Bush Gardens: China's Sex Theme Park
The notoriously unsexy People's Republic of China is trying to shed their rep for flaccid views on sexuality. In fact, a sex-oriented theme park is rising right now. Not content with being the Ninth Sexiest Country In The World, someone over there felt in themselves the need to mount what they're billing as a place designed to "(improve) both the sex education and the sex life of its visitors." Hence: Love Land. The Chinese have to take all the fun out of sex, don't they? The park's manager, a decent fellow named Lu Xiaoqing, tried to pound the message home: "We are building the park for the good of the public. I have found that the majority of people support my idea, but I have to pay attention and not make the park look vulgar and nasty." Visitors are being promised "giant" genitalia, naked people, histories of sex, and other assorted "fun," sexytime ways to learn about the world's oldest hobby, but tragically, no rides have been announced. Yet. We've worked on a few ideas in case they're in need: Splash Mountain Mr. Toad's Wild Ride The Magic Carpets of Aladdin Donkey's Photo Finish Twister: Ride it Out Jaws The Wild Surge Cheetah Chase Ariel's Grotto Country Bear Jamboree (why not?) Got any more in you? Bust a few out in the comments below. Whee! China Builds First Sex Theme Park [BBC News] MORE >>
Susan Orlean, Defender of the New Yorker Universe, In Her Own Words
If you've seen the movie Adaptation you know Susan Orlean will mimic dial-tones does not play around. So I asked the New Yorker staff writer if she had more thoughts not-fit-for-tweeting. She did! See, Dan Baum had more to say about Susan Orlean, and we thought it only fair to give the lady a chance to respond in full. Why? Because we are children, and have yet to put down childish things. Soooooo, from the hallowed halls of the New Yorker to the fecal-crusted basement of WTAN on Gawker: we present, Susan Orlean. Why, oh why did I find myself mixed up in the Dan Baum brouhaha (by the way, was the word "brouhaha" ever more appropriately used than in this instance? I think not.)? Chalk it up to medium and message, which were very different reasons I felt compelled to reply. First, the medium, which was the lesser of the two reasons, but still, I was irked by the endless stream of tweets from Mr. Baum — I felt like I was sitting at one of those horrible dinner parties where one person insists on doing all the talking, and in this case, talking backwards. This is not a federal offense, of course, and there are far stupider things on Twitter everyday, but using the form in that way definitely drew attention and almost demanded a reply (I suppose a simple, "Could you please shut up?" would have been fine, or a gentler "Excuse me, don't you have a blog where you could put this story up? Twitter is, um, for short messages, did you notice?" but it was provocative; I ignore about eighty percent of the things in my Twitter stream (as I bet most people do), but this endless posting had me on the edge of my seat — compelled to read but not happy about it. But this would ordinarily amount to me nothing more than me complaining about it over dinner to my husband. But then comes the message. Discussing details about salaries, contracts, hiring, firing — I think it's indiscreet and unprofessional, but that's just my opinion; if Mr. Baum wants to, he's entitled. Even airing opinions that I happen to disagree with strenuously — that the atmosphere at the New Yorker is "creepy", for instance — is his right. It's just that Baum's characterizations seemed so off-base that I couldn't help but respond. I'm not an apologist for the magazine. It's an institution I am very loyal to and very proud of, so it was maddening to read his account, suggesting that the New Yorker is a strange, dysfunctional place full of whispering freaks, headed by a capricious, vengeful editor-in-chief. Huh?? In a court of law, Baum's testimony would be practically inadmissible; he's a writer whose contract wasn't renewed (not "fired", as he describes it — but whatever), obviously wounded and disappointed. Bias alert! I've been at the magazine since 1986, enjoyed ridiculous amounts of freedom to write what I want, gotten paid extremely generously, mouthed off a number of times when I disagreed with editing changes, and been granted great liberty for book... MORE >>
Genius Is Permanent: The Five Tat Commandments
Peeps been getting ridiculous tattoos for years; it marks some as animals. But there's rules to this game, I wrote you a manual. A step-by-step booklet, for you to get, your tats on track: Rule Number Uno: No one respects a celebrity tattoo. 1. Our celebs are being torn down/everyone's a celebrity somewhere, so who cares? Only you, unfortunately. 2. Heaven forbid you actually run into that celeb of your dreams with a tattoo of their face on your arm. Talk about blowing your chance for romance. 3. What if your celebrity has a meltdown and starts calling everyone in the room the n-word (not "negro") and you're left with a bigot on your arm? Well, I guess in places where people get Kramer tattoos that might actually be pretty sweet. Rule #2: Tattoos are not photogenic. These types of tats may be ridiculous, but they engender more sympathy from normals since they obviously come from a good place: I love you, wife! I love you, baby girl! Who wants to hate on that? Alas, the vision in your mind is most likely not obstructed by hair, blemishes, pimples, etc that require constant maintenance. Also, she looks like a horror movie promotional trailer now. Pass. The skin is not an ideal canvas, keep the photo-realistic art on paper. Rule # 3: No penises (uh, NSFWeekend?), period.. Ok, we get it, peens make you giggle. Or they make you edgy. But constant looking at one often makes you vomit; that's why most BJs happen in the dark. Not that you would know with your penis tattoo driving all the prospective BJs away. No matter how you dress it, no penis-tat will ever make you "lucky". (btw, looking at this book and gallery, there are a lot of penis tattoos out there. Too many. It probably demands a New Yorker-style sprawling deconstructing-of-process investigation. Maybe a freelance project for Dan and the Mrs.? But until such a cover story is commissioned, do keep the penises behind clothed doors.) Rule #4: All the funny text shit? Dead it. These readable-tats are particularly fascinating because they often show true flashes of genius. Oh, but I just forgot to italicize the "flashes" part of that statement. Because after the flash, or brainfart, such genius is challenged by the irrepressible idiocy of making this moment permanent. There are real existential issues at odds here, people. Discuss. Rule #5:Never get high on your own supply. Well I really just wanted to include that lyric at the end here, but I could care less if you use the drugs that you purchased in bulk, or if you just sell them. To people before they get tattoos. But this dolphin smoking a bong in a recliner does seem to demonstrate the concept neatly. Photos courtesy of: Aviva Yael. To see more of "The Best, Worst, and Most @#$%ing Ridiculous Tattoos Ever, buy the book! MORE >>
Politico/Drudge Report Atomic Infinity Loop Finally Birthed
The clusterfucky relationship between Politico and Drudge Report reached new heights yesterday when Politico reported on the U.S. Attorney's Office of Massachusetts telling all of its staffers to stop smoking the Drudge. Tragically, the notice was sent out to the U.S.O.O.M. (fun, right?) for all the uninteresting and wrong reasons. An IT organ-grinder named Paul Harvey, who - and get your best pissy I.T. Guy voice on - noted that he had to "to reformat/reimage two computers because the user visited the drudgereport.com site," and that if someone needed to get on Drudge, they still could. Just don't break his fucking computers, first, okay?! Politico bakes this non-story of IT anal-retentiveness into NEWS like they do everything because of the obvious angle. Drudge is a "conservative-leaning" site and "Barack Obama critic" and thus, conspiracy! Inevitably, because of both Matt Drudge's bi-polar vanity complex and need to keep his relationship with Politico well fed, it stays the main headline on his site. For 19 hours now, going strong. And don't forget what a total and complete non-story this is. Politico and Drudge have a symbiotic relationship, like those small fish that suck the bacteria off the bigger fish: the bigger fish gets cleaned, and the small fish gets fed, but really, one's getting rid of shit and the other's eating it. Matt Drudge needs Politico to break stories. Politico needs Drudge to link to their stories. And this has got to more or less be the mutant-psychic peak of their relationship: Politico breaks a story on Drudge, for Drudge to link to. It's Drudge's favorite kind of story, because he gets to flatter himself and take the cognitive dissidence route into thinking he was banned for being a badass, by the Government! He links to it, and Politico gets the hits on the story. For those who were fortunate enough to not have to sit through Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly's so-bad-it's-good apocalyptic fetish dream Southland Tales, the movie ends when (SPOILER ALERT!) Seann William Scott shakes the hand of Seann William Scott, playing his clone-via-time-travel double. Stiffler meeting Stiffler rips a hole in the time-space fabric of the universe, and the credits start rolling over a Moby song or something. This is kind of like that, except the world goes on and all we have left to show for it is a news cycle that just made us all slightly stupider people. The upside to all of this is that we've seen through the other side of the fourth dimension, and we finally know what it looks like: U.S. Attorney's office tells employees not to log on to Drudge Report [Politico] MORE >>
Click here to safely unsubscribe now from "Gawker: Top Stories" or change your subscription or subscribe
| Your requested content delivery powered by FeedBlitz, LLC, 9 Thoreau Way, Sudbury, MA 01776, USA. +1.978.776.9498 |
No comments:
Post a Comment