparent for some.

The West Bank village on Bil'in, which has been demonstrating and protesting against the wall for over four years now, put together a brilliant response for this fucked up add.
This is what really happens, which the IDF returns the ball:

If you need to ask why what is portrayed in this video is fucked up, please, go read an Occupation 101 manual or something and educate yourself please.

Questions will be answered seriously, should you actually have any.

I'm no expert, I just say it as I see it and think it.

Mandatory Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett RIP mention.

Each in their own, and very different, ways, shaped pop-culture as we know it.

Thank you for the music and great characters.

Personally, Michael Jackson will always be the artist I associate with my childhood favourite movie "Free Willy" and much like other cultural phenomena of the time, helped shape my conciousness regarding global and environmental issues.

Personally, "Charlie's Angles" was one of the first live-action shows I watched on television and I thought I could be super hero like the rest of those girls, along with Mrs King, Cagney and Lacy and Remington Steel.

( Video under the cut - you may skip, it is cheesy )

Amazon.com, the great book, music, dvd and other assortment of commodities has revamped their sales ranking system.
They're in fact, removed the sales ranking from what they deem "adult" material.
What does this actually mean, you ask?

An author of a young adult book with an m/m relationship at the centre noticed that the sales of his book disappeared and he wrote to Amazon, this is the reply he received:

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.

Best regards,

Ashlyn D

Member Services

Amazon.com Advantage

Here is a list of the books that have been "purged" - It is long and they are all GAY!.
Please note that children's books like Heather has Two Mommies and Am I Blue? are included in this list.
The Playboy Centrefold, however, is not.

Books containing LGBT material of any kind are no longer ranked in sales and are not part of best seller searches.

So much for targeting "adult" content.

This is blatant homophobia and I urge you, if you care about the representation and treatment of queers in real life and the media write letters and boycott them.
In Protest of Amazon's New "Adult" Policy - Petition.

If you want to buy books online might I suggest Better World Books?

I'm off to remove my Wish list from Amazon and create an independent one.

I'm more boggled than pissed off to tell you the truth, as just today I added things of they consider "adult" content to my shopping cart and must say I'm so very disappointed in their (what I feel is) a reactionary response to the changing social climate on the US.

Screw them.

Yeah... I am a bit pissed.

Edited to Add: Means of directly contacting Amazon.com:
connect-help@amazon.com
http://clicheideas.com/amazon.htm

Jeffrey Bezos, CEO
AMAZON.COM
1200 12th Avenue South
Seattle, Washington 98144-2734
United States
Phone: 206-266-1000
Fax: 206-622-2405

Edited to Add again: I love you Neil!!!

When I saw this video, I was shocked at the amount of utter badness one managed to condense into one minute and 8 seconds.



There's your Beauty Myth ideology at the basis of the video.
The beautification of bodily mutilation.
Big, huge, honking amounts of racism ("Big Bushes" for the Black girl, tiny "Bonsai" bushes for the Asian girl).
Oh and good ole' female objectification with the comparison of bushes to... well... you get the picture.

A chain saw?
For reals?!

Teevee.
Television.
As a sampler and some-times addict of that potent drug I can't help but try and explain.

Commencing academia babble now:
Benedict Anderson wrote about Imagined Communities, the idea that through a non-existent or imagined commonality we establish the community in which we live.
He speaks mainly about the print and literature in order to exemplify this, because News papers are the most reproduced form of literature in the world today - think of those scenes in 1940's and 50's movies in which the frame is filled with men in fedoras and all of them reading the New York Time or the London Times, etc. Are they looking at one another? Do they communicate with each other? Most likely they can barely recognize each others face, but they are reading the same thing and they imagine or consider what they think about they are reading to be social consensus, despite the fact that they most likely would never talk about what they are thinking to another person.
That's an imagined community.

Television takes it one step further in my opinion.
News papers are relevant until the next edition and it takes conscious thought to read and absorb the information and data printed on a page.
Television by its nature, allows you to switch off your cognitive operations and just sponge in what is going on as you watch the screen.
Television has replaced religion when it comes to values as well.
Once in order to know what was right and wrong you listened to pulpits to tell you who was good, who was evil and what one should believe.
Now television tells us who is vilified, what is beautiful, how we ourselves can be like the idols which we worship on the flat screened alter.
Instead of family prayer, a family will congregate around the television and watch the episode of whatever programme we are addicted to at the moment.
And we obsess about it, no less than people used to obsess about god while those who control and create the discourse make some kind of profit off us "sheeple".

Best Sinfest in recent history!

I come from a family of such weirdos.

A paranoid argument about Chinses economic domination, as though it would have any effect on our culture other than consumption.

The words "Occidental" and "Domination" came up a few times.

Double standard much.

To me it's just proof at the invidiousness of Capitalism and White-Supremacy.

And to think that just a few decades ago this same Occidental culture tried to exterminate us.

How fickle we are.

There is something to be said about the "mainstream".
It is easily accessible, doesn't take a lot of thought into understanding what's going on within it and everybody known exaclty where they stand in it.
Hence the bunch of outsiders that actually create it.

The "mainstream" as I see it, is culture at large. It the images that surround us; News, ads, television, magazines (lad, fashion, finance, etc.), movies and best-seller books.
This can easily be reduced into pop-culture, but since the 80's and the true Material revolution, post-modern thought and resistance to the alienation that we all feel with ourselves and with each other.

Beyond being this invidious entity that creates the outsiders, which I've always felt a part of because I could never really feel comfortable in within the parameters the mainstream allows us to exist. The "mainstream" with great ease takes the existence of the culture that lives on its margins, on its fringe and slowly swallows it up and digests it until it is reduced to it's very basic ingredients.
The first thing that comes to mind as an example are the sponsored Pride events that I no longer enjoy as I once did, since the movement has become much more about assimilation than about liberation.
Which is the crux of the "mainstream" - assimilation.

To me the "mainstream" can be easily be replaced with hegemony.

This was a long exposition to the effect of the assimilation process has on one of my favourite sub-genre of literature.
Comic books.

Statistics show that the amount of comic book readers have been slowly reducing over the years - where once you could buy a 25 page issue at any kiosk, you now have to go to comic book stores, meaning that the genre has become even more marginalised than ever before. In the 50's they were considered a public menace, now they're barely even considered.

Not so the heroes of the genre.

The popularity of the comic book characters, specifically Superman (DC), Batman (DC), Spiderman (Marvel) and Captain America (Marvel) has never wavered - Superman and Captain America for their sheer symbolism as the protectors of The Way of Life from the enemies without. Batman and Spiderman for their symbolism as the protectors of our own lives from the enemies within (and within ourselves).

No one can ignore the fact that in the past decade Superhero movies have been on the rise.
This is a double edged sword in my mind - the "mainstream" is a money chaser and it creates the criterion which will enable them to make the most money, that is appealing to the population that has money.
And so the circle turns.
I'm very much a member of this population, by the way, in case that wasn't apparent.

Now there's nothing inherently wrong with the rising of the superhero movie genre from b-movie to blockbuster, what concerns me is the message and the changes the characters have to undergo in order the be in the acceptable criterion that makes them so popular(1).

Warner Brothers has announced a new movie making strategy which will enable them to make a ton of more money - Warner Bets on Fewer, Bigger Movies.
Within this little announcement are these interesting sentences:

"Superheroes are more global than ever in today's commercial world, existing in 30 languages and in more than 60 countries," says Paul Levitz, president and publisher of DC Comics. The characters are "a world-wide export," he says.

And

Warner Bros. also put on hold plans for another movie starring multiple superheroes -- known as "Batman vs. Superman" -- after the $215 million "Superman Returns," which had disappointing box-office returns, didn't please executives. "'Superman' didn't quite work as a film in the way that we wanted it to," says [Jeff] Robinov [Warner Bros. Pictures Group President]. "It didn't position the character the way he needed to be positioned." "Had 'Superman' worked in 2006, we would have had a movie for Christmas of this year or 2009," he adds. "But now the plan is just to reintroduce Superman without regard to a Batman and Superman movie at all."

Emphasis mine.

"Superman Returns" didn't work as a movie, mainly because of the reason I really liked it - Superman/Clark was too alien and one was unable to relate to him as a person, which is kind of what makes him so lovable (though personally, I do not like him as a hero).

"Batman Begins" was a great movie (despite the stupid ninja thing) because in it Bruce Wayne goes through the process of becoming Batman - who he really is - and he confronted his fear, ha ha, symbolism.
In "The Dark Knight", Bruce still in the process of evolution into Batman and has to confront what he has the potential to become - a monster.

I've heard two people say that Batman in "The Dark Knight" represents the American Way.
To me, this is anathema to what Batman is, for him to represent anything other than what the American Way seeks to hide, seems wrong.

But that's what the "mainstream" is about, isn't it. To feed us something that the lowest common denominator can swallow without chewing.
Had the Joker won (though in a way he did. Haha), the unease that the movie would have caused would have created such a backlash that it wouldn't have been able it to become the blockbuster effect it is.
It's why the Joker feels like a much bigger presence in the movie (at least to me) than Batman. Christian Bale, fantastic actor that he is, was a bit short changed when it came to this role, there was no development on his part - though we see the extent he is willing to go in order to win without killing (yeah that sonar thing, no way it's the only one and no way it's really destroyed, Bruce would rather gnaw off his leg that get rid of a gadget that useful).
Batman is the Way of Life (something better represented by Harvey Dent and Gordon, in my opinion) rather than the Way We Are.
The Joker is an enemy to Society at large instead of being the abyss we look into and laughs at us in return.

The "mainstream" made Batman into an Urban Superman.
I can't say I approve.

Notes:
(1) I could really go into the representation of women, people of colour, queers etc. But due to the shortness of space (and to keep y'all from getting bored) I'm focusing on the subject at hand.

I've seen many sexist adds in my life, because hey, I'm a child of Consumer Culture... advertisement is the culture.

But this one, takes the cake. ( Video Under The Cut )

I'm not a huge drinker, I in fact don't drink that much as I dislike being more than buzzed and it doesn't take much for me to get a buzz.
I do, however, know what I like in my alcohol and if there is a beer that I really relish drinking, it's Guinness.
I mean for fuck's sake one of my planned stops while I was in Dublin was the Guinness Brewery!

And now they bloody well went and ruined my love for them and their clever and hilarious adverts.
Fuck them. They just lost a loyal consumer.
*weeps*

Edited To Add: I'm so upset by this that I actually wrote a letter to Guinness. Here's what I wrote ( Under the cut )