No, I'm not kidding.

MEXICAN men who display extreme jealousy or avoid sex with their wives could be tried in court and punished under a new law.
Men who phone their wives every half hour to check up on them, constantly suspect them of infidelity or try to control the way they dress are committing the crime of jealousy, special prosecutor Alicia Elena Perez Duarte told Excelsior newspaper.

Those who stop talking to their wives, avoid sex or try to convince suspicious spouses they are "crazy" even if they are caught red-handed having an affair, are guilty of indifference, she said.

Men found guilty of jealousy or indifference could face up to five years in prison, the newspaper said. Mexico's individual states will determine the punishments, it said.

The progressive new law was passed this month to protect women from domestic violence.

...

Ms Perez Duarte said indifference, jealousy or lack of love were crimes against women just as much as physical violence.

"Jealousy produces a particular type of stress in the person that comes up against it," she said.

"It is exactly the same. They are wounds, psychological scars identical to physical scars."

The claim is that these laws are intended to protect women against abuse by husbands -- actual abuse, actual murder -- but she seems to undermine the seriousness of that by claiming the stress of jealousy, or indifference, is "exactly the same" as physical violence, no?

I can't keep up with the stupidity any longer.

In related news, men who don't spend enough time on foreplay face a ten year sentence, while those who spend too much time on foreplay will face a fifteen year sentence under the new Mexican law against "Frontin'."

Mild Pussycat Dolls warning on that.

Thanks to Jacob, via Protein Wisdom.

Posted by: Ace at 12:27 PM | Comments (18)
Post contains 357 words, total size 3 kb.

A WaPo article has dared to offer her opinion that the "hook-up culture" now prevalent in colleges -- with young girls giving it away like it's rotting in the warehouse -- may not be really in women's best interests. Apparently they've decided to become whores because that's the feminist way:

Absent old-fashioned dating, which has virtually disappeared, the alternative for these young women is hooking up, which can happen in any semi-private place and includes anything from kissing to intercourse. The beauty of hooking up is that it carries no commitment, and this is huge, for being emotionally dependent on a lover is what scares these young women the most.

To tell a man "I need you" is like saying "I'm incomplete without you." A young man might say that and sound affectionate. But to an ambitious young woman, who has been taught to define power on her terms and defend it against all comers, need signals weakness.

She's written a book on the subject, which is poked fun at by a reviewer, who apparently thinks that screwing as many semi-anonymous guys in high school and college is a brilliant way to learn, one day, to truly love:

Stepp is troubled: How will these girls learn how to be loving couples in this hook-up culture? Where will they practice the behavior needed to sustain deep and long-term relationships? If they commit to a lack of commitment, how will they ever learn to be intimate? These questions sound reasonable at first, until one remembers that life just doesn't work that way: In our teens and early twenties, sexual relationships are less about intimacy than about expanding our intimate knowledge of people -- a very different thing. Through sex, we discover irrefutable otherness (he dreams of being madly in love; she hates going to sleep alone ), and we are scared and enraptured, frustrated and inspired. We learn less about intimacy in our youthful sex lives than we do about humanity. And of course, there is also lust, something this very unsexy book about sex doesn't take into account. In fact, Unhooked can be downright painful to read. The author resurrects the ugly, old notion of sex as something a female gives in return for a male's good behavior, and she imagines the female body as a thing that can be tarnished by too much use. She advises the girls, "He will seek to win you over only if he thinks you're a prize."And goes on to tell them, "In a smorgasbord of booty, all the hot dishes start looking like they've been on the warming table too long."

It seems strange to have to state the obvious all over again: Both males and females should work hard to gain another's affection and trust. And one's sexuality is not a commodity that, given away too readily and too often, will exhaust or devalue itself. Tell girls that it is such a commodity (as they were told for a number of decades), and they will rebel. The author is conflating what the girls refuse to conflate: love and sexuality. Sometimes they coexist, sometimes not. Loving, faithful marriages in which the sex life has cooled are as much a testament to that fact as a lustful tryst that leads nowhere.

In the final chapter, Stepp writes a letter to mothers and daughters, in which she warns the girls: "Your body is your property. . . . Think about the first home you hope to own. You wouldn't want someone to throw a rock through the front window, would you?" And: "Pornographic is grinding on the dance floor like a dog in heat. It leaves nothing to the imagination." The ugliness of these images seems meant to instill sexual shame.

...

In a culture that values money and fame above all, that eschews failure, bad luck, trouble and pain, none of us speaks the language of love and forbearance. But it is not hooking up that has created this atmosphere. Hooking up is either a faithful reflection of the culture, a Darwinian response to a world where half the marriages end in divorce, or it is an attempt at something new. Perhaps, this generation, by making sex less precious, less a commodity, will succeed in putting simple humanity back into sex. Why bring someone into your bed? Maybe because she is brilliant and has a whimsical sense of humor, or he is both sarcastic and vulnerable, and has beautiful eyes.

And perhaps as this generation grows up, they will come to relish other sides of an intimate relationship more than we have: the friendship, the shared humor, the familiar and loved body next to you in bed at night. This is the most hopeful outcome of the culture Stepp describes, but no less possible than the outcome she fears -- a generation unable to commit, unable to weather storms or to stomach second place or really to love at all. ·

Was Kathy Robie the best choice of reviewer for this book? Someone who didn't have a particular stake in slut culture? Welllll... not so much.

The very rare young woman who understands her nubile sexual power and knows how to use it is a force to be reckoned with, indeed.

Kathy Dobie was not such a girl. The centerpiece of her new memoir, "The Only Girl in the Car," describes a brief period -- about a year -- during her teens when she stumbled into an archetypal role among a group of adolescents in her suburban Connecticut town: She was the slut. Her precocious exploits culminated in an awful night during which, as the titular only girl in a carful of boys, she was bullied (by the guy she considered her boyfriend) into having sex with all four of them. She'd just turned 15. Anyone who's ever been a teenager can imagine how quickly the news of that night spread among her cohort, and how brutally she was treated by them afterward.

Dobie isn't stupid -- she isn't now, and she wasn't then. But "The Only Girl in the Car" offers a perfect refresher course in how the naiveté and heedlessness of teenagers combines to make something very much like stupidity. Some girls get slapped with the "slut" label unfairly -- because of their class background, say, or because their breasts develop before anyone else's. Dobie earned her epithet fair and square. At 14 she became intoxicated with her sudden power to attract men and boys with provocative words or a look. After a few nervous false starts, she set about losing her virginity by arranging herself artfully in her family's front yard, dressed in a candy-striped halter top and platform shoes. (Well, it was the '70s.)

With this strategy, she landed a pockmarked, ponytailed 33-year-old who lived with his mother -- a "loser," she realized even at the time, but he served her purpose all the same. Dobie was thereby launched on a campaign of sexual adventure, proceeding through a couple of trysts with a man in his 40s and finally arriving at her nirvana, the local teen center, where she found an abundance of what she really wanted: boys, "the confident, aggressive, dirty-minded ones ... No cathedral could have filled a true believer with as much awe" as the Hamden Teen Center inspired in the 14-year-old Dobie.

...

If it wasn't some obvious dysfunction that provoked Dobie to seek out the furtive, inexpert caresses of the "boy-men" of the Hamden Teen Center at a painfully early age, then what did? Her answer to this question is intimated rather than baldly stated, and it's complicated. Partly, she wanted to feel, as she did during her brief teen center heyday, "as alive, as bold, as free" as the bad boys around her.

...

Yet Dobie doesn't disown the impulse behind her brief foray into promiscuity, that headlong dash to freedom and exploration. The hankering to model yourself after "a boy who joins circuses or travels west with a pistol and a dog" is nothing to scoff at, even if the first time you take a stab at it you screw up badly. "The Only Girl in the Car" is a grownup's memoir, not a fetish of past miseries thinly wrapped in the pretense of having reached "closure." Dobie is not nursing grievances, but explaining that she continues to take chances (albeit different kinds of chances) even though she once paid a horrible price for doing so.

Well! Definitely she's an expert, but perhaps not an unbiased one.

Predictably, the Feminists 3.0 at Feministe are horrified by all this damned prudery.

What's driving this, it seems, is the ideological position by feminists that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. They simply do not want to believe they "need" male companionship in the romantic sense, and can be, as Dobie strived to be, as "free" with sex as those "bad boys" at the teen center.

Here's the problem: Dobie might be able to manage it -- she's pretty much an out-and-proud slut -- but most women can't. ZuZu from Feministe and the rest of her merry band of yes-womyn can caterwaul that women can be just as ruthless and coldhearted about sex as a pure convenience, and can use men like disposable stroke mags just as well as men can use women, but the fact is, they can't.

You guys think you can be sexually ruthless? Think you can view another human being as nothing more than a walking receptacle to the degree men can? To quote Niccole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut:

If.

You only.

Knew.

It's pathetic that this is what is now deemed "progress" among the feminists -- attempting to ape the most selfish, brutish behavior by men and calling themselves enlightened and empowered for doing so.

But what makes it tragic is that it simply isn't true, and these young women are being told that they shouldn't care about dating and courtship and romance, or even a guy simply liking them very much as a human being, but should simply rack up as high a sexual bodycount as possible, because that shows "independence."

Are they happy?

They seem not to be, by and large. The guys, of course, are thrilled. The male fantasy has always been nearly anonymous, committment free sex as often and as with many partners as possible (witness gay men making this fantasy a reality, with women removed from the equation), and feminists have given men just that.

And Feministe and the rest can keep claiming that women ought to be happy with this awful state of affairs, but they're not, and they won't be, not until they finally learn to keep it in their pants long enough to discover if their next sexual conquest is even attracted to them.

That's right -- a guy will get so horny he'll have sex with a woman he's not even physically attracted to (let alone romantically interested in), if it's late enough and there aren't any prettier takers around.

If it were true that young women really didn't want romance or love at all, this might perhaps be viewed as -- if not a desirable state of affairs -- at least one that was, in sexual terms at least, satisfying for women. But it's not. The reason these young women spurn romance and call it "yucky" and make fun of those involved in relationships as "married" is because we are compelled to denigrate what we actually crave but cannot have, and the reason they can't have what they actually want is that they're fucking guys so quickly guys hardly have a chance to catch their names.

And, "double standard" or not, it has always been the case, and will continue being the case into the year 3000, that it's rather difficult to work up the enthusiasm to court a girl when she's been nailing everyone you know without such courtship (why should I be the one who has to put in the effort?), and it's hard to have that sense of pride in one's romantic "get" when you know she's been passed around the fraternity like a blunt.

You've come a long way, baby.

You guys won the sexual revolution, huh?

Keep telling yourselves that.

Posted by: Ace at 11:59 AM | Comments (86)
Post contains 2061 words, total size 12 kb.

Content warning: Contains lascivious cat spanking.

En fuego.

This sort of thing always makes me think of this:

I'd really like to try dirty-talking like Stewie one day.

Posted by: Ace at 10:13 AM | Comments (49)
Post contains 32 words, total size 1 kb.

Perhaps Michael Moore was actually propagandizing for the war when he showed kite-flying children in Iraq. After all, these things are deadly.

Particularly in Pakistan, where what sounds like a sorta fun idea -- kite "battles," with opponents attempting to cut the lines of each other's kites, using their own kite lines, sharpened with ground glass -- inevitably results in people getting beheaded. By kites.

Add in a little gunfire and you've got yourself a party.

At least 11 people died and more than 100 people were injured at an annual spring festival in eastern Pakistan celebrated with the flying of thousands of colorful kites, officials said Monday.

The deaths and injuries were caused by stray bullets, sharpened kite-strings, electrocution and people falling off rooftops on Sunday at the conclusion of the two-day Basant festival, said Ruqia Bano, spokeswoman for the emergency services in the city of Lahore.

The festival is regularly marred by casualties caused by sharp kite strings or celebratory gunshots fired into the air. Kite flyers often use strings made of wire or coated with ground glass to try to cross and cut a rival's string or damage the other kite, often after betting on the outcome.

Authorities temporarily lifted a ban on kite flying that was imposed following a string of deaths at the festival last year. Lahore Mayor Mian Amier Mahmood said the two-day permission to fly kites ended Sunday and that the ban has been re-imposed.

Police arrested more than 700 people for using sharpened kite strings or firing guns, and seized 282 illegally held weapons during this year's festival, said Aftab Cheema, a senior Lahore police officer.

Even their kite-flying festivals have bodycounts. Sheesh.

Posted by: Ace at 10:05 AM | Comments (30)
Post contains 293 words, total size 2 kb.

Content warning for language, violence, and alcoholism-loosened teeth.

Thanks to Shawn.

Posted by: Ace at 09:18 AM | Comments (25)
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Dear Lord,

I don't thank you often enough for the blessings you bestow upon me. So I wanted to do so now.

Although it is unlikely that you read AoSHQ (I think you are more of an Anchoress type), if you do stop by I want you to know how thankful I am for today.

You see, I hate the Academy Awards. Always have. Always will.

And I especially hate them this year since Al Gore is likely to win for his bogus documentary.

But you know this, I think. Which is why I was delighted to see an answered prayer today.

For I woke up in Washington, D.C. with about 6 inches of snow on the ground and the roads too icy to travel upon. The nation's capitol (a.k.a. Prince Albert's hometown) was essentially shut down due to an unexpectedly severe winter storm.

So God, when the Gorebot is up on stage preening and posturing and basking in the glow of his own ever-enlarging carbon footprint, please know that there is one guy down here who really appreciated the stunt you pulled today.

Oh yeah..and that James Cameron guy? Total douchebag. Feel free to show him up too.

Your humble servant,

Jack M.

Posted by: Jack M. at 03:33 PM | Comments (290)
Post contains 210 words, total size 1 kb.

I think everyone said they couldn't make it this time, but if anyone wants to meet, we've got a place, finally. Should be around 6:15 or so. Place called Casablanca, 40 Brattle Street, in Cambridge/Harvard.

Posted by: Ace at 02:14 PM | Comments (93)
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What a shock.

The grooming shop caters to very pampered dogs. Particularly female dogs. So the owner named it,

High Maintenance Bitch

I don't care who you are, that right there is some funny shit.

This quote is precious. Apparently this woman sees some contradiction between being very liberal and very "progressive" and also being outraged and wanting some censorship:

"I am probably the most progressive liberal person in the world [but even] I am personally offended by the sign," said Janet Stillman, executive director of the Wallingford Neighborhood Office. "It's so blatant and so in your face."

She wrote "and" where I substituted "but even" but that's clearly the sense she meant it in.

Outraged Seattlechiks want the sign taken down.

Stillman said the sign could wreck family photographs of the parade, scheduled for July 7.

"Walk by there with your 5-year-old and try to explain why that sign is there. Half of the sign is made up of the word 'bitch."'

Guys? I know you pride yourselves on having senses of humor, on being able to just roll with it, about being cool, about being tolerant.

Trust me: You're not. Oh, you have terrific senses of humor when other people's sensibilities are being offended. You can in fact just roll with it when people you don't like are being insulted or demeaned. You're quite cool indeed with all sorts of provocative art and slogans that provoke reactions in your political opponents. And you are indeed supremely tolerant as regards speech that, felicitously enough, reinforces everything you believe and flatters your political/moral vanities.

But when it's something that actually bothers you? You freak out worse than a bunch of Podunk Pentacostalists who've accidentally wandered into a W.A.S.P. concert.

To be fair, I'm not fond of public profanity like this, and I'm sure there are a lot of conservatives who are just as bothered by it. It is true that you don't want kids seeing or hearing profanity in public.

Still, I have a feeling that the very liberal progressives who are outraged by the word "Bitch" on signage are also equally outraged by more conservative-minded, family-values-minded folks who, say, would like sex shops to not put their dildos and sex dolls right in glass displays in the front of the place.

That's not offensive, of course, and anyone who is offended should just "grow up" and "become more comfortable with their sexuality" rather than being such "prudish moral scolds."

But the word "bitch" -- horror! The patriarchy coils like a serpent, ready to strike with its fanged phallus!

Thanks to Jim.

Posted by: Ace at 01:47 PM | Comments (55)
Post contains 444 words, total size 3 kb.

...and was aghast.

I feel bad posting this, but I also have to imagine that this woman is going through so much that my posting on it is hardly capable of causing her any real additional discomfort.

Dan Riehl is just sick with the Google search. He thinks he's found Diann Rust-Tierny's blog, and I'm pretty sure he's right. He's got the evidence here.

The only problem here is the timing. Presumably this investigation has been going on for weeks, or even months. And yet this particular post -- about her not knowing the right thing to do -- is just from last Tuesday. It sounds like she was considering dropping a dime. But if she did drop the dime after this post, the arrest wouldn't have come yet.

Maybe she wrote this much earlier, but saved it in draft, and only recently posted it after she knew the warrants were being served. Or maybe she was still deliberating as to whether or not to inform on her husband, but the arrest came before she was quite done deciding.

Pretty heartbreaking stuff. I feel for her.

The whole thing may mean something else, but it sure reads to me like she saw something awful on her husband's computer.

Confused RANT

Not particularly artful, this is a rant on being confused-- on knowing the right thing to do but being unable to do it.

Knowing that walking away is the wisest thing to do-- but that my legs are frozen in place.
Knowing I should run away as fast as I can but being dragged by my heels in the other direction.

On living in a parallel universe in the same time--

On living a divided realty and not trusting my judgement or sensibilities.
Am I seeing what is there or not seeing what I don't want to see?

My instincts are scrambled-- If you were to ask me whether it was raining or the sun was shining you should not trust my answer-- it might be raining because I want the sun to shine or the sun might be shining because its raining.

The one certain thing is the searing pain that eats my body---starting at my toes and working its way up until I want to run screaming, tearing at my skin.

Agitation that won't be still churns my body-- unbearable images repeat again and again in my head.

If only I could sleep. I could be numb for a little while.

Emphasis added.

Heartless Bastards: I try to occasionally sound respectable and caring, and you morons keep ruining it.

Ray Midge:

I think it's possible she'd just seen Smoking Aces, cause this was my exact reaction as well.

That's as vicious and unfeeling as it is hilarious.

Posted by: Ace at 01:07 PM | Comments (23)
Post contains 477 words, total size 3 kb.

I always knew there had to be a reason these guys just never seemed to hit it off.

Damn, I misread this originally as being about Robert Byrd's ancestors.

I wonder if anyone's checking into his family's past. Oh, wait, of course no one is.

Thanks to JackStraw.

Posted by: Ace at 11:52 AM | Comments (70)
Post contains 70 words, total size 1 kb.