Jae finished staining my bookcases on Thursday, and said they’d be dry enough for books on Saturday. So about 11:30 Saturday morning I started shifting my books from where they were stored in three cupboards, and by the time I stopped for dinner at 6:30 I had them all divided into 25 groups by author name (or title if there was no clear author). The reason it took so long was that at the same time, I was also shifting Chekov’s books from the boxes in my hall into the now-vacant cupboards, where they’ll remain until we get his cottage built this summer (he ordered a kit Saturday). Soon after dinner I started alphabetizing the shelves, and got done about 1:30 AM; then on Sunday morning I shifted them to basically even out the shelves, as you can see below (the bottom shelves, for oversize books, are not visible in this picture). In the initial process it became pretty clear that I wouldn’t need the shorter shelves at the top of each case, so I left them empty and moved my CD collection to them on Sunday evening after spending the afternoon rearranging the utility room shelves to make better use of the space and thereby clear the rest of the boxes out the hall. Then yesterday, we started building shelving for my TV series DVDs, and later in the week we’ll be doing another unit for movies. That will free up the area where they now live to build a bar, which will get the liquor and glasses off of my kitchen counters. Oh, and I’m also working on getting the clutter out of the garage. It’s rather like one of those number puzzles where you need to slide the numbered tiles around to get them into numerical order, but I’m getting closer and closer to a solution. I don’t particularly like everything being closed and everybody panicking, but at least I’m using the downtime constructively!
Archive for March, 2020
Diary #509
Posted in Diary, tagged disease, libraries, Sunset on March 31, 2020| 4 Comments »
Back Issue #81
Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged blogging on March 30, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Are you blind or just stupid? – “Deadbeats”
- Scum brothel owners push prohibitionist lies to further their own interests.
- More women than men support the violent policing of women’s sexualities.
- Key to understanding Sweden: the government thinks it owns the citizens.
- Songs by Queen, Bob Seger, the Who, Springsteen, Cole Porter & Blondie.
- Anti-sex control freak pays someone to publish a deeply-disturbed screed.
- A thorough debunk of the annual FBI “Operation Cross-Country” pogroms.
- New York Times still can’t understand how anti-sex crusades harm people.
- Anti-whore bigotry will soon be seen as vile as anti-queer bigotry is today.
- Politicians promise the impossible, and stupid people keep believing them.
- Yet another pogrom in the pocket police-state that is Polk County, Florida.
- Men like this are the norm in prosecuting sexual offenses & always will be.
- Cops will never stop trying to gain the power to rob and rape sex workers.
- Less harmful than the usual ignorant sex work “study”, but no less stupid.
- It’s been a while since we’ve seen this touted as a “sex trafficking” Mecca.
- Say your product “fights sex trafficking” & the stupid will give you money.
- Trump’s ideas mostly involve deporting people & giving cops more power.
- “Gain access to” = “break in”. “Seek the services of” = “attempt to rape”.
- Major ethical problem, but did letting drug warriors handle it help anyone?
- Authoritarians refuse to admit that a child-shaped toaster is still a toaster.
- An attempt to rob a business using “sex trafficking” hysteria as a weapon.
- Bruises & rope burns “signs of trafficking”? More “signs of a fun evening”.
- Lenore Skenazy’s take on yet another hysterical “sex trafficking” fantasy.
- So good to see people who had a bad time in sex work attacking Asstoon.
- Say your product “fights sex trafficking” & the stupid will give you money.
- I’d be much happier if the money went to his victims instead of the State.
- Everyone harmed by “prostitution stings” needs to sue the cops for them.
- For those still laboring under the misbelief that Nevada is whore-friendly.
- Whores have been prohibited from entering the US for almost 150 years.
- If this is a “brothel”, then a room with a foosball table in it is a “stadium”.
- Remember this when politicians tell you anti-porn laws “protect children”.
- Daily Fail pretends to care about transwomen so it can print torture porn.
- TSA & cops are allowed to sexually assault citizens without consequence.
- “Protecting women” is usually code for either spying on or controlling us.
- Got an internet-connected device? Assume it can be used to spy on you.
- Dems: Ready to disavow this lunacy you helped create & cede it to GOP?
- So why can’t drug addicts get out of 20-year sentences for “possession”?
- No information this gimmick could record could improve sex in any way.
- Please, wives, stay in denial; if you listened it might reduce our income.
- I’m amused to see Hollywood-promoted hysteria coming home to roost.
- White prohibitionists use names of dead black icons to push racist laws.
- Please, ladies, don’t give cops evidence they can & will use against you.
- Prohibitionists exhume rotting corpse of the “Scottish model” yet again.
- Five years ago, Ipswitch was claiming to have “eradicated” street work.
- Did serial rapist Matt Hickey think ignoring this would make it go away?
- Missing woman last seen with gang member; family blames bogeymen.
- Who could possibly guess septic industrial sealant isn’t for internal use?
- I’d be interested in hearing what actual sex workers think of this show.
- Nuns shocked their magical proclamation didn’t erase economic reality.
- Article quoting violent prohibitionist still sounds sympathetic to whores.
- “Pop-up brothels” are the subject of UK cops’ favorite wanking fantasy.
- Has she sadfeelz about “forced smiles” of women in other service jobs?
- I doubt legislators can make a law immune to repeal or judicial review.
- Another group throws whores under bus to curry favor with their lords.
- Should I trust an escort who doesn’t have much of an online footprint?
- No Cambodian brothel story is too shocking for Westerners to believe.
- Nicaraguan whores can be officially accredited as “judicial facilitators”.
- It’s never called “trafficking” when the government or a crony does it.
- This is what robo-fetishists want you to believe will take my job soon.
- Presumably, those “outraged” would prefer boys be molested instead.
- 1st-amendment lawyers speak out against the Backpage persecution.
- I’m sure this “call for education” doesn’t include actual sex education.
- Harlots’ Ball, clothes sizes, dinners, cocktails & driving in Seattle rain.
- Dallas outfit cashing in on “sex trafficking” tours expands to Houston.
- In which a number of lucky folks get to sample my legendary kissing.
- Journalists love to pretend this is unusual, when in fact it’s the norm.
- These are the same cops politicians keep urging sex workers to trust.
- You mean healthy young men can’t merely be ordered to be asexual?
- What better job could there be for a queer sadist with control issues?
- A few sane people oppose the bizarre schemes of Oregon politicians.
- Sick fuck keeps laughing while facing the possibility of life in a cage.
- Great idea: make people unable to work & provide for their families!
- Another study shows what’s already been shown over & over again.
- Another step toward getting completely rid of these tyrannical laws.
- Sex work is not an evil to be tolerated, but a good to be celebrated.
- This wouldn’t be OK even if the notions it’s based on weren’t idiotic.
- On the myth that porn has become mostly violent & “misogynistic”.
- Any advice for a lesbian relationship that started as escort & client?
- A list of payment processors that are openly hostile to sex workers.
- It’s illegal to pay for sex in Sweden, unless you’re the government.
- Please don’t let non-doctors inject who-knows-what into your butt.
- A short interview with a dear friend, the superlative Savannah Sly.
- Which state can produce the stupidest “sex trafficking” nonsense?
- Dysphemisms and gawking abound in UK articles about sex work.
- Politicians hire male sex workers almost as often as female ones.
- The hypocrisy of arresting underage sex workers to “help” them.
- OMG THE SEX RAYS COULD HAVE HARMED THE CHILDRENTM!
- It’s good to see academics in the afflicted countries saying this.
- “Sex trafficking” fetishists are becoming increasingly unhinged.
- Sometimes “trafficking” just means “bringing in brown people“.
- Fact: Young woman leaves hotel. Conclusion: “sex trafficking”!
- In mass surveillance, fascism beats communism hands down.
- The word for government/corporate collaboration is “fascism”.
- This is a lot better than Vice‘s last article on leaving sex work.
- In mass surveillance, fascism beats communism hands down.
- Gee, I can’t imagine why a teenager would want a fake ID.
- Anonymity, hotels, STDs, and how many men pay for sex.
- “Rescue Two Step” by the lovely & talented Savannah Sly.
- Pigeonholes are fine for pigeons, but unsuited for people.
- Even in Ireland, the truth is dawning on many feminists.
- Is it a good idea for a newbie escort to hire a manager?
- A generous special and a tour that failed to materialize.
- The funniest unintentionally sexual album covers ever.
- Palantir helps cops spy on sex workers and minorities.
- How can I convince my wife to see an escort with me?
- Despite the pearl-clutching, I actually agree with this.
- Is anyone actually still surprised when this happens?
- Banks are looking for whores to rat out to the pigs.
- The old strip club business model is a dead duck.
- Seriously, has this girl been living under a rock?
- A rant against government-ordered clock-lying.
- How you can help support sex worker activism.
- Badass woman uses her badassery for justice.
- Where are all of these “trafficked sex slaves”?
- Only notable for the sheer density of bullshit.
- An absolutely fucking brilliant act of harlotry.
- What the hell is going on in my native state?
- More “grocery store sex trafficking” lunacy.
- More evil prohibitionist drivel from Nevada.
- An antecedent is a terrible thing to waste.
- Still another abomination from Alabama.
- The world isn’t “fair” and can never be.
- Another woman senselessly murdered.
- The story is the same the world over.
- A rare victory against prohibitionists.
- Norway, the other feminist paradise.
- Spanish city harasses streetwalkers.
- Rivers and McNeill and The Doctor.
- Two arguments about “trafficking”.
- Awesome whores being awesome.
- I don’t really care much for porn.
- More good news about bad laws.
- So much for human uniqueness.
- What could possibly go wrong?
- How can a man delay orgasm?
- A witch-hunt against comics.
- Rapist cops of March, 2017.
- Because NHI is so feminist.
- Charlie Sheen’s meltdown.
- Little by little, bit by bit.
- Only the first of many.
- A thorny BDSM case.
- R.I.P. Bob Guccione.
- On time-wasters.
- Vampire whores.
- Back so soon?
- Labioplasty.
Links #508
Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged cops, disease, drugs, hysteria, Illinois, imaginative fiction, Louisiana, restaurants, United Kingdom, Venezuela, video on March 29, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Somewhere in the darkness, the gambler he broke even. – Kenny Rogers
Country music legend Kenny Rogers died late last week after a long, successful career which started as a doo-wop singer in the late ’50s; this was his most famous song, but he was known for many which told the stories of hard-luck characters (such as “Lucille” and “The Coward of the County”), plus his duets with Dolly Parton. The links above were provided by Dave Krueger, Brooke Magnanti, Zuri Davis, Mistress Matisse, Phoenix Calida, and Furrygirl, in that order.
- But for video.
- R.I.P. Stuart Gordon.
- Just protecting and serving.
- Talk about being in a bubble…
- US politicians really believe they rule the world.
- Politicians won’t forgive property taxes, but want landlords to forgive rent.
From the Archives
- Cop complains that he can’t arrest those who aren’t doing anything illegal.
- The New York Times discovers what the marginalized have always known.
- It’s dangerous to be a woman who knows sexual secrets of powerful men.
- Trumpists & anti-Trumpists fight to control the “sex trafficking” narrative.
- There’s a concise word for “sexually assaulted an incapacitated woman”.
- Politicians claim magic posters “fight” a repeatedly-debunked “problem”.
- More on Seattle’s scheme to sell human lives to a sociopathic billionaire.
- From a man who imagines condoms to be weapons of mass destruction.
- How long it will be before the US abandons its “re-education” programs?
- Remember this when racists try to blame migration on African religions.
- Anti-trans bigots keep sexually assaulting trans people in public toilets.
- Massage parlors are popular pogrom targets; they’re low-hanging fruit.
- PREA is worthless while screws have absolute power over their victims.
- Regular reminder that Grady Judd is a loathsome excuse for a human.
- So many “artists” feel no compunction against exploiting sex workers.
- The hilarity of cops trying to regain control of a runaway moral panic.
- Bullshit-free headline: “How UN Staff are Helping Local Economies”.
- Fact: 3-year-old suspiciously vanishes. Conclusion: sex trafficking!
- Persecution of sex workers invariably affects other women as well.
- Captain Save-a-ho is going to “fight” our work by walking around.
- This hodgepodge tries to fit in every single “sex trafficking” trope.
- It’s the same everywhere our work is even partially criminalized.
- Thought blaming whores for epidemics was a thing of the past?
- The fallout will continue while this horrific law remains in force.
- Prohibitionist group laments the shutdown of a gang of rapists.
- In mass surveillance, fascism beats communism hands down.
- I’m glad to see Bruckert has expanded her study into a book.
- If the people won’t support your crusade, just overrule them.
- At least Wyoming had the sense to vote this nonsense down.
- The real story here is that she was threatened with violence.
- Creepy fascist surveillance of hotel guests is growing worse.
- A retrospective of my blogging from March 2015 and 2016.
- No woman can now be safe from sexually-aggressive cops.
- Appeasing prohibitionists results in exploitation of women.
- Magical anti-pimp posters have their origins in puritanism.
- STOP CEDING GROUND TO FUCKING PROHIBITIONISTS!
- It’s been a long time since we’ve seen anything like this.
- They’re like anti-vaxxers who actively spread contagion.
- The UK’s long-deferred surveillance/censorship scheme.
- Why do men want to put stupid gadgets on their dicks?
- Are providers ever jealous or possessive of clients?
- Cops, censorship, Rube Goldberg and much more.
- How you can see The War on Whores for yourself.
- Want more proof that we’re past the watershed?
- The Canadian premiere of The War on Whores.
- Cops, cats, chickens, fascism and much more.
- Farm machinery still causes “sex trafficking”!
- Recycling the same bogeyman tale for years.
- Imagine this actually going to trial in the US.
- A fundraiser to promote The War on Whores.
- Caty Simon on overlapping prohibitions.
- Rapist cops don’t only target women.
- What “safe harbor” laws actually do.
- But they’re “rescuing sex slaves”!
- A rare victory for sex workers.
- This is called “democracy”.
- Rapist cops of the week.
- SAVE THE TOASTERS!
- A very uneven week.
In the News (#1025)
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged Bangladesh, Bolivia, brothels, censorship, cops, disease, Germany, illegal aliens, law, Like Houses, Maryland, masturbation, porn, pragmatism, prisons, rape, restaurants, Social Distancing, stripping, Texas, The Puritan Recrudescence, Torture Chamber, violence vs. sex workers, Worse Than I Thought on March 28, 2020| 3 Comments »
We should be very careful about granting new powers to the government. – Norman L. Reimer
Waffle House is so reliably open, FEMA uses them as a measure of disaster severity:
Waffle House has now closed 365 locations across the U.S. due to the coronavirus pandemic…In a Facebook post on March 15th, Waffle House said that they were attempting to keep their customers safe and keep nearly 45,000 employees employed.
And guess who gets to declare that an “emergency” exists?
The Trump Department of Justice has asked Congress to craft legislation allowing chief judges to indefinitely hold people without trial and suspend other constitutionally-protected rights during coronavirus and other emergencies…While the asks…will likely not come to fruition with a Democratically-controlled House of Representatives [until a future Democratic presdent asks for the same exact thing], they demonstrate how much th[e] White House has a frightening disregard for rights enumerated in the Constitution. The DOJ [wants to]…allow any chief judge of a district court to pause court proceedings “whenever the district court is fully or partially closed by virtue of any natural disaster, civil disobedience, or other emergency situation”…Norman L. Reimer…of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, [said]…“you could be arrested and never brought before a judge until they decide that the emergency or the civil disobedience is over. I find it absolutely terrifying”…
The Puritan Recrudescence (#892)
Hollywood actors really need to stop pretending expertise in sexology:
British actor Orlando Bloom…recently disclosed that he practiced celibacy for six months prior to dating pop-singer Katy Perry (now his fiancee) and further disclosed [his adherence to the bizarre but increasingly-popular puritancal belief] that pornography is very “destructive”. Bloom’s comments were praised by [pro-censorship fringe group Morality in Media]…
A 27-year-old Honduran man [killed himself in a cage after being locked in it by]…Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Texas…The death is the ninth in ICE custody in the 2020 fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, and surpasses the number of deaths for the entire 2019 fiscal year when eight people died…The man had requested asylum [with his]…family…at a port of entry in Texas on Feb. 19…[but was denied by a pig] on Feb. 28, a decision that was later upheld by an immigration judge on March 11…
How the pandemic is affecting sex workers in Germany:
At the “Lankwitzer 7” brothel…disinfectant dispensers have been installed next to the washbasins. [Owner Aurel] Marx say he’s ordered staff to hot-wash all towels and sheets, and open the windows more often to let the warm, sticky air escape. Still, customers just aren’t coming round anymore…since the virus arrived in Berlin…
Sex workers from one of the world’s largest brothels appealed to the Bangladesh government…for emergency funding after a ban on customers to prevent the spread of coronavirus. More than 1,500 sex workers are based at the Daulatdia brothel, about 100 km (60 miles) west of Dhaka, which is one of about 12 officially sanctioned brothels in the South Asian country, and receives an estimated 5,000 customers every day. The government on [March 20th] announced the closure of the brothel…until at least April 5 but promised to give all of the sex workers a package of 30 kgs of rice, $25, and a freeze on rent…
A nighttime curfew imposed by the Bolivian president to try to slow the spread of the coronavirus…faces opposition from sex workers, who say their already precarious livelihoods are at stake…more than 50 licensed establishments have been forced to close after the Bolivian government imposed a daily curfew from about 5 p.m. to 5 a.m…Lily Cortes, a representative of Bolivia’s sex workers union, said that if the legal establishments cannot function, “unfortunately the sex workers will go out to work the streets and the result will be worse”…
Wow, two politicians with a particle of human decency!
…Odessa [Texas politician]…Dan Jones [tried to use the fantasy of “sex trafficking” to sell his proposed]…policy [to deny strippers the licenses they need to work if they got behind on their water bills while out of work during an epidemic]…but…council member Peggy Dean…ask[ed] for the…change…to be pulled from the…agenda and so did…council member Tom Sprawls. Both previously voted against the ordinance during the March 10 council meeting…Dean said that that she disagreed with the ordinance’s utilities policy especially in the current times where many people might be unable to pay their water bill after being laid off or have had their hours cut due to the coronavirus….“I don’t really understand how the past due water bills help stop human trafficking. That makes no sense to me.” She mentioned that if anybody had a past due water bill, then they would be 18 [even though Jones pretended his petty, punitive]…policy would help us find out who is under age. “Well it wouldn’t, a 16-year-old wouldn’t have a water bill…[this] is very invasive and way too far reaching”…
A glimpse into the violent sociopathy that is prohibitionism:
When the news alert from the Baltimore Sun popped up saying: “Baltimore State’s Attorney Mosby to stop prosecuting drug possession, prostitution, other crimes amid coronavirus,” I had a visceral reaction that was like a punch to the gut. I’m most concerned about the inclusion of prostitution in her list. By [stopp]ing [cops from stalking, deceiving and raping]…sex [workers, we rob freaks like me of material for our spank banks]…I sold sex for money in my early twenties…more than a decade later, I [started swallowing prohibitionist propaganda. Blah blah “sending a message“]…In Baltimore we have a VICE unit specifically focused on [ra]ping sex [workers]…If I reacted so viscerally to Mosby’s statement, I can only assume that [the rapist cops must have had a similar reaction to news that they would temporarily be denied opportunities to rape women and destroy peaceful men’s lives]…
All the Quiet Sociopaths
Posted in Current Events, History, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged cops, disease, ethics, illegal aliens, imaginative fiction, psychology, Twitter on March 27, 2020| 7 Comments »
When Lucy Steigerwald tweeted this item about ICE still trying to deport people in the middle of a pandemic, she commented that she didn’t understand how they could sleep at night; I said that “Just doing my job” is even more insidiously evil than “I was only following orders”. Mike Siegel then replied by calling attention to what Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski said about the interrogator character in the episode “Intersections in Real Time”, a man so harmless-looking he would’ve gone unnoticed in any ordinary office:
…You look at most of the guys who ran Treblinka, or Bergen-Belsen, and they’re largely ordinary looking guys, who could be accountants or repair men or car salesmen…most SF tends to…deal with the big bad guys, the…Darth Vaders and all the other major forces…but all too often the real damage is done not by the single Evil Leader, but by the ten million people who follow him, the bookkeepers who track the bodies and…make the trains run on time, who run the gulags, who build the new state empires that will be built with slave labor, any or all of whom could say, as many have, “I was just doing my job”…To the interrogator, he was simply doing his job, and…then he goes home to his wife and kids, and has dinner, and sits out on the porch trying to forget what he does because he thinks he has to do it…assuming he thinks about it at all…
Look around you, especially in an election season, and see the pure evil a lot of people spout, usually while imagining that the things they’re advocating – up to and including mob violence – are righteous. And they’re all ordinary folks. Some of the people I’ve crossed paths with as an activist don’t actually care about anyone’s rights; they’re just amoral Marxists who happened to fall into sex work at some point and have chosen to adopt it as an identity despite Marxist regimes’ long persecution of us. The majority of cops, bureaucrats and other petty evildoers don’t see themselves as evil; they see themselves as just people doing a job. And every one of them looks (and in public, acts) just like anyone else. They shop in the same stores, watch TV, love their dogs, eat next to us in restaurants.
All the cops.
All the screws.
All the functionaries.
All the other quiet sociopaths.
Two Weeks
Posted in Current Events, Diary, Tyranny, tagged Australia, disease, fantasy, hysteria, left-right myth, psychology, The Monsters Are Due, Twitter on March 26, 2020| 3 Comments »
On Wednesday of last week, an authoritarian psychopath from Australia tweeted that to prevent what violent collectivists call “food hoarding” during the pandemic, “All houses should be inspected. Anyone that has more than two weeks food should be fined, heavily.” This is the kind of violent, coercive idiocy which has become fashionable among “wing” fetishists who think of themselves as “the Left”, and demonstrates their complete detachment from reality. There has been no time in my life since I moved out on my own in 1983 that I did not have at least two weeks of food on hand; usually it’s more like one or two months’ worth. That isn’t “hoarding”; it’s being an adult. Let’s see what “two weeks of food” looks like, shall we? I eat only two meals a day, a small breakfast and a moderate dinner. A bag of cereal and a gallon of milk = breakfast for me for about ten days. Add a second bag & we hit two weeks’ breakfast. For dinner, an 18-carton of eggs + 1 loaf of bread + cheese = six omelettes or egg sandwiches. A can of corned beef + bread + cheese = four meals. I have two cans of corned beef in my cupboard, 4 packs of cheese in the fridge & 3 loaves of bread in the freezer; there’s your “two weeks of food”. And as you can see, it’s maybe 20% of what I have just in my incall (fridge & freezer look similar, and at Sunset it’s at least triple that). And yet this wannabe Wizard of Oz says my house should be torn apart by armed thugs and my personal economy wrecked because he’s too stupid to buy corned beef, cheese and bread before he absolutely needs it. This is “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” behavior: “Anyone who does things differently from me should be targeted by mob violence.” And anyone with a functional moral compass who encounters this kind of thinking should not be afraid to condemn it, in no uncertain terms.
In the News (#1024)
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, advertising, agency denial, California, censorship, disease, Facebook, fantasy, Florida, homosexuality, hysteria, Minnesota, Monsters, New York, Oregon, porn, rape, Social Distancing, stripping, The Implosion Begins, The Pro-Rape Coalition, The Public Eye, The Widening Gyre, transgender, Twitter, United Kingdom, Wise Investment, You Were Warned on March 25, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Curfew and quarantine enforcement inevitably mean new opportunities for police overreach, profiling, and violence. – Elizabeth Nolan Brown
Even rent-a-cops feel entitled to rape sex workers:
A hospital security guard has been jailed for 14 years for the rape and violent assault of two sex workers…one of the victims was forced to jump naked from a window to get away from Noel McKeon…as he tried to stab her. The attacks, on June 18, 2016 and on February 2, 2018, both took place after McKeon contacted the two women [for outcall]…
Timothy Blancher, 20, Alunte Davis, 21, and Paris Cameron, 20, all attended a party with a 19-year-old man they met at a gas station in Detroit. Hours after he left the group, Devon Robinson, 19, burst into the house wearing a masked and…gunn[ed] the three…down…Jurors found Robinson guilty Tuesday of the May 25, 2019, murders…committed…to cover up…that he had engaged in sex…with the three victims…
Predictable in the current Neo-Victorian climate:
Playboy has announced that it’s closing down its flagship magazine for the rest of 2020. It seems unlikely, given the wording of the announcement and the state of print magazine-making, that it will ever return. It’s not a surprise, exactly — its circulation and advertising drooped long ago, accelerating as the nudie pictures for which it was celebrated became available everywhere for free…
This won’t end until it starts inconveniencing the wealthy & well-connected:
…Oprah Winfrey’s name…trend[ed on Twitter after]…a series of tweets…alleged that the celebrity’s Florida home had been raided by police, who were “digging up the tunnels” there in connection with an alleged sex trafficking ring. (…Oprah has no home in Florida)…the tweets put forth theories: some noting the friendship Oprah enjoyed with Harvey Weinstein, others suggesting the novel coronavirus epidemic was somehow engineered to shift the spotlight away from the arrest of celebrities involved in the alleged ring…includ[ing] Tom Hanks and Justin Trudeau…
Sex workers, clients & everyone else harmed by “prostitution stings” needs to keep suing over them:
From January through March [of last year], at least four men responded to online ads f[rom a pervert cop fantasy role-playing as] a [sex worker] named “Brittany” who…asked each of the four men to meet [him] at a hotel, but first to stop at a gas station before to buy [him] a treat such as a candy bar or a can of pop…Cases against them were dismissed, first by a district court, and then by a three-judge panel of the Minnesota Court of Appeals…[because] the [prosecutor] charged the[m]…with…soliciting prostitution….[which] has to come in a “public place”…cops and…prosectors…didn’t prove any of these men was in [public] when they texted [the masturbating cop. Though]…the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office [vomited a lot of disgusting nonsense about]…human-trafficking…[all over the court, it still]…rul[ed that]…there’s no evidence indicating [the cop was fantasizing he] was underage, or a victim of trafficking, [while msturbating, and] the…language on gross misdemeanor solicitation is plain, and applies only to “public” acts…
A reminder of what the government is trying to take away from you:
It’s almost hard to believe now, but there was time when Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of “participatory media” were widely heralded as great gifts to public perception and global democracy. For going on nearly half a decade now, the tone on tech companies and social media has shifted to one of suspicion, hostility, grievance, and moral panic. But as COVID-19 continues to spread around the world and as many governments continue to mishandle things, people are starting to remember why the platforms we love to hate are important after all…Social media have also been providing news from early outbreak zones across the globe, as users widely disseminate stories from foreign news outlets, statements from foreign leaders, and first-hand accounts from residents of affected areas abroad. These snapshots helped give Americans a better sense of the scope of the threat posed by COVID-19 at a time when the messages coming from official channels were conflicting and confusing…
As always, sex workers demonstrate our adaptability:
Portland will not go without its strippers, even during a…pandemic. Lucky Devil Lounge is bringing its dancers to your door with a new food delivery service it’s calling—wait for it—”Boober Eats”. “I originally did it at first as a joke,” says club owner Shon Boulden, “and it got 150 shares on Facebook—like nothing we’ve ever had before. So I was like, ‘Well shit, why don’t we just try to do this?'” Lucky Devil has a full food menu and non-alcoholic drinks, like ginger beer and Red Bull, available for delivery. The process is similar to many the home drop-off systems that have sprung up overnight as a way for restaurants and breweries to continue operating…Simply peruse the menu online, give the business a call and place your order….[but] instead of being greeted a harried driver in jeans and a hoodie, your meal is hand-delivered by two dancers. “They’ll wear pasties and booty shorts, drop off the food, dance for a second and then we’ll move along,” Boulden says. “We’ll still stay a reasonable distance back. They have Lysol as well”…the strippers will also pose for photos…
Free Speech Coalition…called for a voluntary shutdown of all adult entertainment productions in the United States and Canada through Tuesday, March 31…”we ask that producers cancel all shoots through March 31, and recommend that performers immediately stop filming with partners who are not a part of their household”…
Prohibitionist whining is becoming increasingly desperate:
The MTA [was paid to] display…a series of advertisements promoting a “Sex Workers Pop-up” exhibit…[prohibitionists moronically labeled the text-only ads]…“sexually oriented” [even though they merely advertised an art exhibit]…and [bloviated a lot of their usual puritanical idiocy about how consensual sex is]…inherently harmful. The pastel pink promotions, up since early March on subway lines across the five boroughs, was bankrolled by George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and invites commuters to a West Village “exhibit dedicated to the global sex worker movement”…
Diary #508
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, disease, Sunset, Washington (state) on March 24, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Last Thursday I came out to Sunset, because there’s nothing going on in Seattle anyway and I might as well spend my time getting stuff done out at Sunset (because there’s a lot to do). On top of that I don’t really want Grace to be alone more than necessary, and Chekov’s return has been delayed due to the virus panic. In the past few days I finished rebuilding the chicken yard, cleaned out the henhouse in preparation for the new chicks, helped Grace do some electrical work, cleaned out the garage from the stuff that’s never been properly unpacked and stored since the move, and set Jae to finishing the bookcases. As of this writing (Sunday night) the east bank of three cases is completely done, and by the time you read this the north bank will probably be mostly done; with any luck, by next week I’ll have my books properly shelved again. And yes, I’ll share pictures!
Silver Lining
Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged blogging, disease, hysteria, Silver Lining on March 23, 2020| 1 Comment »
In order to keep my news columns reasonably consistent in length, I keep them to a minimum of nine news items and a maximum of thirteen, and I try not to let the number shift by more than two in either direction from one column to the next. So if one column has ten, I try to keep the next one to no more than twelve; since they’re written half a week to one week in advance of publication, I can see how the queue is stacking up and move items from one column to another as needed. Well, when I started working on “In the News #1022” on the 12th, it had twelve items, but on the evening of Sunday the 15th I realized that one was a duplicate of an item from #1021 (same story in a different source) and that there were only seven items in #1023. So I eliminated the duplicate and shifted two items to #1023 to even them out, and as I started slotting stories for #1024 I noticed it was also probably going to be lean. It didn’t take me long to figure out the reason: COVID panic has pushed “sex trafficking” hysteria off of the internet’s “front page”, so to speak. Usually about a third of the stories in any given column are directly related to “sex trafficking” hysteria, but in the past week and a half those have all but dried up; #1023 would’ve only had one such item had I not shifted two of them from #1022. Now, it may be that this is only a temporary respite, and that once governments stop these dress rehearsals for martial law we will once again be inundated with crude sexual fantasies about pubescent “sex slaves” abducted from Ikea and raped by dozens of men a day. However, the last round of “sex trafficking” hysteria ended in the UK because of the First World War, and in the US because of the Great Depression; it wouldn’t be at all surprising or unprecedented for this one to be killed by a pandemic. We’ll have to wait and see, but if this indeed turns out to be the case, the dark cloud we’re all enshrouded in right now might well turn out to have a silver lining.
Links #507
Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged Colorado, cops, disease, drugs, illegal aliens, lawheads, Maryland, New York, Oregon, Things We Choose To Do Together, video on March 22, 2020| Leave a Comment »
The Constitution is dead. – Duncan Lemp
This string quartet cover of Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” often plays on the Pandora station I play while getting high; it’s one of several unusual covers of the song here. The links above the video were provided by Radley Balko, Franklin Harris, Amy Alkon, Lucy Steigerwald, and Stephen Lemons (x2), in that order.
- But for video.
- R.I.P. Lyle Waggoner.
- Is there no soap and water in Oregon?
- Because laws are more important than people.
- Cops sneak up on sleeping man and murder him.
- Government is just a word for the things we choose to do together.
From the Archives
- What hysteria about Italian “crime” would be complete without the Mafia?
- In case you thought screws restricted their petty sadism to the prisoners.
- UK politicians are unhappy people see through their surveillance scheme.
- Evidence–free anti-sex propaganda, complete with “addiction” nonsense.
- “At least one person noted that the UK was at risk of looking like idiots”.
- Another sleazy attempt to hurt sex workers from a billionaire sociopath.
- Churchy molesters seem to seek younger victims than other molesters.
- If every “anti-trafficking” org were like GAATW, there’d be no hysteria.
- A periodic reminder of the psychopathic behavior of the Ruhama nuns.
- Strippers are spearheading the movement for sex worker labor rights.
- Everyone harmed by prostitution laws needs to keep suing over them.
- How to prop up a turgid conglomeration of myths, lies and ignorance.
- Cops, banality, absurdity, sanity, legendary dancing and much more.
- California produces the most racist anti-massage-parlor propaganda.
- Miniature baby dinosaurs that run around banging into one another.
- Notice that there aren’t any men protesting or obsessing about this?
- Saying Mary Magdalene was a whore is the opposite of “orthodoxy”.
- Incredibly bad law skated through a legislature? Follow the money.
- Disaster followed the passage of FOSTA by hours, as we predicted.
- Every New Orleanian knows that cockroaches can’t stand sunlight.
- Cops, lawheads, dogs, Kentucky, Star Trek opera and much more.
- The state calls these subhuman monsters “correctional officers”.
- Seattle Times: parrots porcine propaganda. The Stranger: this.
- There’s a xenophobic stink of the “blood libel” about this story.
- Anti-sex “feminists” are being revealed as the bigots they are.
- Another of those nonexistent false sexual assault accusations.
- India’s pigheaded resistance to decriminalization continues.
- Quite possibly the stupidest “sex trafficking” story of 2018.
- Why do you advise activists not to debate prohibitionists?
- Porn performers boost their claims with ugly whorearchy.
- What terrible “crimes” these “gangsters” are accused of.
- Anything that helps demystify sex work is a good thing.
- A list of sex work-friendly criminal defense attorneys.
- The dystopian future of Minority Report has arrived.
- My two previous columns for the vernal equinox.
- “Fainting-couch feminism” is a brilliant coinage.
- Please, Samantha Chang, just shut the fuck up.
- The Canadian premiere of The War on Whores.
- What do sex workers think of married clients?
- In praise of my producer, Paul Johnson.
- I’m quite enjoying this whole saga.
- The sweet smell of schadenfreude.
- Can’t you just hear the fapping?
- A brief look at women in porn.
- Rapist cop of the week.
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