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September 28, 2006
Notes on Gender, Sci Fi, Comics
I can't believe I spent a childhood in Pasadena and never read anything by Octavia Butler:
She told him of the messages she had read within the flesh of the fish. "Messages as clear and fine as those in your books," she told him. Privately she thought her flesh-messages even more specific than the books she (sic) had introduced her to, read to her from. But the books were the only example she could think of that he might understand. "It seems that you could misunderstand your books," she said. "Other men made them. Other men can lie or make mistakes. But the flesh can only tell me what it is. It has no other story.... My body reads it -- reads everything."
I've just finished reading Foucault's Discipline and Punish and am in the middle of work by ethnomethodologist Harold Garfinkel. It's uncanny -- I wonder if Butler ever read any of their work? Her concern with non-scientific, non-abstract, embodied forms of knowledge is so incredibly close to theirs. What she's saying also seems to me to be akin to some of the basic project in The Dialectic of the Enlightenment, but that's my hammer, and everything looks like its nail to me. The most likely explanation is that Butler read some bell hooks. Or quite possibly she's working out of the same traditions as hooks.
* * *
For those of us who have been talking gender and science fiction/superheroes lately, Jess recommends these two forum threads at Girl Wonder where artists play around with viewing male superheroes with a sexualizing male gaze. It's not until way too far into the discussion that they begin to consider that this has already been done... I mean, c'mon, people, s/ash h3nta! fan art wasn't born yesterday... but it's still an interesting exercize. The best ones are totally NSFW (look for the one with the reveals-just-enough-of-the-relevant-cleavage cutout on the male superhero, hidden behind a link. Reeeeally funny, and barely appealing at all.)
Posted by me at 2:38 PM | Comments (2)
September 16, 2006
The Omen: Where Are They Now?
It's Saturday. I awoke this morning at the unholy hour of 7:45, and found that I was counting lawyers. (Makes sense: to fall asleep, count sheep. To wake up, count lawyers.)
The count was relevant to a dream which I was having, in which a girl from my high school had somehow been charged with editing my college's hate magazine, the Omen. The only sense this made was that she had the same first name as a male editor of that magazine; aside from that, she'd never been to my college and I don't disproportionately associate her with hate, magazines, or editing.
In the dream, she had just gotten to the end of reviewing full-color comics produced for the ten-year anniversary of the magazine, and had slashed -- not just with a red pen, I mean slashed, with an X-acto knife -- out the contribution of two prominent alumns who had been editors. I was text-messaging her in outrage to try to explain what a bad idea this was, which was hard to do, as the texting medium I had available consisted of tiny orange text in which I could only send about twelve characters at a time; when I'd write more than that it would overwrite the previous characters I'd written.
The best argument I had for her was, Look, you're completely going against the Omen's editorial vision by making it into a buttoned-down literary magazine. In fact, I'd say you're falsely publishing something else under the Omen name. This is a really bad idea, considering the number of Omen veterans who have gone on to be lawyers. Stephanie, Dan, Brady, Jordan... and then I tried to figure out others, and whether the ones I'd mentioned had actually become lawyers or not, and that's when I woke up.
And I couldn't shake the thought. The Omen was routinely a pariah at Hampshire; started by libertarians who felt they had no voice, it continued on under less-focused editorial eyes to become what I call a "hate rag" -- unfocused editorials from absolutely whoever wanted in -- with occasional news. I wrote some of the latter, some of the former; friends of mine were its editors. Later the Omen became more of a culture 'zine. The magazine's stated policy of accepting all submissions without any significant editing whatsoever made it a perennial lightning rod on a campus where political correctness was at times more poisonous and pervasive than (I now think) it ought to be. At its very lowest point, its least visionary editor published a page of racist jokes, just because he could. Oddly, this was not the moment at which the college's then-president, Gregory Prince, attempted to shut it down; that came later, for reasons I currently don't recall. The general feeling seemed to be that the Omen was a poke in the college's eye with a stick sharpened using Student Activities funds.
I don't think my count of the number of editors is right, now that I'm awake -- Brady's still in law school, Jordan's actually a professor, and I don't remember if Dan actually wrote for the Omen, or whether he just hung out with its editors. But if you consider that the Omen was full of badly-written horseshit, didn't have a clear editorial vision, was universally loathed by people who had any sense, and to add insult to injury was printed on saddle-stitched tabloid laser-printer stock, it's surprising some of the things its editors have gone on to do. Its alumns include:
a lawyer (Stephanie) who does, in fact, specialize in intellectual property;
a published humorist, also a member of a cult musical group (Negativland) known for its run-ins with intellectual property law;
a professor of law at American University;
a well-regarded DC journalist and editorialist, nominated for a Webby;
two moderately well-known comics artists, one of whom is having his characters optioned for a show on Nickelodeon;
a librarian at Harvard;
a Brooklyn schoolteacher (MA from one of the top ed schools in the country);
at least two doctoral students currently studying at Ivies;
and another student working on a law degree.
And this is within fifteen years of the graduation of the magazine's founders. (And I'm still trying to remember whether Dan wrote for the Omen or not; that would add another lawyer.) For Hampshire, this partial list seems like a pretty strong concentration of ambition. Perhaps it's not surprising, as the Omen tended to attract students who rejected the more communally-focused, anti-establishment Hampshire community.
I'm wondering how this compares to the other Hampshire publications (though certainly the crossover is enough that various of the Omen staffers, like me, also belong to the Forward and possibly the short-lived Phoenix). The Forward boasts a writer who went on to write for the show CSI; and it appears former editor Gabe Ruegg continued his design career, taking a master's in design at Pratt this year. The Phoenix was home to rising comedian Eugene Mirman, who among other things has written for Conan O'Brien's show. And if not other publications, how about other programs? How does the Omen's track record compare to that of, say, the Lemelson program? The Peace and World Security Studies program? I know, it's probably a kind of pointless exercise; ambitious students will gravitate towards any institution which offers leadership roles, so it's not like the Omen was exactly the crucible which molded us. (And you might ask what it did for Casey or Mark.)
Still, I think the Omen comes out ahead on a count of notable alumns. It seemed like a lot more when I was half-asleep and doing the math... and that's when it hits me:
The Omen may be the closest thing Hampshire has to the Lampoon. A Lampoon for bloviating future lawyers and artists.
And if it is, what should Hampshire do about it? Establishing it as the historic launching point for Hampshire's brightest and best would kill it dead. Hampshire hates anything resembling tradition. So don't tell any of the current students about my hunch. (Particularly considering what students are publishing in the Omen these days. Have you seen it lately? Christ, in my day it was BAD, at least, not just mediocre! Cmon, guys, if you're gonna mouth off, you can at least try to piss off the hippies. What's with all this "drag ball isn't radical enough for my transqueer agenda so we shouldn't have one anymore" bullshit? Hippies!)
Nor do I think Greg Prince did the right thing by trying to shut the Omen down. If I recall correctly Greg kind of made a career of meddling with student newspapers; there had been some fracas when he was still up at Dartmouth, and he interfered with that paper's editorial board too. Certainly it makes the Omen into a cause which students can rally to any time anyone wants to cut off its funds, strengthening it somewhat. But a paper can't survive on that kind of boom-and-bust cycle.
So I don't know. If I was to advise the current president on how to approach it, I'd probably tell him to quietly egg the Omen's writers on. The magazine was at its best when it struck out at ideas, political or just cultural, which were popular at the school but poorly thought-out. If there was some way to get Omen writers to think a little harder, it might be nice, but owing to the paper's no-editing policy that would take some personal conversations with people, rather than looking at an already-written piece and saying "you missed a spot." Maybe Dr. Hexter should have Public Safety haul Omen writers out of bed at eight on a Monday morning and forcemarch them to breakfast with him. That should be just about a popular enough strategy to get the hatin' juices flowing.
* * *
OK, enough of this silliness. Probably I shouldn't try to make arguments out of ideas that come out of dreams I have on only six hours of sleep.
On a much sadder note, in poking around looking for backup on this piece, I found Hexter's rather nice convocation address for this year and learned that Eric Schocket, a Hampshire professor of American studies who I admired from a distance, died just before the semester started. That is really, really awful. He seemed like a great professor, one of the best things Hampshire had going for it, and he was very young.
Posted by me at 10:40 AM | Comments (6)
September 11, 2006
Accepted: To Hampshire
On old buddy Roger's advice, I went out today to see the movie Accepted before it left the theaters for good. ZOMG, check it out, he said. It's completely about Hampshire. I had gotten that vibe from the trailers, in which a dude, who looks suspiciously like the Saturday Night Live actor in the sketches about Hampshire, starts his own college. The movie got lukewarm reviews, but I gave it a shot.
In a post-American Pie age, where movies about teenagers tend to be oversexed, this one hearkens back to well-meaning goofball school comedies like PCU and Revenge of the Nerds. In fact, it's pretty clear that someone on the project was aiming for that effect; the soundtrack makes overt reference to The Breakfast Club and its sensibilities (other noteworthy soundtrack features include the Pixies' song U-Mass, the Ramones, and Le Tigre).
And yes, it was totally about Hampshire. Or possibly Evergreen. Or Goddard, or Johnson College at U of Redlands, or someplace else at the fringes of the educational system. Well, OK. Seeing as ol' Alma Mater just sent me the surprisingly thick guide to being a Hampshire Alumni Admissions Interviewer (yes, I signed up. obviously nobody up there remembers the chanting and muckraking and smack-talking I did anymore. ahahahaaa. no, seriously, there are less safe people to send out to greet the n00bs. i'll be good, I swear. I'm a Respectable Member Of Academia now) I should probably qualify the comparison. So here's Your Guide To Viewing Accepted And Being Accepted To Hampshire.
In college, I can expect:
...to major in skateboarding, explaining to my parents that I'm learning about aerodynamics, physics, and mechanical engineering.
Quite possibly. John Dwork did it with frisbee, adding a business component and a study of the history of sports to those topics. Legend has it he went on to work at Wham-O, though The Internets seem to think he's currently best known for editing a number of books on the Grateful Dead.
... that my parents will still wonder about my employability despite my explanations.
Depends on what they're like, but if you expect that, then probably, yeah. Luckily, if you play your cards right at Hampshire you'll probably be much more employable than that guy in the movie who's trying to blow things up using his mind.
... that a professor who lives in squalor on campus will lead class in a bathrobe, holding court like an extra-crazed Lewis Black and developing a massive cult following.
Maybe. Most of the faculty who used to live on campus have retired or moved off to start families, but Hampshire does tend to attract younger faculty with a real zeal for continuing the character of the place, so you may have some aspiring characters on campus. I hear Lester Mazor used to hold court in the clothing-optional hours in the sauna, but I guess he retired. Michael Lesy has his cult following, but he's much less genial than Lewis Black, so unless you have a thick skin, I'd steer clear. Lynn Miller will certainly engage you in debate on the ineffables, wearing his trademark bolo tie and swilling something dubious from an Ehrlenmeyer flask. He's probably your best bet.
... that students will invent their own classes, and they'll have titles like "Walking around thinking about things" or "Listening to the materials."
Err... no. You may be thinking of Goddard College, from which Hampshire students got periodic reports from transferring refugees. At least at times in the past, students have been able to set their own curricula at Goddard, contracting with professors to complete a course of study at the beginning of a semester.
While I still, to this damn day, wish that I was allowed to develop my own courses at the beginning of the semester -- would someone PLEASE offer courses titled "Time, Space, and the Internet" or "Cultivating Memes," already? I can give you a reading list! -- this is unfortunately a very difficult model of education to sustain. Self-directed learning is far too amorphous a product to standardize, and standardization is what capitalism wants from us all. Even more unfortunately for such attempts, Hampshire and Goddard students tend to be so deeply opposed to standardization that they fall into anarchy and personal dissolution. Given enough rope to hang themselves with, these students don't even finish the curricula they've developed. I'm speaking from personal experience, here. Don't tell me you'd be different, damn you, I'm a doctoral student in education at a dang Ivy League school now; do you really think you can take me? I know you, you little punk. sheesh.
There is an exception at Hampshire, of course: the periodic "Re-Radicalization" movements and the January courses led by students. During my time the former were led by an erstwhile homeschooler, who insisted that Real Learning could only be achieved by "asking our own questions about our everyday lives" (memorably satirized by Hampshire comedy major Eugene Mirman as "learning about film by smelling the camera"). This homeschooler proposed that we pay Hampshire tuition -- at the time, the highest in the country -- to take classes from our fellow students, effectively(?) seceding from the college. Fortunately, he was largely ignored by the administration, though he did attempt to commandeer a handful of incoming students to participate in this ill-advised project. His legacy is a series of student-taught courses of varying worth, which did in fact have titles like the ones scrawled on the whiteboard in Accepted.
Not to completely dismiss the perennial anguish of students about Hampshire's slide into normalcy, though; the readings we did on our own during that time certainly prepared me well for graduate school in education.
... that everyone will drink and hang out by the pool all the time.
Um, no. If you want to drink, you can find drinking; if you want to do drugs, those probably exist too, but I was on the substance free hall, so I wouldn't know. That's sort of the glory of Hampshire: if you want it, it's there, but it's most definitely not the only social life to be had. And they're not going to let you near the pool with glass containers. Sorry, even Hampshire has rules about getting glass shards in your feet, ya hippie.
... that hippies will walk around barefoot all the time and get their feet sliced open.
Uh, yeah, even rules about not getting glass shards in your feet won't stop hippies. Rules won't even stop hippies from intentionally composting on their dorm halls. Stupid hippies. That wasn't in the movie, though; that's just a sweeping editorial vagary.
... that "accreditation," when it rolls around, will consist of a courtroom-like hearing where my ragtag bunch of misfit friends will go up against a board of stiff-looking old white people, and it'll just be our word against the frathead morons at the snobby college down the road!
Uh, no. You really think they'd take your word for it that your college is working? They visit campus and take notes. Cmon. Stupid hippies.
... that a small, dubious-looking group of students will be responsible for making up just about everything resembling campus life.
Yep. That's the Super Sixty, five dozen of us who made a power grab to make Hampshire better, or at least make ourselves feel important. We didn't start the school like the guys in the movie, but we and our predecessors and heirs are responsible for the school's various enduring cafes, publications, and shops. Hampshire students are notorious for starting their own fun; there's no organizations like the Lampoon or Skull and Bones which have been around for a hundred billion years, so each generation of students tends to show up, say "why the hell doesn't anything happen on this campus?!", and, say, start a burger delivery joint in a third-floor lounge one night on a whim. (Nate, where are you now?) Great for learning how to start and sustain organizations, shitty if you expect your fun to be there when you get there or if you want tenured professors who won't disappear halfway through your Div III (it is up to YOU to put recommendation letters in their folders when they come up for review, it is up to YOU to make noise with the trustees, people). The Super Sixty have their pros and cons; some of them end up being weird demagogues, like the guy who started the secession movement or like his predecessors, the group who demanded that the college stop mowing its lawns. But even some of the really overbearing Super Sixty members who you think are bound to wash out or get arrested become law professors or political science experts or artists with cult followings or published authors/members of Negativland/successful at the same brand of irritating editorialism they cultivated while at school.
... that campus will be full of a bunch of weirdos who I will tell stories about for the rest of my life, and I, as one of them, will feel more comfortable among them than just about any group of people I'll ever meet.
Yes.
That was my favorite part about Accepted, actually. Like Revenge of the Nerds and Real Genius, it's not about college at all -- that's just window dressing. It's about being accepted for who you are, on your own terms. For me, as a high school senior about to head off to college, that was absolutely what I was all about. I really didn't care about college so much as I cared about not having to put up with the same old normalizing bullshit I'd put up with for the past twelve years. So I packed myself off to Hampshire where it all fell away, leaving me free to discover the bullshit I made other people, locally and globally, put up with on my behalf. It felt like hell at the time, but I definitely wouldn't trade it for the ongoing feeling-that-everything-ought-to-be-fine-all-the-time which I see my Harvard alumni friends struggling with.
yes, two roads diverged in an Amherst wood... sing it with me now...
(actually, the really funny thing about Accepted was that parts of it were clearly shot in Pasadena, where I put up with the normalcy for all those years. and yet they say the movie is set in Ohio. Hee.)
(I think I'm gonna submit this to the Omen. Should I submit this to the Omen? Does the Omen still even exist?)
Posted by me at 1:39 AM | Comments (3)
September 10, 2006
And that was only the FIRST panel
Really, there's a good reason why Brooke McEldowney's 9 Chickweed Lane won the National Cartoonist Society's Award for Best Newspaper Comic Strip this year. The man is wicked smart.
Because, I mean, Colin Mochrie. It takes no genius to recognize that Colin Mochrie is something special; even albinoblacksheep.com knows that. Without Colin Mochrie, both the American and British versions of Whose Line Is It Anyway might have failed utterly. Colin is not the funniest man on the show, nor the flashiest, nor the naughtiest, but he is the kind of comic who is absolutely essential to improv: the team player who knows when to back off, and can get the other players working better with each other. He is the "Yes And" Man. Without him, Tony Slattery and Ryan Stiles sometimes looked as if they might have chewed each other up along with the scenery.
And Colin's career beyond Whose Line has colored him with a bit of the grand cosmic joke. The man is most often seen these days on commercials and in character roles on sitcoms, just another bald head and silly mug to serve as grist for the advertising mill. Despite his very palpable acting smarts, Hollywood still hasn't given Colin Mochrie a good firm shake.
So who better to be Mega-God, if you have as many questions about the reasonableness and existence of an all-powerful deity as McEldowney does? Mochrie is an intentional and unintentional joker. That about sums it up.
Not to mention that McEldowney's summer project seems to have been a graphic novel version of A Midsummer Night's Dream as performed by supernaturals in a 1920s setting.
Colin Mochrie and Bruce McEldowney: two great tastes what taste great together.
Posted by me at 4:46 PM | Comments (0)
Appearing At
So not only is the audio from my HOPE (hacker conference) presentation now up online, but the Bitch Magazine anthology I was published in is now also available. And I will most likely be speaking at a reading of authors from the anthology at The New School on Wednesday, September 20th. Yay!
Posted by me at 3:56 PM | Comments (0)
September 5, 2006
Not that bus
Hi. A few of you may be wondering if I'm OK, having heard news that a Fung Wah bus rolled over between Boston and New York today. Well, by twist of fate I wasn't on that bus -- it was going the other way, actually, so that means Tse Wei, who I ran into this morning and who took an earlier bus from Boston, could not have been on the bus in question. We're fortunate. It does appear, though, that nobody was seriously injured.
We were greeted by camera crews when we disembarked this afternoon, so you may see me on the news B-roll if I didn't wreck the dude's footage by being an as$hole and crossing right in front of his camera. I'm the one in the too-small burgundy hoodie. I really hope this sudden publicity doesn't hurt the Fung Wah's business... it was raining, and the drivers are generally not unsafe, so I don't imagine it was recklessness that caused this accident. And we all love the Fung Wah, with its cheeeap cheeeeaaap cheeeeeeapness.
Posted by me at 6:57 PM | Comments (0)
September 4, 2006
Fries and Propaganda: Poodle Fries
Spike's Junkyard Dogs, Somerville, MA
Joined by special guests from Sushiesque and Sanskritboy.
Despite yesterday's dismissal of curly fries as violating scientific principles of consistency, we go with the "Poodle Cheese Fries," curly fries with cheese, as Spike's does not appear to have "normal" fries.
J: Initial impressions: positive. (tries one) Initial tasting: cheese free. (grabs another) Ah. Here we go.
G: They smell great.
J: They're well-salted.
G: I think they -- ooh!
C: Verdict?
J: Quite good. They need more cheese, but what doesn't. Also, these are the best veggie dogs I've had in quite some while. (Author's note: G ordered a "Contradiction Dog" without chili, a veggie dog with cheese and bacon. This is on the menu as a regular item.)
G: I'm not sure this is cheddar.
J: Yeah, it tastes like swiss.
R: Is cheddar required?
J: Yeah.
G: Except when in Rome... you can have Tasty Cheese.
J: I miss Tasty Cheese. It was good.
* * *
C: You know, you could buy the URL for cheesefries.com. It would be the top hit for cheese fries. You could make a killing on Google ads.
J: Imagine! We could do interviews with celebrities!
* * *
J: The layering is...
G: Nonexistent.
J: Not acceptable. Round The Clock is still the best, and not just because it was free.
G explains how we skipped on the bill because our waiter clocked out before we were done
J: And I had G convinced I'd gone to cheerleader camp.
G: Just like yesterday, when you convinced me you'd been to church.
J: Which is even funnier.
G: Hey!
* * *
G: The fries are pretty nice even underneath.
J: Yeah, they're even good without the cheese.
G: Oh, there's pepper on 'em.... The buns are good.
J: Yeah, they're not awful like hotdog buns usually are.
G: Normally they stick to the roof of your mouth and they're made of nothingness.
C: Yeah, they're the only reason I can do hotdogs here.
G: They're like bread.
R: It makes it hard to do the Spike's Challenge, where you're supposed to eat over six in an hour and a half. Eating six hotdogs would be one thing, but you're eating six of these buns as well.
* * *
J: I used to hate swiss cheese, but I'm coming around on that. And some other things.
G: Raaaaaiiisins!
J: (cringes)
C: What about raisins?
J: I hate them. I had a bad experience once when I was a kid. I guess the raisins had come all the way up to Alaska from California, or something, and my grandma packed 'em in my lunch, and when I opened the box it was just crawling with maggots.
R: Your raisins were the givers of life!
C: If we accept your clearly inferior philosophy.
J: Oddly, some things are OK with me. Raisin bran is OK.
G: I think raisin bran, I think weevils.
C: Mealworms.
G: Yeah, mealworms live on raisin bran.
J: I think in my mind they cancel each other out. The mealworms eat the maggots.
R: How did you deal with the California Raisins when they were dancing in those ads?
J: Yeah, that actually came out shortly thereafter. Maybe the California raisin board mounted that campaign because I wasn't alone in my experience. I know my third-grade teacher was as grossed out as I was. I don't think she ever ate raisins again either. Anyway, yeah, I responded with rage to the California Raisins.
* * *
Google is hiring everyone we know.
G: Apparently they're set up across the street from the Microsoft campus, where they hire disgruntled Microsoft workers as they leave work.
C: Google is the new Microsoft.
J: Yeah, but they want us to believe they're not. "We're cute! Look how much of our name consists of Os! Os can't hurt you!
J then reveals what she has learned about the top three popular searches on Yahoo. They are apparently "Google," "Yahoo," and "MILF."
Posted by me at 11:32 PM | Comments (0)
Fries and Propaganda: Not Safe For Work
Cambridge Commons, Cambridge, MA
Joined by special guests from Sushiesque, Sanskritboy, and Non Compos Mentis, among others.
Cambridge Common
(J arrives)
G: So we were just trying to figure out -- do we need cheese fries?
J: Sha! We haven't had them since Australia, and those were fake.
G: They were real!
J: No, I need me some real American Patriot Fries!
R: You mean freedom fries.
J: No, it's Boston. I think it's appropriate to call them Patriot Fries.
C: Do I need fried dough?
J: Bakon certainly needs fried dough. Your position on this is clear.
G: What are you saying?
J: It's fried, and it's dough.
G: What are you saying about me and my affinity for fried things?!
* * *
The conversation turns inevitably towards the local beer scene. J is new to town and needs to learn the ropes.
R: You could go to John Harvard, but...
C: No, the beer is unexceptional... between the beer and the scene... ecch.
A: You should get into the Beer Advocates.
J: Is that www.beeradvocate.com? I've been there.
C: Yeah. It's like a gang for people like you.
J: Ooh! Is it violent?
* * *
Waiter: Curly fries or straight fries?
G: How does that affect our science?
J: It has to be straight. We need to maintain consistency.
G: Straight fries, please.
Time passes. The fries arrive.
G: Ooh, they're nicely browned. They've done the broiler thing.
J: (trying some) Good cheese, good salt, not too hot, none of that searing heat issue.
G: The salt is infused in the fries rather than scattered over it, which is nice. There's layering -- and here's the clump!
J: And of course G goes for the clump.
G: They're a little raw, but the flavor is great.
J: They're up there. But they don't pop.
G: They're way up there. They're pretty raw.
* * *
G: (to R) Can I have some of your bacon?
R: Of course!
G: (beat) Does it bother you that I'm a vegetarian?
R: Not at all! I had no idea.
* * *
The conversation turns inexorably to pulp fiction, particularly of the romantic variety. It is revealed that Harlequin's most lucrative genres at present are religious and supernatural romance.
J: Screw this graduate school thing, I need to start me a lucrative side career!
G: Would you do religious or supernatural?
J: I could do religious.
G: Have you ever set foot in a church?!
J: (laughs)
G: This is on the record.
J: I have, I have.
G: What does Christian romance consist of, anyway?
C: There's usually a schoolteacher getting some drifter to settle down.
J: It reminds me of this book from the Victorian era, where this pure young girl runs away with a drifter and eventually meets her death, though not without redemption.
B: I was thinking it was more like "Jesus rubbed my nipples."
G: I want to see Jesus/Judas slash.
C: Oh, I'm sure it exists. Just about any slash you can imagine exists.
B: I found a site with a graphic of Gadget, the female chipmunk from [Disneys] Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers, crossed out with the words "No Gadget erotica!" underneath. Which is disturbing, because of course that implies that such erotica exists.
We all acknowledge that we don't understand furries.
A: I dated a guy whose fantasy was to dress up in a bear suit and do a girl wearing a bunny suit.
G: I'm convinced that the furry subculture is an unintended consequence of misguided second-wave feminism.
C: How so?
G: Well, there was that porn-is-evil trope, and the all-sex-with-men-is-coercive trope. A lot of us grew up with this baggage and just can't see the human body as sexually acceptable. So you avoid humanity entirely, and go with the very physical, ungendered sexuality of animals.
C: It's also sexuality without morals.
B: And with more rape.
J: Jesus!
B: No, I'm serious. With animals it's like "Look at my nice ears -- UNH! UNH!" (pelvic thrusts)
(A discussion of the sexual habits of marine megafauna ensues, including the infamous "sharks are total guidos on the dance floor" maneuver)
C: There's whole websites devoted to how dolphins swim around with their dorsal fins in each others' genital slits.
B: Why do you think dolphins prefer chaps?
Posted by me at 11:21 PM | Comments (1)