2nd Sex

Officer forced woman to perform oral sex

2009-07-18T14:16:00.000-07:00

Will write more later

2009-07-18T14:14:00.000-07:00

but projects, sl and rl, are right now overwhelming.

Nice Free Hair

2009-07-12T07:21:00.001-07:00

A nice up do and perhaps one of the nicest free hairs I have ever seen; rush over to http://slurl.com/secondlife/tenjin%20fukuoka%20japan/20/35/25.

I don't post very often but when I do it's because I've found an absolute gem.

XingZ xx

Bittersweet the harvest comes

2009-07-08T05:44:00.000-07:00

Naked light in naked night before naked sight

unseen.

Nude the skin that is brushed by air and then kissed by moisture

that is sweat like unto a dew,

and invisible as a dream in morning.

But felt a weight that bends our minds,

in arcs as the grass formed suspensions by spiders.

This morning meadow of my fancy,

I stare down between the long valleys of my body,

and at the tender curls of my thicket,

and at the hands now eased from all tension,

released by the quivering that remains

shaking in my spine and in my breath.

The eruption now subsided,

a lushness restored to netherlands,

and a richness to the scent that hangs about my bed.

Bittersweet thought the fruits may be,

and distant is the harvest,

it was brought by thoughts of you,

always you.

Only you.

The summer to seed

2009-07-07T23:01:00.000-07:00

The cry of jays in an empty field screech and echo in my ears;

Turning soon the caw of crows, that pick the broken stalks,

and turn the stones to search for movement in the sand.

The summer morning teems with motion and with life,

in all the smallest places, and across the waves of the golden grass.

The spring is gone, the spring is gone, the day is burning fast.

To seed the clover is, to fruit the trees, to dust the once fattened ponds.

Stalks among the reeds a tall heron, who spears and pierces,

only to take great flight when even frogs have fled the sun.

Horace, I know that some how once you walked a way like this,

burnt your ship behind you, and in exile from the might shine,

of once then Rome.

Could you, if you could, guide my hand, and give me some advice,

to sooth the pains of those I know, who, having given,

now empty whispers receive?

The berries are still bitter, the plums and apples still green.

Not yet the richness of sweet harvest.

Perhaps not this, nor any year.

(The person this is for knows who he is. :P )

Some thoughts on arguing the law

2009-06-25T06:26:00.000-07:00

When you argue the law it helps to cite, read the cases, back assertions with references if there is no case law, and to read the relevant statutes. I had an argument with @justinmclachlan, who is, as far as I can tell, a truly terribly bad lawyer. First he cites nothing, then he doesn't read cases, then he doesn't read the legislative history, then he cites no references. I can just imagine what would happen to that as a legal brief.

Then, having committed all of these sins of argument, he goes off. Well I can do that too, and it doesn't even take law school to learn how to do that.

One of the real problems with the law right now, is that we, as a collective we, want to do many things which are simply unconscionable and stupid. The law can be twisted to allow it, but at that point it allows many other stupid things as well. People put on blinders to this, and happily chug along doing some stupid things, while pretending that the other stupid things can't happen. Except, they can, and do happen.

Let me take an example. We, as a collective we, want to ban "child pornography." However, the way the laws are worded, in that kind of sweeping, written by a bad prosecutor in the middle of the night kind of way, allows teenagers for being charged as sex offenders for "sexting." Everyone was shocked, except, well those who had read the law itself, which plainly does in fact allow it.

Let me take another example: Australia's proposed plan to censor the internet down to the level of what a 45 year old terrified mom thinks a 15 year old should be allowed to see. It is plainly stupid, and against any form of self-government as the term is understood. It is also legal in the sense that the laws as written provide for it.

And another one: the Defense of Marriage Act. It is plainly against Article IV 1, which provides that states shall provide full faith and credit to each other's instruments. Except same sex marriage, that doesn't count.

Or torture. There are enough examples there, but the one that is current is the decision not to prosecute. In a country where teenagers are prosecuted for sending semi-naked pictures to each other by cellphone camera, there is no logic of danger to society that has torture not prosecuted. Except the logic that their are interests that are above the law in some strange way, or that there is a parallel law based on some concepts that aren't ever actually ennumerated, subject to a vote as such, or written down any place. A rule of not even people, but prejudices.

When we pass laws that are contrary to our most solemn promises to ourselves, and we have been doing that a great deal, it undermines the whole of the structure. Out there, in the fringes of thought, are people who would knock down the entire structure, because they do not understand it, or they understand that they are always on the outside of this special zone of law.

Dictatorship and the Web

2009-06-25T05:37:00.000-07:00

On the same day that the US objects to Chinese filtering, Australia announces a draconian censorship of computer games, limiting all content to that deemed suitable by the government for 15 year olds.

This is just unacceptable, what is going on with people, have they simply lost their minds?

@justinmclachlan is a total loser

2009-06-24T19:42:00.000-07:00

I've learned not to have an argument over twitter I guess, because twitter seems to have a species of idiot male who think that they can shout you down 140 characters at a time. @justinmclachlan is the second I've run across. Cites nothing, gets everything wrong, and when he does just shifts to the next completely wrong argument. Some times an argument needs to be ground out. Total losers like justinmclachlan are convincing me that twitter, while fun, is also the province of people who are completely assured of their own rightness about everything, and yet, strangely, can never come up with a single fact on their side.

I think this must be indicative of something larger, but what it is doesn't seem clear. That there are people with a very high estimation of their own abilities that they can't produce evidence of, well, I'm in the art world, and that's sort of most of the drifting population of would be artists. But that these people seem to be running the world right now makes me wonder what is supposed to get fixed, when the people who are being given the biggest megaphones are the people without any sort of intellectual ability, and who are merely nasty bullies. How do they become important?

I wish I were the sort of person who could draw some blah blah blah patriarchy or other facile explanation, but that sort of retreat from facing things left me somewhere down the road.

There is a grace to understanding, and to research. To reading words and having them soak into your eyes. To feeling the currents of the text, as they become part of your blood. It seems we do not practice this anymore.

Instead, we live in a time of bullies, of a few who have some special permission. I do not know where they get it from, but I know that they are all the same, whether they are demanding sex, or some other form of personal worship that they feel, for reasons I do not understand, is due to them

In a land when someone with a thousand twitter followers is exempt from every shred of intellectual honesty, the way @justinmclachlan is, there's no room for art or ideas.

It was, if I recall, Nabokov, who longed to write, because there, art and beauty are normal. I need a taste of that right now, and it is there to which the bright light of thought and the many twists of creation, are the only visa needed to enter.

Yifu's Comet

2009-06-22T12:31:00.000-07:00

yes, this is horribly simple, but I thought it would make a nice touch at sl6b.

Vidal Fashion one day gift special

2009-06-21T04:31:00.000-07:00

Vidal Fashion is running a special, join the group, and request one free outfit. Today only.

Hurry!

(This is me at the SL6B build wearing the black cocktail dress, with stockings from the dollarbie Charisma outfit. I can always use another cocktail dress.)

How have you twitted for a #publicoption today?

2009-06-19T12:42:00.000-07:00

It is life or death, with Ayatollahs elected by nobody fighting to hold on to their power to impose arcane lifestyle rules on everyone, against a democratic tide in favor of what the people really want. The Ayatollahs have secret police that peers into everyone's lives, and is empowered to find out what you eat, who you have sex with, and to pry into every corner.

I'm talking about the Health Insurance industry in America. If you want to know why #iranelection is big, it is because people in Iran are no longer willing to die quietly, and live hopelessly. Compare the US with the UK here. In the UK, a stupid right wing tabloid tries to stir up anti-immigrant hatred with a stupid online poll. Not one, but two, twitter trending topics are to flood the poll. In the US, with the last sliver of real hope in health care, a public option, hanging in the balance, there is not a peep among the trending tweets. People are spending more time on why AT&T won't plug in everything of the iPhone, than on why they don't have a chance at decent health insurance. The House finally introduced a #publicoption bill. President Obama gave guarded approval. There is news out there on this. Why isn't there a flickr stream of people suffering because of US health care that is being spread?

So, what have you done to tweet for a #publicoption today?

Neo Nursery Rhymes

2009-06-19T09:15:00.000-07:00

Barack's new bill

Barack's new Bill went up the Hill

To fetch a #Fail of health care.

Single payor went down,

It made him frown!

Public Option was blocked

By bastards.

Barack be nimble

Barack be quick.

Pick a position,

and make it stick.

Barack said yes,

Barack said no,

Barack has the power,

to end this row.

Barack's Splat

Barack's budget splat,

could leave no fat.

The war had left no lean.

So betwixt them both you see,

they're licking health care clean.

Green #iranelection twitter icon of mousavi

2009-06-18T22:10:00.000-07:00

This is the full size gif of Mousavi. The #iranelection fever is dying down, unless there are more developments, but the light has done its work.

Not a Freebie but... 'Indie Rose' is closing down soon :(

2009-06-18T05:45:00.000-07:00

Indie Rose http://slurl.com/secondlife/Tohono%20Island/225/166/23 is closing down in a couple of days and until then Angelina Eizenberg is holding a sale. Everything is spectacularly reduced so if you've had your eye on anything go and get it now at a rock bottom price before it's gone forever.

One of my first choices for SL clothing and I will be very sad to see it go.

Sleepless

2009-06-17T01:25:00.000-07:00

In Tehran they are sleepless,

the acrid rank reek of leather and gas,

the cries of blood beaten.

The Secret Police are the corpuscles in the streets.

In Tehran, that small scrap of volition ripped

ripped from the ballot box,

like a child from a womb in the middle of atrocity.

In Tehran they are sleepless.

The world, it is rocking,

to 3:3 GMT.

And so are we.

That last scrap of illusion ripped from us,

like the candy that teethes the infant's pain,

we are facing reality, grim cold

once, now, and again.

In America we are sleepless,

but it is a different night,

the sun travels round so far

that midnight falls

as the sun takes Tehran into it's arms.

Here we have betrayed,

the lights of our losses,

forgotten the fury,

and fermented a brew,

as foul and fetid,

as any before.

We have tossed aside so called hope,

and voted for war.

In America we are sleepless,

watching each line,

and hoping that somehow,

in English it rhymes.

That bleeding of time

2009-06-16T18:51:00.000-07:00

The poet said, and so I've often read,

that the sky is just a sieve that bleeds the time.

In time my love in time and time,

all these cuts will heal, all these cuts will heal.

I heard the shouting on the streets, in jerks and starts,

by video half captured, half poured,

into a camera in the hand,

sing me an aria in sharp edges and scattered motion.

The powerful, half cunning, half hapless,

seek to cage the songbird, the canary

who twitters of hoped half-remembered freedom.

It was written in another book,

the book of fate,

that all these people will one day be free.

That day is not today,

but it will be, in time, in time.

In time the words will be as sweet as dates,

and the breath as cool as clean rain.

But now shouts are on the tongue,

and the maneuvers go behind the third eye blind.

Do not doubt, that chatter becomes a roar,

as droplets become a downpour,

and the crackle of single fingers

become a roar like thunder flashed

with lightning like an insight.

The storm will pass, in time in time,

and who knows what fruit it will bring,

from this patter of words like rain.

They will bleed from our fingers,

as long as other fingers bleed.

Ensign on Marriage. Speak Loudly and Carry a Big err... stick.

2009-06-16T15:08:00.000-07:00

Ensign admits affair with married employee.

"The time-honored and unique institution of marriage between one man and one woman is a fundamental pillar of our society and its values." Representative Ensign of Nevada, on behalf of the Defense of Marriage Act. He missed three votes on it. Including the final one.

Ensign however, may have had reservations, he did not vote on the Definition of Marriage Amendment. Even though he said he supported it.

Perhaps it is his idea of political courage?

Twilight at the build

2009-06-16T12:42:00.000-07:00

A Missive From My Generation

2009-06-16T08:46:00.000-07:00

There are few moments when someone can claim, or does, speak for a generation. It is almost always by accident rather than design. What is, comes together in one person's fingers, and it is manifest only after the fact. The reason for the energy around the Iranian Election is that it brings myth and reality together, and fuses them into a simple imperative. In a way which the soap opera of Barack and the Village does not, and cannot, and will not. The Iranian Election speaks to, and for, our generation, because what is happening there, is not happening here.

We live in the dilemma of Graham Greene's Ministry of Fear, with a short sharp strangling of breath, against which we feebly struggle. We cannot fight injustice, so much as express our outrage at our sense of injustice. This is our myth: that enough exposure of injustice will lead, eventually to it's end. That the mass of human beings are inert because they are uninformed. All truth is viral: once seen, it must be witnessed to and participated in.

This is also the reality: there truly are two arcs from the Iranian election, one that streaks in one direction, and another which descends down into a darker pit than any they know. It is not so with any of the other issue of the day, and certainly not the Soap Opera. The Soap Opera is not unimportant, because out of it comes the life we live. Bad bills, bad statements, bad actions. However, there is an unending wave of them, and the details are dull. All government is dull, and if you think government is dull, realize that I am one of the few people you will ever meet who has been paid to watch paint dry.

But the mastery of detail is a false protection from the truth that none of these individual battles divide the world into two, the way the Iranian election does. It is clear, at least to us, that these little battles are not skirmishes in some great battle between good and evil, but between naked evil, and veiled evil. Between purely insane, and self-satisfied self-loving stupor. Caught between the left and the right? No between the wrong and the wrong headed.

There are no riots on our streets, the truth is not denied by the powers in Washington DC, the way it is denied by the powers in Tehran. They admit that we are in hard times, they admit they do not share in those hard times, but dance at balls and float between happy appearances in bright clothes. They admit that we must accept our fate, consigned to sickness and starvation of hope. There is no fact which can be revealed which will break the power of the Ministry of Fear in America. That vast government agency, in which is employed, everyone hoping to sell their green green lawn to the next person. It is the agency that mandates sex crimes charges for sexting, assassinates doctors, lusts to ban so called violent video games and depictions of sex. It is more persuasive and pervasive than the secret police ever were in any dictatorship. When Frost wrote "I am the Grass," he was talking about war, but grass is even more chilling in peace. It destroys lives, marriages. We, the young, still remember, all too well, growing up in a penitentiary of grass.

So if you ask why we are not so eager on these small details, well, we are, individually. Individually attracted to this detail or that. To this or that shiny thing that we take back to the nests of our idenity and lay it as part of what makes us able to sit within it. But no small detail, save the one which is truly hidden, is enough. It's very nature as a small detail means that the fight for it is the fight of individuals who see that small detail. Why is it that the Administration has put a rider in the Supplemental, that is War, appropriation to block the release of detainee abuse photos? Why did the Bush administration block the flag draped coffins. We are not at war with Eurasia. We have never been at war with Eurasia. Because somewhere in these details is, they feign, they fear, the foresee, is the one detail that will cause people to revolt and recoil.

So Alexander, I write back that Iran's Election is missive for my generation. When the world stretches in two directions, between two roads, that end in two places, with two names, then there will be all of the activity on the priorities that you desire. Until then, when we are faced merely with scenic or expedient highways to hell, it will be a babel of voices, following perhaps this flag or that, like the souls in Dante's Limbo, and not the chorus you might prefer. We are without leaders, and while all truth is viral, we do not yet have a pandemic of it.

I am told the army is moving into Tehran, and the fears of an Incident seem confirmed. Tell me when there will be an Incident on the Mall, when what we have endured will finally be enough to take all in hand. It is not today, it was not yesterday, and it will not be tomorrow. But I think that day will come, and when it does, the world will shake not with GMT +3:3 but to the backdrop of marble and cherry trees.

What Errol Morris' Eye Missed Part V

2009-06-15T14:28:00.000-07:00

Simon Worrall's book on one of the most accomplished literary forgers of the 20th century follows a most unusual character: someone who took it upon himself to destabilize the Mormon church by a consistent forging of documents designed to sting and color the history of that Church. One particular document is interesting: it is a forgery of a promissory note by a confidence man who had taken in the early Mormon followers of Smith. The forger had made a living creating documents that cast the Mormon church in a bad light, and then selling them back to a church eager to cover up any such blemishes.

(Mark) Hoffman could get Emily Dickinson's voice and handwriting right. He could create a letter from Daniel Boone that is so convincing you can hear the crack of gunfire as you read it. He could manipulate ink and paper with consummate artistry. He could fake history and manipulate people. But he could not simulate time: the slow drop-feed of the days, andweeks, and months, the shift of the seasons, and with it the subtle changes in humidity, temperature, and light that alter the chemical composition of a document. It was the flaw that would send him to jail for the rest of his life.

Simon Worrall The Poet and the Murder page 226

In this case, the way Worrall aged his ink created a microscopic pattern of "alligatoring" cracks, much as van Meegeren's rolled canvases had lines of parallel cracks, different from the passage of time.

But it is the purpose of Hofmann that is the deeper thrust:

Metcalfe believes that Hofmann's genius lay in his ability to deconstruct Mormon scripture and create fictional texts that fitted seamlessly into the historical record. Just as computer scientists take a piece of code and reverse engineer it to discover how it was constructed, Hofmann reverse-engineered Mormon scripture to get at the underlying structures. "He would create these fictitious documents that were sprinkled with enough historical verisimilitude that people concluded historicity from them," recalled Metcalfe. "And they, in turn, became pivotal documents that said how things are. Hofmann wanted to demythologize the founding parents. I think he was saying 'You've been told all these stories. But this is what really happened.' "

Metcalfe see Hofman as a ruthless nihilist whose ultimate goal was even more ambitious and diabolical that most people have assumed. "Steve Christensen was a rising star in the Mormon Church," he explained. "By murdering him Hofmann was disproving God's existence."

The reality of Mark Hoffman was that he was exacuting both forgery, and hoax. Many of his documents were meant to slip into the stream of documents. Many were clearly intended to be mimesis, particularly his Daniel Boone letters. On the edge lies his forgery of Emily Dickinson, which was meant to push in to the explicit what he thought was her agnosticism. But his forgeries of Mormon documents were clearly hoax: he wanted to change the view of the church itself. The Church of Later Day Saints, for it's part feared, if not believed, the story he was telling with his documents. The early history of the Church of Later Day Saints is replete with forgery, fraud, and acts of lesser morality. The Church of Later Day Saints is, itself, a hoax, in that it promulgates a history of the Americas which bears no relationship to the truth. One does not need a high powered microscope to see the discrepancies between archeology and the LDS scripture. This stands in contrast to the old testament, which for all of it's holes, flaws, changes, and amendings, clearly comes out of a particular historical tradition. It may not be history, but it is historical. The Hofmann forgeries are closer to history, as forgeries, than the LDS scriptures are.

This is an important point: Hofmann's hoax is embroidered with close history, the LDS hoax is fabrication. Both are hoaxes. Both are intended to get people to see the past in a radically different way, and both are creations of a particular place and time, as well as a particular intellect. Hofmann's hoax was, in effect, a counter-hoax, an attempt to get people to disbelieve the lies of the Church of Later Day Saints, by telling even more lies, and, ultimately, committing homocide. In doing so he became at least as warped as anything he preached against, and passed from the realm of someone who had the ambition to tell the truth, to, as Worrall correctly points out, into manipulation and a purer malice than what he crusaded against. He was not deluded, but with a clear mind set out to alter the past, and erase the future.

The difference between forgery, I can't say mere, because after all, a forgery is capable of doing far more damage than most hoaxes are, is on display in Hofmann, and ironically, in the posts by Errol Morris, who accepts a hoax, in debunking a forgery.

Tuty's Jing* Skin ~ FREE FREE FREE ~

2009-06-15T12:02:00.000-07:00

One of my favourite shops in SL **TUTY'S** SKIN & SHAPE STORE have put out a Freebie Shelf at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lauzon/220/48/28 and it contains amongst other things a full set of *Jing* Female Oriental Skins (eleven in all.)

It's difficult enough to find decent oriental skins in SL - never mind FREE!

I always buy my hair and shapes here so I was particularly (and very pleasantly) surprised to find this

Go get :)

XingZ

A window into the Arab moment

2009-06-15T06:29:00.000-07:00

Other people are better informed than I am, and have more arabic, and knowledge of the Middle East. I am writing this, then, as a window, having gone looking for what could be found in Second Life. It would be unwise, I think, to draw any conclusions from what I write that are more general, because SL is a very narrow audience, and selected.

But a few words about Arabic speaking people in Second Life. Many come from societies that make it very difficult to get pornography, or to even meet other people of the opposite sex away from layers of supervision. So many come to Second Life for fast cybersex (guys) and many, both young men and women, come to Second Life just be be with other young people of mixed genders. Playing dice is a favorite pass time, though not for money. They use voice much more than Americans do. The times I have watched or participated, there has been a general happy go lucky air to them. The boys are very marriage directed, the girls flirt a great deal, basking in the attention.

They don't represent a cross section of their world, overwhelmingly they come from internet based jobs, or from relatively wealthy families. So what you find out about anything is very much a window into a particular pair of segments. One is all new, forward, future, and very interested in everything in the West. They also tend to be ummmm, sex scrounges. The other is very directed inward, arabic using, not English using, conservative in morals. A good way of thinking of it is that for the first group, being from America makes them very interested in you, and "wanna have fun?" is a prelude to cybersex, while for the second "wanna have fun?" means talk and play dice, but they are looking for a nice arab girl.

This being said, the Iranian election has not rippled through the consciousness of the second group. The topics of the day are the same as every day. Meeting people, laughing, playing dice, the weather, the food, their own dreams. Iran, is not in their world. One young man even laughed about it.

I am drawing no conclusions, this is not news, in a day when events are moving very swiftly in Iran, and Americans recognize a revolutionary moment, a discontent of the young, a search for change, it should be remembered that not all of the Islamic world, which is different from the Arabic world, looks at these things in the same way. For them today is not a symbol of coming change, or much of anything, but another day to flirt and play dice. The Iranian Election is something else, somewhere else. If anything there is a sort of attitude that Iran is a rival, and that the failure of Iran's Democracy weakens a rival. The Shi'a Sunni split, the Arabic Persian split, reveal a fault that runs deep. "Maybe they cause less trouble."

For the young internet crowd, many come from Egypt, and getting msn to cam is a bigger priority than talking about Iran. After that came the Egypt-Brazil football match.

This is a moment for Iran, and for young Americans, in that I think we see our own discontent in that which is going on in Iran. But it is not this way for everyone everywhere.

Freebie Alert

2009-06-14T12:28:00.000-07:00

Still on the furnishings trail I visited Apocalips (that’s how they spell it) Japan; purveyors of lovely low prim oriental furnishings - low cost too so don't be stingy babies have a good look around while you’re there.

I found two very nice little Futon Beds, which I would have happily paid money for, selling for Zero Lindens.

Sleep tight.

XingZ

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Apocalips%20Japan/19/31/25

The Sex Business Is The Exploitation Business

2009-06-13T08:34:00.000-07:00

For people who believe that, RL, merely regulating the sex industry is like pushing the Staples "Easy" button, a cautionary counter-example: 22 performers in California's sex film industry have contracted HIV since 2004.

Stereo 2

2009-06-12T19:55:00.000-07:00