(click to enlarge)

It looks like an early ’80s picture “revamped” in Photoshop. I find this mirror-image extravaganza almost physically unpleasant: the overall color tone, the girl’s expression and hair, the dizzying frame – multiplied a thousand times, some kind of nausea-inducing porno-fractal. And I wonder: why did someone create this image (which I believe took some time to make)? Is it sexually arousing (for blonde fetishists or fractal nerds)? Is it decorative (perhaps an impossible wallpaper)? Is it a devotional image of The Secret Church of the Holy Double Penis (in many traditions, from Roman Catholic to Tibetan, symmetry is considered divine)? As usual with me, too many questions and no answers (that’s why I don’t call myself a theoretician).

Here’s a (bad) photo I’ve taken at the Musee Mechanique in San Francisco. It’s a 1920es (I believe) viewing machine, and what you’ll see is promised right there on the box.

It explains much better that I can one aspect of Realcore. Obviously we know what she does on her days on, right? We could safely assume that, on the other days, she behaves like any other person. But she’s an exotic belly dancer, so she somehow has a double appeal: onstage, where she visibly shakes her belly for everybody, and on her day off – where we can dream that she leads a wild, untamed, sexually frenzied existence. If it sounds silly to you, remember that in the golden age of exotic dances (as references, Ziegfeld was active between 1907 and 1931, Bettie Page between 1950 and ’57) men would literally go insane after the wonderful (and liberated) stars that would pass by their town with a dance troupe. And I believe the real reason wasn’t their onstage acts, but the atmosphere of liberation and possibilities (as opposed to the strict moral rules people had to live with) that emanated from these women.

It’s also, in a way, the same mechanism of gossip: see what Lindsay Lohan does on her day off. I bet the belly dancer had a far more interesting story to tell.

More puzzling is the story of Nichola Paginton, a 31 y.o. woman from Gloucester in UK. According to the Daily Mail: “Children’s nanny Nichola Paginton was found dead in bed naked from the waist down last October with pornographic material running on her laptop. A sex toy was discovered next to her. A Home Office pathologist told the inquest in Gloucester that Miss Paginton died from a sudden heart arrhythmia, probably brought on by her state of arousal.” Anywhere this news was published, it was accompanied by her sexy Facebook profile photo. Fortunately there are also very positive traces of her Facebook life.

Very sleazy journalism, of course. Is this the future? That we’re all out there in public, and if I die while wanking to porn my FB profile pic will get in the news? I also wonder how many guys a day die while wanking and no one talks about it. In any case I find this story slightly disturbing, and don’t feel very good about.

Update (7/19): Zaccai defends himself on Youtube – yet more evidence that my theory is correct.

Now, Rammstein (and their label) obviously knew that no Tv channel would have ever broadcasted this clip (as they didn’t with the fantastic, and quite tame for today’s standards, Relax video by Frankie goes to Hollywood in the mid ’80s). But in the web age this really doesn’t matter anymore: nowadays Mtv is just for pussies, so serious pussies (and dicks) migrate elsewhere. With a great cultural side effect: people go looking for Rock’n'roll on Pornotube.

(Thanks to Dax Parisini for the tip)

Remote controls are interesting objects – that embody, even in the name, the true meaning of technology as an extention of our bodies or senses. Of course there’s a variety of remote-controlled sex gadgets, wired or wireless, USB and Bluetooth. Toys that can be controlled remotely, even from elsewhere, via internet. This is a screenshot from a video, and the remote creates an odd effect: are we being watched by two persons having sex (one of which is certainly a crossdresser, but probably both), and we’re so boring that they’re switching channel?

Last friday I had a Realcore gig in Torino; the venue created a Facebook event but it was deleted by FB for “obscenity”. You can see the image above. Yet another piece of evidence that porn is the new Rock’n'roll.

“Yes, I am religious. I am Christian, Baptist. I grew up in as close to a Cosby-show lifestyle as you can get. Doing porno, on a repeated basis, I am committing adultery; I’m not married, so I’m fornicating for a living; I’m paid to have sex, which means what? I’m prostituting by definition. These are things I have to reckon with with my God on a daily basis. I knowingly do these things.”

“My decision to do porno has forced me to take my religion within: because of my job I am stronger in my relationship with God, because now I take God with me everywhere I go; if I don’t, I’ll fail. I didn’t know that God blessed me with an abnormally large penis that allows me to make porno. But I feel blessed. I believe I am blessed because I am meant to please one woman for the rest of our lives together. True, I haven’t met her yet.”

In a 2008 interview he also said: “People who are spiritual, like myself, we carry our spirituality inside of ourselves. I don’t believe any institution has any hierarchy on my personal relationship with God. I have been blessed with physical attributes that have allowed me to provide entertainment. What I do is not illegal so I am not at odds with anything. I’m not married so I am not committing adultery. If I be damned for fornication, then I am not much unlike then [sic] the billions of people who walk this earth today.” (from Wikipedia)

PS: #2 of my visual column for Rolling Stone is online.

It’s a Point-of-view shot, taken by someone visibly concentrated in something else. Still, not only it’s a perfect photo, but depicts the joys of an act that wouldn’t have occurred to me, but of which I can see the point. If you’re a foot fetishist, or a lube enthusiast, this must be heaven. It could even be that this is the first photo ever taken in this position, from this angle: it’s certainly the first one I’ve seen – and believe me, “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe”.

As usual, I can’t help noticing the actual beauty of the photo itself, in glorious lo-res (it could even be a video frame): a maybe blasphemous, contemporary, absurd, digital (but very fleshy) Lingam.