Banished to after the jump, because it’s all over Blogistan now.

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When I write my column for the Chronicle/SFGate, I don’t expect to get too fucked with as writer, though after the years of seeing how typically slanted and sex-negative the mainstream media is about sex and porn, I knowingly *hope* for fair treatment.

Last week I wrote a column about altporn, and interviewed the top director in this porn genre, Eon McKai. Halfway through the day SFGate ran a story about an anti-porn protest at the armory building, which the good people at Kink.com just bought. The piece that ran in the SFGate the same time mine did was slanted in favor of the anti-porn stance.

When SFGate put the anti-porn piece up, they changed the front page copy on my column description to remove the word “porn” and changed it to “onscreen sex”. They moved my column to the *very bottom* of the page, and put the anti-porn piece as the top headline — for two solid days. SFGate clobbered my pro-porn piece with one that literally labled Kink’s employees as “manacled performers”.

So, today’s column is rips both SFGate and anti-porn MSM coverage a huge new orifice, from their very own pages. Citing the Gate’s Kink.com coverage as an example, I deconstruct the myth of unbiased reporting. It’s very, very controversial, and the SFGate is right now, at this very moment, fucking with me on it again. Instead of the front page title and subhead my editor and I requested they use with the column, they are using one that runs against the very principles of the entire article. They are illustrating my whole point. Read my piece and you’ll see why calling it an article about “dirty movies” is biased and unacceptable (not to mention inaccurate: Kink does not make movies). **see update at bottom of post *** Now I understand why I was invited to the Chronicle’s newsroom (paper) holiday party and not the SFGate (online) party. Snip from Kink.com and Porn Hysteria: The Lie of Unbiased Reporting:

“(…) My [Kink.com] friend reminded me that there was a protest at noon against his company’s purchase of the Armory Building — and only a few hours later we were exchanging ironic e-mails about the headline article on SF Gate covering the protest, Steve Rubenstein’s ‘50 Protest Porn Business Inside Old Mission Street Armory.’ My Kink friend wrote in regard to coping with another round of skewed media hyperbole: ‘Awesome! They just changed their erroneous caption of the guy washing the outside of the building from doing so in protest since HE WORKS FOR US.’

The SF Gate article was little different than this week’s New York Times piece about Kink and the Armory — yet it is absolutely an outstanding, shining example of the lie of unbiased reporting.

Steve Rubenstein and Jesse McKinley are reporters, and so we require that they report and not serve us with opinion, instead. In both articles, slanted phrases such as ‘dirty movies’ were slipped in like a hostess silently sliding a coaster under your drink — blink and you don’t even notice it’s part of the judgmental scenery — when a more accurate term like ‘adult’ could serve better. Rubenstein’s piece went the distance, making Kink’s employees into ‘manacled performers.’

But the most interesting example was the presentation of unchallenged material in the form of quotes from people on the street as anti-porn pundits — with no weigh-in from pro-porn pundits. Protesters were quoted as saying, ‘This neighborhood is already plagued with enough violence and prostitution as it is’ and ‘Kink degrades the neighborhood, degrades women and offers ‘dead end’ jobs that no decent person would want.’ Such statements bracket the piece — with no counter-opinions about pornography — and are presented in such a way that readers could interpret opinions as fact. Kink.com was indeed quoted — but only about their use of the space.

This was front-page ‘news.’” Link.

I am going up against MSM on their own pages. Wish me luck. Oh — and I’m also getting the CRAZY anti-porn emails, as if I need more of the same… People seem to think that if something is “bad” then biased reporting is perfectly justified…

Soaking in irony update: Check out this post about the Google Adwords running with my column today.

*** Update, noon: The front page copy now reads “What’s With The Anti-Porn Agenda? It’s time for less bias in reporting on the adult movie biz. Violet Blue: Open Source Sex.”

Update, 12:45: Check the Boing Boing post on this, SF Chron columnist slams SF Chron for biased porn reporting.

Update 5:35pm: So awesome, my overlords at Gawker Media’s Fleshbot concur with Wet Spots: Fucking With The Wrong Cupcake.

Update 2/16: These links to Kink.com and Porn Hysteria: The Lie of Unbiased Reporting gave me chills — good ones, not like the chilly wishes in my inbox this morning sent from angry christians. Check: Romemesko (!!!), Chronicling a kerfuffle (CineKink), and the *amazing* Happy Anti-Porn Hysteria Month!.

Okay, I didn’t actually forget, I’m just over it. In fact, everyone’s blogs have become little pinched out linkloaves of Valentine’s Day URL floatiness — despite my attitude, faves of mine include Xeni’s Omakase linkdump: Valentine’s Day and Viviane’s exhaustive Valentine’s Day links.

I feel like being the the anti-Valentine this year. Which is weird because I actually have a hot date tonight — indeed I did not have one last year, so I should be less snarky, right? Wrong! I’m so sick to death of sex retailers pushing their gift guides, which are always the same old toys and ideas just repackaged. I just couldn’t do a gift guide — and last holiday season I felt the same way and instead did this guide to giving erotic gifts, which may have some good ideas for you. But me — I’m a dark and broody Valentine today. I’m going to go get my stripey socks, and rent a scary movie, harumph.

Soooooo, wups Valentine’s Day indeed. Gothic Valentines & Broken Hearts is way more my speed (don’t miss her iServe collection). Even closer to my black little heart this year are the items to be found on Pushin’ Daisies: A Mortuary Novelty Shop, where you can actually give her your (gummy) heart to gnaw on when she wants to do a hot zombie fetish scene.

Did you forget? Send a cheesy but cute-as-a-cemetery Gothic Greetings Valentine ecard, as befits the Hallmarkiness (Hallsnark Card, anyone?) of the day. Even better — join me in my crankiness and send them an Anti-Valentine ecard (their server is up and down, tho). Of course, there’s always the Zombie Pinups gallery — and you can send a Zombie Pinup to the pale, shy boy of your dreams with the Sinister Circuit: Sinister Greeting ecards.

Panties. Shirts. Skate decks. Bling. Fetishes. Hotness. All about cupcakes.

I want *everything* at Johnny Cupcakes. If you pick through their gallery, you even find zombies. I LOVE Boston! I *need* one of those small necklaces… (thank you Jason!)

Reader comments: Sean writes me, “Now whenever I see an innocuous, cute little cupcake, I have insanely erotic thoughts. Congratulations, you win.”

Squishy likes these sexy customizable necklaces better. “*any* message, you say?”

Tanya sez, “Look Violet! Cuddly cuppy cakes!”

Sean sends me a concealable carry case; Xeni sends me a portable munitions bunker.

As many of you know, I have a herd of wild Austrians in my house right now; last night they filmed Taugshow X at the Exporatorium (I was a guest last December in Vienna on Taugshow 9). Scott Beale has a great wrap-up post with his fabulous photos, including a link to my set. Friends also shot a couple kewt photos of me and Jason Schultz being bad kids near the back row; I’ll post video after I mess with editing later (I shot the awesome RFID song, to the tune of YMCA). The show was so out-of-control fun and hilarious, my face hurt from laughing afterward!

On a semi-related note, I am *so* ready for a new camera. Mine is fucking up, dying, and the video it shoots is difficult to edit (muxed) and looks awful. Since I’m officially out 4 months of royalty income, probably indefinitely, donations for new tools are gladly accepted. Bleh!

Update: HRLori took some *amazing* photos (with a drool-worthy new camera, natch).

Is this retro-style howto video, What to Do with Your Dead Hooker.

My Flickr friend Dustin Lacina emails, “Violet. I thought you’d get a kick out of this. Virginia Commonwealth University hosted the 2007 Sex Workers Art Show, so naturally I had to go and take photos. It was absolutely delightful, if it comes near you I definitely recommend it.” Link.

I’ve never been to this traveling event, but looking at the photos makes me want to check it out. Also, peep these two ultra-sexy shots. Thank you, Dustin!

My pals over at 10 Zen Monkeys send me moments of happiness in the form of this fun multimedia article, The 5 Sexiest Apple Videos by Lou Carbon. He asks “Are Mac users sexier than other people?” I think we all know how I feel about that. But hey, until PC people come up with some h4wt user videos, my lusts will always side with Appliciousness.

We Make Money Not Art recently attended the Design Interactions show in London, blogged it, and shot this nice Flickr photo set. There were some pretty curious sex-related concepts at the event — most especially the ones blogged in this We Make Money Not Sex post and this genetic sexual attraction post. Playfully fascinating to me in a sci-fi way was the project called Wish You Were A Bit More Like Me. Snip from the post:

“Wish You Were A Bit More Like Me is inspired by the Cellular memory theory, which claims that an organ donor’s personality, taste and history can be passed on during transplant surgery. Revital Cohen tells the story of a world in which medical procedures are used to perform personality enhancement surgery.

‘In a future where medical advances make an organ transplant operation a routine procedure, a transplant wedding would allow a couple to swap their hearts (instead of the traditional ring) and install a fragment of their personality into their partner. Fashion designers would sell special surgery wedding gowns and the wedding ceremony itself would take place in an operating theatre. As a result, the newlyweds will be able to share their passions, phobias and traumas as well as experience flashbacks of each other’s dreams and memories.’” Link.

After a long winter hibernation, the Extra Action Marching Band has emerged from their secret underground fortress of doom, warmed up their pasties and glitter decoupage athletic supporters, and are now officially back to rain sweet funky humpy Balkan brass tunes, beer, confetti and Astroglide soaked pom-poms upon the masses. Last night they made me go see them at 12 Galaxies, and I was super-excited to be able to bring my houseguests Monochrom to the festivities. They loved it! There was much dancing, drinking and smiling… much needed, and I was no stranger to the mosh pit. My whole photo set from last night is here; Fetching has started a set here and you’ll squeal when you see her amazing photos; I uploaded a hot bootyshakin’ bump-and-grind video here; and after the jump I cherry-picked a few more favorite photos.

Oh — and one of the trumpet players wore a rainbow bikini!

Yeah, she said, it’s like that.

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I’m pissed at SFGate right now (more on that later), but you really need to read this article that went up today, about abstinence aid, who gets (and refuses) all that money, and what a chilling joke this whole thing has become. Our kids are in trouble. Snips:

“More than $1 billion in federal aid has been poured into state-run abstinence-only programs in the past decade after the Bush administration decided there was an imbalance that favored comprehensive sex education and slighted abstinence. State school systems accepting the federal money are required to teach that sexual activity outside marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects, and that a married, monogamous relationship is the expected standard.

California is one of only three states — the others are Maine and Pennsylvania — to refuse the federal education funding tied to abstinence.

(…) Community-based programs in California do receive abstinence-only funds from a separate federal funding stream established in 2000. Await & Find gets $800,000 a year in Community-Based Abstinence Education Program funding — the highest amount awarded to any California nonprofit.

(…) In November, the Bush administration appointed a new abstinence-friendly chief of family planning at the Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Eric Keroack had been medical director at a Massachusetts pregnancy counseling organization whose Web site states: ‘The crass commercialization and distribution of birth control is demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality, and adverse to human health and happiness.’

The administration also has budgeted another $241.5 million for abstinence-only programs in 2007.” Link.

Update: An anonymous reader emails me saying, “I read your post today about Federal Funding for abstinence-only sex ed. Dr. Dora Mills is a friend of ours, she was the person responsible for making the decision to refuse Federal funding. This decision has had a huge, positive impact on our State. Maine has gone from having one of the highest teen pregnancy rates to one of the lowest. (Third lowest in the country.)”

Spotted at friend’s website 3xL, Marquis’ “Surprised Doll” Rubber Doll Suit (519 euro). No, it’s not a blow-up sex doll in the image, it’s a person in a doll suit worn with the intention of being a real, live blow-up doll (and getting fucked like one, if all goes well). Copy reads, “This beautiful one piece suit is a dream for all rubber dollies. It comes with pouches, feet, zip at back, rubber hood with O-mouth is included. Nipples are in contrast pink as well as the opening in crotch.” I’ll bet it’s a hit with people who are into masking fetish — and Marquis even sells the “surprise” face hood as a stand-alone, available in several transparent rubber colors.

It seems fitting that this guide on how to *not* get accused of being a subway groper comes from Japan. But really, why do it illegally when you could just to to the Train Cafe and partake in a little simulated, consensual grope for US $42 on your Ikebukuro lunch break? Still, a snip from the tips:

“- If you’re standing, grasp the strap with both hands, so they are visible to everyone in your proximity.
- Turn your back towards women standing close by.
- If you happen to bump against a woman, say ‘Pardon me’ in a voice loud enough to be heard by other passengers and change your position.
- Under no circumstances should you stand beside girls of middle school age.” Link.

It’s well over by now, but beloved Toronto sex shop Come As You Are’s First Annual Erotic Arts & Crafts Fair looks like it was one fun, inspiring event. I’d read about the fair friday and felt a sizable pang of longing in direct proportion to the distance between San Francisco and the playfully kinkily crafted goods at this sweet adult version of Maker Faire. Check out their page of featured erotic arts and crafts for a taste, and links to naughty arts and crafts resources. But when I read just now that one of the exhibitors made “erotic cupcakes”, the longing turned to a very piqued curiosity, indeed.

Check out the photos shot today at the Erotic Arts & Crafts Fair on Marjohelena’s Flickr stream, and the cupcake boobs purchased this afternoon by Marni Ellen at the fair (image via).

FYI — a short while back I investigated adult knitting, and the newest books like the unbelievably sexy Naughty Needles. Also peep the Flickr set of Naughty Needles photo shoot outttakes, and the adorably saucy Naughty Needles site.

A reader sends me a link back from 2005 to The Exciting Game of Career Girls (also seen @ Boing Boing). The “game” itself is one of those deliciously retro curiosities of cultural perceptions about what “little girls should be when they grow up”, and we could all go on and on about how narrow and silly and naive and inaccurate this game was even at the time (1966). I mean, I don’t see Batgirl or stuntwoman in there. But the reader also sent me another link — and if you love how the Internet has its own version of call and response, you’ll love nerdgirl’s immediate updates, baby mammas and all.

Just in time for the weekend, a reader and fan from London’s Volupte Cocktails and Cabaret Lounge just sent me the one thing a girl like me could find as no sweeter tribute — a Cotton Club style martini, for me! Thank you! Behold the Violet Martini:

Violet Martini
1/4oz Parfait Amour (violet liqueur)
2oz Grey Goose vodka (or any other light vodka)
Dash Cointreau
Splash Rose Water

Stirred over ice, served in martini glass, garnished with a rose petal.

“in the spirit of your signature, that recipe is bloggable (in fact, why not Creative Commons?)”

Isn’t it funny how when you’re broke, you find all these things you want super-bad? Fortunately for me, the one thing I’d trade my personal porn collection for isn’t going to be available anytime soon. Unfortunately for me, Exquisite Restraint would be all to willing to put me (even more) in debt, at the true cost of my own sublime pleasure, of course. Also I should mention, though it’s not to my tastes — I’ve never seen a maternity corset before. Wow.

We blogged about CantikFotos yesterday on Fleshbot, but I took a closer peep at his Flickr photostream and wanted to point you in the direction of two albums I found worth browsing: alien invasion and infrared nudes. All of his sets are remarkable; he shoots beautiful Asian women throughout locations like Taiwan and Indonesia and experiments with a variety of techniques, such as Polaroid transfer and infrared. Cool stuff.

Infrared nudes are just ethereal and amazing — if you like them as much as I do, check out pal Jacob Appelbaum’s series from last year, San Francisco Infrared (no set, lots of lovely ropework, image via)

I hope you like it, I’ve been working on it for a while, and dreaming of it since last year. Phew! I only ask for your patience as I fix, tweak, spank, add new things and nibble everything into shape.. and yes, I’ll soon be adding much-asked-for things like sitewide search… but now, a bit of sleep. Ahhh.

Update: Yaaayyy! Look in the sidebar — Tiny Nibbles now has sitewide search! Thank you Squishy, I love youuuuu! And now — it’s almost time for the arrival of the Austrians. They just called me from the airport and are staying at my house this weekend (my apartment will be packed with Austrian goodness), so expect some chaos around the blog over the next few days. Keep an eye on my photo blog for random entertainment.

It’s live — hooray! I was interviewed by Rachel Kramer Bussel for her blog, Cupcakes Take the Cake (All Cupcakes, All the Time). She really had fun asking me questions about cupcakes and sex, and sexiness and cupcakes, and I had a blast answering. Now, of course, I’m really needing some hardcore cupkakke… Snip from The Sexy Cupcake Interview: Violet Blue:

“[CTtC] What makes cupcakes themselves so sexy and delicious?

[VB] You’re putting something really cute in your mouth, a wholly naughty act on its own. Cupcakes just demand that you feel sweet and downright dirty when you eat them. They are as wholesome, adorable, playful and pervertable as a pair of white cotton panties.” Link.

Right now there’s an anti-porn anti-Kink.com protest at the San Francisco Armory — start time is 12 noon. It’s 12:01, and it just started pouring rain! Which is why I’m not going, of course ;)

No, the special gallery isn’t in Teh Chronic! Eon sent me a bunch of stills from his next film The Doll Underground, and we’re running them as a Fleshbot exclusive along with my column about altporn (and interview with Eon) today. Yay! Will altporn fare better in the long run than “alternative rock”? We’ll see… snip from Eon McKai’s Altporn Liberation Army:

“Soon enough, like corporate rock and alternative rock in the 1990s, corporate porn smelled a cash cow in the making and was eager to milk it, snapping up directors like L.A.-based Eon McKai (eonmckai.com) and alterna-hottie starlets willing to sign contracts to do formula porn but decorated with hip tattoos, music from MySpace and a hint more style. But now big porn studios slap striped socks on a starlet and title the videos ‘punk rock’ or make a shopping trip to Hot Topic and call their starlets Goth.

McKai is a clear-eyed participant in all this, and while he’s directing porn films for the biggest corporate porn studios around (right now he’s with behemoth Vivid, under his own label, Vivid Alt), he’s doing so decidedly without a map and on his own terms. When McKai sent me a text message Friday night trying to lure me to the Mission District’s Beauty Bar for cocktails with a gaggle of altporn stars in town for promotional signings, I balked. A bunch of hipster pornsters in a hipster bar seemed like a recipe for irony overload and way more white belts and emo haircuts than I could take. My Sunday coffee option was no better: I suggested hacker hookup coffee shop Ritual on Valencia, but when we met out front, we realized it was all wrong. Tall, pale, nerdy glasses, soft-voiced and self-conscious, McKai looked inside and said, ‘I have enough of that already.’” Link.

* Here are three cute photos I took of Eon that day; here is a photo from last night of me mugging with Eon’s last film, Girls Lie. Also — ha, I see today that someone at SFGate changed my line “we also talked plenty of shit about people we know.” to “we also talked plenty of trash about people we know.” So silly!

Tonight was fun — now it’s 4:30, time to sleep! The whole set is here.

The hotness of Gala Darling writes me, “I thought that “photographer” link was going to direct to girls on sofas.

Have you seen it/thought about doing it? I think you would be peeeeeeerfect.”

Indeed. Incredibly, they’re all shot in San Francisco. Check out the tags for more fun info.

I just stumbled across a stash of erotic photos by Trevor Watson, he’s really one of my all-time favorites. Enjoy! (via Fetish Design)

(She blogged happily on a rainy Wednesday San Francisco night, in Betty Page wig, fifties’ housedress and no undies, waiting for the photographer to show up…)

I watch for noteworthy news all day long, and when those typical porn hysteria headlines pop up on Google News repeatedly — like this week’s mass-marketed line about children being exposed to unwanted porn on the scary, uncontrollable internets — I don’t even want to waste a post on them. However, I just caught this item at my other home-blog, Fleshbot: Taking Another Look At That “Ambush Porn” Story, snip:

“In this study, which was conducted via telephone, that problem is magnified because of both the age of the participants and the subject matter discussed. The researchers admit as much: They told Bloomberg that some kids may have ‘characterized exposure incidents as unwanted because they were embarrassed to admit they sought out such material.’ In other words, that 34 percent figure should be viewed with skepticism.

(…) So why is the study getting so much attention? Because it fits into a classic news template: The your-children-are-in-peril story. Journalists know that people pay attention to stories about threats to their kids — they tap into a primal drive to protect one’s children from potential harm. And so news outlets jump all over stories like this, even though a closer look suggests that there may not be as much to worry about as the headlines suggest.” Link.

You won’t miss your privacy until it’s gone. This comes from Republicans, with a Democrat proponent, and the bill also includes mandatory web labeling, snip from C-Net’s article:

“Details about data retention requirements would be left to Gonzales. At a minimum, the bill says, the regulations must require storing records ’such as the name and address of the subscriber or registered user to whom an Internet Protocol address, user identification or telephone number was assigned, in order to permit compliance with court orders.’

Because there is no limit on how broad the rules can be, Gonzales would be permitted to force Internet providers to keep logs of Web browsing, instant message exchanges, or e-mail conversations indefinitely. (The bill does not, however, explicitly cover search engines or Web hosting companies, which officials have talked about before as targets of regulation.)” Link. (thanks, Kimo!)

Declan McCullagh, the article’s author, is following the story closely on his invaluable site, Politech.

Update: A reader explains *exactly* how this bill won’t work, and I’ll bet the people pushing this bill have no idea. Snip:

“This isn’t workable. And even if it were — even if someone could identify all of the originals, compute all the permutations, compute hashes of all those, store all those, and rig up a service that scaled to Internet size…it would fail the first time someone figured out and used a permutation not accounted for. Or created another picture.

Epilogue part 1
—————

There’s something else scary about this, and about the requirement that such images be reported. One of the other properties of hash functions is that they’re one-way: that is, if I take image I1, and compute its hash S1, and give you S1, you can’t work backwards to I1. So if you’re in the field, using such a hypothetical service, and your software checks a newly-seen image and discover that its hash matches S123456 from the database, and you automatically report this to Fatherland Security…then you do not know — unless *you* stored the image (possibly a crime) and looked at the image (possibly a crime) what is actually in that picture. You don’t know whether it’s really kiddie porn or whether it’s a picture of the Shrub standing under the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner.

In other words, there is no way for an independent observer to verify that every hash in the database was actually generated from kiddie porn input. So this same mechanism could be easily used to track *any* images that its operators take an interest in.”

Read the whole explanation in its entirety after the jump.

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Much-adored reader B emails saying, “Hey Violet,

I know that you’re aware of (and crusade against) numbing creams such as Anal Ease, but the dangers are far more serious than you or I ever thought. The FDA just released this report regarding numbing creams for ‘medical or cosmetic use’ citing cases where women who have used topical anesthetics have had seizures and become comatose. When the numbing agents enter the bloodstream (and isn’t the rectum a great place for that to happen?) very bad things can happen.”

Update: now here’s the CNN/Reuters article… Nothing about the “novelty” industry’s use, but it’s unacknowledged anyway. And yes, a great, fast way to absorb things into your bloodstream is to insert them anally.

Colorado Springs’ Rev. Ted Haggard (he of the Greek-flavored hookers and alleged biker speed parties and well-lubed, where’s-my-manhole-cover denials) has been “pronounced ‘Completely Heterosexual’”.

Update: A sends me this hilarious video showing the explanation for Haggard’s homosexuality cure. Also, a number of readers have emailed me about this item in outrage and dismay at the NYT for running such a piece of hateful garbage as news, and I agree.

Oh, my. It looks like a few friends of mine had some fun last night with a video camera, some electrical tape, their boobies and the concept of war protest. Hey, if this is the new wave of how we protest policy these days, I’ve got a a pair, *and* a stash of electrical tape in colors, grrrls… YT embed after the jump, link here.

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