I spent a decent amount of time trying to debunk both Natural Harvest: A Collection of Semen-Based Recipes and Semenology: The Semen Bartender’s Handbook as satire, but to no avail. The author appears to be totally earnest, as you can see in this Reddit AMA, which contains the somewhat unexpected line, “My shift at the hospital is starting and I need to get to work.”.

But I’m still finding the whole thing difficult to swallow (come on, I had to). It’s not the practice of consuming semen that leaves me skeptical, but the level of pretension being applied to a sexual fetish. Be a freak, of course, but must we put on airs about it?

Perhaps it’s because I’ve always been more gourmand than gourmet, but I just refuse to believe that ejaculate-based cooking is an actual cuisine. It’s more of a past-time, really. And I refuse to acknowledge ejaculate as an ingredient. It’s a garnish, at best! And since the recipes all appear to be pretty classic and relatively straightforward, couldn’t I just buy a regular cookbook and add one more final ingredient? See below for a cocktail demonstration.
 

 
This website has the one of the most memorable sales pitches I have seen in quite some time:
 

Restore your virginity in five minutes with this new technologically advanced product. Kiss your deep dark secret goodbye and marry in confidence for only $29.95.

 
I don’t think any product captures the ongoing global conflict between the forces of progress and the forces of conservative darkness quite as vividly as the artificial hymen does. This website dispenses with the American Beauty rose petals and starts off with an explicit reference to the situation of women living in Muslim countries, for whom a non-virgin status can have dire consequences. As mirthful as the idea will seem to the average enlightened westerner, the following bullet points make the stakes uncomfortably plain:
 

I want to marry in confidence, keep my secret, can you help? OK!!!
I want no needles, no costly medical operation, can you help? OK!!!
I am a poor girl, I do not have much money, can you help? OK!!!
I am scared, I cannot let anybody know I buy a hymen, can you help? OK!!!

 
The artificial hymen is a lifeline for impoverished females who are trapped in a situation that only proof of virginity will remedy. It is a defense intended to aid the helpless in the face of the powerful forces of darkness. This is not rhetoric; this is a simple fact. In a world in which sexuality is damned and demonized, an artificial hymen is sometimes the only way. The whole concept makes me sad.

The Wikipedia article on the subject alludes to calls by conservatives in Egypt to ban the product, and also has this peculiar sentence: “Further controversy stems from the product’s adherence to centuries-old misunderstandings of virginity. The medical community has established that not all women are born with a hymen, and those who are do not necessarily bleed from intercourse.” Um, okay—what? The idea isn’t to fool “the medical community,” right? The idea is to fool one specific man, one who may need proofs of visible blood in order for his suspicions to be mollified. I don’t see what the true facts of virginity have to do with that. Is that really “controversial”?

Delivery of the artificial hyman is “discreet,” of course: “Items are packaged in a plain envelope or box with an attached mail-label declaring the contents as ‘Make-up Kit’ and the Sender as ‘Magazines Online’ … the transaction details on your credit card statement will appear as “MAGAZINES ONLINE” or “MAGAZINESOL” depending on your credit card company.”
 
Here’s a visual representation of the end result, complete with fake bloodstain:

 
Possibly the most interesting thing about both of these websites is that they feature bundle offers—at hymenshop.com, you can get five artificial hymens for $114.95; at hymenshop.net, you can get five of them for $103. I’m honestly trying to envision the situation that would call for five artificial hymens—I haven’t had any success yet. It could be a good device in a grim yet devastatingly entertaining farce by Pedro Almodóvar.
 
Here, a YouTube user tests out an artificial hymen to the sedate tonalities of Enya:

 
via The Kernel

Keith Haring at the Tokyo Pop Shop
 
Keith Haring had the great good fortune to become one of the most iconic and recognizable of the downtown artists of the 1980s—and while it was fairly obvious that he was gay and that his sexuality played some role in his work, a lot of people may be unaware that, on certain occasions, he expressed that side of himself far more fully in his art. Not all of it was fit for T-shirts or refrigerator magnets, in other words.

In 1989 Haring took over the second-floor bathroom of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Center on 13th Street in Greenwich Village—the exact address is 208 West 13th Street—and turned every blank surface he could find into an astonishing tableau of his familiar figures throbbing with every kind of imaginable urge. The title of the mural is “Once Upon a Time.” In effect, it’s a pre-AIDS bacchanal, and the images are at once reminiscent of a smutty Hieronymus Bosch and (this might just be me) the stately public friezes that Gustav Klimt instigated in fin-de-siècle Vienna, which at the time were considered shocking (they don’t seem shocking today). There’s a lil’ Picasso in there, too.

A year and a half ago, the restoration on the site was completed—the space has been converted from a bathroom to a meeting room. According to the LGBT Community Center’s website, the mural is currently “under wraps” because of construction, but ordinarily it’s available to be viewed by the public (however, I’m not certain of the viewing times; it’s not a museum, so it’s probably best to call in advance).

These pictures are pretty NSFW—I think they’re very nice but your cubicle co-worker might not share the opinion.
 

 
More after the jump…

 
The Quebec-based Le Guide Restos Voir appears to be something like the Zagat guide of Francophone Canada. This year Guide Restos is proud to issue their 18th edition; to celebrate the occasion and to promote the 2014 edition, they have issued a series of sexually suggestive posters in which tasty morsels of food are photographed to resemble certain highly interesting body parts. (The concept is based on a pun involving the idea of “18+.”)

These posters made me smile , which was presumably the idea.
 

 

 

 

 
via ufunk

 
This poor farmer in Thailand is busy struggling with his godforsaken tuber when suddenly, out of nowhere, a “Gangnam”-esque beat starts to pulsate throughout the fields and a trio of go-go dancers materializes and relentlessly gyrates as if their lives depended on it. (The farmer’s horrified reactions to all of this, by the way, are fantastic.)

This commercial takes the notion of “suggestive” to brand new heights, complete with an utterly unmissable visual metaphor for successful completion of the sexual act. Watch it and see.

Seriously, don’t show this to kids. But I laughed my ass off.

And then I promptly went out and bought some of this fertilizer.
 

 
via RocketNews24

 
This is one of those books that I reckon you can judge by the cover…

This curious little volume is by a fellow named Ed Hurst. It’s a free ebook you can acquire—should you want a copy—via the author. Hurst is a prolific self-published writer. His other titles include The Mind of Christ, The Chronicles of Misty, The Laptop Oracles,  A Course in Biblical Mysticism and Mystical Tales of Romance. He’s written 22—that’s right, 22—books in the past couple of years. On his website, Hurst declares “I am called to prophesy against Western Civilization as a whole, because it is fundamentally hostile to God’s revelation.”

Just so you know where he stands, K?

After telling the reader how he’s been faithfully married to his wife since 1978, Hurst gets… personal:

“I can claim a history of total fidelity, but you’ll have to decide for yourself how true that might be. Further, I am at the age and level of exposure to environmental pharmaceuticals that my libido is about gone. It still works somewhat with my wife only because of the vast ocean of trust she has earned. Otherwise, the wiring between my testosterone and my sense of taste in flesh is largely burned out. Not much of anything or anyone turns me on, so to speak.”

Why does Hurst inflict this information upon us? He explains:

“This helps to establish me as an objective observer. All I hope to gain is an opportunity for people to peel away the layers of social mythology and find peace.”

Ah ha! So when it comes to dispensing sexual advice, impotence = objectivity? Apparently in the parallel universe that Mr. Hurst resides in this is the case. He’s clearly not interested in bringing sexy back…

Hurst blames church leaders and feminism for the decline in Christian marriages. Specifically he blames the church leaders for feminism.

“What most preachers assume is good moral values still leaves the door wide open for feminine domination in the home and all the attendant problems that come with it. What part of “be submissive” in God’s Word do we not understand?”

According to Hurst, this feminism shit, why, it’s anti-Christian…

“Men tend to be a little lazy, particularly about enforcing moral boundaries. It requires a bit of indirect prompting, but direct nagging is a guarantee of failure. He is wired to bristle and resist. Rather, she has to devote herself to strengthening him according to his nature. A conspicuous devotion that others can see will provoke him to genuine heroism as much as anything can. Treat him like a hero until he feels the vibes and acts accordingly; a woman has no power to remake her man’s nature. He naturally gets angry if his woman embarrasses him in front of others.”

You hear that ladies, make your man feel like a hero.

Here’s Hurst’s (free) advice for the menfolk:

“Guys: Know your mission first. You simply have no business messing with women until you know who you are and what you must do with your life. That means delaying your start when gals your age are raring to go. Don’t be ashamed to come back when you’re ready and “rob the cradle,” but realize it is highly risky most of all because ten years is forever when it comes to cultural trends in the West. She’ll be quite foreign to you unless she’s partly retro. The biggest mistake you’ll make is allowing your hormones to run you off a cliff. Is she hot? Close your eyes and get a hold of yourself. Her beauty doesn’t mean a thing, except that she’ll probably be very hard to get, in one sense or another. The last thing you want to do is advertise your willingness to be a slave by staring like every other drooling loser.”

So says the guy who introduced himself to his readers by telling them that his dick is dead…

Via Matthew Paul Turner’s blog

 
A few of you may be familiar with the WWII-era poster proclaiming that “98% of all procurable women have venereal disease.” Of course, there’s absolutely no way to prove such a figure, since they didn’t have the data necessary to reach those kind of conclusions. In fact, since prostitutes were among the first to embrace safer sex technology, many public health experts actually believe soldiers were the largest transmitters. Note the happy, healthy little servicemen in the bottom corner of the final picture?

Regardless, the epidemic of syphilis at the time generated a lot of materials warning of the dangers of “procurable women,” some thinly veiled, some fairly explicit. Below is a fantastic little collection of propaganda, each piece somehow managing to make venereal disease look totally worth it. Those are some foxy working girls!
 

 
And of course, the classic…
 

 
More after the jump…

 
Reddit user Irish_317 “ran across a bracelet vendor at the night market in Chiang Mai, Thailand.”

Whatever twisted, epigrammatic mind came up with these ridiculous bracelets deserves a round of applause for sheer verbal inventiveness. There are so many wonderful, mind-frying sentiments expressed here. It’s well worth looking at the whole picture in detail—it’s just so much hyper-compressed, fuck-crazy wordplay…..
 

 
There’s a demented genius at work here.

Oh—and then, apropos of nothing: “Fuck Liverpool”—all right!
 

 
Tommy Campbell shot some of the Thai bracelets and posted a video to Funny or Die. Note: A lot of these bracelets are pretty foul. You have been warned.
 

 
via reddit
 
Thanks to Mark Davis!

 
In the late 1990s, the white supremacist bootboys at Stormfront decided to start their own online dating service, obviously, with the express goal of meeting some cute bootgirls via the Internet. I don’t imagine it’s all that easy to find a mate, let alone a date, when your musical tastes gravitate towards Skrewdriver, your bookshelf consists solely of Mein Kampf and you want to dress up as Francis Parker Yockey for Halloween.

Where is that isolated Odin worshiper in Pennsylvania going to find a nice girl he can take home to mama? For certain people, navigating the dating minefield can prove to be a real dilemma, but it’s getting easier, even for guys taking selfies in front of the Confederate flag holding shotguns…

Match.com. Christian Mingle. J-Date. Russian brides. Asian ladies. Vegans. Freegans. Hepatitis C carriers. Furries.  It can get pretty specific. There’s a dating service for practically everyone now, even the most repellent people on the planet, like libertarians and the lowest of the low, Ayn Rand fanatics. Being a self-identifying “Objectivist” can be tragic and socially awkward thing in the “real world.” Where would that aspiring John Galt in Pawnee ever meet up with a Dagny of his own to throw up against the wall in fulfillment of her quasi-rape fantasy?

It’s as hard as Rearden steel to meet that certain special someone who wants a selfish lover!

Via the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Hancock is a proponent of Russian-American author Ayn Rand’s philosophy of capitalism and self-interest. At age 30, he had already been “looking for a very specific kind of woman” for three years when Google searches led him to the Atlasphere, an Ayn Rand appreciation site with a dating component.

There, he found his dream date: a woman who also wanted to do logical cost-benefit analyses of every decision.

You hear that? Oh baby, let the good times roll!

Atlasphere founder Joshua Zader, 40, of Phoenix, says niche sites are more efficient than broader sites such as OKCupid or Match.com.

“If you assume that maybe 1 out of 500 people is a serious fan of Ayn Rand’s novels, on a normal dating site you have a 1 in 500 chance of someone sharing the same basic values,” he says. “On the Atlasphere, every profile shows you what you want,” he says. The 10-year-old site has seen a spike in membership in recent years—it has more than 16,000 dating profiles—after two “Atlas Shrugged” movies were released, says Mr. Zader, a Web developer. User handles include “Atlas in Arlington” and “ObjectivelyHot.”

So it’s not just fans of shitty fiction with a pseudo-philosophical component, it’s people who like shitty films based on that shitty pseudo-philosophical fiction.

Ms. Betit-Hancock, a schools special-needs coordinator, says she had been “kind of freaking out,” wondering how she’d find someone “rational” to date. She met a man at a meet-up group for fans of libertarian former congressman Ron Paul, but “he couldn’t explain why he supported Ron Paul and why the ideas behind his policies made sense.”

Because they don’t make any fucking sense to begin with, that’s why!

Mr. Hancock, an engineer, says he specifically wrote his profile to “scare people who weren’t serious Objectivists away.”

I don’t have anything to add to that. I’m all snarked out now.

Over at Vice, Dave Schilling trolled the Atlasphere. Read his story here. Part of his online profile, below:
 

 

 
Catherine the Great is one of those fascinating figures whose political power was often overshadowed by scandal. She did not, as popularly rumored, die attempting to have sex with a horse, but her real life was way more interesting. She had twelve well-known affairs, illegitimate children (no one’s totally sure which ones), and made lavish gifts to her consorts. She gave one of her boyfriends more than 1,000 indentured servants!

Cut to World War II, when a very surprised group of Soviet soldiers managed to stumble on ole’ Cathy’s special room while exploring a palace. It was packed with explicit art, wooden phalluses and some insane furniture. Instead of looting or burning the lot, the soldiers took pictures, and aren’t we grateful they did? Looking at the kinky personal effects of the rich and powerful is even better than going through their medicine cabinets! This is only some of the collection, as most of the photos and furniture have been lost or destroyed, but man… girl loved her some porn.

Definitely NSFW, unless you work at a really fun place, but since some of the most entertaining history is simply the gossip of yesteryear, consider this post educational!
 

 

 

 

Catherine the Great’s snuff box
 
ViaSang Bleu