Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Google Logos are OOC / Who the ef is Chagall?


Sometimes the changing of the Google logo on its homepage throws me off, distracts me, makes me forget what I was about to search. Like the one above, dedicated to some one-named artist called "Chagall." I was going to search "Parker Briggsmore Real Name" but instead I searched "Chagall."

Oh, that guy.

However, I have to admit when I saw the 4th of July Google with fireworks I let out a quiet "woo woo" and threw up my hands like I was at a party. (Raise da roof)

But I was not at a party. I was alone. In my apartment.

That is all.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Bukowski Quote of the Weekend


even when starving
the rejection slips hardly ever bothered me:
I only believed that the editors were
truly stupid
and i just went on and wrote more and
more.
I even considered rejects as
action; the worst was the empty
mailbox.

-Charles Bukowski from "hell is a closed door," The Last Night of the Earth Poems

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Raw Footage of Africa - Part II - The Conclusion


This is the follow-up to Watching Raw Footage of My Parents' Trip to Africa While Using Their Wireless to Write This. It is the following night, and I am typing this on the couch, sitting next to my parents as we watch the last half of the raw footage from their trip to Africa.

There is a lot of down-time, and my parents don't mind me typing; though they sometimes they look over with a "how many freakin' emails is he going to write?" look. You know the one. -KV


Things Learned from the last half of the Africa Video:

-Hippos really are hungry hungry.

-Victoria Falls is loud.

-Putting the camera in a plastic sack sometimes doesn't prevent it from getting wet.

-Monkeys like hotels lawns.

-Cape Town is Disneyland with way more black people.

-Tourists like to watch dancing.

-When it's summer in California, it is winter in South Africa.

-It is easy to leave the camera on and not know it.

-Nelson Mandela spent some time in prison.

-Gondola's with VISA on the side look just like the ones in the VISA commercials.

-Animals NOT seen on safari are far less impressive.

-French people know a lot about wine and cheese (don't ask)

-For twenty dollars you can pet the baby cheetahs.

-It's going to take a computer with a large hard drive to edit this video.

-KV

Friday, July 4, 2008

Watching Raw Footage of My Parents' Trip to Africa While Using Their Wireless to Write This


Things Learned:

Hippos love grass.

Elephants are large.

Baby lions are cute.

Crocodiles are scary-looking rocks.

Wind is bad for camcorder sound.

My parents love birds.

Real life jackals are identical to the ones in The Lion King.

A mobile bar comes with the safari package.

Hippos are the only animal whose babies look uglier than the adults.

Giraffes are tall.

The "zoom" function can be overused.

Mongoose don't hold still for the camera.

Real life warthogs are identical to the ones in The Lion King.

-KV
...

It turns out this is only part 1! We're but half-way through the footage. Look at all we've learned! Imagine how much there is to begot in part two...


Guys, Girls and Porn: What IS the Deal? - by Teddy Nutmeg


Happy Fourth-of-July! Here's a popular and explicit piece from Teddy Nutmeg to help you celebrate the holidays right.

Did I mention it was explicit? Ages 16 and over, please. (If you can legally drive a two-ton piece of metal at seventy miles an hour, you should be allowed to read anything you want.) -KV



GUYS, GIRLS AND PORN: WHAT IS THE DEAL?
by Teddy Nutmeg

"You've just lost your membership card to the human race." -old episode of the Honeymooners

Why do women usually hate pornography so much while men consistently enjoy or at least accept it? This question has plagued me for minutes, giving way to a number of crackpot theories and half-baked scenarios.

Theory the first: The notorious female insecurity. Women are generally very, very insecure about their naked bodies, and with good reason. On television, in movies, in magazines we are unflaggingly bombarded with images of stick figures who seem principally to be composed of overly bright eyes and toothy shining smiles. Lollipop girls with heads far too massive to be supported by their emaciated frames.

Too often, I believe, women think that if their heads are not amazingly disproportionate to their bodies, they fall under the category of fat. That if they can't see ribs poking sickeningly through their sides, they're overweight and must subsist solely off celery, Starbucks and Tic-tacs. And guys too seem to buy into the "skinny is sexy" rallying cry of anorexics everywhere. Sad. Personally, I love women of all shapes, sizes, mental capacities, and temperaments. But that's another article.

So basically, women end up being embarrassed of or even hating their naked bodies and transferring this hatred onto the naked bodies of all women. Think about it. Why doesn't she like to tango (horizontally of course) with the lights on? Assuming, of course, that the she's turned on by her partner, I'll fucking tell you why. Women are trained to hate the naked female body. Ever heard of the Vagina Monologues and wondered why it's such a sensation? Women need to reclaim their bodies as their own-get to know and love their bodies. Men do this on a daily basis. (At least I do.) But back to the subject. Women hate porn because they hate their own bodies.

Theory the second: the average woman doesn't get enough good sex (which makes no sense at all because they can get it whenever they want simply by putting on a short skirt or some tight jeans and moseying down to the local watering hole). The average woman buys into society's labeling of openly sexual women as "sluts". They are jealous and spiteful of girls who do have great sex, who are open and proud of their bodies (porn models), and who we label as "sluts." Disagree? Shut your protesting mouth and read on.

Why don't women get enough good sex, you ask? It's not that all women are man-hating, ball-busting prudes--far from it. Most women wish they had great sex more often, and fantasize endlessly about the perfect bucket o' passion. So why do their fantasies rarely become reality, why does the seed of dreams never bear its fruit of sensual love? Why? Because men suck.
We do, dudes, its true. We're conditioned to believe that we're the best thing since Tang and that the sun wouldn't rise without our consent. And so in the male psyche, good old number one always comes first. Our needs; our desires. This would be OK if more guys also wanted to pleasure their woman.*

But most guys are lazy and only want to come home, take off their shoes, plop down and drink a beer while watching Monday Night Football. Somewhere in there is a hug and a few words with no meaning attached, and if they're lucky, a quick hummer. This is what most guys desire, and this doesn't cut it.

Now, some girls are strong enough to demand that her man please her, and patriarchal society labels these women as "sluts" and says that only sluts pose in or tolerate pornography. Let me tell you something: "Sluts" are confident, sexy, and fun to be with. Women who like sex are not sluts. Women who go out and get sex are not sluts. Women in porn pics are not sluts. These women just don't give a shit about what other people may label them. And they have the balls to make their man give them multiple orgasms (or at least I picture them doing so).

Besides not wanting to seem like a slut, the average woman during sex is too busy thinking about how her naked body looks that she forgets her own needs, (or subjugates them to the needs of the man) and doesn't get off, and too often we men aren't man enough to get her out of her self-hating groove. We're too caught up in our own insecurities, or we're too caught up in busting our own nut-either way, the woman gets the shaft.

Theory the third: women think all porn is the same, and classify it all away in the "nasty slimy poopy stuff" corner of their mind normally inhabited by rats and snakes and football. Take it from Uncle Teddy, "All Porn is Not the Same." Some is art, some is bad art, and some is under the mattress material. Seriously, though, women tend to lump art like Playboy magazine and smut (not that they're anything wrong with smut) like Cherry magazine into the same category, it's like saying Filet Mignon served at Chez Luis is the same as refrigerated McDonalds's from last April. (not that there's anything wrong with refrigerated McDonalds's from last April)
In Playboy, (God bless Hef) the women have cute little "come hither" smiles, and they're tastefully posed, NOT all splayed out and as wide open as frogs on dissecting trays in freshman bio class. In Playboy, the female body is held up as something beautiful to be appreciated, loved, and respected. Playboy has normal articles and normal advertisements. It's a class operation.

In Hustler or in Cherry or in Big Assed Bitches or in Boob Connoisseur or in Anal Monthly or in Euro-Sluts or in Cum Queens or in Beaver Illustrated in Barely Legal or in Asian Poon Hunting or even in Plumpers (God bless Plumpers), the pics and the women are straight up nasty. This is sometimes a good thing, but mostly its just raunchy, filthy full page pictures of women who spread themselves on crusty looking mattresses like rotten strawberry jelly on old toast, with the remaining pages taken up by ads for penis enlargement pumps and XXX phone lines. These magazines are not even magazines. They're the collected rotten fruit from the orchards of capitalism and free speech which has been taken and distilled into one nasty, 190 proof shot of porno moonshine.

This porn I can understand women disliking, shit, I dislike it (most of time, except for Big Assed Bitches and Plumpers [God bless Plumpers]) but to lump all porn, all suggestion of porn into this category, it is just not cool, not right, not kosher at all. The female body is a beautiful thing, but smut can make it look bad. Worse than bad, smut can take a female and make her no longer a living, breathing, loving being with her own desires and dreams, but an object to be ogled, lusted after, and smeared with spent genetic material. Women hate porn because they think it is all smut.

But we can change the way we think about these things, gentle reader, if we all work together.
We can change that women think all nude representations of the female body are smut. We can change that women are so insecure about their bodies and hating themselves for it. We can change that women think they need to tame their natural desires and subjugate themselves to men. We can change the world so that men don't have to hide their Playboys' and Plumpers' under the mattress or in the closet. God bless change.

But now you're asking, "OK, Uncle Teddy, tell me, why do GUYS like porn?" That's easy; we masturbate to it.

-Teddy Nutmeg

------
* For Guys: "How to Pleasure Your Woman - The Short Version" by Teddy Nutmeg:

When you get home, immediately hug your female partner closely, like you've missed her and like you need it (because you do), and ask her how her day went. While she tells you every-fucking-thing that happened that day, you sit down and rub the day's anxieties and worries from her feet and legs and shoulders and back and neck, while making little "uh-huh's" to let her know you're listening. Then you kiss her softly and gently on the lips, face and neck, bury your nose in her hair and smell noisily, making grunts of approval to her smell. You nuzzle for a few minutes, look deep into her eyes, put your nose tip to tip with hers, whisper in a husky tone "I need you, I love you, let me take you away from all the cares and worries of life. Let yourself be wholly and completely mine, and we will fly amongst the angels, my darling love." You take her hand softly in hers, walk into the bedroom, put on some Al Green or Marvin Gaye, and then proceed to give her slow, sweet love until her body can't take it anymore; she tenses with anticipation, convulses with involuntary muscle spasms, screams loud enough to break the stained glass windows of the church across town, and then collapses in a quivering, smiling heap of pleasure. She has been pleasured, and somewhere in there so have you, no doubt.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Video - Flip a Towel


Because I know some of you are lazy and a lot of you haven't checked out the Short-a-Week Project, the reenactment of my article Flip a Towel is posted below.

The original piece is much longer, and has to do with a guy and his friend "Dan," but for filming purposes they had to change it.

Change the sacred words of Klaus Varley? Yes. And alas, I can't say I'm displeased with the final product. It's not bad, and some have gone so far as to call it "good." Who knows, had I done it myself could I have done any better? I doubt it.

Check it out, if you haven't already...

Flip a Towel

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Cell Phones in Powell Library - Tasable Offense?


There are many horrible things about the UCLA Taser Incident of 2006, but one of the worst is that Tabatabainejad was tased for passively resisting the police.

If people are to be tased, and if the job of the UCPD is to protect UC students, (along with staff and faculty) then students should be able to decide what is a tasable offense.

Having spent much time in the Powell Library Computer Lab (I'm there now) where Tabatabainejad was tased, it is obvious that there are only THREE tasable offenses, and passive resistance is not one of them. Here they are, in order of severity:

1. Talking on your cell phone for longer than 10 seconds to say, "I'm in the library, can I call you back?" Click. Done. Conversation over.

2. Coming to the library sick, sneezing on the keyboard and leaving it for the next person without first cleaning it with the nearby hand sanitizer.

3. Printing out more than fifty copies at a time. Seriously, what the hell are people printing?

Okay, so students shouldn't be tased for any reason...

But if you were sitting next to the girl I'm sitting next to, a girl who is like, uh huh, really, no way - on her cell, well then, you might think different.

-CL

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Klaus Varley Interview: Brain Transplant Journal


Lest Charlie be the only one at The Brothel doing interviews, Klaus weighs in with some questions of his own for Laura of Brain Transplant Journal. She also sent some questions to Klaus. Read his responses HERE.


THE BRAIN TRANSPLANT JOURNAL INTERVIEW


Questions by Klaus Varley
Answers by Laura of Brain Transplant Journal

1. Where did you get the name of your journal?

Although I am generally not a board game ("Bored" game) person, I was playing Balderdash with some friends, and one of the questions was: “What does JBT stand for?" My friend (Alex, of Literary Brothel “Anonymous Weighs In” fame) wrote down "Journal of Brain Transplants." I laughed and laughed, as that was completely preposterous. A couple weeks later, I was at work with nothing to do, so I decided to start a second, general-interest blog. It seemed like the perfect name. And thus, Brain Transplant Journal was born.


2. In 1000 years from now when Brain Transplants ARE possible and the premier publication covering this cutting-edge procedure wishes to buy your domain, what do you think your descendants will do?

Unfortunately, they will probably sell it for $1 billion dollars. But you never know, maybe my descendants will be little artistes like me, and by that time it will have a universal (instead of just national) following. In which case, not only will they will be sentimentally attached to it, but it will be such an online bastion of thought-provoking hilarity that they would never dream of selling it. But then again, maybe they will just want the money.


3. What's the BEST thing about blogging?

It keeps me busy at work. Plus, now, I have all kinds of cool friends, such as yourself, whom I’ve never actually met. That way, no matter where I go on vacation, I will have someone to show me around. Aren’t you glad you started communicating with me?

Also, it is a great way to get in other people’s business.


4. In less than a hundred words, please explain the Brain Transplant Journal's role in the "blog revolution" in the early twenty-first century, or at least the role you think historians will portray the Brain Transplant's role in the middle class electronic discourse known as "the blogging phenomena of the early 21st century."

Brain Transplant Journal is a prime example early 21st century late-20- and early-30-somethings keeping themselves entertained while at work. Covertly conversing with friends, all the while appearing hard at work. It’s part diary, part social networking, part shameless self-promotion, but 100% fun. BTJ is an excellent example of the amalgamation of mixed sources of information so prevalent during that time: first person perspective, clips from “official” sources, and clips and references to other cohort’s journals, such as the Literary Brothel.


5. A lot of people blame Nader for the 2000 election, but can we blame Oregon instead?

No, I don’t think so. Blame a rigged election.
Nader didn’t help though. Don’t blame me, I voted for Gore.


6. Name five cool things to do in Portland.

1. Hiking in one of the largest urban greenspaces within the U.S.
2. City-wide pillow fights
3. Mmm...lots of good restaurants and bars. Coffee, beer, Le Pigeon, Clyde Common.
4. Even though there are over a million people here, it's fun to discover that someone you just met happens to know someone you already know. It always seems to happen.
5. Watching "Indiana Jones" in the summer at an outdoor showing in the middle of downtown at Pioneer Square. Sitting on cement for 2 hours makes your butt hurt though.

(edited for length, but Laura miraculously came up with six more things...)

Oops, that was 11 cool things to do. Damn, maybe Portland is too much fun!


7. Just kidding! Finding ONE cool thing to do in Portland is difficult enough. Just list some things that people "do."

Dearest Klausy, clearly, you have not been to Portland…yet. But you will. Everyone does. And once they visit, they don’t usually leave.


8. Why is Gus Van Sant so popular?

Because he lives across the street from my office, and I often see him at lunch, duh. And I saw him DJ at Saucebox's We're Not DJs series. He played "I'm Gonna Wash that Man Right Outta My Hair." Also, my friend worked with him on "Elephant." And he went to high school with my best friend's parents. Basically, he's cool because he's only two degrees separated from me.


9. What do you think will be better for the country: Obama's first term, or Obama's second term?

His first term will be better in that he will clean up all the horrendous messes that the current so-called president made, but we’re going to have to wait until second term for all the really exciting innovations to take place, and hopefully for the U.S. to regain its reputation, which is presently laughable.


10 . Is that ten yet? Man, you shouldn't proclaim to do something in the beginning of your article before you actually do it... .... ...agree?

Agree.


-TLB
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