New warning on ‘perfect vaginas’

Women are undergoing surgery to create perfect genitalia amid a “shocking” lack of information on the potential risks of the procedure, a report says.

Research published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology also questions the very notion of aesthetically pleasing genitals.

–full story at BBCNews

I know I say it every week, but I’m totally serious this time: the clip posted below may be the worst commercial ever. It is to the advertising world what The Cleveland Show is to Seth MacFarlane’s animation empire (which I mention only because I had the misfortune of watching that crap last night and OH GOD DOES IT CONTINUE TO SPREAD STANKNESS ACROSS THE LAND). Seriously, in a terrible contest, this ad and The Cleveland Show would be like those girls in Bring it On (and its numerous sequels) as they endeavored to outdo each other on the crap scale of craptacularosity:

I don’t need to explain, right?

For better or worse, I have a lot of writing to do these days, and much of it needs to be finished before I walk out the door to my day job. To be perfectly honest, it’s become borderline overwhelming.

To improve the situation (i.e. prevent myself from going bananas, and not the Rachel Zoe way), I first tried tweaking my sleep schedule and even my writing style, but eventually it became clear that I needed outside help. As I’ve mentioned before — either here or on Twitter — I’ve opted for speech-to-text software.

All has not gone as planned. In my head, I had this fairly romantic, Star Trek-ish fantasy of easy, intuitive communications with my laptop. Sadly, that ain’t the way The Dragon likes to roll. She’s got a reasonably good vocabulary, but it takes a VERY long time to train her on the translation part. For weeks, it felt as if I were making so many corrections, I might as well have typed the stuff by hand.

And that’s to say nothing of the process of writing itself. See, as it turns out, thinking and typing is much different than just speaking into a microphone. Typing is obviously slower, it’s hands-on, and it’s visual: you type something you don’t like, you back up and pen it again. There’s a chance for reflection as you see your words pop onto the screen. Using speech-to-text, on the other hand, your mouth is moving in time with your brain — possibly faster. It makes for long sentences, conversational tone, and a bigger chunk of editing when I finish. I’ve begun training myself to speak slower, reflect, and dictate more like I would if I were typing, but it’s not easy, learning to think before you speak. (I could point to examples in the political realm, but I’m sure you could, too.)

That said, the program and I finally seem to have reached something of a truce. I speak slowly and distinctly, pulling back on my emotions and inflection so that I don’t confuse her. In return, she does a mostly good job with everything but proper names, and she’s begun to shed her habit of tossing in extra “ands” and “withs”. Things are livable.

I wanted to show a couple of examples of the translation in action, but just to make things interesting (and completely useless), I’ve thrown Miss Dragon a couple of curve balls. You’ll see what I mean:

Opening passage from Nabokov’s Lolita

Original
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

Translation
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Low-Lee-tot: the tip of the time taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Low. Lee. Top.

* * * * *

Opening lines from The Canterbury Tales
(Read in my best Middle English accent, courtesy of Dr. Nona Feinberg)

Original
Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(so priketh hem nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of engelond to caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

Translation
One that I pre-the which he sure is.
The draw of much have pasted to the Rocha,
and all that every then yukking speech to the core
of which there Chu and John for it is the floor;
lines and if it is a good that he’s safe to breath
in spirit hath in every Holton Keith
10 the Acropolis, and the on some
half in the round is half course you’re on,
and smaller file is mocking Ms. O’Dea,
that second of the night with open ye
(so predicting hem not sure I need you quarter I just);
then long been sold to goon on to remind just,
and palmettos for second strongest wrongs,
to Ferne Hollis, not use laundry loans;
inspection of the from every she it is and that
of in the long to come the battery bay window,
the only place will mark the fourth Seca,
that hem hath Holton one that they would expect.

* * * * *

Jacques Prevert: “Déjeuner du matin”
(A high school fave, f
or many obvious reasons: simplicity, angst, coffee, cigarettes)

Original
Il a mis le café
Dans la tasse
Il a mis le lait
Dans la tasse de café
Il a mis le sucre
Dans le café au lait
Avec la petite cuiller
Il a tourné
Il a bu le café au lait
Et il a reposé la tasse
Sans me parler

Il a allumé
Une cigarette
Il a fait des ronds
Avec la fumée
Il a mis les cendres
Dans le cendrier
Sans me parler
Sans me regarder

Il s’est levé
Il a mis
Son chapeau sur sa tête
Il a mis son manteau de pluie
Parce qu’il pleuvait
Et il est parti
Sous la pluie
Sans une parole
Sans me regarder

Et moi j’ai pris
Ma tête dans ma main
Et j’ai pleuré

Translation
Beyond the new Café
Donna pass
you done the today
Donna pass the Café
John used to cloak
Dawn the Café over day
of that who could keep create
but up to may
be that but new Café: a
eight but Outlook does it have to for
soma buy they

Utah pride you may
units the gap at
but I think they own the
of that the unit
eat on me that song
gonna something a
solemn holiday
solemn will get a big

You stated they
you got me
/up oldster socket a
you done me some month old to read
asked you prove that
8E8.keep
suit up to me
songs you to hold
small move look out of date

A more jake please
might that don’t Mama
AJ Pillai

* * * * *

NSFW Fanfic Erotica: “Hairy Seinfeld (excerpt)”
(Yes, it’s exactly what you think.)

Original
“Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, yeahhhhhhh. Fuck me, Jerry. Fuck me, harder.” Jerry leaned in, sharing a passionate, lust-filled kiss with George, all the while, fucking him harder than ever, his pubic hairy cushioning his deep thrusts, while his balls slapped George’s ass. George wrapped his legs around Jerry’s body, and their hairy chests met, their sweat allowing their bodies to slide against each other with minimal friction.

Translation
“That movement yeah talk to me, Jerry. Fox me, harder.” Jerry leaned in, sharing a passionate, lust-filled kiss with George, all the while, foxy him harder than ever, is she big hairy cushioning his deep thrusts, while his balls slapped Georges ass. George wrapped his legs around Jerry’s body and their hairy chests met, their sweat allowing their bodies to slide against each other with minimal friction.

Fact: human seminal plasma hypersensitivity is a painful, frustrating allergy that affects roughly 5% of women and a handful of men.

Fact: the lede on this article about human seminal plasma hypersensitivity is mildly hilarious:

A new wife was given a nasty wedding night surprise when she discovered she was allergic to her husband’s sperm.

— much more at The Daily Mail

And that’s your conundrum for Thursday.

[via boingboing]

Today in STUPID PR TRICKS, we feature the formerly friendly folks at SkyWest and Delta Airlines, who refuse to offer the same travel benefits to gay, married employees as those enjoyed by straight, married employees. To wit:

“In a six-page letter to the airlines, attorney Tara L. Borelli, with Lambda Legal, contends her client, Gilbert Caldwell, and his spouse, the Rev. David Farrell, are enduring employment discrimination due to a SkyWest travel policy that refuses to extend its benefits to same-sex spouses ‘while heterosexual employees’ spouses are fully respected automatically.’ The Oct. 29 letter is the first step before formally suing SkyWest and Delta, Borelli said Friday.’ In this incident, they are refusing to treat Gilbert in the same way as they do married, heterosexual couples,’ added Borelli, a Lambda Legal staff attorney in Los Angeles. ‘They should be providing travel benefits on equal terms.’ … Officials with SkyWest and Delta Airlines did not return multiple phone messages on Thursday and Friday seeking comment.” [DesertSun via Towleroad]

So, class, why is that stupid?

A) It just is.

B) If Delta and SkyWest maintain their discriminatory policy, and if Caldwell and Farrell are indeed legally married in California, and if the couple move forward with their suit, Delta and SkyWest probably won’t fare too well. Sounds expensive.

C) No matter which way things go for Caldwell and Farrell, the two companies’ PR teams ought to get out in front of the conflamma and control the message. If you’ve ever had to do damage control duty before, you know it’s neither pretty nor pleasant.

D) We’re gays. We’re brand agnostic. We’re happy to boycott.

E) Delta and SkyWest surely employ hundreds if not thousands of gays and lesbians. Why piss off such a chunk (and a vocal chunk at that) of the workforce? Not the best morale-building exercise.

F) The world only spins forward. Delta and SkyWest can either be at the leading edge of the civil rights movement, or they can play George Wallace. My suggestion? Well, things didn’t turn out so good for George Wallace, did they?

Few New Orleanians liked former Recovery Czar, Ed Blakely. He was distant, he was presumptuous, and he spoke without thinking. Also — and this is a fault of our own parochialism — he was an outsider and therefore, suspicious.

I never met the man. I don’t know what he was like. All I know is that watching him on TV was unbearable: his comments reeked of the same jackass hubris that still peppers Ray Nagin’s cringe-inducing interviews. Grand pronouncements, back-slapping self-congratulations, all that junk.

However, as the [terribly edited] two-part interview above shows, Blakely did pick up a few things here. He may or may not have had any impact on our city’s recovery, but at least he understands now what we’re up against — and I don’t mean levee walls and rising sea temps. Of course, you’d have to be a complete idiot to miss the racism — both black and white — that informs every move in city politics, but given my low expectations of the man…well, I’m pleasantly surprised he got it.

That said, Blakely is way out of line when, speaking of the recovery process, he says that “New Orleanians expected someone else to do it all along…. They never expected to do it themselves.” That may have been true over on Perdido Street (was there ever a more apt street name?), but if the son of a bitch had gotten out of City Hall and into the neighborhoods and seen the work that people were doing — cleaning up, building networks, starting community organizations, attending endless planning meetings — he might’ve understood where the real impediments lay.

The man’s no idiot, but he’s kind of an idiot, if you catch my drift.

New Orleans is not the place to live if you’re paranoid about safety. Things happen here — good, bad, accidental, deliberate, and frequently unpleasant.

Of course, the city’s neighborhoods aren’t created equally. Despite its reputation as a hub for vice, the French Quarter is one of the safest places you can live in New Orleans. The streets are busy, the police patrols are frequent, and many of the residents are tourists, which makes local-on-local crime less likely.

Less likely, but not impossible.

As the big party weekend began ramping up last Friday night, somebody or somebodies decided to celebrate Halloween in a particularly cruel and unusual way: by stabbing a well-known surgeon in his French Quarter home, then setting fire to the place. Dr. Ralph Newsome was pronounced dead that evening, after being taken to the LSU hospital.

I didn’t know Dr. Newsome. I’m not even sure I recognize his face in the photo above — which is unusual, since New Orleans is a pretty small town. Making it doubly unusual is the fact that Newsome was gay, and for one reason or another, we gays tend to know one another, at least on sight.

That’s not to diminish the tragedy of Newsome’s death, of course, only to say that I didn’t know him: I didn’t know his likes, his dislikes, his personal preferences, what he ate for breakfast, how he took his coffee, or the other minutae of his too-short life that friends and family will remember over the weeks, months, years to come. I can’t say anything about Newsome at all, but judging from the fact that he was a gardener and kept tortoises, I think we would’ve hit it off really well.

Over at Towleroad, most commenters have jumped to the conclusion that Newsome was killed by what used to be called “rough trade”. I’m sorry to say, that was the first thought that crossed my mind, too. The area of the Quarter where he Newsome lived is well known for its population of muscled-up straight boys whose allegiance to money and crystal meth frequently outweighs their devotion to the female of the species. Mix gay-for-pay with gay-for-meth and…well, it’s proven lethal before.

But none of that’s been confirmed by the police. So far as I know, no details have been released at all. Conjecture leads to the worst kind of stereotyping (is there a better kind of stereotyping?): as proof, look no further than some of the knuckle-draggers leaving comments at NOLA.com. I’m trying to steer clear.

All I know is that murders in the French Quarter are rare; they galvanize locals who are fed up with the city’s piecemeal system of policing and justice; that New Orleans has lost a handsome, talented, and by all accounts loving man; and that if I were that man’s partner, I would be out for blood.

[Thank you for the reminder, Tyler]