SerpentLibertine just posted a video. It’s worth watching, mainly because it’s all true.
[via Melissa]
Filed under: gay, hookers, internet, music, tv | Tags: carnal nation, duffy, facebook, jessica fletcher, katy perry, queer suicide, sex work, torrents, trent reznor
Students think that sex work is pretty okay
Homeland Security shut down over seventy torrent sites over the weekend without any notice, taking advantage of the fact that most tech sites would be on vacation and unlikely to cause a fuss.
I stopped writing for Carnal Nation over the summer and they shut down last month. But it looks like they’re coming back?
I think I like this new Duffy song, although doesn’t it seem like “Mercy” was fifty years ago at this point?
Twenty years on, I’m thinking about maybe finally buying Pretty Hate Machine.
The Queer Suicide Teach-In last month at Brown/RISD is now online.
Jezebel wonders what you would do if Katy Perry crapped out a pizza for you.
[image: Sugar and Lust typed her dad's Facebook page on an electric typewriter]
Filed under: hookers, people from rhode island, porn | Tags: amazon, cybersocket, gay art, internet porn, movember, pedophilia, prostitution, pulp, rhode island, sweden, the smithsonian, the un, trafficking
While I sit here and wait for a call from a pair of models who may be flaking on me, I thought I’d drop you some news updates.
A little over one year after prostitution was criminalized in Rhode Island, the police have brought their first trafficking charges against two 23-year old men from New York who, according to be police, first came to Rhode Island because of the prostitution law. Surprisingly, the Providence Journal article spends three paragraphs describing how the trafficked woman was not carried away in handcuffs, and how she was immediately taken to meet with an advocate from Day One, a local rape crisis center.
The UN, however, does not have nice things to say about American sex work laws.
The king of Sweden used to visit Mafia-run sex clubs when he was younger, according to a new book.
The Smithsonian is looking at gay portraiture for the first time since, like, ever.
Consumers went nuts this week calling for an Amazon boycott, after it came out that they were selling a pro-pedophilia book. Hundreds of people responded by angrily giving the book a one-star rating.
Nominations are out for this year’s Cybersocket Awards; again, I realize I know nothing at all about the current state of porn.
It’s Movember.
Finally, you’ve probably heard this already, but it’s worth repeating: Pulp are getting back together!
[image: Croatian designer Matija Drozdek; via Escape Into Life]
Filed under: books, gay, heterosexuals, hookers, hot, in praise of athletic beauty, internet, music | Tags: addictions and rituals, alexa dicarlo, boners, books, death in venice, e-cigarettes, jon secada, netflix, new york, pat bohannon, penises, prostitution, sports, suicide bombers, the british, the incomparable hildegarde, twin peaks, uniforms, world cup
As it turns out, the World Cup didn’t have much of an impact on South Africa’s sex trade.
I recently learned about The Incomparable Hildegarde, a Wisconsin-born cabaret singer who performed for about seventy years and who inspired much of Liberace’s act. She was wildly populat in the forties and, it should be repeated, went by the name The Incomparable Hildegarde.
Tess Lynch on smoking electronic cigarettes, something my friend Kerry recently described as “all the ritual of heroin addiction without actually having to do heroin.” Unlike Tess Lynch, I’ve only heard good things about the Jupiter Hotel. But, you know, different social circles, maybe.
When I was thirteen I’d get a boner from pretty much any man who was on my television and wearing a sleeveless shirt. (Which also explains why I tolerated professional basketball for so long.) But this week I was reminded of the video for “Whipped,” one of Jon Secada’s less-remembered steamy Latin hits of 1994. I’m totally ready for a Secada revival if you are, by the way. (I even sang “Just Another Day” at karaoke recently…)
New Yorkers can’t stop touching Adam’s golden penis.
Someone recently directed me to this athletic uniform blog, which is reeeeeeeeally thorough.
I’ve been thinking about joining Netflix, because I’m kind of a dullard about movies lately, and also because it would give me an excuse to spend more time at home. If I do, Visconti’s Death In Venice would be at the top of the list, because I (somehow?) didn’t even know it existed until this week.
In the Books That Sound Really Interesting But Which I’ll Probably Never Get Around To Because I Never Read Books Like That category: Cutting The Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How To Stop It.
Finally, The British are finally starting to appreciate Twin Peaks again.
[video: Army Of Lovers' Jean-Pierre Barda advertising vegan Swedish condoms]
Filed under: hookers, internet | Tags: alexa dicarlo, stupidity, the internet
Your opinion about stripper/escort/student Alexa DiCarlo may vary, depending on whether you come here to read the sex work stuff (which, sorry there’s barely any of that anymore) or the music stuff (in which case you probably have no idea who she is.) But, to refresh: About nine months ago, people seriously began to question the authenticity of Alexa’s escort blog, The Real Princess Diaries. Folks found it odd that a full-time student/escort would be able to spend to much time on the internet. Because in addition to her blog, she had an extremely active Twitter feed, a Tumblr (or four), and a blog about (oddly) Yellowstone.
Previously, Alexa (then known as Caitlin) ran a dodgy sex-advice site called Caitlain’s Corner, which started after she was banned from the forums at both student.com and Scarleteen. That site’s gone now, as are pretty much all of Alexa’s sites.
Last year, right around Christmas, some people got some creepy ideas. A blog appeared offering to expose fake sex workers and threatening to publish specific bloggers’ real names, outing them to their regular employers. A lot of the sex work community got (understandably) upset about the witch-hunt aspect of this. Meanwhile my then-employer, Carnal Nation, decided to call it a free speech issue, defending the vigilante types and using the scandal as a rather odd way of introducing new blogging features on their site. (People were really unhappy with that one; so was I, though I also needed a job and didn’t want to get involved with that.)
After January I didn’t hear much. I still get hits here every few days from people searching things like “is alexa dicarlo real?” But I didn’t hear any news until today, when I saw on Kate Bornstein’s Twitter that Alexa seems to actually be a government employee in Delaware named Pat Bohannon.
If you’re thinking about it, read this Stranger article by Benjamin Nicholas. It’s pretty common sense-ish, but it’s all 100% good advice.
Filed under: art, books, hookers, internet, personal | Tags: angostura sours, blurb, books, change.org, goodreads, npr, peeping tom, prostitution, the environment, the iPad, the kindle
The Telegraph on the fiftieth anniversary of Peeping Tom, one of my all-time favorite movies.
The Millions isn’t really into Goodreads, although for me it’s the one social network that actually tends to lead to interesting real-life conversations. (I guess you don’t have that problem when you’re already a famous book blogger, though…)
I just this week stumbled across high-class self-publishing site Blurb and so of course now I’m planning a book which will haunt me for months and then never happen.
Change.org continues to conflate prostitution with human trafficking. Also their math isn’t so good.
Articles about how iPads and Kindles are more environmentally friendly than printed books continue to make no sense to me. Also, shut up.
Finally, NPR recommended drinking angostura sours in honor of Mad Men. I have yet to see a single episode of that show, but bitters and egg whites sounds like a win-win cocktail for me.
[image: Still from Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960)]
Here’s an illustration of me reading at the Sex Worker Cabaret event I did in New York in June. It was done by Luma Rouge, an artist based in the Big Apple. I’m very excited, because I’m pretty sure I’ve never been realistically illustrated before, and also because I had thought my Pottery Barn joke tanked during the reading. Photos of nearly all the performers (all of which are in color and show the performer from the front…) are posted on Ms. Rouge’s Facebook; I’m not sure if they’re anywhere else.
Filed under: hookers, magazines | Tags: $pread magazine, magazines, sadness, sex work
This November marks the one-year anniversary of the change in Rhode Island’s prostitution law, and I was thinking the other day about writing a story to see what change, if any, the law’s had on Ocean State sex workers. Obviously my first idea was to send the story to $pread, especially since I had just read the interview with editor Will Rockwell in Mother Jones last week.
So I e-mailed over my idea, but just hours later I found out, via Gchat status update, that $pread had just announced that it would be closing its doors after the next two issues come out.
Filed under: books, gay, hookers, internet, Italians, porn | Tags: bjork, china, cumshots, dragons having sex with cars, human rights, italy, reality condoms, rl stine, shirley sherrod, visible penis lines
Banana Republic’s herringbone pants are available in big and tall.
Lynsey G from McSweeney’s on the meaning of the money shot. I like her column because she’s so completely ambivalent about everything. But also right.
China will hopefully put an end to “shame parades,” in which suspected prostitutes are shackled together and then forced to walk around in public.
Reality condoms. I don’t know anything about these from a health or pleasure standpoint, but maybe they’re a good thing?
The Reykjavik Grapevine interviews Bjork about Iceland’s economy, working with Antony, and how Paris Hilton basically saved serious pop music. Definitely worth reading.
Racism, Shirley Sherrod and the Obama White House. I’m not one to post political stuff, normally, but Sherrod’s forced resignation is one of the most fascinating (and also stupid) things I’ve heard of in a long, long time.
Is Italy too Italian? (And are those Italian clothes actually Italian at all?)
Finally, I spent a good chunk of this week reading some (extremely long) reviews of early-nineties RL Stine novels, written in 2010 by an adult. This, because I was trying desperately to remember the name of the author who wrote the deranged killer story that I read when I was maybe ten, that took place in a Rhode Island ice cream place. (It was Ellen Emerson White.)
