Inside Gloria's Mind

The Speech You May Have Missed

I was surfing the tv the other day, looking for news about a speech Al Gore was scheduled to deliver at NYU. Advance reports said that Gore would be calling for the resignation of several key Bush administration officials. I don't care much for Gore but the topic definitely got my attention. So I flipped back and forth from CNN to HNN to MSNBC to FOX and CNBC and C-SPAN, certain that someone would be covering this highly political speech, if only to blast it. Former Vice Presidents usually do get air-time when they make radical statements. Or so I thought. Only one channel--I think it was CNN--was following the story. They had cameras in the NYU lecture hall and began to broadcast the speech live when...

WHOOSH! A big terror alert from the Feds, and a sudden White House Press conference, swept the air-waves! Everything changed, Gore was gone and utterly forgotten, replaced by various Bush officials explaining how, while we are staying the same color for now (are we at orange? yellow? personally, I'm purple, but that's another story...), and even though they haven't heard anything new or substantive, and don't know when or where or really if anything might happen this summer, it's important that all Americans be scared out of their minds right now.

Naturally, the Gore story just DIED. Who cares what an ex-Vice President has to say when the Bush people are telling us to be scared? I didn't see another video clip of Gore all day. None of the talking head shows advertised coverage. Even print media barely reported it or (as in the case of the NY Post, Rupert Murdoch's baby) only reported it to bash Gore and have Podhoretz, a GOP spin-meister, declare him insane, thus dismissing all Gore's important ideas as crazy ranting. Have you ever heard Podhoretz speak? I don't doubt for a minute that he knows all about being crazy.

In doing a google search today, I was bemused to find that foreign presses took top spots while while other links led to mainly small, local papers. The NY Times ran an OpEd piece by Bob Herbert, which was, at best, a tepid plea for people to take Gore seriously. Good Lord: no one had to tell people to take Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter seriously when they denounced Clinton's extra marital affairs and Ford and Carter were two of the worst presidents of the 20th century. (In my never humble opinion, of course.) There is something insidious about even suggesting that one's first reaction to Gore is to brush him off. I may not like Gore but I take his opinions about foreign policy a hell of a lot more seriously than Gerald Ford's opinion on Bill Clinton's philandering or Dan Quayle's opinion about Murphy Brown's tv pregnancy (remember how much press that story got?).

Instead the news for the past couple of days has been all about the Non-News story of a terror threat we all know is there and which has not grown more nor less dangerous. All that day tv media broadast and then parsed speeches in excruciating detail, recruiting terror experts who essentially all said the same thing: there is no story here. There's no new information, no new developments, no reason to think the risk is bigger now than it was last week. Then they'd shift to White House spokepeople who wouldn't say whether or not the terror experts were right but emphasized how important it is for Americans to be vigilant--as if any of us have forgotten that we are at war with lunatics who want to see us all die. Er, perhaps I'm alone in this, but I haven't stopped feeling vigilant since 9/11. Judging by the number of times local police have sent in bomb squads to investigate suspicious lunch-pails and briefcases, I'll guess that I'm not the only American whose way of thinking about security has altered over the past few years.

Meanwhile, it seems the American public already feels that whether or not a terrorist attack occurs is just not something they, or the government, can control. Here are some results from a poll currently running on AOL:

**How confident are you that the U.S. could stop another attack?
Somewhat 49%
Not at all 38%
Very 13% **

With 87% of respondents believing that the US can't stop another attack, it's pretty obvious we aren't "winning the war on terrorism," certainly not in the minds of Americans. But why get distracted by facts when you can call a press conference, and get tons of air time to parade around, and make it look like you're on top of things when you don't even know which end is up?

Maybe I'm just a wee bit cynical but is it possible that the White House TIMED this non-news, non-event to distract attention from a speech that could have hurt them? Is it possible this was just another example of "Wag the Dog" politics, staging a fake event to distract Americans from real events?

Here are some tidbits from Gore's speech, beginning with the call for resignations:

***"We simply cannot afford to further increase the risk to our country with more blunders by this team. Donald Rumsfeld, as the chief architect of the war plan, should resign today. His deputies Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and his intelligence chief Stephen Cambone should also resign. The nation is especially at risk every single day that Rumsfeld remains as Secretary of Defense.

Condoleeza Rice, who has badly mishandled the coordination of national security policy, should also resign immediately.

George Tenet should also resign. I want to offer a special word about George Tenet, because he is a personal friend and I know him to be a good and decent man. It is especially painful to call for his resignation, but I have regretfully concluded that it is extremely important that our country have new leadership at the CIA immediately."

***"Now the White House has informed the American people that they were also "all wrong" about their decision to place their faith in Ahmed Chalabi, even though they have paid him 340,000 dollars per month. 33 million dollars (CHECK) and placed him adjacent to Laura Bush at the State of the Union address. Chalabi had been convicted of fraud and embezzling 70 million dollars in public funds from a Jordanian bank, and escaped prison by fleeing the country. But in spite of that record, he had become one of key advisors to the Bush Administration on planning and promoting the War against Iraq.

And they repeatedly cited him as an authority, perhaps even a future president of Iraq. Incredibly, they even ferried him and his private army into Baghdad in advance of anyone else, and allowed him to seize control over Saddam's secret papers.

Now they are telling the American people that he is a spy for Iran who has been duping the President of the United States for all these years. "

***"The president episodically poses as a healer and "uniter". If he president really has any desire to play that role, then I call upon him to condemn Rush Limbaugh perhaps his strongest political supporter who said that the torture in Abu Ghraib was a "brilliant maneuver" and that the photos were "good old American pornography," and that the actions portrayed were simply those of "people having a good time and needing to blow off steam."
**************************************************************

So what do you think? Is Gore insane? Are these the rantings of a madman or perhaps the indignation of someone who recognizes corruption and incompetence in high places (as well he should).

I'll end with two quotes.

"Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." --Lord Acton

"There's an old saying...that says, fool me once, shame on--shame on you. Fool me--you can't get fooled again." --George W. Bush

I hope American voters won't be fooled again.

And you call yourself a masochist?

Top this! Malaysian woman to perform Indian dance on bed of 10,000 nails

(Hey, she's cute...I might like to top this myself....*fluttering eyelashes*)

Used Panty Fetishist Alert!

Who said you had to go on the Internet and pay jacked-up prices for ladies used undies when you can shop at Macy's or Saks and pay retail for used panties.

"Donald Halperin of the New York Metropolitan Retailers Association said the issue was mainly about women's undergarments because women care more about such issues more than men. "

Hmm...and apparently men don't mind driving on other men's skid marks.

Photographic Excursions

I'm not usually that impressed with catalogues of "best" photos, but must admit that this site's choice of Best Pictures of 2003 lives up to its claim. Wow! I love good photography and by the time I'd looked through all of these I felt as if I'd taken a visual holiday. Hope you enjoy 'em too.

(Thanks to my buddy Alan for sending me this link!)

Spanky the Clown Goes Down

Spanky the clown arrested on child porn charges

The photo really says it all, no?

Dog Has His Day

N.Y. Lawyer Fined for Barking at Witness

Considering it happened in New York, it's a wonder he didn't piss on their legs too.

I'm Not Surprised. Are You Surprised?

A bunch of guys were just busted for having sex in a public bathroom, and apparently the cops were flabbergasted to discover that the men were mostly closeted. Duh.

"You have these men, adult men, who are using public restrooms to engage in oral sex ... Surprisingly, a lot of the folks are married."

The Sadomasochism in Us All

Iraq Prison Torture Was for Fun, Not Results-Paper

"The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself." --Spec. Charles Graner, prison
guard at Abu Ghraib

It's almost painful for an ethical sadomasochist to read this. First, because the sadomasochist in me loves to make a grown man piss himself too. Second, because moral context is everything. Sadomasochism without morality is violence.

It would be very interesting to open a dialogue on the seldom-acknowledged fact that all human beings have sadomasochistic impulses. It's how we act them out, and to what degree, that varies.

At least that's how I see it.

Abu Ghraib and Bergen-Belsen

In early 1946, my parents--who'd spent most of WWII being involuntarily transported across the former USSR on Stalin's trains--returned to their native land of Poland. Everything and everyone they'd ever known had vanished. They were soon swept up by a Jewish rescue and relief organization. By 1947, they were living in a Displaced Persons (DP) camp in Germany.

Although it was hardly comfortable, the DP camp restored some semblance of dignity to their lives. For the first time since the 1930s, they had a secure place to live. They had medical care. They could attend religious services. They even got some money. It was enough to buy food, and the dishes to eat it on too. They could afford bedding and new clothes. At the time, these were all unimaginable luxuries to them.

They lived in the DP camp until 1949, while my sole American uncle worked to get their papers cleared and their visas granted. There was discord in the camp and grief and madness, as you would expect among the starving, battered survivors of war. And it was in Germany, source of their misery, and in a particularly horrible place in Germany.

But for the most part, those years that gave my parents and thousands of other war victims in DP camps across Europe a chance to find their feet again, to live under the protection of a benevolent government (the US, the great benefactor of European war victims), and most important of all, it gave them the opportunity to feel human again. Their basic needs were met. The gnawing terror they'd endured for almost a decade began to fade.

The place? Bergen-Belsen, one of the most notorious German concentration camps, where untold numbers of prisoners were tortured and killed. It is ghoulish to think of the Jewish survivors living in the renovated buildings of a concentration camp that American soldiers had liberated. But how and where else could a huge population of homeless emotional wrecks be housed?

And so the place which once had been a hell for Jews became, for a time, a haven where they could heal from the war. It was at once a magnificently practical and philanthropic gesture by the American command.

Fifty years later, the US went into Iraq and took over a different kind of hell. Instead of a concentration camp, we liberated Abu Ghraib, where Saddam Hussein--often compared to Hitler--tortured and killed prisoners.

What an opportunity it would have been for us had we turned that place into housing for the thousands of people left homeless by our bombs, or the victims and families of people who had been tortured by Hussein. Instead, we chose to let the spirit of torture and degradation live on. Indeed, all we really did there was to change the name of the management. Abu Ghraib is a bigger shame now than it was before, a bigger blight on humanity's moral spirit than Hussein could ever have made it. We expected an evil man like Hussein to run a place of evil. We never expected it of America.

Oh the Humiliation!

It's getting more and more embarrassing to be an American. It's like Mickey and Goofy are running the government. Can you get more transparent than to pick this moment (as yet more appalling footage of how we mistreated and tormented prisoners is being revealed) to ask the UN for an exemption from War Crimes? Are they so dumb they don't realize how dumb this makes the US look?

''Given the recent revelations from Abu Ghraib prison," said Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch (HRW), "the U.S. government has picked a hell of a moment to ask for special treatment on war crimes."

Media Covers Up Bush/Riggs Connection

You may have completely missed the story about how the Riggs Bank was fined $25 million in terrorism probe. Another corrupt bank, another appalling tale of anti-patriotism, another sorry story of money laundering to help some Saudis who were financing terrorists. There are so many leaking out, who can keep track of them?

But what makes this story special is not just that a bank has been fined for what really amounts to treason--it's the fact that somehow all the major media outlets, from the Washington Post to CNN--omitted perhaps the most shocking detail of all. One of the bigwigs at Riggs bank is Jonathan Bush, the uncle of our President.

You have to dig pretty deep into the Leftie/Liberal blogs and media sources even to learn about this important familial tie. Jonathan was not just some distant relative: he's been directly involved in the Bush campaign's financial end. For example, I found the below on a site called American Progress.

"The decision last week by federal regulators to fine Riggs Bank $25 million for a "willful, systemic" violation of anti-money-laundering laws is raising new questions about whether the Bush administration's ties to powerful moneyed interests is unduly influencing U.S. foreign and national security policy. Riggs Bank is headed by longtime Bush family friend Joe Allbritton, employs President Bush's uncle Jonathan as a top executive, and other executives have been financial donors to the Bush campaign. The bank is at the center of a controversy, according to the Wall Street Journal, for failing to monitor "tens of millions of dollars in cash withdrawals from accounts related to the Saudi Arabian and Equatorial Guinean embassy," including "suspicious incidents involving dozens of sequentially numbered cashier's checks and international drafts written by Saudi officials, including Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan." Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) "said members of the bank's board of directors should be held to account for failing to exercise their watchdog role over Riggs's operations" and said refusal to follow money laundering laws "allows terrorists to funnel their blood money through the system."

CONNECTION – JONATHAN BUSH AND RIGGS: Jonathan Bush, President Bush's uncle, was appointed CEO of Riggs Bank's investment arm in May of 2000, just months after his nephew secured the nomination for the presidency. At the time of the appointment, Jonathan Bush had already become a major financial backer of his nephew, rising to "Bush Pioneer" status by raising more than $100,000 for his nephew in 2000. The move solidified the relationship between Jonathan Bush and Riggs, which was originally initiated in 1997 when, according to American Banker newsletter, Riggs paid Bush $5.5 million for his smaller investment firm. That transaction, according to the NYT, "deepened [Riggs's] links to the Bushes." While Riggs denies any connection between Bush and the accounts being investigated in the money laundering probe, Riggs President Timothy Lex told the Washington Times in 1997 that "there's a blurring of distinctions between banks, mutual-fund families, broker dealers and everything else across the board.""

Now tell me why mainstream media never thought it germane to mention these little details, clearly available in the public domain, when reporting the scandal at Riggs? If media has a "liberal bias" why does it seem to be covering George W's ass at every possible occasion by burying such stories and omitting such crucial pieces of information?

Or is it possible the the lying scummy bastards who openly control the media, like Rupert Murdoch, or do so secretly, like Mitchell Scaife, are actually part of a (oh my God, has it come to this that I am actually quoting Hillary Clinton?)...VAST RIGHT-WING CONSPIRACY? Yee-haw!

All I can say to this is...IMPEACH BUSH! Oh, yeah, and FREE MARTHA!!

(big thanks to Will, for being a dedicated consumer of all Iraq-related news, for sending me to the money laundering story and then for helping me to actually FIND the facts on the Riggs/Bush connection instead of the lies of omission that pass for mainstream news coverage these days)

No Peepee No Job

And in other excremental news, Man With Shy Bladder Syndrome Files Suit, or what I like to think of as "Piss v. Caterpillar." Wouldn't you love to be the lawyers for the defense and try to prove that the plaintiff could have peed if he wanted to?

"ATLANTA - A man who says he was fired by Caterpillar Inc. because he wasn't able to urinate for a drug test sued the equipment giant Wednesday, alleging discrimination."

Traffic Is Horrible! I'll Just Think About Sex...

That's the headline on Yahoo for a short piece about German commuters' tendancy to fantasize when stuck in traffic.

"BERLIN (Reuters) - A third of German motorists fantasize about sex when stuck in traffic while only 10 percent think of finding an alternate route, according to a motor club survey published Thursday."

I wonder how many of them fantasize about being ordered around by a talking toilet...hmmmmm.

Every Dominatrix's Dream Toilet

And to think it delivers the orders in German! Talking Toilet Orders Men to Sit Down

When Fetishes Go Wrong

It's always sad to see someone who lets a fetish get so out of hand that he or she indulges in theft to satisfy the need. In this case, a Police Officer with Handbag Fetish was just convicted on 15 counts of theft.

I've heard lots of people speculate that "if only that person had found the Scene and learned about Safe, Sane and Consensual," such things would never happen. But I wonder if it is that simple.

Personally, I don't think it's as much about the fetish but about patterns of compulsive behavior. Clearly this guy lost sight of the moral line between having fun and harming others. That is not a sexual problem but a behaviorial problem at heart. Of course, the courts (and the media) always rush to blame it on sex, as witness the "diagnosis" of "progressive deviant sexual development." What the heck does that mean, anyway? That the guy got kinkier as he got older? Well, hey: join the club! Don't we all get kinkier with age, or is it just me? *fluttering eyelashes*

By the by: a handbag fetish! Woooo. That's a new one on me. I wonder if he could have been satisfied being ordered to organize and worship purses. Or was the feeling of stealing a purse the real thrill for him? Wish I could've talked to him before it all came crashing down around him.

The Next Time you Fry Up Insects...

Consider the case of this guy who Became Ill After Gorging on Cicadas

"BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - A man who cooked and ate nearly 30 cicadas sought medical treatment after suffering a strong allergic reaction to the sauteed insects."

The article doesn't say WHY he did it. Just how bad was his wife's cooking, anyway?

Looks like Jelly, Tastes Like Vaseline

Some fetishes are harder to live out than others. Pity the poor pervert who tries to live them out at a Motel 6. How do you explain it to the cops when they grab you while greased?

The story reminds me of someone I used to see (and smell) on a commuter bus back in the 1980s. He was well dressed but reeked of Ben-Gay. The distinct stink of that product oozed out of his pores, as if he had slathered it over every part of his body. When the bus wasn't crowded, he had the back seat all to himself. Unfortunately, the bus was usually crowded and, worse, I was usually one of the last ones to climb on. By the time I got to work, it felt like the hairs in my nose were permanently mentholated.

Now that I'm older and more depraved, I can't help figuring it had very little to do with muscle aches and a whole lot to do with a fetish.

The New Solution to Fertility: Intercourse

Now here is a couple who would definitely benefit from owning one of the new Swatches. Apparently, after 8 years of marriage and trying really hard to have children, the only remedy left to their fertility problems was to actually try having sex.

Copulating Like Swatches

Oh, how I long for a little Bunnysutra to call my own!

Teen husband sentenced for having sex with wife

What do you do when it's legal to marry a child but against the law to sleep with her? In Georgia, a man gets "charged with misdemeanor statutory rape and sentenced to 10 years probation, he must complete high school, make child support payments, pay $250 in court costs and attend a prison awareness program"

I guess it would make too much sense to not allow kids to get married UNTIL they can legally have sex.

And, ok, the headline is a bit misleading. Presumably, the husband was charged for the sex he had before he was married. On the other hand, it's Georgia! So who can say?

Frighteningly Real People

So you've been poking through alt.com and bondage.com and match.com and yahoo personals, restlessly trying to sort fact from personal delusions. Maybe what you need to do is consult the Brutally Honest Personals offered by Esquire.

At least now you can predict the psychodramas you will be facing.

(Thanks to Jay for sending me this link...have you contacted all the girls yet?)

Free Glory!

A few months ago, I created a course for the Netscape Learning Center called "On the Sexy Edge." For those of you who are kinky, this class won't teach you much about BDSM and won't seem very edgy. But if you are interested in improving your overall sexual technique and expanding your knowledge of tantric sex, three-ways, swinging/polyamory, role-playing, and non-SM sex toys, the class is a romp.

Netscape had been offering it as a premium course at a premium price (probably because it's rather risque compared to their usual fare) but for the month of May, they are offering the class FREE! I feel so....so...CHEAP!

No grades; self-tests (if you feel like taking them); and six in-depth lessons written by me on everything from masturbation to decorating a boudoir. Click Gloria's Netscape course and enjoy the freebie! :-)

The Death of Books

To writers and publishers it isn't much of a surprise to find out that a New Study Shows Big Drop in Book Sales. It's been painfully obvious for years that books have become just another disposable product for nearly all their merchants, from the big book chains to the Wal-Marts. Only indies retain some vague semblance of actually caring about authors and their intellectual properties.

Mostly, books get shelf space only as long as they sell quickly, soon to be replaced by the latest greatest potboiler, blockbuster, self-help manual or pseudo-spiritual tome. Walking through the book aisle at supermarkets, airport newsstands, drugstores, and places like Target and Wal-Mart, one might even get the impression that there are only about two dozen authors publishing consistently. (Unbeknownst to most consumers, publishers pay bookstores to boost sales of their best known "brand" authors.) If your tastes do not run to thrillers, horror, and romance, you're often shit out of luck.

Even bookstores, long the temple of the quirky book, have adopted the mass-marketing approach to bookselling. You put the 10-15 hot authors up front and let the others languish, buried with their equally unloved brethren, soon to be yanked from shelves and dropped into remainder bins. And, frankly, is it worth killing trees forsome of the great tributes to modern civilization that this mentality has produced--such as Chicken Soup for whoever you are and whatever ails you?

People frequently ask me when my next book is coming out. I struggle with the question of whether it's worth writing a book at all.

I can't help instinctively crunching the numbers in my mind. I have a much steadier, and certainly more middle class, income as a therapist than I ever did as a writer. Writing a book always takes about a year or two. I think it cuts the same amount of time off my lifespan. Writing is a book is like having a temporary personality disorder with a full range of side-effects, including headaches, insomnia, emotional melt-downs and incredible existential angst.

In order to make any kind of a real profit from the precious masterpiece which exacts this toll on your social life, health and mental stablity, you need an advance which pays you for the 1-3 years of your time. Yet the average book advance is in the single digits, while mid-list authors (who are by and large well-established authors) are in the low double digits. And here is the burr: you can spend years writing a book only to see it come and go in a few sad little months, with sales figures that barely match your cholesterol levels and no chance of ever seeing a royalty. Or you can endure the hell of modest success--where a book isn't big enough to make you rich like Rowling yet brings you some small fame. Then prepare for an endless death cycle, where you make no profit yet are trying to nurse the baby to better health through shilling and whoring at every opportunity.

Several thousand people visit my sites every day and have done so since the late 1990s. Is there any chance so many would read a book by me every day, day after day, year after year? True, it's not the same people, but for an author, isn't that the dream--that your words and ideas fan out to the widest possible audience? If your object is to get rich writing books well, honey, do I have a bridge to sell you. If your object is to make a living at it, good luck, and I hope you have either good contacts and well-connected friends or a thirst for poverty and rejection. But if your goal is to be read, what could be a better medium for you than the Internet? The real challenge is figuring out how to earn a living for stuff you publish on-line. If anyone could figure out a way to do that, then writing and earning a living from it would join in happy harmony. To the best of my knowledge, no one has yet found that golden fleece. I've visited plenty of sites where people are hawking their writings; I don't believe any of their claims about how many copies they've sold; and it's clear they are not able to support themselves from the income. I saw an article the other day saying that more and more surfers are willing to pay for content but I'm dubious about how any single website would profit big when there is an overwhelming amount of free just one click away.

I'm as guilty as the next person: I read constantly, but most of my reading is on-line, supplemented by some 3-D newspapers and the occasional magazine. I chiefly buy books these days only when someone passionately recommends one to me, when the author him/herself seems to have something important to say, or when I need to acquire some specialized knoweldge in one authorative volume.

For most of my life, I could not walk into a bookstore without dropping a small fortune. Now I find myself going to bookstores to get a latte.

I think the Internet will be the death of books.

Colin in a Kilt

Oh my God, Colin Powell is getting whiter by the day! Check out the picture of him--is he using Michael Jackson's plastic surgeons to turn beige? He's now seeking a coat of arms to celebrate his Scottish origins. A black man celebrating his white ancestry? Is this the ultimate in self-loathing or the wave of the future? Or did he always just hanker to wear a skirt and this is the fast path to plaid?

Will asks poignantly, "Can we now throw down our veils of shame and finally let white men celebrate their black origins?"

Louisiana's War on Crack

In the absence of any really important problems, the state of Louisiana has announced it may outlaw low-slung jeans. Aimed at preventing youngsters from exposing underwear and bellybuttons, the new law should also take care of all sloppily dressed repairmen. Under the new law, the next time someone bends over to fix something and you catch a glimpse of ass, you can put them under citizen's arrest. Let them prove in a court of law that it wasn't intentional when their jeans slipped.

"Local councilor Glenn Green, a staunch supporter of the bill, told the committee last week that teenagers' fashions had gone so far that legislation was needed to bring them back within the bounds of decency.

"I don't relish seeing the beginning of the crease of people's buttocks," local press reports quoted Green as saying."

Green later added that he wouldn't mind seeing the entire crease, but just seeing the "beginning" of it was too much of a tease for him to bear.

Dear Abby: My Tits Are Pissed

The further I read this Dear Abby column, titled WOMEN TIRED OF SHOULDERING BURDEN OF BAD BRA DESIGN, the greater my indignation grew. Yeah! Who is stuffing the women of America into those geekish, badly designed numbers anyway? I don't know of too many women who don't have some kind of complaint about the ubiquitous under-garment. The hooks in the back--OW. The razor-sharp straps that slice your shoulders if you are big-chested and the cast iron underwires that slice your diaphragm if you're small.

And why, in this day and age of ultimate convenience should it be so ridiculously complicated to put them on and take them off? Is it some underlying anti-sex agenda aimed at thwarting us (and particularly our lovers) from taking them off too easily? I'm sure more than a few fathers of teenage girls wish bras would come with locks on them but is that reason enough to make millions of grown women suffer?

Watching women get into their brassieres would be an interesting study in itself. Some put them on backwards, hooking in front then twisting it around and sliding their arms in. Others put them on forward, then struggle with the hooks in back like contortionists. Everyone has to readjust their breasts so the nipples don't point in strange directions and readjust again for everything to feel right. Meanwhile those handy "changeable" bras that can work as halter bras, athletic bras and regular bras all in one--sounds incredibly efficient until you contemplate the ornate system of straps and hooks you have to navigate in order to wear it. If I wanted a goddamn Origami project, I would have taken up Origami.

You have to know that if men had to wear something for support every day it would NOT entail so much hardware. Frankly if men had tits, and bras were the only alternative, I think we could count on seeing them staggering along with their big old floppies jiggling around free as birds. Whereas women, trained by fashion to be masochists, endure the whole tedious enterprise, sighing patiently when straps burst, hooks carve out craters in our spines, underwires pierce us, and "perfect support" leaves us unable to breathe.

Bra-makers of America! We are the Concerned Tits of America! And our tits are pissed!

(Don't even get me started on thong panties!)

Regaining Function after Prostate Surgery

Here is some good news for men (and the partners of men) who have undergone prostate surgery. According to a new study, daily use of Viagra can ultimately lead to restoration of erectile function.

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Anti-impotence drugs could offer long-term help to some men who have had prostate surgery or who otherwise lose their sexual potency, researchers reported on Monday.

"A U.S. study found 30 percent of men who had a radical prostate removal procedure regained their ability to have an erection without drugs after taking Viagra for nine months."

ARGH! I dominated Burger King! ARGH!

Here I was, in my own fantasy bubble, imagining that some clever pervert had created subservientchicken.com just for the likes of me...to make that chicken do my deeply twisted bidding....to make it snap its garters and do a sordid chicken dance for my personal amusement....only to discover today that ARGH the chicken is ARGH! a shill for Burger King. ARGH! How entirely humiliating is it to be had by a chicken?!?!

I want to speak to the people in charge of this chicken!! Yeah. Especially the one who came up with the idea of putting him in a garter belt.....

Kosher Sexual Frustration

This interesting survey explored the sex lives of Orthodox Jewish Women

Among the conclusions it reaches: the women in the study have more sex than the average American woman, but get much less pleasure out of it. So, what were they expecting? That rabbinical students should know where a clit is?

From the article:

"Orthodox Jewish women experience a relatively high level of frequent sexual activity, but low levels of emotional and physical satisfaction, according to the results of a survey released Wednesday at the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting in New York. The study was based on anonymous, self-administered questionnaires filled out by 382 Orthodox women in the New York area and Israel."

Keeping Abreast of History

It seems that "show us your boobs" is a tradition dating back four hundred years. A new study shows that topless models date back to 1600s

From the article: "Queens and prostitutes bared their breasts in 17th century newspapers to titillate the public, Coventry-based historians have discovered."