michele

Rule 13 of Special Conditions of Parole subparagraph (g) Unless otherwise indicated for the treatment required under subparagraph (E) of this paragraph, a prohibition against viewing, listening to, owning or possessing any sexually stimulating visual or auditory materials that are relevant to the person’s deviant behavior.

yesterday, or the day before, i got an email from my very favoritest aunt who works for the prison system in oregon. (she works in the building where ‘one flew over the cuckoo nest’ was filmed. fucking creepy place. totally haunted. there’s a ghost in this black dress which rustles who wanders around at night. oh man. it’s like the floor goes creak, creeeeeak, and her dress goes russsstle, russstle russstle.)

that’s besides the point.

anyway, my aunt sent me this email containing part of a dialogue between the members of the Sex Offenders Supervision Network concerning the use of japanese anime porn as a tool which can reinforce deviant behavior among sex offenders. due to their job title they’re going to ban anime renting and buying for sex offenders in prison and on parole.

now obviously, i would agree that some hentai is seriously fucked up, what with the tentacles and the graphic rape and so on. but there’s a lot of discussion over whether or not television and the like produce behavior patterns. i have no idea what the statistics are in japan for rape or sexual offensives (although now i’ve read this paper i know quite a bit more. and from this i would venture to say that anime porn comics and videos are not affecting sexual offenses in japan. [“It is certainly clear from our data and analysis that a massive increase in available pornography in Japan has been correlated with a dramatic decrease in sexual crimes and most so among youngsters as perpetrators or victims.” quote from the paper linked above] but in america this might be a different story as certainly there is an incredibly large percentage difference between japan and the US in offense cases of this sort.)

my point with all this is that i think doing a case study on prisons and sex offender parolees and how hentai anime affects them (or not) would be really, really interesting. i tried to find out if any research had been done already, but when you put “hentai” and “sex offender” into a search engine, all you get is porn sites. and…probably now i will be getting a lot of pornographic comments on this page. sigh.

(click below to read the comment from the SOSN that my aunt sent me)

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kati vol, you’re welcome on my apple cart anytime.

more pictures of the cherry blossom festival are up. also, a couple pictures from kim’s birthday. umm, one of the pictures…is a little strange. i didn’t realize i had saved my bizarro version and not the normal version. i was busy playing with special effects in MGI Photosuite yesterday. sorry, jason.

please note that kristen, christine, and myself did not attend this birthday party. i repeat, we were not there.

how cute though is this picture?

excellent composition if i do say so myself.

you are my masses-of-braided-hair-extensions guru. we need to do that again.

i’m writing you a poem for your birthday.

dianna

you’ve got two n’s in your name

because you abhor being the same

when life is looking down

you will make that frown

remember that time we went and got hair?

all those french black women didn’t use nair

said rude things about us in their frog language

against which slurs i took quite a bit of umbrage

that didn’t really rhyme, but i don’t care

because today’s the day you came into the world bare

that was a terrible poem. happy birthday.

p.s. the 4 things on your amazon wish list are from 2002. are they even still valid?

him: well, at least we’ll always have paris.

her: you know, that’s kind of cheesy.

him: sometimes i’m like that.

her: well, you’re still gouda ‘nough for me!

him: you’re kind of cheesy.

her: …now you’re supposed to add, ‘maybe i should call you swiss, cause i like your holes.’

him: that kind of stepped over the line from cheesy into revolting.

her: i do that. but you like my holes anyway, right?

him: i like the one you’re talking out of right now.

her: noyce.

really, in addition to kristen, no one should bother to read this.

1: people who watch angel and don’t want the end of the series to be hinted at to them.

2: people who don’t watch angel, buffy, or give a fuck about joss whedon.

dear joss whedon (letter #2, letter #1),

i wanted to say that sometimes you amaze me. there have been times on angel where you present something so against all tv ethics that it’s just completely, startlingly beautiful. this can be seen in that episode third season where darla stabs herself with a stake and dusts away to leave the squalling infant connor. that image will haunt me forever.

equally haunting is last week’s episode where the demon that killed fred and took over her body, shoves a stake thru spike’s heart, her hand or some sort of wicked blade into wesley, kills lorn dismissively, takes an ax and chops off angel’s head as he leaps to jump on her so his dust is in motion as it dissipates as motes in the air. considering that you’ve already killed off cordelia and fred (the only females of worth on the show), all that is left is a man’s man world, and now you’re going to kill what’s left. fitting tribute to the end of the show, really.

now sure, the deaths were taken back as an aberration in illyria’s (demon who wears fred’s body) time-line and angel saves the day in the end, but we know at this point that all you’re doing is foreshadowing the end of the series. half the cast who have been dying all season will die again for real. if not more. in buffy’s last season you killed one person. anya. in angel, you’ve already killed the heart and the second heart, what are you looking to rip from us next? souls? MY heart stops again as i watch my memory play spike and angel dusting. is this a punishment for being canceled? is this really the best you could do? bring. it. on.

love,

michele

“The koalas are so hungry they are eating pine needles,” said Kanck. “What will tourists think of a habitat of denuded trees with desperate, starving koalas roaming the damaged landscape?”

scene: little billy and sarah clamber out of the outback rover with their parents on kangaroo island. billy and sarah, being naturally exuberant children, race around in circles for a bit, while mr. and mrs. rowe watch with smiles on their faces and their arms around one another’s backs.

sarah: mommy, why is this place so denuded?

billy: oooo, you said the ‘n’ word…

mrs. rowe: you know we’ve talked about this, sa-put your shirt back on, you dirty whore!

billy: ooo someone’s going to feel the firm back of daddy’s hand…

mr. rowe: slap what? slap who? slap now?

off in the distance there is a loud crashing noise and as they turn to look in startlement, a tree a quarter mile away falls over. the long grass between them and the tree starts violently rustling and there are loud grunting noises getting closer.

mr. rowe: back in the car!

mrs. rowe: fly to me, children, to me!

billy: look, a bug!

sarah (as billy eats the bug, [she should have pigtails]): eeewwww.

the parents swoop up a child each (stick to genders). mr. rowe slaps billy across the face so the bug flies out. at this moment seven koalas crash into the clearing. they’re all kind of scruffy and thin looking with red-rimmed eyes and wicked sharp claws. two of them try to snatch up the bug at once and engage in a full-on fight with wrist-slaps and tickles over it.

mrs. rowe: this is terrifying!

billy (blubbering): mm-mmm-myyy bbb-bbuuu-g!

mr. rowe: be a man! i’m a man! stinking koalas should be shot.

sarah: fuzzy! fuzzy!

billy: (struggling to get away from mr. rowe): give me back my bug, you damn stinking koalas!

billy kicks his father in the gut and is released. he runs over to the koalas, who abandon the bug, forget gum trees, and spit out pine needles in order to cram warm human flesh into their gaping maws. somehow then they should become zombies. because zombies are cool.

there’s something to be said for a festival where you can eat multiple shaved ices and something called takoyaki (which means fried octopus) but which contains no actual octopi. when realization strikes that you can understand the word nihonmachi, life also seems a little brighter and perhaps indicates that your years of taking japanese 1 over and over again are finally paying off. what i came away with primarily from this festival with, though, was a severe sunburn. ah, inferno, (thank you, jason).

some pictures here. taken with the good grace of jason having his digi with him and me quickly running out of film in my shutter camera. sadly though, we also quickly ran out of space on his film card and i had to keep deleting previously taken pictures. i’m pretty sure i’ve got some of cute little kids and taiko drummers on the other role though. which i will develop as soon as i get a chance.

the main reason i went to this festival (other than the obvious lure of shaved ices) was because i need to write a final paper for religion/culture class which incorporates first-hand experience of an asian religious festival. honestly, this cherry blossom nonsense didn’t really cut it for me. if i knew who this dance group was and could prove they were doing a daoist spirit banishment ritual at one point during the performance, that might be ok. and then there’s my theory on geishas, dance, and religion being semi buddy-buddy. not fulfilled by any sight seen today though. if i wanted to write about the number of buddhist boy scout troops in san francisco or an inquiry into why they had like 6 separate courts with queen, 1st princess, and other princesses than this festival would be, in a sense, my man. or, at least, my beatrice.

next weekend i’m going to go to a dance class/performance of indian temple dancing in berkeley. would anyone like to try that with me? it could be fun. i mean….it’s free. and involves learning something new and possibly interesting and watching me flounder in an attempt to find something worthwhile to write a stupid paper about. this theory on devadasi (the female temple dancers) and prostitution is much better and actually founded on previous research done by others, so there’s hope for me yet.