Saturday, December 24, 2016
Saturday, December 17, 2016
U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 93
In Western societies, for too long, there had been no victories, no glory and diminishing certainties. Wars were waged; nobody knew how they could be won. Their wounds festered. The distance between metropolis and periphery grew into a cultural chasm. Many things became unsayable; even gender became debatable. Truth blurred, then was sidelined, in an online tribal cacophony.
The Rage of 2016
Wednesday, December 14, 2016
Awww Yeah vol. 55
EXCLUSIVE: 'It's truly tragic to see her maudlin displays of self-pity': Feminist Camille Paglia hits back at Madonna's claims she was rebuffed by her female peers at the start of her career
- Madonna spoke about sexism, ageism, and misogyny during her speech at the Billboard Women in Music event on Friday
- The 58-year-old called out Camille in her speech, claiming that the writer said she 'set women back' by objectifying herself sexually
- The writer actually hailed Madonna as a 'true feminist' in a 1990s op-ed, and Camille maintains that she was one of the singer's 'first defenders'
- Camille discussed the pop star's 'path of self-destruction' and her 'embarrassing inability to deal with aging' in a statement shared with Daily Mail Online
CAMILLE PAGLIA'S FULL RESPONSE TO MADONNA
Madonna is one of the most creative and influential women artists of the modern era. She transformed music and dance and produced stunning videos that were among the major works of art of the late twentieth century. She single-handedly broke the power of the Stalinist puritans of old-guard feminism and was instrumental in the triumph of pro-sex feminism in the 1990s.
Hence it is truly tragic to see Madonna descend into embarrassing displays of maudlin self-pity and irrational accusations against others. She is turning into a horrifying combination of delusional, vampiric Norma Desmond and bitter Joan Crawford on the bottle. I was Madonna’s first major defender, when she was still considered a pop tart and a sham puppet created by shadowy male producers.
In my ultra-controversial 1990 op-ed on her in the New York Times, 'Finally, a Real Feminist', I hailed her cutting-edge work and celebrated her embrace of sex, beauty, and Hollywood glamour, which had been under attack for the past quarter century of dreary second-wave feminism. I was widely attacked for my finale, which was dismissed as preposterous but which in fact came true: 'Madonna is the future of feminism'.
It is absolutely ridiculous for Madonna to now claim that she longed to ally with other women at the start of her career but was rebuffed from doing so. The media, in the U.S. and abroad, constantly asked Madonna about me or tried to bring us together, and she always refused. For example, in 1994, Esquire magazine asked me to interview her for a cover story, but she rejected the proposal. Instead, they got the geriatric novelist Norman Mailer, who knew nothing about Madonna or popular music, with predictably vapid results. HBO wanted to film Madonna and me conversing at a restaurant. Again, she rejected it. And Penthouse too proposed a joint cover story that was shot down.
The real issue is that while Madonna’s world tours have remained highly successful, her artistic development has been stalled for 20 years. The last truly innovative work she did was with electronica producer William Orbit. Madonna has become a prisoner of her own wealth and fame. Her most authentic ideas were inspired by her childhood rebellion against the repressive code of American Catholicism. When she switched over to Hollywood chic Kabbalah, with its easy-going ethic and pat bromides, she lost her creative drive. Furthermore, Madonna seems to lack the humility and persistence that are required for the study of serious art. She collects art for display, but obviously it has not broadened or deepened her imagination.
The number one issue in Madonna’s current path of self-destruction is her embarrassing inability to deal with aging. She has failed to study the example of her great role model, Marlene Dietrich, who retained her class and style to the end. Madonna keeps chasing after youth, humiliating herself with vulgar displays, like the horrendously trashy, buttock-baring outfit she wore to the Metropolitan Museum of Art Gala in May. She has become a cringe-making pastiche of ratty blonde hair extensions and artificially swollen cheeks, obscuring the magnificent classic bone structure that made her one of the most photogenic celebrities of the 1990s. In her struggles to stay relevant, Madonna has debased herself with adolescent, pitifully inept Instagrams that cannot compete with Rihanna’s brilliant work in that genre.
Instead of lugubrious rants and hysterical recriminations, perhaps Madonna should try a little honest self-critique.
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
Negation Aspiration vol. 34
I HAVE WORKED IN 60 COUNTRIES, covered wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and spent much of 2014 living inside West Africa’s Ebola zone, a place gripped by fear and death. What I experienced in the Philippines felt like a new level of ruthlessness: police officers’ summarily shooting anyone suspected of dealing or even using drugs, vigilantes’ taking seriously Mr. Duterte’s call to “slaughter them all.”
He said in October, “You can expect 20,000 or 30,000 more.”
On Saturday, Mr. Duterte said that, in a telephone call the day before, President-elect Donald J. Trump had endorsed the brutal antidrug campaign and invited him to visit New York and Washington. “He said that, well, we are doing it as a sovereign nation, the right way,” Mr. Duterte said in a summary of the call released by his office.
‘They Are Slaughtering Us Like Animals’
He said in October, “You can expect 20,000 or 30,000 more.”
On Saturday, Mr. Duterte said that, in a telephone call the day before, President-elect Donald J. Trump had endorsed the brutal antidrug campaign and invited him to visit New York and Washington. “He said that, well, we are doing it as a sovereign nation, the right way,” Mr. Duterte said in a summary of the call released by his office.
‘They Are Slaughtering Us Like Animals’
Sunday, December 11, 2016
РОССИЙСКАЯ ФЕДЕРАЦИЯ! РОССИЙСКАЯ ФЕДЕРАЦИЯ! т. 92
“The whole affair is Kafkaesque,” Mr. Bukovsky said in an interview. “You not only have to prove you are not guilty but that you are innocent.” He insisted that he was the victim of a new and particularly noxious form of an old K.G.B. dirty trick known as kompromat, the fabrication and planting of compromising or illegal material.
Old-style kompromat featured doctored photographs, planted drugs, grainy videos of liaisons with prostitutes hired by the K.G.B., and a wide range of other primitive entrapment techniques.
Today, however, kompromat has become allied with the more sophisticated tricks of cybermischief-making, where Russia has proved its prowess in the Baltic States, Georgia and Ukraine. American intelligence agencies also believe that Russia used hacked data to hurt Hillary Clinton and promote Donald J. Trump in the U.S. presidential election, according to senior officials in the Obama administration.
Old-style kompromat featured doctored photographs, planted drugs, grainy videos of liaisons with prostitutes hired by the K.G.B., and a wide range of other primitive entrapment techniques.
Today, however, kompromat has become allied with the more sophisticated tricks of cybermischief-making, where Russia has proved its prowess in the Baltic States, Georgia and Ukraine. American intelligence agencies also believe that Russia used hacked data to hurt Hillary Clinton and promote Donald J. Trump in the U.S. presidential election, according to senior officials in the Obama administration.
Foes of Russia Say Child Pornography Is Planted to Ruin Them
Thursday, December 8, 2016
Awww Yeah vol. 54: 2016 Shame Crushes
sex overdrive.
absence raises desire, and by this point my desire is a hissing spitting cobra-hooded wild pig the height of a skyscraper, the width of an air craft carrier, and possessing the desperate hunger of a constellation aware that its inching closer and closer to going supernova.
i don't fuck a lot, is what i'm getting at here.
i don't fuck at all.
not only that, but i'm getting the sense that no one is really fucking at all. too preoccupied with pedantic micro-managing of everyone else's thoughts and behaviors, with purloining and misappropriating each other's outrages, to concentrate on that one stress relieving flesh connector that binds us all... a solid pounding.
giver or receiver. man or woman. straight or gay. cis or trans.
why can't we all just fuck till we can't walk?
as i find my social inadequacies multiplying by the nanosecond, seemingly in correlation with exponentially vitriolic societal pressures, i find that my attractions and fetishes have also mutated further, broadened into an overreaching spectrum of spunktrum that colors every encounter on either side of the cathode horizon.
alright... this writing is starting to take the length of the new Bethlehem record, so let me get to the fuck-meat of this open-faced sex sandwich; the top 5 Shame Crushes of 2016.
these lovelys find their place on this list because of their atypical beauty, their intangible aura, their effortlessly hypnotic trance-waves that have ensnared my ID in their vertigo tilt-a-whirl fishnets, choked into coma-bliss delirium by its garter belt garrote.
here we gooooooo
getting the reliably jackable out of the way is this pornstar extraordinaire. Ms. Reid has the honor of possessing one of the most fascinating visages ever found in the medium, like if your perma-cute girlfriend received some kind of Twilight Zone esque punishment for making one too many Roger-Ebert's-Last-Days faces in a reflecting doorknob, but somehow the cosmically ironic comeuppance made her even more inappropriately adorable... like a living Trevor Brown drawing. plus those scenes w/ Dana Vespoli and Bonnie Rotten are literally Fucking Art.
the inadvertent femme fatale of the terminally embarrassing "GamerGate" movement, the droll dom of clinical depression. has that semi-sentient-wet-burlap vocal cadence that sucks me right down. i've been increasingly interested in how games are designed, and i can't think of somehow i'd rather have as my tutor.
yes... that's almost-irritating Kate McKinnon... but that whole package up; the cute kicks, the lacy dress, the short hair, the glasses.. really puts the "shame" in "shameshank". Existential one-liners about the spots on my dick, please.
intelligently eviscerating words and performances that turn much of the worn-out aesthetics of art damage and power electronics into something truly abrasive.
Kristen Stewart's secret rage unleashed in a feral whirling mass of sweat-shined battle vinyl and deadly fuck-you-without-end musculature. after the inevitable collision with NXT Women's Champ Asuka, my dick is gonna need grief counseling.
------
Merry 2017, everyone.
get to fucking.
Sunday, December 4, 2016
We Are The Sprocket Holes vol. 233: (s)Top 2016 DVD releases
THE WORLD OF KANAKO
teenage girl rolling with the inadvertent cult of personality sparked by her existence. yuh.. been there.
UPSIDEDOWN CROSS
fundamentalist torture fetish film with a meanly satirical edge.
THE TRIBE
always felt like the deaf kids in my school were assholes.
NEON DEMON
that's a picture of Jena Malone fucking a lady corpse, so i really don't care about your negative shit.
MEAT
lustmord and piss-defilement in a scuzzy butcher shop.
LIKE CATTLE TOWARDS GLOW
Dennis Cooper's literary voyeurism masterfully translated to film (which he also authored).
DIARY OF A DEADBEAT
don't trust anyone that doesn't at least in part relate to the struggles present herein.
THE DEMOLISHER
something of a gender-swapped companion piece to Amy Everson and Jason Banker's Felt, this time deconstructing the male-centered vigilante and stalker films, suggesting that maybe there isn't much separating Death Wish from Don't Answer The Phone.
BASKIN
police officers stuck in a rapey mutant time loop. wait.. what's the scary part? HACHACHACHACHACHA.
ATROZ
Alarma Revista: the Movie
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