OK! At least we're not cussing, like doyle and your buddy Bruno from the Herzog flix (kin I have your autograph, Bruno? Sincerely, your fondest fan, WDK)...
> > There are other narrow genres, science fiction and detective stories
> > for example, where, despite the despotism of editors and consumers,
> > art sneaks through.
>
> hello? now we're working with a pretty elitist conception of art, ey?
Um, no, it would be elitist if I said it was impossible to find art in SF. You have to admit that strapping the artist into straitjacket and blinders might tend to spoil his product's artistic value.
> ...but oh geez WDK, but you really ought to take a look at some cosmos
> and the like, vogue even. you will find plenty of beautiful pics and
> some even nakeder and more provacative than what you found in SI.
> honest.
Yeah, I already know about Vogue, I love Vogue's photos. They're consistently the best photos of women on the news stand. But Cosmo? I can't remember ever seeing a strikingly beautiful photo in Cosmo; their photo art is even weaker than Playboy's. Now I got a bunch of scans off Usenet of real old Cosmo covers, from 1910 or so, and they were real cool, kind of like Charles Dana Gibson's pinups. But I just haven't seen any photos that are particularly appealing in contemporary Cosmos, although some of the prose is pretty funny, in a lame way - to me Cosmo is a lot like Playboy in that sense, but Playboy actually prints some readable articles now and again.
Go ahead, say it, just like everybody else does: "You mean to tell me you actually read the words in Playboy? I flatly refuse to believe it; you must be lying." Oh well.
> > ...What one does with one's cock is whirl it around over one's head
> > like a cowboy gunfighter slinging a lasso;
>
> exactly.
>
> > that's an OK dirty joke, but I really haven't got one of those.
>
> well i'm at a loss as to how to restore your sense of virility
> but.....
You mean, "how to restore your manic delusions of grandeur" that I didn't have in the first place? that's OK, I'll pass...
> oh wait, maybe it was self deprecating humor in the interest of
> positioning yourself to be "just not like other guys...?" heh.
Hey, other guys can't swing theirs over their heads either. I did gym showers for four years in junior high and high school, and that's a fact. If some guy tells you different, he's lying. Also he's nuts.
So I was chatting with a friend about these words, and he told me how when he was a kid he used to have chickens in his yard. He says that when cocks get worked up, which is all the time, they run around the yard with their heads pitched back crowing like crazy, and they trip over stuff and go rolling head-over-heels in the grass, whereupon they immediately bounce back up on their feet and start running around, crowing again. I never looked at it that way; now I see what a cool metaphor "cock" is after all. Thanks to you and him too!
> > ...shitheels and no-good bastards. The U.S. President when I was a
> > teenager was a Dick, imagine what a pun like that does to a guy.
>
> yes, exactly why it's a poor word for public usage.
And also there's King Richard III.
> > ...Plus any of those words is just one part in three of the whole
> > works, where's the one word that describes it all? At least, you
> > can talk about a woman's "pussy," which is inclusive.
>
> huh?
Er, uh, that was a mechanical technicality that I, um, let's talk about currency or Kosovo or something (blush)...
> > That's hardly an ideal word, kinda uncouth maybe, but it's got a
> > nice cross-image in it, did you ever pet a cat and hear it purr?
>
> errrrr.....
>
> oh probably.
>
> were you looking for me to share an illustrative account...?
Well, that's what you get when you raise a boy in the suburbs; he knows all about what pussies are like, but he misses out learning first-hand about cocks. Your turn.
> > Is that a typo? I'd think objectifying a woman's body
> > pornographically would be eroticizing it -
>
> porn objectifies--turns into an object that has no agency except for
> someone else.
OK, I get you, thanks for explaining. I didn't think of it from the bored porno actress's point of view.
Also, you made another post where you actually reviewed the magazine, from cover to cover. (That was you, right?) At first, I was all, "how could she be so blind to look past those several fine photos with no more than 'more babes,' and focus on the ads," but then I realized that you were right: just like TV, the ads are the thing in a magazine, everything else between the covers is just filler to sustain reader (sucker) interest in the ads. That was smart, thanks.
There's nothing so unique about the ads in that SI, you see the exact same ad copy in Car & Driver, but they really are an eyeful. Mr. Macho Prole, here is your reward; for only about four times what you need to pay for basic transpo to and from your daily slave, you can have this great big gasguzzling pickup truck, and this sky, and this mountain, together with the free time to enjoy it all. What a cruel fraud!
> > ...But I don't think men, or rather, idealized male images, are, or
> > should be, more unfit than women's images. I'd only guess that they
> > wouldn't generate enough revenue to justify a special annual men's
> > swimsuit issue in SI.
>
> why is that. it's not natural. it's produced that way because men
> have made the porn. that's all changing by the way, if my perusal
> through cosmo is any indication: more and more very nekkid pics of
> men to advertise perfume and the like not as many as women, but many
> more than ever before.
Well, first of all, aren't you mixing up ads and porno? These are two widely distinct realms; few advertisers want their product associated with porno.
If naked men in ads moved merchandise effectively, the men (and women) who make ads would put more naked men in ads. Now I may be unusually stupid, but if you want me to look at your ad for wrenches or ethernet cards, just put a picture of a pretty girl in the ad. Why don't women fall into that in reverse? I just don't know.
> is this a good thing though?
It is if it eventually leads to the establishment of legal nude beaches within driving distance of my house. How's that for self-centered? Me and that asshole from Boca Raton (Rat's mouth) whom Doug quoted.
> ...oh puh-lease--is it all transluscent. really? well you must meet
> my rilly rilly dark haired, freckle faced irish friend, jill, who
> doesn't shave--anywhere!--definitely not transluscent. so?
I was thinking of, like, as compared with an orangutan.
Yours WDK - WKiernan at concentric.net