Archive for the ‘sex’ tag
Send the Kids out of the Room for Big Link Friday…
Wow I had a hard time getting down to writing this week’s BLF. I’d thought I’d gotten the jump on it, but then Inspiration just flew away.
So I’m just going to blurt it all out. Without the clever transitions I was envisioning. Some of this stuff is NSFW just so you know before clicking on the links.
Much of my work is about the sexual implications of objects, leading me to be interested in the designs of sex toys so when I ran across a couple of references to the Sqweel, i.e. this on line I was immediately taken by it’s weird mix of organic and mechanical. How well it would actually work for anything I don’t really know. But it also reminded me of two other things. One is a prop in a scene scene I’m almost certain that I saw in Bob Guccione’s Caligula and the other is from this drawing, by Tomi Ungerer.(That’s a terrible picture I just shot because I couldn’t find a reasonable version of it online.)
Weirdly enough the next day there was a profile of Ungerer in The New York Times
Ungerer was one of those European Illustrators who could draw like a madman and really framed the Sixties graphic sensibility. Taschen had a great book of his erotic stuff called Erotoscope, which seems to be out of print. Getting my own copy down to look up the drawing showed me that I had screwed up the dust cover a bit, and now that I see what used copies are going for on Amazon, I regret that even more.
It takes a lot of looking at drawings to keep me going on my own drawings. This bit from Milton Glaser is a big help, not only for what he has to say but for the boggling grace with which he’s putting down lines.
The Times also had a link to this blog: http://inklines.blogspot.com/ which has some sweet drawings that aren’t so much to my taste but I do love the steady working method and devotion that he brings to the process. For the Times story see here.
I also ran across an archive of the work of Karl Hans Janke an eccentric artist and inventor. Lots of fanciful flying machines.
Finding his work also led me to this beautiful blog: http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/ which has a wealth of odd illustration.
Finally three unrelated things:
Spezify is a newish search engine with a different kind of interface. Try heading over there and entering “Tomi Ungerer” into the search panel. I can see the way that I wouldn’t work for certain types of things. But there’s something very appealing to me about the collage way of looking at information.
Kate Bornstein twittered about this band, and now I just want to be their groupie.
Some one posted this (Coulrophobics beware) in the Live Journal Vintage Ads community. I love all of the type on this package. I spent a bunch of time looking for faces like that of the Sugar Smacks logo. Any one have any ideas of what typeface is?
Tags: big link friday, drawing, sexRelated posts
Flashing some Fur, and Big Link Friday….
ig link Friday is my sorry attempt at #followfriday as well as a fulfillment of my promise to make this blog more of a resource. Also I’m impressed with the way that people like Thor make their ljs about so much more than the repeated tracks of their obsessions. So here’s some of the stuff I’m enjoying these days. Hopefully it’ll spice up your weekend.
This weekend is the New York Art Book Fair, which gets more exhausting every year. It’s a fantastic event, but there is so much stuff. My bank account is already making whimpering sounds.
What’s great about the artists’ book thing is that it’s another example of D.I.Y. culture. Printed Matter has managed to bring together both the art and ‘zine strains of this into something that seems to be spawning a whole new generation of practitioners. It a way of making things that has been much on my mind lately.
Along with that, here’s a project that I ran across this week which is the first thing to make me interested in Star Wars in a long time: Star Wars Uncut, a project where random people are remaking the first movie in fifteen second chunks. There’s something so great about this: it’s a project that talks about the way that certain films get lodged in our collective memory, about methods community art making, and it treats the film as a kind of musical score. Watch the trailer: the bits that are finished so far are already awesome.
Along with communities coming together to make weird things happen with data there’s the more than slightly sleazy but totally safe for work I Just Made love a google map of where snu snu has just happened all over the world or at least where people want us to think it has happened. So now we can all broadcast our smug. I like the fact that they allow you to add a note to your record, as well as to let people know if you’re getting it on indoors or under heaven’s vault. You can zoom in to see if there’s anyone else on your block up to hanky panky.
After sex, what then? For many of us it’s video games, and as we all know the best video games are free and have “Donkey” in the title. So here’s Time Donkey, which is kind of like Groundhog Day with a donkey and also tacos. Wow, I wish I had some tacos right now. My breakfast is wearing off.
Speaking of clumsy transitions, I’ve been on a breakfast yogurt and muesli kick for the past few months ever since Sylt, and for the last two days the yogurt has come from Butterworks Farm. It has the kick that I remember yogurt having when I first tried it. My font of idle curiosity is endless and so i checked today to see if the company is online at all. The farm seems to be run by an earnest Vermont couple (with a studly husband by the name of Jack). I picked up the yogurt without much thinking, and now I’m surprised at how much more connected I feel with it after having looked at the website. This is what ad companies are spend millions to do theses days: to make us feel a personal connection to brands, with “web presence”. Have I just been tickled in my target audience spot by the home spun nature of Butterworks Farm’s site? In truth, I have no greater proximity to them now than when I was shoveling their milk product into my maw a few hours ago, yet I think I’m developing some brand loyalty.
That’s one of the tricks of digital media – it is both intimate and far away at the same time. Like yesterday Nick Frost retweeted me! That means we are totally super friends now, right?
Finally, if you like that drop cap that I began the post with, you should go over to this site where designer Jessica Hische is putting up one drop cap each day. Click through and look at the rest of her charming work.
P.S. Oh yeah – fur flashing: there’s some peeking out of the open collar there. And I got bored and braided my beard.
Tags: big link friday, books, food, movies, online life, sexRelated posts
New York to Kinksters: Don’t Be It, Damn It…
At last night’s TES meeting someone who has been around New York’s leather life for a long time talked about the “scene getting bland” in the midst of reminiscing about the Hellfire Club. Their observation was not dissimilar to those made many times in my circles, and for the most part everyone seems content to let it pass as a truism and move on. I was in a crabby mood however, and lobbed the observation that the the blanding of the scene is no accident, and that from where I stood, there has been a systematic attempt regulate non-conformist sexuality into invisibility in New York over the last twenty years. And then this afternoon a friend drew my attention to this article.
In terms of this specific case I should be honest: I haven’t been the hugest admirer of the way the previous Leather Weekend Street Festivals have been managed, but this story neatly encapsulates the issues at stake in New York right now. We are faced with a city administration that will do anything to make sure that the preening self regard of international consumption continues without disruption. Having “improved” the meat packing district and Chelsea by making it a safe haven for the overpriced inanities of Stella McCartney, hoteliers can dictate the terms under which their guests can be protected from the horrid prospect of encountering the people who populated the area for decades previous. Shopping must continue smoothly. Elegance and ease above all. Their response to the possibility of public sexuality? “Get a room. Hopefully one of our over priced ones.”
Why is this a big deal? After all, people can fire up their laptops and pickup a willing play partner on Recon or Fetlife. In some ways more people know about Kink than ever before. We have Folsom Street East every year. Private parties still happen around New York, and let’s face it, it’s more fun if it’s a little dirty and underground, right?
It’s a big deal because of the utter quietism that greeted this rollback of opportunity. New York currently has one and a half leather bars in a city of some eight million. One SM club that periodically issues cries for help. And no one is talking about it in a larger sense. Gay and Lesbian political groups have abandoned any attempts to talk about sexual behavior, in a bid to argue for gay people’s rights to replicate the nuclear family with the blessing of the state. NCSF, which we all should be a member and supporter of, has too few resources to do much more than put out fires, like last years rash of raids and closings of pro-dom houses and the attendant media frenzy.
Sex and urban life are places where we put our bodies on the line. There is a power to be gained from going outside away from the computer and seeing people do something you hadn’t thought of before, watching people in the exultation of endorphins and endurance, or witnessing the formal elegance of certain D/s couples, or being part of the antic fun of doing fucked up shit, that feels far different from having the “permission” to “do what we want behind closed doors”. When I am confronted by other people’s difference, when it’s inconvenient for me, when it disrupts my somnambulism, I am grateful. That’s what being a city dweller means. It does not mean being a mall shopping gated community denizen with better views and an account at “Design Within Reach”.
Shortly after moving back to New York in 1996, I was involved in the early days of something called Sex Panic!. As an organization it didn’t sustain itself, in part because (in my view) much of its activist stance was pitched at fighting a battle in academic queer studies circles, and it lacked a sense of how to really negotiate the ins and outs of community board politics, which would be the only way to address the development issues in New York. At least it had the will to argue for the sorts of things that few kinky people ever speak out for these days: the right to inhabit our own skin in public without shame or apology. It also was willing to draw the connections between the erosion of sexual freedoms with the erosion of public space. Guiliani presented the thuggish bullying face of that trend. Bloomberg presents the nannyish. Both of them agree that what is paramount good for the city is business, that development and displacement are somehow natural processes that only the irrational would think to question, and that making it all the same is making it all better. In every pot a CVS and every man a hedge fund manager and all that.
Commerce is one thing that makes cities great. Confusion is another. So the next time you’re thinking that you aren’t having as much fun as you used to, don’t blame it on the young folks who don’t know how to do things right or the Stand and Model crowd. Look instead at the shills in city hall who have been working so hard to make us all so much safer and saner. Did they do it with your consent? And if not when will you work up the nerve to tell them?
Tags: activism, anger, dissapointment, kink, new york life, politics, sexRelated posts
Folsom Street East…
I’ve been going to this event for something like ten years. Originally I wasn’t going to be attending this one, but circumstances intervened. Spent two hours volunteering at TES’ table, which was a good spot to be during the two by now obligatory downpours, since we had a canopy. I saw so many friends, old and new, from out of town and local, expected and surprising, that it made my head swim. Literally: after about four hors, during which I made it down to the end of the block and back maybe twice, my agorophobia come on so strong that all I could think about was getting out of the crowd and into some less stimulating place. A couple of friends could read it on my face, and nicely sent me off.
The was much hotness to be seen and much smooching occurred. For once, the only thing I bought was a copy of david stein’s new book. He graciously consented to sign it for me. And now I have to turn my attention to everything I need to get done before July, when I will be heading out for a month on my own.
Tags: agorophobia, bdsm, daily photo, Folsom Street east, sex, tesRelated posts
Splish splash…
So Mike has been in town and yesterday he, I, his friend Karen, and Lolita took ourselves off to five hours of liquid satisfaction at Spa Castle. Bliss is a well placed jet of water. If you’re a New York resident or planning a visit, make your host take you there: it’s like a civilized water park with immaculate saunas and a decent food court thrown in. You can get baked eggs. One note though: bring a change of clothes, because you end up so clean that putting your old duds on at the end of it can be a bit of a let down.
We also had two fantastic meals: before we submerged ourselves we had a very civilized brunch with Thor at good. And on the way home we joined Jason and Sue at SriPraPhai (sorry Dan, I know we should have called you), which has expanded and remodeled and yet was still as delicious as ever. Then J was so very kind as to offer Mike and I a ride back to my place, where a not too disgruntled Lehigh awaited her evening walk. There was a little canoodling, and then the Sandman showed up for a three-way.
You could say I was satisfied.
Tags: brooklyn, daily photo, food, friends, new york in black and white, sex, spa castle, thorRelated posts
Hooray for Visitors…
I have a new safeword…
The eepc is now running eeebuntu. After messing around with it on a stickdrive for a while, I decided to bite the bullet and ditch the operating system Asus shipped it with. But this is being written on the desktop. I’m seated in my office chair and Lehigh is perched on the bed, pawing at my shoulder to catch my attention.
Yesterday’s talks left me with a lot to think about.
First, the problems I have becoming a manager: Because of my training as an artist, I am used to solving problems on my own with my hands. When making work, I have If I need to get something done, I like to speak to the other people involved face to face. I tend to drop in on other people at their desks and ask for their help then and there. I’m uncomfortable with the phone and to a lesser extent with email. So I assume responsibility for every aspect of a project, but not in the sense that I can get my team to do everything I ask of them: I mean it in terms that I believe internally that I’ll do everything. This ends up limiting what I can think of in terms of projects.
Just finished reading The Other Side of Desire by Daniel Bergner. It reads just like what it is: a group of four articles that could have appeared in The New Yorker, or the New York Times Magazine. Each focuses on one personality with a different sexual kink: a foot fetishist, a sadist, a pedophile and a person with a fetish for amputees. Each person then becomes the scaffolding for Bergner’s examination of various schools of thought regarding the structure of sexual desire and the treatment of deviance. It’s all very earnest investigative journalism except where Bergner turns to rhapsody to try to capture the intensity of his subjects’ emotional lives, a ploy that makes for bumpy reading. The quartet of people are both exemplary of some idea in treatment or theory about the brain, and yet supposed to be individuals. As a narrator, Bergner tries to finesse the line that separates “nonjudgmental” from “implicated”. I was highly conscious of his emotional discomforts but left without any sense of his own introspection. The blurb from the Times says that he has a “novelist’s eye”. He certainly doesn’t have a novelist’s brain, since the the four pieces have very little to do with one another from any sort of structural view. Before the mysteries of desire, he displays convention and all of its waffling. From another book I’m reading, Pema Chodron’s Comfortable With Uncertainty: “Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move towards turbulence and doubt however we can”. To make that move and find pleasure in that turbulence is the value of sex.
From that I guess you can tell that I didn’t much care for the book.
Notes, notes, notes: I’m continually making them, but rarely taking the time to revisit them and turn them into something more substantial. Through out my current life I’m spread among many details. Someone asked me last week what I was working on, and in the larger sense I didn’t have a real answer for it. It’s time to get back to building.
Lehigh’s been walked, the rain is pouring down, and I’ve moved back to the laptop to finish this entry. Less got done today than I hoped, but that’s alright.
Tags: art, eeepc, management, reading, reflection, self destruction, sexRelated posts
I’ve sat next to hotness…
I’m feeling down these past couple of days: cut off, out of it. And physically a bit wrong. The causes are multiple, but a big one is the fact that Monday was the anniversary of Phil’s death. Along with a couple of other dates in the year, it’s become a spot where I have to watch for my emotions to go into a nose dive. I’ve also been on a extended period of eating poorly and not moving as much as I’d like. Finding out what my tax debt for the past year is was not much of a help either.
Paradoxically, my solution in part to the eating issue is to cancel my weekly deliveries from Urban Organics. This is the second time I’ve used their service and both times I went into it with the idea that I would cook at home more, and eat healthier. But the result has been the opposite: a box of vegetables arrives, and while there is stuff in there that I like, there’s stuff that I don’t like as well, If I don’t eat it right away it starts to spoil, and then I feel guilty about buying stuff from the market. Which means that I eat out more and still have the sneaking suspicion that I could purchase the same amount of food myself for less. So no more deliveries, and I go back to shopping more regularly.
The other kooky thing I’m doing to cheer myself up Is to remind myself of the groovy people I have been lucky enough to make contact with this past year, including the fellow mischief-maker above. It’s now been three times that I’ve had fun with him, and we have the fourth on the schedule. So creepy as I may feel, there are folks out there willing to knock some sense into me. And I’m grateful for that.
Tags: food, friends, gratitude, self destruction, sexRelated posts
Howdy boys!
Today’s welcome screen from Photobucket. It’s nice to have such personalized service!
Related posts
Animal planet…
I went looking for action on Saturday night and I got it in the wilds of New Jersey. I had much fun and the results were nothing as a traumatic as this (courtesy of marian333). My accent remains intact.
While researching this entry this story came up, which leads me to think that despite decades of ursine identification on my part, truth be told, it’s time for me to come out at a wombat.
An A-List one.
And now I can start telling all of you who is and isn’t a real one.
Tags: animals, sex