Latest Post


Send your love electronically HERE We will read it. Platonically.


The Public Blogging of Pomosexuality, Homotextuality, Homophobiaphilia, and Drear Theory (aka Career Theory) [aka Gay4Pay]. We also read the Corner and OpJournal so the right buttock will be punished as well. All comments subject to publication. Or dismissal. Or Both.



























 













 
Your Disciplinarians: Glenda Benda (Philapa), Amber Waves (Kansaster), Polly Morpheus (Dreamsville), Tess Tosterone (D'Urbervilles)





YOUR COMPUTER IS LAZY: FightAIDS@Home

ALL YOUR FRIENDS' COMPUTERS AND YOUR COMPUTERS AT WORK ARE LAZY TOO: Computer Bootcamp

WHEN IN PHILLY SHOP AT: Philadelphia AIDS Thrift



Solar X-Rays Status Geomagnetic Field Status



Calvin Klein's Obsession:
Glenn Reynolds
Virginia Postrel
Andrew Sullivan
A & L Daily
Mickey Kaus
Boing Boing
Joanne Jacobs
The Onion
Frontpage
Hunk Hunters
The Corner
Dennis Cooper
Clay Shirky
Wired News
Blogdex
Gaydex
The Cellar IOtD


Paloma Picasso's Tentations:
Eve Tushnet
Ralph Mag
Julian Sanchez
Light of Reason
Matt Welch
Ken Layne
USS Clueless
The Volokhs
Found Mag
Indie Gay Effers
NY Press
L'il G Footballs
Shout Across Pa
SciTech Daily
Manny Toomany
Tim Blair
Jesse Walker
Chas Murtagh
The Loom
Daniel Drezner


Nina Ricci's L'air du Temps:
M. Wickens
N. Imp
J.Manifold
J. Micah Marshall
M. S. Dog
H. Stuff Works
M. Pool
W. Peril
E. Dge
M. Filter
C. Cosh
F. Bot
R. Osenbaum
D. Weinberger
G. O'Machine
M. O'Asianboys
B. Leats
E. Schaton
E. Log
D. Enton
T.C. Station
U.W. Beauty (RIP)


Elizabeth Taylor's Black Pearls:
Merde
Hit
Carnival
Mind
Will
Weisdom
Lives
Ideas
Drawers
Hitches
Revolution
1,000
American
Sailers
Palmers
Caves
Coughs
Cults
Tails
Images
Asymmets
Winds
Zed


Karl Lagerfeld's Narcisse:
Cranky. P.
Salam P.
Pop B.
Samiz D.
Radley B..
Dan G.
Classical V.
Terry T.
Two B.
Porno C.
Larry L.
Ox B.
Howar D.
Choir E.
Luke F.
Jeff J.
Gay P.
Kieran H.
Roger S.
Jay R.
Jocko H.
Crampe R.

































Agenda Bender
 
Saturday, November 22, 2003  

Bound In Nontoxic Asbestos


There's a lefty organization that publishes a yearly list of "the 25 most censored media stories". The list is always interesting for its unabashed fraudulence (and for that illiterate media modifier.) The stories are all known to any reasonably well-informed ax-grinder. As an added dishonesty, the list doesn't document stories so much as a particular slant on the stories, though here again these supposedly secreted slopes have been skied down to the mud.

I was reminded of this minor annual scam when I looked for some information about Casimir Dukahz on the net. There is none. Just some name check citations of his not-even-infamous lost book, The Asbestos Diary. I was thinking about Casimir in the first place because Michael Jackson's mug shot has crowded everything else out of my brain. Everything in there now leads back to Jacko. The Asbestos Diary is the book Michael does NOT want to be seen carrying into the courtroom

It's the chickenhawk bible, or should be, but the chickenhawks appear to have forgotten about it as well. It is a brilliant book, possibly Loilta's equal (though not much like it). The pseudonymous Casimir's jump cut chronology of picking up boys in 40's to mid 60's America. Every entry has the boy's name and age at the top. The average name is Ldejcirtaky and the average age probably 13. Casimir is archer than McDonald's, eruditer than Arthur Treacher's, more fantastic than White Castle. You want some real secret shit, look for Dukahz. You probably won't find him (secret shit is like that), but the search for the hidden usually turns up other curious stuff.

Just as my googling Dukahz didn't payoff with any real information about him, but led me to rediscovering Jonatham Williams. This is one of the most satisfying discourses on books-worth-reading I've ever read, and I read every one of them I come across. I must remember not to forget Mr. Williams again.

Google revealed as well this instance of fetishist bibliophila:

Some books are given special value by their collector. One collector of gay books tried to put bindings on them to match the content, theme, or tide. Included in his collection was Casimir Dukahz's The Asbestos Diary, bound in nontoxic asbestos with the title blocked in silver on the front cover. To be successful in selling such unique books, the bookseller has to have a customer in mind when he or she purchases them.

For sure. Wacko J-O really doesn't want to bring this particular copy of the book to court.

And finally, I discovered bj's gay porno-crazed ramblings. BJ turned up as one of the handful of Dukahz google hits because he mentions buying a copy of The Asbestos Diary on ebay. BJ now turns up here because he's as interesting as his purchase. Which is to say he reminds me of me. A little bit. Enough to intrigue, not enough to repel. His blog? Gay chat excerpts, porno screen captures, vintage gay pulp covers, sex stories told out of school. What's not to like?

Even his non-sex stuff resonates. I've been meaning to write something very like this for months:

I love my Google Toolbar, of course I've had it for months and search GOOGLE constantly, but the newer version has the best Pop-Up blocker - much better than PanicWare's free Pop-Up Stopper, which wouldn't allow comment boxes unless you manually ok'd it each visit. Google's knows the difference between a comment window popping up, and an ad; also, you can adjust the settings for individual pages, like those M4M dating sites, to allow the personal ads to pop-up. Neat-o!

5:04 PM

Friday, November 21, 2003
 

I Awoke Laughing From A Dream...


The joke got less funny as the dream wore off, but there's still a little something there. I dreamed there was a political party, I'm thinking I even founded it, called the Knowonething Party. This would seem to be an astral reference to Isaiah Berlin's bestiary. You know, the hedgehog and the, uh, rabbit. Or was it the otter and the squirrel? The Scarecrow and Mrs. Muir? Anyway, one of them knows a lot of little things, and the other knows one big thing. Me, I forget all things, great and small.

Robert Benchley knew one big thing: There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't.

Or maybe that was just one of many little things he knew. Which would make him a city mouse, if I have my terminology right.

Searching for the exact Benchley quote (and discovering there are two distinct versions of it, spookily enough) I found this geek retrofit: There are 10 types of people in the world, those who know binary and those who don't.

And those who know just enough binary to get the joke. Which means there are really 11 types of people in the world.

4:27 AM

Thursday, November 20, 2003
 

The Anxiety of Swingfluence


The true source code for the Austin Powers movies doesn't lie in the low-rent secret-agent knockdowns of the James Bond formula. Look instead to the post-mod exhaustion of 1970's There's a Girl In My Soup for the secret key to the Powers' aesthetic and morphology.

The overlaps and tie-ins are many, but the most striking parallel is the body hair. Peter Seller's natural body pelt was reborn as Austin's only slightly exaggerated torso rug.

Goldie Hawn's performance is pure fembot, too.

Doubters disperse! I call Mr. Sellers to the stand.

4:22 PM

Tuesday, November 18, 2003
 

Ironic Distancing Maneuvers, Since Forever


I wish I knew how to add this tagline to the page header above. It would be a sort of self-granted perpetual indulgence, and not the first one I awarded myself.

Taking dictation from the voice in my head: Typos, homonymn confusion, flatout misspellings, and highly variable punctuation, since mid-2002.

7:13 PM

 

Turn On Your Heartlights


Days like these are hard on the angular souls stacked up in the Corner. Spare a thought for them and wing a prayer their way. Honey Graham, Polly Amory and the Duchess of Derbyshite especially will be "going through it", as I believe the youngsters put it. Today's Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling will appear to them to be "some fucked up shit", as the rougher looking youngsters put it. It will feel to them as if someone had "busted" a veritable "cap up their ass", as the more affluent, suburban youngsters put it.

Think on them with a smile of goodwill. The cave of their hearts is even more dark and cold than usual today. Stoke up the friendly fires in yours and aim the charity and benevolence flamethrower in their general direction.

I always recall what my uncle (known to friends, family, associates and authorities alike as "Lockdown") once told me, "the world loves a magnanimous motherfucker", he said. He was wrong about a lot, but he nailed that one (actually he was wrong about that one too since he really said, " the world loves a unanimous motherfucker", but I knew what he meant.)

Let us tempt the world with our grace in partial victory.



12:39 PM

Monday, November 17, 2003
 

We Take The O. Out of T.O.S.


As long as I'm mentioning devastating assaults on sacred monuments, what about the Yahoo Groups deletion of the accumulated porn archives on all its member sites this past summer? Many of these groups had been in existence for years and they had built enormous...I mean huge... I mean vast libraries of previously posted images. In August Yahoo stripped all archived messages in all its groups of their picture attachments. So now all that's left is the dark rectangle on the wallpaper where the portrait your hot grandfather used to hang, the endless thousands of messages of text teasers with no payoff. The pics themselves still exist, scattered on the hard drives of everyone who sent and saved them, but the record of the evolving totality of the endeavor was destroyed.

Every era looks back on the obvious mistakes of previous eras with satisfaction. Until the realization sinks in that the mistakes must not have been so obvious then. Once you reach that level of awareness, an even more unsettling and deeply sunk realization will probably surface: we are making obvious mistakes too, obvious to the future, invisible to us. Nicholson Baker has the destruction of paper archives covered. The future will surely laugh at the library scientists who engineered that bonfire of the bureaucratic imagination. In between sacking and pillaging the various schools of library science.

I hope the future stops by the Yahoo corporate campus, too, and knocks over the chrome logo on the lawn. Maybe burns the company flag and bubble baths the fountains, while they're at it. Sure, Yahoo had the usual Terms of Service droit de seigneur and could do whatever the hell it wanted with the archives that the members of the Yahoo Groups had created on Yahoo Server space. Of course, according to the Agenda Bender Terms of Service, I pretty much own anyone who ever stops to read something here. Your kids, cars, patents, pensions, magazine subscriptions, camel cash--all of it.

You better read it again.


12:59 PM