Nobody's Business

Sexy-Time Between Gran & Gramps? Call the Cops!

Consenting adults over 60 who have sex on camera need to be protected from themselves, believes Kathi-Anne Reinstein, a Democrat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Reinstein proposes that "elder porn" (and porn involving people who have disabilities) be treated the same as child porn, because evidently, the moment you turn 60, you lose your mental capacity to make your own sexual decisions. Law professor and First-Amendment attorney Marc Randazza pwns Reinstein, no contest:

[Her bill] targets my parents who are, by any measure, still pretty damn good looking — even if they are both over 60. Dare I say that my mother is still knockout gorgeous, and strangers still ogle her. I'm proud to say that she and my dad certainly still do it. But you know what? My mom does have a bit of a disability (as defined by Massachusetts law). She has a lung condition that is a "long-term physical … impairment that prevents or restricts the [her] ability to provide for … her own care or protection." Uh-oh.

I'm not lamenting the fact that this legislation might prevent my mom and dad from becoming the next internet porn sensation. I do think that I would need to gouge my eyes out with a fork if that ever happened. But Reinstein's law is not limited to commercial porn. In fact, it doesn't have to be porn at all — since I'd venture to guess that the elderly women who posed nude for this calendar don't consider it to be "pornographic" or "perverted."

The worst part is that Rep. Reinstein's law equates nude photos of the elderly or disabled with child pornography: You can't make it for any reason whatsoever, not even for private enjoyment, no exceptions, no nothing. ... [T]here is no exception for personal use, no exception for someone who is clearly mentally capable of making a decision for themselves, nor an exception for someone who truly wants to appear in a state of undress for a lascivious purpose.

But surely police and prosecutors will use, you know, discretion in the application of the law? Let's not get silly, Randazza says.

When it comes to dumb sex laws, the last person I'm going to trust to apply it intelligently is a law enforcement officer or a prosecutor. Not even in my beloved Commonwealth. Even noble and intelligent legislation becomes an unpredictable monster in the hands of fools who refuse to think while enforcing it.

And he has examples to back up the sentiment. Read the whole thing.

Yeah, We're That Scary

If atheists ruled the world. Seen on BoingBoing. [thanks, Court!]

Coffee Art

Not to go all Italian-delicacies on you, but if you're into graphic art and espresso, take a look at this design contest for a new coffee label. The seventh entry from the bottom (shown here at left) is my contribution. I'd be tickled if you voted for it, though I'd certainly understand if your preference went instead to another finalist's beautiful psychedelic coffee-flavor explosion.

Pizza Pi: Fucked by Freschetta

Freschetta has changed its frozen ready-to-bake pizzas, I discovered tonight when I pulled one from my freezer. They still come in the same 12''x12'' boxes, but what the packaging doesn't tell you is that the doughy disc inside has shrunk from about 11'' to a miserly 9'' in diameter — LP to EP, if you're old enough to remember vinyl.

If I know my pie pi, that means the pizza's surface area has gone from 95 square inches to just under 64 square inches. That's a third less. And at least at our grocery store, the retail price of the damn thing has actually gone up.

The pie does fill out when the dough rises, but not enough to make up for much of the surface loss; and the discrepancy between the luscious photo on the box and the sad state of the paltry toppings after my pizza was done cooking makes the Freschetta PizzAmoré (WTF is with that totally un-Italian diacritical mark, by the way?) a real fregatura.

Men of God on Spain's Killing Fields

Today is the 70th anniversary of the end of the Spanish Civil War. Luis Granados chronicles the unfathomable malevolence of the Catholic Church, which steadfastly agitated against the democratically-elected Azaña administration on the grounds that his pro-secular government allegedly consisted of "the enemies of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ." The Vatican and its Spanish servants supported the coup by General Francisco Franco, whose blood-soaked power grab was successful after Mussolini committed 100,000 Italian troops, and after the German Luftwaffe, under Hitler's control, carpet-bombed Guernica.

A nice little detail:

When the southern village of Rociana was taken by the rebels two weeks into the revolt, the parish priest made a speech from the balcony of the town hall: "You all no doubt believe that, because I am a priest, I have come with words of forgiveness and repentance. Not at all. War against all of them until the last trace has been eliminated!" Over the next three months, 60 villagers were shot; not enough to satisfy the priest, though, who filed an official complaint that the repression had been too lenient.

The dictatorship lasted 36 years, until 1975, during which period Franco and his Catholic-Church-endorsed cronies are thought to have killed about 55,000 dissidents. Many of these dead were dumped in mass graves, and occasionally the bones of Franco's victims still work themselves to the surface in unexpected places. Through it all, the General and his immediate family amassed a personal fortune of as much as 800 million dollars.

Pope John XIII anointed Franco's mausoleum and declared it a basilica. To this day, Catholic churches throughout Spain display plaques honoring the pious strongman and the fascist goons who killed for him — and for Jesus — without compassion.

A pagan I'll remain.

Acronym Causes Angry Bozos (What's That Spell?)

Annoyed cops in the city of Groningen, the Netherlands, detained and fined a man with a neck tattoo that spells ACAB. [link in Dutch.] The man claims it stands for "acht cola acht bier" ("eight coca-colas eight beers"), but the police officers believe the acronym conveys the illegal sentiment that "all cops are bastards."

Clearly, that's against the law. At least, in Holland it is. "Giving offense to a government worker in function" (including the queen) is a crime over there. No, really.

As regular Nobody's Business readers know, this sort of thing happens not infrequently in my erstwhile country, a place that fancies itself a bulwark of freedom and tolerance.

Bizarre stuff, if for no other reason than that proving the inverse of the notion that all cops are bastards would have to start with officers actually refraining from arresting people sporting mysterious acronyms. Absent that, I'd have to call the whole thing a rather brilliant self-fulfilling prophesy.

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P.S.: Fans of acrostics may want to read this again.

Truth in Labeling (2)

Just as you can be officially deemed a sex offender without having committed a sex offense, you can be now be charged with a DWI without actually having driven drunk.

That's because, well, you see... It just makes sense, since... It's fair because...

Fuck if I know.

After Only 13 Years, Getting With the Program

Among my many other failings, I've just never been a South Park fan. Having merely been exposed to a few minutes here, a few minutes there, I always found myself vacillating between mild amusement over the often foul-mouthed content, and vague irritation over the cultish following the show has enjoyed from the start.

Then, last night, almost by accident, I fell into the fifth minute of a new episode called 'Margaritaville,' wherein our national economic problems are skewered through the exploits of a South Park character seeking a refund for his dad's electric margarita maker.

Transfixed by the suddenly-obvious genius of creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, I even endured the multiple interruptions of inane commercials (no mean feat for a guy addicted to his DVRs) so that I wouldn't have to miss a second of the tale's unfolding.

In less than 20 minutes, I witnessed a spot-on treatise on consumerism, banking, Wall Street, bailouts, the inner workings of the U.S. Treasury, and, for good measure, a brilliant spoof of religion. All of it came wrapped in an extraordinary mix of the profane and the profound.

Wow. Can they all be this good? (Snippet below. Entire episode this way.)

My next post will be about a mindbending new invention called "electricity," to be followed by a few hundred words of wide-eyed wonder on this obscure dramatist I just discovered — one Bill Shakespeare.

God Experts

What I like most about Luis Granados' blog, God Experts, is that it doesn't feel bloggy. Blogginess is the snap and snark of the here and now; the quick, tossed-off pronouncement of shoot-from-the-hip dissent or agreement; the instant opinion shaped more by a sense of urgency and immediacy than by historical perspective or serious reflection.

I'm not knocking blogginess. Some of my favorite online reads excel in it. I certainly am plenty bloggy myself in this space, probably more than I should be (the RSS beast needs, well, feeding).

But Granados, a lawyer in daily life, admirably escapes all that. He writes against organized religion in an eye-opening manner, fueled by cogitation and reason rather than a desire to strike and wound with harsh wit or contempt. I'm tempted to say that he writes mini-essays, not blog posts, but that makes it sound like his prose is academic and stuck-up, where I actually find it compelling and a downright pleasure to read.

Granados displays a rare knowledge of history, easily tying little-known facts from Biblical times or the Reformation to current news events and religious tidings. For instance, I know no one else who will look at the AIG debacle and laser in on a cogent religious-historical angle — in this case, that the American government now co-owns a huge financial services firm that's heavily invested in the promotion of Islam and Sharia-based securities. Who knew?

God Experts is on my blogroll as of today. Granados is working on a book of the same title. I'd wish him Godspeed, but in this case, a heartfelt "all the best" will have to do. I'll buy my copy sight unseen.

On a Wing and a Prayer

To the doubtful efficacy of prayer, add instances where praying provably kills people:

A Tunisian pilot who paused to pray instead of taking emergency measures before crash-landing his plane, killing 16 people, has been sentenced to 10 years in jail by an Italian court along with his co-pilot.