Originally posted January 15th, 2012
By Michael Konik
Aside from their protective utility, latex condoms aren’t anyone’s first choice for a sexual accoutrement. Claims to the efficacy of certain “ribbed for her pleasure” varieties notwithstanding, folks use them to prevent pregnancies and transmittable diseases, not because rubbers enhance sex.
Sure, the old putting-it-on-with-your-mouth trick, redolent of European brothels and Asian massage parlors, has its charms, and, yes, condoms come in all sorts of interesting colors (and flavors). Still, those in a relationship that doesn’t require protection (e.g., sterile married couples) would almost never choose to include condoms in their sex life. Compared to “bareback,” condoms are a drag.
The Los Angeles City Council, whose serial acts of legerdemain and thinly concealed larceny could fill many books, has recently given its approval and support to a local ordinance mandating that those who would make adult movies in our city – an impulse which requires a city . . . → Read More: Matters of Public Insertion
Originally posted December 19th, 2010
By Michael Konik
Justice has been done! The U.S. Military’s pernicious ongoing discrimination against heterosexuals has been outlawed.
Now it’s all out in the open. Now straight people won’t be the only (majority) group permitted to suffer unimaginable indignities, grievous disfigurement and injuries, and painful death while protecting the business interests of those richer than they. Now straight people won’t be the only victims of propaganda that makes war seem like a really cool video game. With the repeal of the noxious “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, now gays too may be conned into believing they are heroes for sacrificing their lives in overseas police actions that provide security for no one but arms manufacturers, oil producers, and corrupt tribal politicians.
Some of our more courageous Christian brothers and sisters — like the ones brave enough to stand up for God at military funerals, reminding the parents of slain children . . . → Read More: Gays in the Military
Originally posted August 15th, 2010
By Michael Konik
One is required to live. The other is required to create life. Depending on your appetites, one of them is the best part of being alive. Sometimes they complement each other. Sometimes they’re combined. Sometimes they’re kept in discrete compartments. Every day (if we’re fortunate) we experience one or both.
Food and sex are natural constants that allow the organisms of our planet to survive and flourish. But only food, it seems, is an acceptable subject for unbidden declarations of personal ecstacy. How many times has a friend fairly swooned, her mouth agape in an evocative moan and her eyes rolling back in her head, communicating with anyone within earshot the sublime perfection and intense pleasure of the slice of carrot cake she recently ingested? We moan in concert: Oh my god, that sounds so yummy!
Seldom in polite company will you hear that same friend describe in ecstatic . . . → Read More: Food and Sex
Originally posted April 3rd, 2010
By Michael Konik
Joe is a human being.
Joe is unsure if he is homoseuxal or heterosexual. But like most human beings, he has urges that involve activities other than procreation.
Rather than figure out who he is or what he likes, Joe decides to sublimate his confusing desires, announcing to the world that he is no longer interested in boys or girls. Instead, he is focusing all his love on a long-dead mystic whose radical ideas changed the world.
Joe’s work brings him in contact with many vulnerable and subservient children.
Joe’s “marriage” to the dead mystic, while spiritually fulfliing, does not address the persistent tingling he feels in his scrotum whenever he’s around vulnerable and subservient children.
Joe attempts to strengthen his marriage, reminding himself how much he loves his physically absent friend, and how much he is loved in return, even though that love does not take . . . → Read More: A Fun Little Easter Parable
Originally posted August 16th, 2009
By Michael Konik
You may have noticed that people like to have sex, including countless youngsters whose testosterone levels dramatically exceed their intelligence. Everybody’s conception of permissible activity varies somewhat, based on controlling factors that most of us don’t bother to examine. But whether or not you approve of pre-marital sex, or marital sex, or post-marital sex, whether you think people ought to be having more sex or less, the act of copulation is as inevitable and eternal as the sunrise.
Attempting to dissuade or prevent human beings from engaging in one of life’s enduring pleasures is as futile and nonsensical as trying to eliminate the tides. Weird organizations devoted to chastity may certainly try their best to make lustful humans into self-abnegating monks, but they’re fighting millions of years of genetic imperatives, not to mention millions of marketing and popular culture images reinforcing the idea that getting laid is . . . → Read More: The Immorality of Discouraging Contraception
Originally posted March 15th, 2008
By Michael Konik
The fall of the (former) Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, was a glorious windfall for comedians, political pundits, and connoisseurs of schadenfreude. But lost amid the jeering laughter (and disappointed tears), the competing tendentious agendas, and the grave scholastic commentary was an opportunity for us to collectively ask: what’s wrong with us?
Perhaps we need a moment of thoughtful consideration about why we Americans accept prostitution in virtually every area of adult life, except when it involves a woman’s vagina.
This space has previously suggested that anyone in the abortion debate who claims to be pro-choice, especially on grounds that a woman (and not a bunch of rich and predominantly white old men) ought to have final say over what she does with her body, must logically also support the legalization of prostitution. Curious: few feminists have joined the fight.
Originally posted August 5th, 2007
By Michael Konik
Orthodox free-speech advocates must be cringing, certain that donations to their nonprofit organizations will slow to a trickle and, eventually, dry up like an extinct lake. What critics have been saying about groups like the American Civil Liberties Union is true: they stick up for the rights of the worst kinds of people, anti-social crackpots who don’t know when to keep their damn mouths shut.
Bad enough those free speech folks defend neo-Nazis parading through Jewish neighborhoods and un-American traitors criticizing the President and his Patriot Act. But the latest outrage to make the news will surely prove what reasonable people have been saying all along: the First Amendment isn’t for everyone.
The apocalypse has come, and his name is Jack McClellan.
He has no arrest or conviction record — not in the United States, anyway — but this 45-year-old transient has inspired fear and outrage everywhere he’s gone. Especially . . . → Read More: Free to Be a Pedophile
Originally posted August 24th, 2006
By Michael Konik
According to the bus stop advertisements and billboards around town, another disposable situation comedy is about to make its debut on network television. The conceit of this one, called “‘Til Death Do Us Part,” is that his adorable wife henpecks a regular guy (the aggressively unfunny Brad Garrett) to the point of emasculation. The tag lines retread Henny Youngman era mother-in-law jokes and all the stock notions of marriage being a death sentence for the id. “No sex in the city,” one of them says.
The humor in all this, apparently, is in recognizing the inherent truthfulness of the lighthearted clowning. Married couples are supposed to think, “That’s us!” and chuckle along with the laugh track.
But what’s funny about marriage characterized as the end of lust? Shouldn’t marriage be a precursor to greater intimacy, deeper connections, and hotter sex? If it were not, then why would anyone submit to . . . → Read More: Sexless Marriage
Originally posted December 2nd, 2005
By Michael Konik
Tabloid favorite Heidi Fleiss, a young woman whose two best talents appear to be self-promotion and the marketing of nubile flesh, recently announced via the winking and blushing media, including the credulous Los Angels Times, that her latest venture in pimping would be in Nevada, where prostitution is legal in several clear-thinking counties. This time, though, instead of catering to rich Hollywood men her planned target market would be wealthy women. In her new venture the whores on offer will be men.
A prospective name: The Stud Farm.
Notwithstanding the madam’s past follies, I think a male brothel has a great chance of succeeding. It’s about time women had this kind of outlet for their sexual appetites. Male strippers and masseurs have long been a favorite of bachelorette parties; quasi-pornographic magazines and TV shows aimed at women (Cosmopolitan and Sex and the City, for example) celebrate the sexualized woman and . . . → Read More: The Male Brothel
Originally posted October 26th, 2004
By Michael Konik
Last night, while most of us slept, the most cleverly marketed movie in recent history opened on thousands of screens across America. Before a single megaplex presented Mel Gibson’s “Passion of Christ,” the film inspired more editorializing, hand wringing, righteous anger, righteous pride, and cocktail party theorizing than every other work of creative fiction composed in the prior year combined.
By that measure, it’s a spectacular success.
I greatly admire the film’s director, the former star of “Air America” and “Lethal Weapon 3.” He had the courage of his convictions to self-finance a film that no one in their right mind would make. He also found a way to make people pay attention to a historical viewpoint most commonly held by AM radio cranks and paranoid-schizophrenic taxi drivers. Mel Gibson used his fame in the service of something he strongly believes in. Celebrities regularly redeem their faux credibility at the . . . → Read More: Mel Gibson’s Christ Porno
We're really sorry about our most recent trading loss. People will say we require more oversight, and, in this case, maybe they're right. It shouldn't have happened, and we'll take steps to make sure it doesn't happen for a third time.
The $4,000 or so ($4,882) of your money that we failed to bring back from our annual company trip to Hollywood Park Racetrack and Casino will in... Read More-->
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Poet Robert Pinsky. Pianist Laurence Hobgood. Text, music, and the moment -- what we hear on the new POEMJAZZ recording is two giant artists making something greater than the sum of its parts. While Pinsky recites his lovely words with his unlovely (but weirdly attractive) voice, Hobgood, the longtime arranger and accompanist [...]
Matters of Public Insertion
By Michael Konik
Aside from their protective utility, latex condoms aren’t anyone’s first choice for a sexual accoutrement. Claims to the efficacy of certain “ribbed for her pleasure” varieties notwithstanding, folks use them to prevent pregnancies and transmittable diseases, not because rubbers enhance sex.
Sure, the old putting-it-on-with-your-mouth trick, redolent of European brothels and Asian massage parlors, has its charms, and, yes, condoms come in all sorts of interesting colors (and flavors). Still, those in a relationship that doesn’t require protection (e.g., sterile married couples) would almost never choose to include condoms in their sex life. Compared to “bareback,” condoms are a drag.
The Los Angeles City Council, whose serial acts of legerdemain and thinly concealed larceny could fill many books, has recently given its approval and support to a local ordinance mandating that those who would make adult movies in our city – an impulse which requires a city . . . → Read More: Matters of Public Insertion