.
May 06, 2005 11:49 PM
summer of 2002 found me drifting about the state of michigan in my (now deceased) blue subaru station wagon. In grand rapids i discovered 'bao bao tea', in rochester hills i discovered pokemon ... but it was in micoda michigan that i found something in a small fire department rummage sale that would change my life for ever: the casio sk-1 keyboard. this 4 voice polyphony keyboard was established in 1985, as one of the first consumer level sampling keyboards, and boasted a 99 step chord sequence memory and 13 envelope shapes for an additive synth selection. at first, it was the sampling function that amused me for hours. on the beach, driving my car, on long walks through the wood... these places all witnessed my eagerness to explore the possibilities of hearing 1.4 seconds of just about anything repeated back to me in 32 different tones. it wasn't until almost 4 months later, when the appeal of polyphonic 'i pity the fool' started to wear, that my appetite for a new sound began to grow. i started wondering what exactly it was in this totally rad machine that made it so incredible... and shortly thereafter discovered my predilection in taking toys apart and exploring their circuit boards...
circuit bending came at a very good time for me, when otomo yoshihide and nobukazu takemura were at the top of my music charts, and I was desperately looking for a way to exert creative energy in (what at the time i thought was) new ways. for those not familiar with this practice, there is not really much to know. at the basic level, it is simply a person with ambition and imagination, not afraid to open the back of an electrical device and randomly connect resistors and capacitors into the circuit. the result is catastrophic to the ears of others, but simply wonderful for the designer. bringing wet finger tips into a circuit, allows a human to interact with a machine in a completely unpredictable and sensitive way that brings life into what originally was a completely in-organic sound. at a slightly more advanced level, circuit bending requires basic knowledge of electronics and soldering. eventually the rear is put back on the keyboard, which will have been modified, using a number of switches, dials and body contacts, to trigger off the various sounds in a slightly more predictable way. shit... there is much more i'd love to share, my affinity for vintage keyboards, toys, and electronics extend much further than this, but already i am tired of writing in this fashion. i prefer a much more visual and aesthetic approach to blogging, or else complete streams of consciousness which i find much too private and hard to focus for ultimate blogging challenges. so... if you'd really like to learn more about this passion of mine, please explore this small collection of links i've pulled from my browsers bookmarks. truly seasoned circuit benders have accomplished some really incredible things (where as i am still content simply 'wetting my fingers', if you don't mind the pun), and their sites might provide much more insight into the process and possibilities that bending may concur. cheers.
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Welcome to my Friday...
May 06, 2005 10:59 PM
Hello Friends and Lovers!
Joel, here. The Ultimate Blogger. Just stopping by for a quick note. How you guys doing? It's good to see you. Anyway, welcome to my entry, on this wonderful, day-after-Cinco De Mayo, Friday, the 6th of May, 2005. I'm glad we have this time together. I quoted Prince this evening and it went like this: "I was dreaming when I wrote this, so forgive me if it goes astray. But, when I woke up this morning, coulda sworn it was Judgment Day" Nice.
I was so stressed about this. Coulda sworn it was judgment day. "I guess I gotta write a good post", I thought. Then I remembered, "This is just a contest, and tomorrow is a new day, plus, I got a hot chick cooking for me" Then I thought: "No problem." So yeah, no problem. Sorry you couldn't hang, Crash. Take care. Keep Blogging.
Here's what I think about technology:
(Current soundtrack I'm listening to: 1950's Sex Education Tapes. So funny.)
1. Things can get better.
2. If they're don't, we'll figure it out.
3. New things are cool.
4. Old things are cool.
5. The one's that replace the old ones, are usually better for a reason. They do more stuff.
6. It doesn't make the old ones bad. Sometimes the old ones look cooler. (Work on that, guys)
7. It feels good to understand new things.
8. I used to think I knew stuff.
9. Boy was I wrong!
10. Now if I don't know something, I ask someone, and if they don't know, I ask my computer.
Man, technology is great. Don't you think? I had forgotten that stuff a few months ago, now they're always on my mind. Old and new.
I am constantly affected by technology.
This was a great topic, and I had to ask all the smart people, and dummies that I know: "What do I say?" I made videos, I took pictures, I brushed up on my HTML. I was inspired.
But I bet you guys are bored with all that, and so I'll just cut to the chase. I am happy with my old self, happier with my new self, and know I can get better with the help of my friends, and a little faith in myself.
That is technology. That's what it means to me. Blogging means letting you guys in, here you are.
That to me is the statement of a person who loves technology, wants to talk about technology from the inception of the universe, to the iPod Shuffle on my girlfriend's arm. And I dig it all. You asked, and I said. I hope it didn't bore you.
I'm Out Like Crash,
Joel Conrad Bechtolt
The Ultimate Blogger
So Many Memories
May 06, 2005 08:07 PM
When my dad got a job as an engineer for GE, he started to bring home all kinds of neat toys for me to play with. How he'd knew I'd end up becoming a technophile at such a young age is beyond me. There's so many to name that were my favorite. Sit back and recall the memories of your childhood electronics with me.
My first computer was a K28 Talking Computer. I forget who manufactured it, but I remember when I started the brick-like unit, it would say K-2-8. AC-TI-VATE. However, it's activating days were soon over when my older brother ran water over it in the bathtub one night to see if it would float. Imagine the horror of coming and seeing your first CPU in a tub of running water saying K....2...8.... before radically changing its pitch and then dying.
It did float, though.
My mother, not one to skimp on the gadgets either, brought this 10-pound Texas Instruments Teaching Calculator, which was basically, a TI calculator mounted atop an LED box with a front screen. Sure, seeing the numbers come up as big as my hand was exciting at first, but not as much fun as trying to make up words that appeared when you looked at it upside down. I even made a story with one, grab a calculator and follow along:
There was 1 girl who was 16 years old and did it 69 times (hit the multiplication key) with 3 men, and this is what she was.
Flip your calculator over.
Nasty.
Next was my Talking Whiz-Kid, which had these little cartridges you put in the sides which had different activities and stories on them. My dad only bought me one cartridge, though, so the replay value diminished after then until I broke it open with a hammer to see how it worked. "No more electronics for you," he'd say. And he stayed true to his word. My grandmother went behind his back and bought me a Laser 2000 computer system complete with printer. I stared at that one-line screen and fooled around on it until I sold it at the flea market for $20.
In third grade, I was introduced to the Apple IIe and games like "Oregon Trail" and "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?". I also started learning BASIC around this time and toyed around with making programs and even some computer graphics.
Best I could muster was a rocket ship that had USA on it.
When I started fourth grade, I had graduated from BASIC to DOS when our school finally received decent PCs. On the homefront, my brother and I were the first in the neighborhood to have a Nintendo Entertainment System. Soon, I was the king of the neighborhood, trouncing my peers in Pro Wrestling and defeating the champ in Mike Tyson's Punch Out! My brother and I had started to collect all the necessities; an NES MAX controller, a Power Glove and R.O.B., the lovable chip-stacking robot creation of Professor Hector. We even had subscriptions to the Nintendo Fun Club, the Nintendo Power predecessor.
And for +1 in geek cred, I still remember my old membership number (025252303) and have the last issue of Nintendo Fun Club in near mint condition.
Ah...those were the days.
A toboggan of cards
May 06, 2005 07:59 PM
January 24, 1978, was our second major snow storm in 4 days and more white stuff was coming. I had a programming assignment due in 3 days. I had spent days on it already but it wasn't finished yet. You know the kind of programming project where you spend three days writing it out on paper and then it takes two weeks to get the punch cards done correctly. All that so the mainframe can work through the program in ten seconds and the instructor can give you a C+ because there invariable was a better way to do what you did - better, fast, with less cards, or fewer instructions. You know the kind of program, because all programming is like that, change the language and the tools but the process remains the same.
On that day, my program had 500 cards or roughly half of what the completed project would require. Computer cards are odd birds, picture something with the consistency of a manila folder and the life expectancy of single-ply toilet paper in tree during a rain. The A9 size punch cards that were used for registration when I was at Purdue had printing across the middle. In large block letters it said, "DO NOT bend, fold, spindle or mutilate" something that was impossible to accomplish when transporting a sheet larger the 8.5 x 11 across a windy prairie campus. Because the sheets were so large you ended up carrying them by hand - wrists together, palms up, forms held flat across the platform, with you fingers curled slightly to keep it all in place - like sacrificial offerings to the registration gods. For years after I left Purdue I kept my black and gold, the school colors, t-shirt that said "Purdue Student" with a reproduction of the registration card on the front.
So there I was on a cold January day, walking home in knee deep snow holding my box of punch cards tightly between my gloved hands. No way was I going to mess up this project with just three days to go. NO WAY!
I had trudged from the sub-sub-sub-basement of the Science Building, where the computer lab was housed, to the empty Burger Chef restaurant in The Village. Ahead of me was Chauncey Hill, a vacant hillside with a steep slope that covered roughly two-thirds of a city book. Chauncey Hill had held several houses at one time but they had long since been torn down. All that was left of those buildings was the stone retaining wall along the lower east sloop.
At the edge of the Hill I had a decision to make, I could cut across the vacant lot and then down the alley toward the townhouse I shared or I could stay on the sidewalks and walk down the hill and around the block a much longer walk. The snow on the Hill showed the foot prints of others who had clearly made it across the vacant lot with no trouble. And well I was tired so I decided to take the short cut.
I made it maybe 30 feet before my lost my footing. I fell and started to slide. The box flipped out of my hands and was sliding along beside me. I remember the thinking, "Don't open, please please don't open." I slide about half way down the hill, and aside from losing face and ripping the back of my jeans open I survived the fall in pretty good shape. The box didn't slide as far as I did and it stayed closed. "Thank you, thank you, thank you." So I got up, brushed myself off, and started back up to where the box was lodged in the snow.
I walked up alongside the box and reached down to pick it up. As I touched it I slipped. Not a fall just a slip. But as my footing moved my hand hit the box and like a pool cue hitting a white ball the box started to slide down hill. I went scrabbling after it without totally regaining my stance. So there I was racing downhill looking like an early primate, an early primate with its underwear sticking out of the back of its primordial jeans, trying to catch a closed box sliding across the snow.
"Stay closed, please stay closed." But of course it didn't stay closed. As the box hit the old retaining wall it flew open spewing punch cards into the air and down across the snow. It took forever to pick all of them up and put them back into the box. Fifteen cards were completely lost, another 200 or so ranged from damp to wet. Once I got home, I spent a couple of hours ironing the cards to dry them out and force them flat. Only 60 or so were unrecoverable and would have to be repunched.
Had the third of three storms not hit early the next morning with more snow and blizzard conditions, I really believe that I could have finished the project on time. But of course the Blizzard of 1978 closed down most of the Midwest for a week. No classes, no access to the Computer Lab, and eventually the assignment was canceled and turned in to an extra credit opportunity. Oh I finished it, 14 days after it was due. It's amazing how much better a C+ looks as extra credit rather then as a regular grade.
PLAYBOYS & PAGERS
May 06, 2005 07:59 PM
(click picture now!)
The embryo years of 1990's in my area was marked by the rise and fall of the pager. Every ultra masculine of Grodno was to fashion it upon the discotek if he must be considered total playboy! I was one of these playboys. The pager, it provided me with multiples of womanfolk for the first eras of my large manhood. It bring me love. It bring me sex. It took my grandmother's money. And then it broke my heart...
My friend Ivan was the first. When he installed his premiere in "Malinka" bar (the local at Vasilishki) I make the green eyes to him on the spot and later I punch him. How could I be without these awesome technics? So I think some time to find high profit job and then disbursed my grandmother's pension into my new toy. It quickly become a most supreme revolutionary thing for me! I communicate through cipher with legions of the opposed genders and invent super-potent and, dare I say, total abnormal code for all my sexes! But the real joker of my pager was this: with it I must run many parallel erotical adventures in simultaneous and have my instruments all over the shops!
These pagers, they made facile the complex of sex and rural warfare. You get a 690, you know you will beat high scores tonight! You send a 691, you can be 100% that you will be acquainted with something extra amazing! You get a 510 and you assemble your pitchforks toward Vasiliy's collective farm... I made swift to develop the playboy reputations throughout the North Western lake district border zone of Byelorussia. No woman's body was alienated from me. No woman was unfamiliar with my special code names for suchlike "ultimate nosedive" and "ruminating the hairy trumpet". But my glory lives were short, and soon came the mobile telephone. Suddenly I could not be freed of being talked at by my womans, soon they would be aware of all the others. I had to lower my performances, and in the end, abandon the life of total primo playboy that the pager had bestowed to me. I raise my glass to these forgotten years, as a tear of old sex comes in my eyes...
(click for translation of pager codes. I add that the English is much less evocative and masculine parlance than the Byelorussian, so translations must be approximate).
Tech Talk
May 06, 2005 06:36 PM
You probably don't know that I do a very popular radio call-in show (KSAW, Denton TX, Sundays at 2:00 a.m.) called "Tech Talk," in which I lend my expertise in the realm of computers to those suffering from confusion in that same realm. In the beginning, I used the pseudonym "Sarah McDoogan" in order to keep fans and stalkers from ruining my life, although in later years my real identity became known and, strangely, my life remained un-disrupted. For this blog entry, I thought I'd post a few excerpts from my very first show, interspersed with my fond memories of Yesteryear. "Tech Talk" premiered in 1984. Back then, computers were made of wood and steel, and we didn't even have the internet (an early version of the intraweb had only recently been discovered by Steve Job at Microsoft (who you probably know mainly as the man who invented Google).)! Some of you are probably too young to remember, but before we had the internet, if we wanted to put data into our computer we had to type it with our hands! Looking back through old episodes of Tech Talk brought me quite a few chuckles, and I thought I'd share those chuckles with you. So put on your hard hats, and let's travel together back to the magical land of 1984--the year of cabbage patch kids, Michael Jackson's Thriller, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, and of course, the timelessly functional MBX system.
********
SM: "Thank you for tuning in to Tech Talk--KSAW's very first computer-related call-in show. I'm your host, Sarah McDoogan, and I'm here to help you with all those pesky problems you may be having with your machine! We go now to Jonas, out in Feinburg. Jonas?"
J: "Hi, Sarah, nice to have you on the air!"
SM: (laughs) "Thanks, Jonas. What can I do for you?"
J: "Well, here goes: I'm using the Milton Bradley Expansion System (MBX) (ed. featured on the right!) with my TI 99/4A, primarily for my kids, Lawrence and Teri, who love to play 'I'm Hiding'. On occasion, however, the voice recognition system seems to 'glitch up', forgetting all of our programmed voice commands. Is there an easy fix?"
SM: "I'm really glad you asked this question, Jonas. I've been getting a lot of complaints from friends and family about the MBX. Here's what I've learned: When trying to glitch up your voice recognition, the best possible course of action is to drastically meg the amount of cookies you're storing in your external hardfile. It sounds like your kids are playing a computer game on the MBX, which is going to use up a lot of your software and create a serious backlog in your RAM-flow. To be honest, I don't understand why you're not amping up your mainframe by enabling AppleTalk (you can get an AppleTalk for $3.50 down at Radio Shack), but I guess we can't all be computer experts! To compensate, I suggest uplinking one of your security nodes to the folder just to the left of the "tab" key, and pressing "pound." Your voice recognition hardware should be bug-free now!"
J: "Thanks, Sarah, I'll give that a shot!"
********
Oh, those were the days. I remember another turning point in my career as a technophile was the invention of Windows in the late 80's. The station was flooded with anxious callers - how do I use it? Where should I plug it in? Do I need to increase the megabits on my maindrive? Naturally, I had to investigate this new techonological discovery for myself. One night in my apartment, I began downlining the new Macintosh Windows version -0.1 onto my motherboard (at the time, I was using a Sony-Genesis instead of a mega-drive). But the downline was taking forever. Back then, you could buy these little nodes that would just stick to the side of your processor and amp up its RAM capabilities using magnetics. It seems sort of barbaric, now, but remember how well they worked? You could go from, like, 8 megs of RAM all the way up to 10 or 12, just from investing five bucks. So, I was in such a hurry to get the new Windows and start using Adobe, I ran down to the Radio Shack and bought TWO of those nodes. When I stuck them onto the side of my S-G, the floppy disk suddenly became overloaded with excess e-frags! And that's why I upgraded to my first laptop, which was an early Pentium i-book with an external giga-drive. So I guess it was a blessing in disguise.
Let's see one more excerpt from 1984 before I go back to my workstation (I'm trying to firewire Mozilla, but there's a really tenacious mailer-daemon that won't let me through):
********
C: "My Timex Sinclair ZX80 seems to be 'crashing' when I use the 16K RAM module, even though it never does when I use the computer alone. What do you suppose is wrong?"
SM: "Well, Christina, the people at Timex will tell you that you should clean the contacts by vigorously rubbing the electrical contacts on the printed circuit board with a pencil eraser, and to tape the RAM pack to the computer to prevent loss of contact due to accidental movement. But Christina, the people at Timex just want to rip you off. They want you to fry your Sinclair by using too much fragging. This is something I DON'T want, Christina. Are you listening to me?"
C: "Yes, I--"
SM: "Christina, what I want you to do is this: take that 16K RAM module and throw it in the garbage. Then run down to Radio Shack and get one of those new de-fraggers that Magnavox is making. The pink one, Christina! Not the red one--the red ones are being recalled because they exhibit a lot of mega-inhibitors. Take the de-fragger home, plug its unit into your ZX80, and then point your mouse onto the "finder" button. Now restart your computer, and everything should be just cherry."
********
We live in an amazing time, what with advances in e-technologies and those cell phones that you can use to find your remote control, but I sure do have fond memories of bygone days--surfing the intranet without a mouse, graphing calculators, and those crazy robot digital watches that could do your laundry. They sure don't make 'em like they used to!
sad fate of the mix tape
May 06, 2005 06:03 PM
There are plenty of technological artifacts that I am nostalgic for- the purr and staccato of the electric typewriter, raging Bubble Bobble and Marble Madness on the first Nintendo, slideshows for crying out loud!- but the loss that I've spent the most time mourning is that of the Mix Tape. Oh, the Mix Tape. Born in the humid bedrooms of our adolescence, the Mix Tape was a carefully crafted declaration- the sonnet of our time. I mean, remember? Remember how you agonized over the song list? How three or four songs would topple over each other- they were so perfect you would add their titles to the song list (in pen!) before you'd even hit the record button? But then you'd get stuck on the last five minutes of Side A. Do you cram in two short songs, or trust your gut and let that Mazzy Star gem ride with fifty seconds of silence tailing behind? You go with Mazzy, because you know that the silence is part of the glory, the delicious waiting for the shivers of Side B.
My friends and I were Mix Tape obsessives. We would make a Tape for any occasion. Birthdays. Road Trips. Break Ups. We memorized the contents of each other's Tapes, and shouted requests even before calling shotgun. There were certain songs that made the rounds on all of our Tapes. Look at any Mix from the summer of 1998 and you will find the song "Dear Josie" by a band called Sarge. It starts with spoken word, "Dear Josie, when you read these words I will be far from here. I'm sorry for the things I let you put me through, and though I loved you dear, I think it's time I made it clear that this will be the last time that I ever think of you..." I never heard any of the other songs on that album, because I simply copied it from other mixes whose crafters had done the same. John Shoe was the one who discovered "Dear Josie," and put it on a tape for Liz, but he didn't really like it that much.
I think the first Mix I made was for Nick Register, when I was 11 or 12. I think it was mostly Beatles and REM songs, but the (horribly embarrassing) highlight was me singing an acapella rendition of Bette Midler's "The Rose" at the end of Side B. (Did I just admit that on live television? Oh dear.) My only hope is that the rest of the tape was so boring, he never made it to that pot o' gold.
Which brings me to the Ultimate Manifestation of the Mix Tape- a tool of courtship. There was nothing sexier or more maddening that receiving a Mix from a crush, and trying to guess his intent. Is there meaning in that Ween song? ("It's gonna be alright, baby. It's gonna be alright, now.") Or did it just sound right after Billy Joel's "She's Got a Way?" Did I tell him That Dog was my favorite, or did he do some investigating to find out? Oh the hours spent deliriously wondering, as the tape looped over and over in the stereo of my Dodge Colt.
Mix CDs never really lived up to the glory of the Mix Tape. They were too sterile, too easy. They were the wrong shape. You couldn't feel that amazing weight in your hand, fold your fingers over the rounded edges of the case, give a little shake, and sense the cassette shimmy inside. If you spill a Coke on a CD, you're done for; with a tape you have a fifty-fifty chance of recovery, at least. I've had a few fancy boyfriends try to woo me with a Mix CD, and while the effort was appreciated, I'm afraid my response was a little lackluster. You can't carry a CD around in your back pocket, you know? How am I supposed to feel close to a man who's music can't be pressed up against me in that oh-so-intimate way?
After six years without a car, I am finally behind the wheel again. My employers have provided me with a brick red 1991 Volvo station wagon, and lo! it has a tape player. For a few unsatisfying months I tried to fulfill my musical needs with a Discman + car adapter. It was totally annoying, and I ended up listening to way too much bad radio before deciding to round up my old Mix Tapes, and put them back into circulation. Half of them were on indefinite loan to my friend Heather, and the rest were buried at my mother's house in Denver. I made some calls, and I finally have my precious treasures secured in an "I Heart Music" bag in the backseat. It's a thrill to revisit them, even the handwriting on the liners bring me back. Here is a list of my best-titled Mixes:
*Emo Coast to Coast
*Sound Affects
*I Don't Hate Your Guts
*Series: Peter, Edition: Willow
*Do You Want Me To?
*Cool Songs for Cool Girls
*Get in the Ring
I'm hoping that there will be a Mix Tape Renaissance. I've noticed there has been a small revival, at least. My friend Calvin has utilized his epic record collection to make the most radical Mix Tape series you ever saw, and he sells them when he's on tour. There is also a Mix Tape club in Denver that meets every other Monday. They each make a Tape and put it in a bag at the beginning of the party. At the end of the night everyone reaches in and grabs one, like a key party, but hotter. (Some of the members get awfully fancy with their fun. At a session I attended a while back the tape I pulled out was devoted to color. Every song had a color in the title, and the case was painted in brilliant acrylic squares.) I like the idea of Mix Tape chain letters. It would be the Ultimate Joy of my life to be at the top of a Mix Tape Pyramid. (After, of course, the Ultimate Joy of being crowned the Ultimate Blogger!)
Even as I pray for a Renaissance, I feel in my heart that the Age of the Mix Tape is over. Driving around, listening to Le Tigre fade into the Halo Benders, then gloriously to an early Dear Nora track before sighing to a stop with Heatmiser (I'm referencing a Tape made by my awesome friend Nicole here), I have become a dinosaur. The sun has set on the Mix Tape, and I am listening in the dark.
Hey Boys
May 06, 2005 12:59 PM
I was in Bon Giorno one evening, the restaurant where I used to work, when I overheard a customer talking enthusiastically to his date. He had the look of the masturbator about him, and his words served only to confirm my initial suspicions.
"So, like I patented this design for virtual sex, it's fucking amazing, you have this computer animated suction device for the penis which is directly stimulated by the onscreen images..."
His date looked slightly less enthusiastic, and her longing for the privacy of her own bedroom, Mr Buzzy and a little bit of self-loving was painfully palpable. It got me thinking. What's happened to the good old-fashioned fuck? It seems technology is always hauling out the latest battery-operated device for solo pleasures. I constantly hear my female friends extolling the virtues of 'The Rabbit', or 'The Dolphin' and its infinite superiority to Dave the Guy who works on Wall Street and has absolutely no idea what to do with his tongue. Thank god for the man who invented the vibrator. But what happened before the vibrator? Were women just getting more sex? Has the advent of sexual liberation in a lubed-up rubber Ever-ready cock merely halted the evolution of mankind in their ability to pleasure women?
It seems that women's sexual frustration has been a concern for centuries - yet it was seen as a 'mental' sickness which could be cured by 'physical', and specifically not sexual means. In 1653, doctors concerned over 'female hysteria' were recommending midwives to:
"...massage the genitalia with one finger inside using oil of lilies, musk root, crocus or [something] similar. And in this way the afflicted woman can be aroused to paroxysm... most especially for widows, those who live chaste lives, and female religious...it is less often recommended for very young women, or married women, for whom it is a better remedy to engage in intercourse with their spouses."
Other remedies suggested were rocking chairs, bouncing women rhythmically up and down on their pelvis and using swings. It sounds exhausting. Fortunately an American physician in 1872 came up with the first steam powered massage and vibratory apparatus, which came with a clear warning: 'Patients should be watched to avoid over manipulation of apparatus'. Those hysterical females couldn't get enough of it. And neither could the doctors, who with the new vibrators flooding into the medical market, could complete in minutes what had taken them up to an hour by manual means. In 1903, Dr Samuel Howard Mondell wrote that "pelvic massage (in gynecology) has its brilliant advocates and they report wonderful results." But he noted that many doctors had difficulty treating patients "with their own fingers," (No kidding) and hailed the vibrator as a godsend: "Special applicators (motor driven) give practical value and office convenience to what otherwise is impractical."
The vibrator became the fifth household device to be electrified, after the sewing machine, fan, electric kettle and toaster - and before the vacuum cleaner and the iron.
The Vibrator was a socially acceptable medical device - until the 1920's when its appearance in porn films started the rumor-monging. In short, by the 1960's, the orgasm was not seen as 'medically' necessary for women, but as something shameful that one's husband certainly didn't ask the doctor to do. It became the device Mommy didn't want little Teddy to see her playing with - particularly not if they lived in Alabama.
In 1999, the obscenity statute of Alabama (Ala. Code. ยง 13A-12-200.1) made it "unlawful to produce, distribute or otherwise sell sexual devices that are marketed primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs." Alabama put forth that these products were obscene, and also stated that there was "no fundamental right to purchase a product to use in pursuit of having an orgasm."
It was constitutional to own firearms, but not to bond with Mr Buzzy when Bubba was down the the pool hall knockin' back beers with the boys. The ACLU challenged the statute, and a company called Good Vibrations distributed free vibrators to the poor, orgasm-deprived women of Alabama. The statute was eventually overturned in 2002.
It seems as technology advances, as you can buy every and any kind of fake cock, butt plug, orgiastic DVD and kinky crotchless panty you could possibly desire, in certain sections of the States sex, even sex with oneself, is considered a dirty secret that noone wants to admit to. There is a vast difference between a healthy and pleasurable sex life, an interest and appreciation of the female and male form, and perverted sexual deviance, but some don't seem to recognise the distinction. As recently as April 18th 2005 there was a ruling in New York which stated that sex shops and strip joints could only operate in certain zoning areas such as the far West Side of Manhattan. Mayor Bloomberg, hailed the court's decision as a victory for families who don't want porn peddlers next to churches and day care centers.
"New Yorkers won't have to push their strollers past porn shops, have topless bars for neighbors or have to worry about peep booths in the back of their corner magazine store."
Hmm, point taken, but somehow it seems pushing smut together just makes it seem more socially unacceptable - when the reality is that everyone is feeding into the soft-core sex industry, whether it's through their choice of vibrator, watching porn films, drinking in strip joints, buying 'Playboy' magazine, or breaking out and going for the ribbed ultra-horny condoms instead of the regular kind. Everyone is doing it, but noone wants to admit to it, and perhaps this is because there is very little distinction in the eyes of many between a good, healthy sexual appetite, and shameful perversion. The New York ruling means that one strip joint, Scores, may be forced out of its premises on the East Side where it's been operating for over thirty years, well away from day care centers and Churches. You have to actually go into these places to see anything remotely titillating, but it seems the very presence of such a place is anathema to Mayor Bloomberg. At the same time as we congratulate ourselves on protecting our children from the evils of sex, this country allows the State of Texas to forbid the promotion of any kind of sex education, barring that of abstinence. My guess is those sixteen year old girls are sending some pleading letters out to the kind folks at Good Vibrations, in between churning out illegitimate children and wondering how the hell that happened.
I find it hard to comprehend how a country so far advanced economically and technologically, can be, in many ways, incredibly backward. All the money poured into a ridiculous case in Alabama banning vibrators could well have been spent investigating and preventing the 50,000 children brought into this country every year by sex-traffickers. But no. Margery might start preferring a little bit of Duracell-loving rather than Hank's clumsy advances in the sack and we couldn't have that. Priorities, priorities.
Hey guys! Listen up! It was you who first came up with the steam-powered vibrator! Well done you! Now let's move on and catch up with rest of the sexually liberated world! Perhaps the Masturbator from Bon Giorno should get that computer-animated suction device out there alongside the Rabbits, Dolphins and Black Mambas which have come so far from the pedal-powered, steam driven vibrators of the past. And I for one, would be sending it out to every goddamned, sexually repressed Right-Winger in this country.
A Short History of Fashion Technology
May 06, 2005 12:17 PM
Okay, so I'm tempted to write about computer stuff and all of the things that I'm more apt to be a geek about; but being in the middle of the fashion capital of the world, I decided to bring up a few of the technological leaps in fashion that have come and gone over the years. Now, there are some things that date back for hundreds of years - like buttons - that have stood the test of time. Fasteners are a good example of technology that has remained for years and years. Ask the good people at YKK and they'll be glad to share with you how much money they've made off of zippers over the years. The same can probably be said for the inventors of Velcro. But yeah, we're not here to talk about the technologies that have made it. We're here to point and laugh at the technologies that have gone the way of the dinosaurs.
I know that I am going to leave some good ones out as I am only choosing to blog about three things today. But knowing that I have attention span problems myself, I went with the first three that I could think of. Here goes...
We begin our journey through fashion four hundred years ago in Europe. Back then, mens didn't likes their womenses looking flabby, and so a bunch of them got together and decided to do something about it. Enter the corset, a garment designed specifically to shape a woman's body to fit the unattainable male standard. The corset, precursor to the girdle and later to the wonderbra in this respect, can be constructed of a variety of materials, but has been made historically from cloth, leather, plastic, and steel to name a few. It is important to note that men have also worn corsets in the history of the garment. No, I'm not talking in the Rupaul way. Myself, I remember wearing a girdle for football. But to this day, I still don't understand why that was necessary. Either way, it's a fact that male body dysmorphia can be traced as far back as its more prevalent female version, but we won't go any more into that (plus I just made that last sentence up. It sounds true, doesn't it?). Anyway, popularity for the corset dropped drastically in the 20th century, probably having to do with all of the women's movements or maybe the invention of liposuction, and now they appear only in the likes of Victoria Secrets and Frederick's of Hollywood catalogs...or so I hear.
Skipping the cotton gin (sorry Eli...it's just not funny) we move on to more football stories from Sonny as we talk about Coach Farvis (I think that was his name) and his affinity for urban camoflage in the form of a little something we call Zubaz. What's funny about this fashion technological wonder is that I even remember thinking that this stuff was cool. I would go on to say more, but I think the name says it all. Moving on...
I don't know exactly where this falls in chronological order, but I wanted to close with this last one anyway because it was what got me started thinking about fashion. Back when I was in junior high and thereabouts, they had these things called slap bracelets. Remember those? Again, I don't know why I thought it was cool; but along with the friendship bracelets, that was the only jewelry I allowed myself to wear for years. Looking back, it is just sad that I made the exception for those two. But yeah, the concept is pretty simple...the piece of plastic wrapped in cloth had two basic states: one in which it lay flat and one in which it collapsed into a circular form. Not only did this assist in teaching young boys and girls how to accessorize, but it added another weapon to the already packed teenage arsenal of rubber bands, spit wads, tittie-twisters, and wet-willies.
how to use " straw" ?
May 05, 2005 04:43 PM
here in Middle East, peopel like old things: old thoughts, old cloths, old customs, old ... it is always belived that old things work better, we have a TV , it has been working for 40 years, and we all still love it and still think it works better than the New Sony TV
my fahter has 2 cars, one is 25 years old and other is 2 years old, but he always uses the old one ! he loves it and he belives it works better than the new one , yep i know it is stupid but thats the way we middle eastersn are , if we werent stupid now we were as modern as you Americans .
but there are still things which their old technology is REALLY better, like Carpets, you know Persian Carpet are best carpets, thats because of a very old -more than 2800 years-hand made thechnology , thats why Automatic Machine Made Carpets made by Inida or China look like shit.
Among cars, I love American old cars, specialy their Sexy Wooden Stereo , ... you can never feel what I say.
well I must say , every Iranian loves American old cars, you know in Iran we cant use foregin cars, we have to use JUST Iranian cars... if you send an old american car to Iran...these horny Iranians will all rape to her... ha ha
when a new thing come to a society from another society, some peopel have problems in using it
an old Iranian man who remembers WWII , told me funny story of using "straw" when it came to Iran for the first time ,by Germans Soldiers who occupied Iran.
look at this paintnig at right , I draw it by myself, belvie me I never draw anything by myself, even in school i cheated and had my assaignment done by my brother lol.
, I wish you can still get the meaining that i want to say...
and again that old man told us funny stories of using western toilet in Iran for the first time ..he he
there is something about technology that I like to mention,
have you notinced these asshole scientists try to prove every new thechnology is bad and harmfull? more than 1 million scientist are doing their best to prove that Cell phones are harmfull ha ha...and everyday they bitch on cell phones...I bet if that amount scienentists work on a project to prove Drinking Water is bad , they will suceed and they will tell peopel not dirnk water anymore.