OHNOES: If I had your phone number before, I don't anymore. My phone died. Email me your number! <3
Monday, August 11, 2008
Quick news and notes.
* Today is the last day you can vote in the current Pretty Boy Poll
* Related perhaps, please keep the *chan conversations off the tagboard. I don't want to gain notoriety with those folks. It would only end poorly for my sites, I'm sure.
* Boku No Sexual Harassment OAV 3 is now available over on shotalicious.org
* Any donations you'd like to make to help me get to DragonCon and/or Anime Weekend Atlanta this year would be much appreciated. Buying a book gets you a book and me 4 bucks so maybe it's time to finally get your copy?
* Stupid sexy Randy Orton got into a motorcycle accident just after he was cleared medically to return to the WWE and now is out -another- 3-6 months. Damn you Orton!
* I really thought the Opening Ceremony for Beijing's Olympics were the most beautiful thing ever televised.
* In Soviet Russia, Georgia will become part of you. (By force if necessary, apparently.)
* Happy (belated) Birthday Elf.
* Over on the secret Pico x Chico x Coco Hype site, the AMV for Boku No Pico has been fixed to where it now includes sound. Yeah, it kinda helps to have sound in an anime MUSIC video.
(San Antonio) A New Braunfels woman is outraged over what she considers a racist attempt to intimidate her grandchildren from using her subdivision's swimming pool.
Mary Alice Altorfer is hosting a visit from her two grandchildren, whose father is African American. The children swam at the River Tree subdivision pool every day for about a week before someone posted a flier on the pool gate bearing a picture of a black man with a large afro haircut, his arms folded across his chest and the words “POOL'S CLOSED” superimposed.
“I didn't even get the implication at first — then it hit me like a club,” Altorfer said. “I was furious. These are two little kids, and it just makes me angry. I was shocked and angry and hurt.”
Altorfer said only one black couple lives in the subdivision of 172 homes, which average about $200,000 in value, and they never use the pool. She added that the only African Americans who have used the pool in recent weeks are her 6-year-old granddaughter Isabel Martinez and 9-year-old grandson Nicholas Martinez.
“I guess whoever put that up probably didn't like our color,” Nicholas said. “It made me kind of upset.”
Altorfer filed a police report Monday afternoon. She said the officer who took the report was unsure what laws the posting of the flier violated but promised to research it. The officer could not be reached for comment.
Mel Soderberg, a member of the River Tree homeowners' association board of directors, said he got a call asking if the pool really was closed after another resident found the flier on the gate to the pool area.
He removed it and later showed it to Altorfer.
Soderberg said it quickly occurred to his wife that the flier was aimed at Altorfer's grandkids, who are visiting from California.
“It was upsetting for both of us,” he said. “I'm sorry it happened, and I hope they catch whoever did it.”
Nicholas and Isabel said the attempt to intimidate them did not work. They were back in the pool Monday afternoon.
“They're not keeping us out of the pool,” Altorfer said. “This granny got mad.”
"Hey that's no loli! What the fuck man?!" -- Pedobear
TOKYO - A Japanese man was arrested for trespassing this week after turning up at a high school dressed in a girl's uniform and a long wig, local police said.
Thirty-nine-year-old Tetsunori Nanpei told police he had bought the uniform over the Internet and put it on to take a stroll near the school in Saitama, north of Tokyo, on Wednesday, the daily Asahi Shimbun said.
When students standing outside the gates started to scream at the sight of him, he dashed inside the school grounds, hoping to blend in with the crowds of teenagers, the paper said.
They also screamed, forcing the man to flee, losing his wig in the process. A school clerk pursued him and stopped him at a nearby riverbank, the paper said.
Police confirmed the arrest of the man in school uniform and wig but declined to give further details.
Kansas -- A woman responding to a break-in in her garage found a man having sexual intercourse with her 4-year-old female rottweiler, police said Wednesday.
The woman called police Tuesday night after finding the 20-year-old man.
Police arrested the man, who they say had a prior conviction for the same crime less than six months ago.
"This is the first time that I've ever seen this... and I've been in law enforcement a long time," said Lt. Sam Hanley, who leads the department's sex crimes unit.
The man was booked into Sedgwick County Jail on suspicion of criminal sodomy and aggravated burglary.
The burglary was included because the man is suspected of breaking into the garage while someone was home, police said.
He had lived with the family for a while last year in the 3700 block of East Clark, police said.
The man pleaded no contest to having sex with an animal last September in Reno County and was fined $353, according to court documents.
He also can be found on an Internet Web site where people show photos and tell stories about sex with animals, Capt. Darrell Haynes said.
The rottweiler was not injured, Hanley said, but a Kansas Humane Society spokeswoman said the incident still qualifies as animal cruelty.
"It is abuse," said Jennifer Campbell, director of communications for the Kansas Humane Society. "That is committing a violent act toward that animal."
Campbell said she hopes investigators explore whether the incident was an attempt to strike out at the dog's owners.
"That's where a lot of animal cruelty starts," she said.
Research has shown that perpetrators "are frustrated and angry and upset, and animals are vulnerable," Campbell said.
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Cody Young parked his bike in the wrong place at the Goodwill store, where the rule is that anything on the floor goes.
He didn't have a lock, but friends said they had parked inside the store before. On Sunday, though, the black BMX bike was sold.
But the 13-year-old is going to get his bike back, Goodwill officials said, after the buyer saw a newspaper story about the mix-up and called to make things right.
The buyer got the bike for just $6.99 but will get a $100 gift certificate from Goodwill for coming forth.
It's not the first such mix-up in Goodwill's busy stores, Goodwill spokesman Dale Emanuel said. A janitor once left a bucket and mop on a store's sales floor, and they were sold the next day.
An anonymous group of hackers, fittingly known as "Anonymous," has declared war on the Church of Scientology.
In a video posted on YouTube on Monday, the group appears to be upset over the way the church tried to eliminate a video of Tom Cruise from the Internet.
"We shall proceed to expel you from the Internet and systematically dismantle the church of scientology in its present form," says the video's narrator. "We are anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us."
The Cruise video in question made headlines last week after copies continued to surface on the Net. In the video, Cruise praises Scientology's virtues and speaks in great detail about the religion. He discusses his faith while the soundtrack to his "Mission: Impossible" films plays in the background.
In the video, which was made in 2004, Cruise said, "There is nothing better than ... going out there and fighting the fight and, suddenly you see, things are better."
Editors at celebrity gossip Web site TMZ.com said that the video was posted Monday on YouTube.com but quickly removed. Since then, more copies have surfaced.
The "Anonymous" video claims the attack is for the good of mankind.
"Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed, for the good of your followers, for the good of mankind and for our own enjoyment," says the video's narrator.
The church said the video was an internal production and meant for members of Scientology.
A Web site set up for the project directs members to download denial of service software that bombards Scientology.org with fake requests, slowing it down.
The site also urges members to make prank calls, publicize Scientology documents the church considers proprietary and fax endless loops of black pages to the church's fax machines to waste ink.
This is not the first time the Church of Scientology has dealt with a denial of service campaign. ReligiousFreedomWatch.org once offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to prior threats.
You know how much we here at pixiesticks.org loves shota. But, of course, there is one cat who loves it even more than we do. I'm talking about Shota-Cat of course. Now you can proudly sport the kitty on a T-Shirt.
Photos of what appeared to be every page of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the breathlessly awaited seventh and final installment in the wildly popular series by J.K. Rowling, were circulating around the Web today, potentially upsetting the most elaborate marketing machine ever mobilized for a book.
Various file-sharing Web sites were carrying what looked like amateur photographs of each pair of facing pages of the book, which officially goes on sale at 12:01 a.m. Saturday morning. The pictures show the book laid out on a green and red-flecked looped carpet with somebody’s fingers holding it open. Some of the photos make the text difficult to read, but the ending is definitely legible.
Kyle Good, a spokeswoman for Scholastic, the book’s United States publisher, said that she was aware of at least three different versions of the file “that look very convincing” with what she described as “conflicting content.”
In a court filing on Monday, Scholastic sought “materials hosted on Photobucket.com’s system” that it said might violate the book’s copyright, Bloomberg News reported today. Photobucket is a unit of the News Corporation.
In addition, Bloomberg said, Scholastic sent a subpoena to Gaia Interactive in San Jose asking the identity of someone who had posted a copy of the book on Gaia’s social networking Web site, gaiaonline.com. A spokesman for Gaia told Bloomberg that it had complied with the subpoena, turned the name over to Scholastic, removed the material and banned the user from the site.
In Britain, where the book is published by Bloomsbury, Sarah Beal, a spokeswoman, said: “We are encouraging people not to do this. This happens with every book, and there are a lot of them out there, and we appeal to everybody not to put them up. It’s amazing how creative people can be. It may look real, but it doesn’t mean they are.”
Hype and frenzy have been building for weeks, as readers anticipate the release of the final book, in which Ms. Rowling has hinted that two or more characters are likely to die, leading to speculation from many fans that Harry might not survive his own series. Fans have been guessing about other important plot points, as well, such as who will end up with whom, or whether Professor Severus Snape, a character whose moral character has been in question, is genuinely evil.
Bookstores across the country are gearing up for festivities Friday night and are expecting long lines of readers who want to get their hands on a copy, which comes out in hardcover. Scholastic is publishing a record-setting print run of 12 million copies.
The Yaoi page's Now Playing section has been updated. While there isn't really anything new there, all the selections except two are available for download. (The two are a small Gravitation clip and the Christmas video I made.) I believe since a majority of people already have everything, the bandwidth won't be much of a problem. But of course, I always will take stuff down if it becomes such.
This is always a good time for me to remind you that there is a lovely wonderful way you can show your love to your faithful and ever giving webmaster. Click on the new donate button and you'll be wisked away to Amazon.com's Honor System program where you can make a very welcome, very appreciated, very needed donation to pixiesticks.org
Spent about 14 hours with Elf on Friday. We watched Salo or 120 Days of Sodom, as well as episodes of Criss Angel. There was the Canadian end of the world flick Last Night, as well as eating Americone Dream ice cream while watching Daily Show and Colbert Report. We also found some time to enjoy some South Park and Team America: World Police.
But in the midst of all that watching, there was a closeness that I hadn't had in a month with my fair trap. And I was ever so pleased to be near Elf. To lay on his back, whilst having him pinned down, powerfully splaying arms and legs and rubbing up behind him while threatening that if he ever makes me wait another whole month to see him, I would press this further.
Cannes - A semi-documentary about a group of US men who had sex with horses has taken the title as the most shocking movie at the Cannes film festival.
But while Zoo has drawn big, curious crowds at its screenings, the real unsettling quality about the movie is its approach: it depicts the men in a sympathetic light, one that tries to push the viewers to understanding their sexual perversion.
The documentary - in which actors recreate non-explicit scenes under audio interviews with some of the men involved - centres on a true-life incident.
In July 2005, a 45-year-old man died of internal bleeding after being anally penetrated by an Arabian stallion during a bestiality weekend in the US state of Washington.
The victim, a Boeing engineer working on top-secret defence projects named Kenneth Pinyan, suffered a perforated colon.
The ensuing investigation led police - and eventually much of the national media - to the farm where the interaction took place, outing the other members of the group.
Independent filmmaker Robinson Devor shies away from prurient imagery, instead enveloping the story in rich photography that gives it a dreamlike beauty overwhelming the sordidness of the subject matter.
Absence of judgement
"In this film, there were things with much more importance to us than the sex aspect," he told journalists after a screening in the sidebar Directors' Fortnight section.
He said the absence of judgement was a deliberate choice, one reinforced after he watched some of the actual videos the men had taken of their horse sessions - footage that doesn't make it into the film, apart from the barest of glimpses at one point.
"They showed us the videos not to show us pornography, but to show an animal that wanted to be with them," Devor said, though he added that he kept some scepticism about the taped acts.
"We don't know what the conditioning was (for the horses)."
Many reviews have been favourable to the approach taken by Devor and his team.
"They've crafted a subdued, mysterious and intensely beautiful film that presents bestiality not for the purpose of titillation?but as a way of investigating the subjective nature of morality," the movie trade magazine Variety wrote.
'Mammal to mammal love'
The men heard in the film are remarkably honest about their motivations. One of them argues "mammal to mammal" love should not be seen as wrong.
Another firmly rejects the tag "bad person" his employer lays upon him before he is sacked. They all say the horses were willing participants.
Indeed, the only judgement seemingly expressed in the documentary is not on the matter in the stable at all. It is in fleeting radio references to US President George W Bush's "war on terror" and the presumed complicity-for-profit of big companies such as Boeing.
Even the cast ended up feeling compassion for the men depicted in Zoo.
John Paulsen, who played Pinyan, said he believed the engineer had been on a self-destructive streak linked to his defence work, a divorce and injuries from a motorcycle accident.
"Here's a man whose greatest loves in his life were so secret, so private," and who abruptly had "these great secrets in his life made so public by dying in such a public and humiliating way," he said.
But Paulsen himself acknowledged the black humour surrounding the incident, and now the film, saying that "in a way, it's a classic Western, except here it's the horse riding the man."
He added with a smile: "I call this role my 15 inches of fame."
There's always some newbies to yaoi that complain about the censorship. You know, the black bars or the pixelation. It's just a fact of life when it comes to the good stuff coming out of Japan. So I thought why not brew up a little pixelation of my own for May's theme.
Mwha ha ha!
Also, there is not going to be a secret stash this month as the yaoi page will be featuring Pico & Chico downloads all month long. It's the sequel to Boku No Pico! But, I mean, if you don't like pixelation, you're not going to enjoy this shota on shota filled bit of deliciousness.
Finally, I'll have to take down the Now Playing section to keep the bandwidth from getting out of control. If things are looking good, I'll see about putting it back before the month is out.
As they stepped out of cars and limousines and made last-minute adjustments to their outfits, most Fresno High School students seemed reluctant to talk about the reason their prom had become national news.
They were all well-dressed, they all smiled -- but most politely said "no thank you" when asked about a classmate nominated for prom queen who ran for prom king instead.
She lost. Shortly after 10 p.m., students selected senior Dan Abril as prom king and senior Corissa Compos as queen.
The would-be king, Cinthia Covarrubias, considers herself transgender, a term for people whose gender identity or expression differs from the sex they were assigned at birth.
Covarrubias -- a senior who sought to become the first transgender prom king at Fresno High -- ducked cameras and interviews by using a back door Saturday evening at the Holland Park West venue. She sent a school administrator out to ask television crews to not tape her or her family.
On Friday, Covarrubias had said she was glad to have broken a barrier for future transgender students.
On Saturday, however, Fresno Unified School District Assistant Superintendent John Marinovich, who is in charge of high schools, said Covarrubias wanted to make those her last words on the subject.
"She and her parents do not want to be taped, or interviewed, at all," Marinovich told reporters gathered near the sign-in table. "She feels strongly enough about it that she came in through a back entrance. I hope you won't spoil the evening for her."
Marinovich and district spokeswoman Susan Bedi later said that the coronation of the prom king and queen would be closed to anyone but students and chaperones.
Bedi said the votes were counted by a group that included the junior class president, the student body president, a teacher and two administrators.
Deana Giles, of Fresno, whose daughter attended the prom, said before the vote that she didn't support Covarrubias' candidacy for prom king.
"Why did she have to be prom king in the first place?" Giles asked after dropping her daughter off at the prom. "Tradition is tradition. Girls are prom queens, boys are prom kings. I think the world is getting too politically correct. Some things should be left as they are."
Giles said that Covarrubias appeared to have put her own feelings ahead of the other students nominated for prom king or queen.
"It puts them all in an awkward position," Giles said. "I don't have a problem with her sexual identity. Tolerance has grown, but why does she need to make things awkward for the other kids? There's a time and place to make a stand. To me, this isn't it."
Junior Michael Martin said that even though he knew many students supported Covarrubias -- and planned to vote for her -- he was not among them.
"I feel, not to be mean, but I think she should not have run," Martin said. "It's creepy."
(Ed note: It's too bad that both of these news stories overwelmingly focused on negativity. Additionally, where were our "so called" advocate leaders commenting on this story? I may be in the minority on this one, but I think it's not just perfectly okay, but absolutely good that there is a T in the GBLT alphabet soup.)
A couple of people posted on the tag-board links to both a torrent and a megaupload to where you can get the Pico/Chico video that was released in Japan on April 19th.
I deleted these links and I want to tell you why.
1) This is my site. I do what I want. 2) Megaupload is shit. 3) I don't want to have to explain torrents to hundreds of people. 4) Having links that I don't post myself on my site is not good policy. 5) I want people to come here to get it. I mean, duh, right? 6) ??? 7) Profit!!! Well actually not really since I took down the Google ads.
So call me a censor. Call me fascist. Call me whatever you want. But those who actually like me and like this site, I think you understand where I'm coming from.
FRESNO, Calif. (AP) - When school officials announce the name of the Fresno High School prom king on Saturday, Cinthia Covarrubias will be wearing a tuxedo just like the six boys vying for the honor.
School officials this week added the 17-year-old's name to the ballot for prom king, reversing a previous district protocol that allowed only males to run for king and females for prom queen.
Gay youth advocates called it a landmark victory for campus gender expression and said they believe it's the first time in the U.S. that an openly transgender student has run for prom royalty.
Covarrubias, who wears black-and-white Vans, baggy shorts and close-cropped brown hair, sometimes identifies herself as Tony. Her date, a close female friend, plans to wear a black dress and red corsage to the prom at an outdoor reception hall surrounded by man-made waterfalls.
"I would never have run for anything if I had to wear a dress," Covarrubias said.
She considers herself transgender, an umbrella term that covers all people whose outward appearance and internal identity don't match their gender at birth.
"My freshman year I just started feeling different," she said. "When I decided to change to be like this, all of a sudden I said, 'Wow, I feel OK. I feel like finally I'm being me.'"
She has no current plans, however, to permanently alter her gender through hormones or surgery.
A native of Jalisco, Mexico, Covarrubias said she has bucked rigid expectations of how a girl in her culture should behave. Explaining the meaning of terms like "queer" and "transgender" to her parents and eight siblings has at times been painful, she said.
Covarrubias said she was honored her classmates nominated her for prom king last Friday, but administrators quickly dampened her enthusiasm by saying she could only run for queen.
Tiffani Sanchez, a science teacher who advises the school's Gay-Straight Alliance, complained.
"Cinthia is still really learning who she is," she said. "We want her to know that there's a safe space for her here and we support her."
On Wednesday, school officials shifted course, saying the district's lawyers had recommended adding Covarrubias' name to the ballot to comply with a state law protecting students' ability to express their gender identity on campus.
"We always want to do the right thing by our students," Vice Principal Sheila Uriarte said. "This is why we came to this decision."
The law, passed in 2000, requires schools to protect students from discrimination on the basis of their sexuality, gender or "gender expression."
Gay and lesbian advocates say that means creating a comfortable environment for students like Covarrubias to cross-dress.
"It's really important for an individual student like Cinthia to be able to feel she has the same access to participate in this rite of passage," said Carolyn Laub, director of the Gay-Straight Alliance Network. "We are growing as a society to accept much more diversity in gender expression, and that's a positive thing."
Some students criticized the decision to put Covarrubias on the ballot.
"I like lesbians, but they shouldn't be allowed to run for king," said senior Erich Logan, 18, as he stood outside the stately high school building.
But Leanne Reyes, 16, said Covarrubias had her vote.
"It's not like the stereotype where the king has to be a jock and he's there with the cheerleaders anymore," said Reyes, a senior. "We live in a generation now where dudes are chicks and chicks are dudes."
Covarrubias is giddily looking forward to the prom, but acknowledged being a little nervous.
"I'm happy I actually made a difference about changing the law and the policy so you can run for your choice," Covarrubias said.
TORONTO (Reuters) - Bullies are no longer content to taunt their victims in the playground but are turning to cyberspace, according to Canadian researchers.
They are using e-mail, text messaging and social networking sites in new forms of victimization.
Cyber bullies are even forcing their girlfriends to undress in front of webcams and then sharing the images with others online.
"They're pressuring each other. This is particularly (true) for girls to send pictures of themselves with their tops off," said Professor Faye Mishna, of the University of Toronto, who has been researching the cyber abuse of children.
"Girls might send it to their boyfriend and she is pressured to do it thinking he's just going to see it. So she gives in and the next thing you know it's all over (the place)."
The images are even more likely to be passed on if the couple breaks up, said Mishna who headed a research team that held focus groups with 47 students in grades 5-12.
Preliminary results from the research show so-called computer geeks are becoming the new schoolyard bullies. Final results of the study, which will be completed in June, are expected to be published in the autumn.
"Traditional bullying is a power differential," Mishna said in an interview.
"The power before could have been age, size, smartness, popularity, ability. Now it's the perceived anonymous nature. We'd like to find out how anonymous it really is. The power now is you can put it all over (the place)."
The focus groups also revealed victims refuse to tell an adult about the abuse because they fear they will be punished in order to be protected.
"They're scared that their parents will take away their computer privileges," Mishna said.
Students also thought it was pointless to tell parents about cyber bullies because they could not identify the culprits.
"Friends are giving their passwords out to somebody who they think is a good friend," said Mishna. "Then they use it to bully somebody else."
Traditional bullying is still continuing on school grounds, but technology has enabled the abuse to continue at home.
"This hasn't replaced it, unfortunately," Mishna said