Rum-willing, Sea-faring, Beard-bearing Sociopaths!

Will it be politically incorrect, I wonder, to dress up like a pirate this year for Halloween?  Not that it's ever been popular to go as a Nazi or a member of the Taliban, but still - I would hate to see another staple of my youth trampled by current events.  It's bad enough kids these days have to trick or treat at 3:30 in the afternoon.  

Okay... it's hard not to poke fun at the headlines when "PIRATES!" are splashed all over them.  Nobody is fooled:  the discrepancy between Captain Hook and these neo-pirate jerks is wider than the one between Gandalf and Chris Angel.  I'm surprised the media doesn't call them "ocean terrorists", but then I remember that the media loves to sensationalize anything (soulless bastards) and suddenly I'm not surprised at all.  After the giggles are over and you actually get to reading the newsfeed though, there's very little funny about any of this.  

Most disturbing are the vows of revenge.  These are distinctly different than the revenge vows coming out of villagers in Afghanistan, coming from innocents in Iraq.  When family members are collateral damage, it's not surprising you'd see otherwise peaceful people become militant, and it's a shitty cycle that bums me out every time I look at the paper.  But this is different.  Listen to this guy: 

"Every country will be treated the way it treats us.  In the future, America will be the one mourning and crying...We will retaliate (for) the killings of our men," says a pirate named Abdullahi Lami.*  

First of all, since when can you interview a fucking pirate?  Secondly, and more importantly, does this guy not get it?  He's a pirate!  Did he not realize that capturing boats, taking hostages, and demanding ransoms is potentially dangerous?  The US will be the ones mourning and crying, he says. Weren't we already, when pirates took our loved ones hostages?  

It's too bad they don't have eyepatches and peglegs, but what's worse is that these semi-organized criminals come from a socio-economic situation so bad they don't realize piracy isn't a legitimate career option.  Haven't they seen those shitty PSA's with the bad electronic music played before the title screen on DVD's? Oh yeah - they're probably not on the pirated copies.  

Abdullahi Lami sounds like a sociopath to me, and my instinct is to say the hell with him - but it's never that simple.  The Darwinian struggle takes on a different meaning in Somalia, and blasting pirates out of the water won't stop other hungry folks taking to the seas.  They've got to compete for resources somehow.   I just hope we don't rely on snipers to solve this problem as much as the Lost Boys relied on Peter Pan, because it'll take more than force.  

*quoted from the article Saved by SEALS, by Todd Pitman and Pauline Jelinik, retrieved from the AP on April 13th 2009,

I was just reading Bukowski, and...

(Disclaimer: this blog is about sex and porn.  It acknowledges that I have had sex, and have watched porn.  If someday you don't give me a job because of this blog,  you're a hypocrite,  Or a Mormon.  If these subjects make you uncomfortable, please do not continue reading, unless you like feeling uncomfortable, in which case, read on) 

I wonder what Freud would think of the porn industry.  Would he snort a line, light a cuban, and say "I told you so"?  Would he be disgusted, or vindicated?  

A little of both probably.  Truth is, the porn industry fries my circuits a little.  I'm no prude, but there is a Grand-Fucking-Canyon dividing sex as I know it, and sex as it has evolved through pornography.  

I've watched porno.  Obviously.  But I am almost always left unfulfilled - partially because porno dulls the imagination, but also because it's so rare to find people having good sex on tape.  All the freaky fetish shit on the internet doesn't thrill me in the slightest.  If I'm going to watch people have sex, I want to see people who:

A.  Know one another.

B.  Are attracted to one another, and most importantly,

C.  Want to have sex with one another.

Understandably, this is rare; porn is a business.  Making love is not efficient, nor is it profitable for an industry.  Porn is commercial.  It's mainstream, and as long as sex is filmed for money, it won't be great sex, and it won't really be worth watching.  

The whole reason I got thinking about this subject by the way, are a couple little websites I was directed to by word of mouth. 

 Compare and contrast:  

Green Porno, a pet project of Isabella Rossellini's creation, produced by the Sundance Channel, in which Rossellini describes the mating habits of animals (the ones you'd least expect) in a weird and, sometimes, sexy way.  Nature is beautiful, and all that. 

 

Compare this with Porn for the Blind, a non-profit website designed to give the visually-impaired audio descriptions of short internet porn clips.  Not a completely outlandish concept when you think about it, until you actually listen to one: these files are about as erotic as castrated IRS agents.   It's funny until you imagine some poor blind guy trying to spice up an evening with this joke of a social service, his only other option being break-the-bank phone sex.  I mean, come on people, where's the feeling?  

  Isabella Rossellini somehow makes a hermaphrodite earthworm erotic, and yet these people make sex sound like a Drivers Ed. Manual.  It just goes to prove, it's not about the limits of what people are willing to do on camera, it's about a connection between two people.  That's what sex always boils down to right?  A human connection.