The freakish is no longer a private zone, difficult of access. People who are bizarre, in sexual disgrace, emotionally violent are seen daily on the newsstands, on TV, in the subways. Hobbesian man roams the streets, quite visible, with glitter in his hair. – Susan Sontag
…and as usual, we give the most freakish and emotionally disturbed of all power over us, like a medieval Carnival celebration writ large and practiced all year ‘round. In today’s collection, I’ve saved those for last.
Not To Be Taken Internally
It’s not too often an article leaves me at a loss for words, but…see for yourself, in this November 19th story from NBC Miami:
A Miami Gardens transgender woman is facing charges of practicing medicine without a license after police say she injected a patient’s rear with everything but the kitchen sink in an illegal cosmetic surgery procedure. Oneal Ron Morris, 30, was arrested Friday after an investigation by Miami Gardens Police and the Florida Department of Health. According to police, the victim saw Morris in May and was injected in her buttocks with a substance consisting of cement, “Fix a Flat,” mineral oil and super glue…the amateur incision was then sealed with super glue…[and] the victim was later hospitalized with a serious medical condition…Morris, who police say is a man but appears to look like a woman and sports an apparently enhanced rear herself in arrest photos, was being held on $7,500 bond. It was unknown whether she has an attorney…
Since then, other victims like this one have come forward. Take a look at Morris’ photo at right and ask yourself, “Would I trust this person’s judgment regarding cosmetic procedures?” The only other thing I have to say is from “February Updates”: “ladies, please, real plastic surgeons do NOT make house calls to hotel rooms!” Nor, I might add, do they perform procedures at parties.
Higher Education
OK, according to American law filmed harlotry magically becomes legal. I wonder how this scheme (reported on November 29th in the Huffington Post) would fly in the US?
The world’s first international sex school has opened which claims to teach its students how to be better lovers. But far from being a cheap thrill, one term at the “hands on” International Sex School in Vienna will cost pupils £1,400. Swedish-born “headmistress” Ylva-Maria Thompson says anyone over the age of 16 can enroll at what she describes as “the world’s first college of applied sexuality”. Students live in a mixed sex dormitory block where they’re expected to practise their homework. “Our core education is not theoretical, but very practical. The emphasis is on how to be a better lover”, the new school head added. “Sexual positions, caressing techniques, anatomical features. And we teach people hands on.”
Thompson is better known for her art exhibitions, including one which displayed 100 casts of Swedish women’s genitals. Raunchy adverts for the school showing a couple making love have already been banned by Austrian TV. “This is wrapped up in a very stylish way but it is just selling sex,” one protestor commented.
One has to laugh at the protester’s inane statement, because selling sex is legal in Austria. I do have to wonder if Thompson’s students could be prosecuted in her native country, though.
Poetic Justice
I hope you’ll forgive me for indulging myself in a moment of schadenfreude, courtesy of Hypervocal:
If you needed any real-world evidence as to why you should never put your name on a building while you’re still alive, former Arapahoe County [Colorado] Sheriff Patrick J. Sullivan Jr. has you covered. The National Sheriff Association’s 2001 “Sheriff of the Year” was arrested on [November 29th], suspected of trafficking methamphetamine, according to CBS Denver. The 68-year-old Sullivan served as Arapahoe County [Colorado] Sheriff for 19 years before retiring from his elected post in 2002. The investigation leading up to his arrest…began on Nov. 17th when several police informants connected Sullivan to the use and distribution of meth. “As part of the investigation authorities say Sullivan agreed to meet a male informant and provide the man drugs in exchange for sex”…
Here’s the kicker: Sullivan, who is being held on $250,000 bond, is sitting in the Arapahoe County Jail. His new home is better known by its updated name: The Patrick J. Sullivan Jr. Detention Facility. Current Arapahoe County sheriff, Grayson Robinson, said Sullivan will likely be charged with a felony count drug count, with additional charges against him and other suspects to follow. If he is convicted of the class-five felony, he faces one to six years in prison…
This story could almost have served as an update to “Wholesale Hypocrisy” or even “Reaction Formation”, since the CBS report notes that this “dedicated, loyal, available,” dope-dealing “hero” who posted bond for drug suspects on numerous occasions over the past few years was simultaneously “an active participant in state and local methamphetamine task forces, helping craft a state plan to deal with the scourge of methamphetamine.” Well, I guess they went straight to the source. I wonder if he’ll be prosecuted as a “human trafficker” too, since he offered to pay for sex and Colorado politicians claim that “end demand” initiatives will “cut down on the enormous public harm that comes from human trafficking”. Alas, it’s much more likely he’ll just get the usual slap on the wrist after his defense says he fell off of his bicycle or became an addict due to some act of wonderful, selfless heroism.
The Clueless Leading the Hysterical
As students of hysteria know, the vast majority of panics would be extremely short-lived if people actually bothered to investigate the moronic claims made by authority figures such as “the average age at which a woman enters prostitution is 13” or “there is a 40% increase in domestic violence on Super Bowl Sunday” (as described in my column of one year ago today). Of course, they never do, and neither do the self-proclaimed “authorities” themselves. All it takes is for some glorified security guard in Arizona to declare that teenagers are using vodka-soaked tampons to get drunk without booze breath and before you know it cops and media from sea to shining sea are reporting it as Gospel. The idea of thinking critically about the claim or simply visiting The Straight Dope or Snopes or Mythbusters or The Honest Courtesan never occurs to these yo-yos, and the result is stuff like this November 30th story from Huffington Post:
The New Mexico Attorney General’s Office is warning parents that an increased sighting of depictions of a cartoon-like bear that is linked to pedophiles could be an indication of increased child sex offender activity in the Albuquerque area. “Our ICAC unit has received reports that the Pedobear window sticker has been sighted in Albuquerque on at least two vehicles recently,” said New Mexico Attorney General Gary King. The concept of the Pedobear was made popular a couple years ago on the Internet forum 4chan. The bear illustration was a joke aimed at people who were inadvertently creepy about children. The bear, however, has since been embraced by pedophiles, according to the attorney general’s office. The Pedobear, they allege, “has a sexual interest in underage girls” and has spread from use among an online subculture to the mainstream…
Last year flyers circulated of a Pedobear masquerading as a TSA agent, and in May a man dressed as the Internet-based Pedobear was escorted by police from the San Diego Comic Con event, where he had been distributing candy to children. It is not illegal for people to display the Pedobear image in public. Some people may be displaying them as a joke, but the attorney general’s office said they are taking the bear images seriously and are trying to get the word out. “We are very concerned about the potential link between the Pedobear symbol and pedophiles; we also want to increase public awareness of the potential danger to children, especially young girls,” King said.
Because, you know, pedophiles are usually strangers who wear funny costumes to attract the attention of every single adult in the area before swooping down on unsuspecting prepubescent girls, only they’re not. Of course, this is Albuquerque, the city which seems determined to win some kind of award for police and governmental corruption, incompetence and all-around control freakishness. Still, they’re just taking their cues from San Diego, which started this particular nonsense last year with a hilarious two-page flyer that sounds like it was composed by the bastard child of a cop and a failed writer of vintage Hollywood ad copy. The sick minds of police are compelled to project their own internal ugliness onto the external world, so it’s inevitable that they would fantasize that a tool of community self-policing is “really” a badge of criminality that they have to “protect” people from by imposing further tyranny.
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Spring was a festive time of year for Roman prostitutes. April was the month of their patron goddess, Venus, and opened with Veneralia, the festival of Venus Verticordia; the 23rd was Vinalia Urbana, on which whores made offerings of myrtle, mint and roses to Venus Erycina at her temple outside the Colline Gate. Five days later Floralia began, and lasted until today; this was the festival of the goddess Flora, who because of her association with fertility (and an identification or confusion with Acca Larentia) was also revered by prostitutes. And on the last day of Floralia, May 3rd, a group of them would strip in the arena and perform erotic dances until young men in the audience were enough overcome by lust to throw off their clothes and inhibitions and join them for ritual public sex.
