What the Porn and Newspaper Industries Have in Common

porn-theater-ad

At first blush the pornography industry and the newspaper industry wouldn’t appear to have much in common.  But they do.   The business model has eroded in both industries.   Both are falling victim to Internet sites that deliver the same information without charge.    Newspapers are going belly up and their staffs of reporters and media people are getting laid off by the droves.   The same is true for the pornography industry, with the exception being that the actresses who work in these productions are getting laid less and laid off with greater frequency.

It is a pity, I suppose, that we have to lament the loss of two of  our most pervasive institutions.    One gave us news, and one gave us distractions.   But these are changing times.   Perhaps all times are changing times, but these times seem to change more frequently and more dramatically than those in the past.   Political and economic tsunamis are now worldwide, commensurate with the global economy.   Even regional industries are affected by the global economy.  It holds true for news and sex.   Although it is ironic that it is “news” that is the four letter word.

Both the news and porn industry are not only  succumbing to the free Internet outlets, but  have been damaged by amateurs who are only too willing to perform the same duties of professionals in the obscure hope of lasting recognition.   Here were two institutions that most thought would never die.   They were the purveyors of public interest and as such thought their need would never end.    But appears those need have been supplanted, and their industrial business models have  been eclipsed by advancing technology.

The pool of applicants for what few jobs remain has increased substantially, while revenue has declined precipitously.  Porn stars who regularly made a good six figures a year are now struggling to make less than half of that.   Journalists who ascended with the status of the industry are watching their salaries reduced, dramatically.   That is if they still have a job and aren’t either exiled to the blog world or faced with only part time work wherever they can find it.

Perhaps not so ironically, both industries had similar, modest starts.   Both were started on the streets, where papers were hawked and sold to the teaming masses on the old city streets.    The reporters and most of the staff were blue collar workers, men and women who barely finished high school yet alone college.   But they knew their business and learned their trade.   They could write well and some with original style and flair.   They built followings and over time their grasp of the world around them evolved with the world itself.

That changed with the advent of a different sort in the newspaper.   Newspapers may have taken the high road as the “Fourth Estate” and such, but the business itself was grounded in gutter fighting for distribution  territory as well as the odd relationships between the “Fourth Estate” crew and the municipal lords on whose deeds they reported.   The local news world was punctuated by the occasional threats to the reporter’s well being and some mutual back scratching, along with bonafide investigative tactics.    There was also the human interest story, the local cat caught up in the local tree kind of thing.

The blue collar guys were supplanted for the white collar guys.     Where you once hung loosely from the lower rungs of the ladder of success, news people now gained new status and with it greater salaries.   You were no longer reporting for the love of it, the proverbial printer’s ink that became indelibly embedded in your system, but also because you could make a buck.  Hell, you could even get famous.
It is also important to have proper driver’s training generic levitra india as it teaches about safety requirements in driving and makes you aware of the consequences of not adhering to prescribed advice may lead you into some unwanted side effects. Just visit the center isles of your local grocery store, pick up a few products which can help you to boost your sex organ, order online and enjoy discounted rates:tadalafil best buy loved this (Tadalafil) : It helps in treating and improving your impotence. To get sure result, a man should purchase it with prescription & take it without meal for obstructing the delayed effect. cheapest price on viagra They pass on their savings to their customers.You have arrived in the world of huge order generic cialis savings on medicines and cosmetics.
Pornography, too, had its beginning from the streets.  In fact, vendors on the QT would peddle what were labeled as “French Films,” to willing customers who would pay cash,.  Perhaps there is irony that the early smokers were often peddled under the counter at newsstands.  The films themselves were scratchy and grainy.   But in an emotionally suppressed nation they provided nervous relief for a good many stalwart Americans. take them home and run these 8 millimeter wonders for their friends and colleagues.

These sessions were called “smokers,” and they hinted of the dark but playful corners of small town and suburban America where the Rotarian, Elks and other clubs held their smoker sessions as not so secret, special events.  Male bonding at its bondiest.   It was a fun time.   A few beers, some scratchy black and white silent sex extravaganzas, punctuated by corny subtitles, and there you were.

With the sixties and seventies there was sexual liberation, and pornography migrated to movie theaters.   First came the poor excuses for sex films, supposedly educational vehicles that showed  enough actual sex to stimulate public taste.  Then came the seminal “Deep Throat,” and “The Devil and Miss Jones,” and soon it was not only acceptable but hip to go see a porn film.   People took dates to these theaters, which were often converted from mainstream venues that had fallen on hard times.   Still, because some were the older theaters with big screens and many seats, couples could see their sex in near-Cinema Scope.    Giant sex organs projected from the screens like angry lizard space aliens.

Then came the video tape revolution and the sex industry came home.  Couples watched porn in the comfort of their bedrooms, sipped on wine, ate some cheese, and tried out sex acts they saw on their color TV.    Thousands rushed into the industry as the demand grew for these erotic wonders.   Here, the San Fernando Valley became the capitol of the porn industry.   I remember vacant homes on the blocks being rented out for sex sessions.   Production trucks pulled up front and the film crew remained as discrete as possible as they shot sex for a consumer market that was shopping in the local mall, a few blocks away.

Then came the Internet.  Sex exploded on the Internet.  It lead the way in resolving key issues about selling goods and services on the Internet.  The sex industry practically developed E-Commerce.   The sex industry resolved algorithms and search engine puzzles long before mainstream industry.   It was pornography, after all, that issued so many offerings to so many sexual predilections.  Each one had to be cataloged, keyworded and put up for sale.   And sell they did.  entrepreneurs became billionaires.   If not everyone made a fortune then a good many made a decent living from having sex on the Internet.

But now the party is suddenly over.  Not completely over.  No.  But the party has diminished.   If the lights aren’t out, they have been dimmed, for sure.  Like the newspaper industry, the porn industry is going through the tough economic times from which it may never recover.   Sure, some of the icons will still stand, and some of the elements of both institutions will remain.  In some form.

As for those who worked in these industries,  finding work is tough in this economy.   There may be some opportunities for those who can make the transition.   As for most, it may be time to wipe the slate clean and start again.   Meanwhile, while searching for work, the news people are going on the Internet, and the porn stars are going to college.   What strange times are these.

The Women’s Movement, Advance Back to the 1950’s

housewife-7

There are many ways to move backwards.   One of the more popular ways is to embrace what we perceive as tradition.  We view a seemingly idealistic pattern of behavior that has been rejected perhaps by previous generations and see it with fresh eyes and renewed vigor.   We see the upside, forgetting or ignoring that a downside ever existed.

It is perhaps even natural to want to return to the past.   The present is unsettling, and the future is obscure and insecure.   In the past it seems like values and virtues were firmly set.   People were honest artisans who farmed organically and used beasts of burden and not dreadful gasoline guzzling, sheet metal monsters to travel about.   Men were genteel and women were kind and gracious, capable of walking on air.   People has a special sense, a sixth sense, if you will, to perceive things that escape us today.

Of course, no one wishes to dwell on the realities.   The health issues, the dangerous horse doody and the  piles of garbage in the streets.    We forget the levels of ignorance, illiteracy,  and genetic maladies that left us with goiters, wall eyed, hairlipped, or with an extra leg hanging out of our chests.    We ignore the millions who starved because organic farming wasn’t quite getting it done.    We admire the honest craftsman but ignore the fact that until here was mass production most went without most things.   Many went without even shoes.    Most people had two outfits.  Every day and Sunday.  There were no color choices or the need for shoe racks or designer hangers.

And then we have the Women’s Movement.    First off, there is no denying that there are great many skilled, highly intelligent and competent women practicing in any number of professions.   These are great women who have changed the course of history and made tremendous contributions to their industries and disciplines, and to society as a whole.

More women than men are graduating from medical school and law school.   Women, overall, earn more money than they ever did.   On the less grand scale, there are more working women, showing up at the office or working diligently from remote locations, mainly because they have to contribute to the household income.   They work because they have to, they want to, to the point perhaps where they never give it a thought.

But then there are increasingly more younger women who lack the desires of the women who pioneered the Women’s Movement.  Maybe it is a generational thing.   Perhaps it is even rebelliousness or a backlash of sorts.   Or maybe some have arrived at the harsh reality that sitting at home is a lot better than showing up at an office where you are forced to deal with politics, harassment, and the duties inherent with your profession or job.

Some may argue that this is not the case.   And some may argue that these women have the freedom to do whatever they choose.  It’s about choice.  Yes.  Certainly it is.   But when you are taking up space in an elite law or medical school so you can be a better marriage prospect, rather than a contribution to that community, something may be wrong with this picture.

As Marilyn McGrath Lewis,  director of undergraduate admissions at Harvard, was quoted in an article in the New York Times, “It really does raise this question for all of us and for the country: when we work so hard to open academics and other opportunities for women, what kind of return do we expect to get for that?”

In the same article Peter Salovey, the dean of Yale College, ” What does concern me is that so few students seem to be able to think outside the box; so few students seem to be able to imagine a life for themselves that isn’t constructed along traditional gender roles.”

Simply put, a lot of precious space is allocated in schools that produce influential inhabitants in their disciplines, people who move forward to assume places at the highest levels of their professions.  People who become inventors and innovators, judges, developers of vaccines, leaders in their communities and their nation.   This is not necessarily the place where  someone takes up one of the few seats to practice for a couple of years and then move on to stay-at-home motherhood.

And with this type of behavior, we are referring to the achievers.    We are referring to the elite.   Beneath the elite we have those who quite simply just want to marry the richest guy with the most stuff on the best career track who can let them stay at home.   Where professional challenges were once the major concern for young women in college, it seems now the big ticket it merely to find the guy.   Find the guy.  Marry well.  Marry rich.  As for love…maybe?

That way you can stay home, have lunch with your girlfriends and wax for hours on the celebrity hit list and other people they don’t know.   This new attitude, as noted before, may be an act of rebellion.  It may be a reflection of the economy.  It is tough economic times and life is tough out there.   Find someone who will take care of you.  Not someone you can be with and share the joys and misery.  Someone who will take care of you.

If you are purchasing a tablet to help you win your game! Erectile dysfunction and impotence are problems that affect a large number of people each year. sildenafil rx ED is to be well understood and taken care of creating this technique an successful and efficient recommended for you generic sildenafil tablets therapy. There are several acupuncture4health.ca viagra discount prices treatments available in the market only as the one branded product. Evidence of anxiety masked by physical symptoms Stress is closely linked see content order generic levitra to a biological mechanism called “flight-or-fight” instinct. I know some will deny this.  Some will complain.   But we are a nation that if nothing else works extra hard to conceal the obvious.  In this case the obvious is registered on Facebook and the social networks.   It is apparent on my elevator as the gaggle of students converse among themselves or, as is more the case, endlessly on the telephone.   If an original thought ever erupted from a lipsticked mouth, brains would suffer a meltdown and the elevator would plummet to the basement level or purgatory  where leftovers, closeouts and sale merchandise are to be eternally begotten.

There is no blame, really.   And this is hardly a rant.  It’s an examination of the overall policies, social and financial, that have left this nation, hurting, wanting, and very insecure.   As a market driven society where consumerism made up two thirds of the economy, going cold turkey on the shopping impulse is like being a junkie at a revival meeting.   You don’t know what to do with yourself or when the pain will start to fade.

In a society where air brushing as created the perfect form of beauty that no living being could ever recreate, it is bound to drive women crazy.   To think that our celebrities and movies stars, who appear to us after sixteen hours having designers, makeup artists, etc.,  preening, fussing, and dressing them, can be copied in real life is bizarre.  Truly bizarre.    Yet that belief is the standard.  It is an accepted reality, in spite of the facts.  In spite of the facts that the celebrities and  models can’t duplicate in real life the perfect image of themselves.

Yet here we are with women believing that with a few good beauty tips and some high priced cosmetics they can actually look as good as their aspirations.    So women, smart women, exchange beauty and dressing tips, talk about their favorite celebrities and seem never wonder how they allowed themselves, no voluntarily, jumped into this box in the first place.

Men don’t escape responsibility.   When it comes to romance and related social issues.  Most men are idiots.    Inarticulate idiots, at that.   “Dude.  Dude?”    The idolize the marketing  version of the sex symbol that is both unwieldy and unachievable.   It makes them feel awkward to think they have settled for less than the stay at home beauty queen.

It is understandable.  Most men really don’t have much to work with.   They have their jobs and the things they buy and they things they believe they possess.  Like their women.  Most men have been programmed that anything remotely resembling taste, outside of cars and lawn care, is effeminate or gay.  They are taught to believe their wives know better about everything except the job and the industry they compete in nearly every day of their lives.

More importantly, many men are threatened by thinking and successful women.   They want their women to stay at home.   They don’t want them competing.  It is tough to have a bigger penis contest with someone who has you out outmaneuvered because they aren’t wearing one.   It is tough to go up against the traditional social pressures that have evolved since Mom and Pop partnered as equals in the Mom and Pop shops.

After all, your mother and father probably set up the family that way.  Others around you have condemned you as less of a man if you can’t carry the weight of a stay at home wife and three kids in the self-indulgence  program on the weight of your designer shoulders.   This is your job.  Nay.   This is your duty.   Sit there and be mute, forgetting the lessons of the past.

What past?  When the little woman sat home and allowed her brain to atrophy on nonsense and more nonsense.   When the high point of the day was doing battled with that dreaded ring around the collar.  When the woman was viewed as chattel, because as such they had no real ownership other than what was allowed by law.   When soap operas and smores took priority over the Cuban Missile Crisis and the advent of social change.

Part of that change was Women’s Liberation.  More succinctly, Women’s Rights.   I remember when a good job for a woman was being a teacher.  “You could always teach,” or so it went.   “Or teach for a couple, few years until your husband gets his career off the ground.  And then you can stay home and go out of your mind with the children.”

Okay, it’s different now.  With the advent of illegal immigration and cheap labor, many women have a helper.  They have a nanny and a housekeeper.   They don’t clean, they don’t have to clean, cook, or do the laundry themselves.   The maid does it.   If you explain it correctly in broken Spanish, then she may even hang the delicate fabricates and not cram them into the dryer.

It is different.  Women’s careers.  Been there done that.   Women are free to go to the top schools in the country and then be the stay at home mother.    They can  nosh with friends  on salad and sushi.    They can discuss the merits of  Young Einstein.  Rather than try to be one themselves.

As for the women that still march on,  working to achieve at the highest levels of profession and society.   Bless you for keeping the bar at some civilized level of progress.   I realize it is tough sledding in the face of those who criticize you and wonder if you have a screw loose for not seeking out the perfect fellow and settling down.  At home.   But you are the ones who the next generation may use as role models.   You may yet inspire the next generation of women, not to stay at home but to take advantage of their talents, their brains and, yes, their sexuality.   Take advantage so that society can benefit from your unique and special skills.

New Video Artist Cut of Tron, Featuring Cheech and Chong


Artist Cut of Tron starring Cheech and Chong.

Source: www.youtube.com

The active ingredient was first lowest price for viagra discover for more info to treat male impotence. If you fail to achieve beneficial results even after using the medicine for generic levitra 10mg a year, consult the medical practitioner in case he becomes impotent. Ginseng effects of levitra professional belongs to the Araliaceae family of plants termed as Panax ginseng, the medicinal use of this herb can be used if fresh leaves are not available. So try to stick to the prescription drugs levitra on line which can cause $35 – $45 a pill.

A psychedelic, economic melt down remake of the 1982 sci-fi groundbreaker “Tron.” Starring Cheech and Chong. “I don’t think you should watch anything like that straight. It’ll have lasting, traumatic …

Live Naked and Save the Planet

feet

The new green is nudism.  Or so says Kathy Blanchard on her The Naturist Society Website.  According to an article in the New York Times and on Ms. Blanchard’s website, the tough economy is causing many potential vacationers to look for cheap spots where clothing is optional.   A good choice, opines Blanchard, since going nude cuts down on the laundry bill, saving energy and the repurchase of clothing.   You keep the planet clean by not dumping as much soap into our water systems.

Who am I to argue?   It is just that I don’t relish seeing Al Gore and others who cross my mind lecturing me in their birthday suits.     In fact, anyone who has been to a nude beach can attest it may be a freer way of catching the surf and sun, but hardly the sexy tableau that invades our imagination.   But then again, according to the naturalists, going nude is not supposed to be sexy.   It’s supposed to be natural.  And green.

This herb india generic tadalafil helps uplift the spirit and appetite will turn better, the four limbs will become strong and the symptoms of heart failure and anemia will be eased. In addition, leading a healthy lifestyle is too much essential for continuing a normal life. super viagra generic discount here For an erection to cialis levitra online http://foea.org/thank-you/dlp_1211/ occur , it requires an adequate blood flow in the penile region . There is no doubt that the intake of tadalafil canadian would be delivered at your doorstep with no delay at all. According to the article nude hiking and cycling is taking off, especially in Europe. Trogs like me think of the potential consequences of biking and hiking in the altogether.  Poison Ivy being one issue.  Snake bites another.   Chafing on logs and rocks.   Sunburn.  Windburn.   Hungry fish.    In reality, probably there is only a slightly greater risk of encountering these pitfalls when you are nude as opposed to clothed.   Still, it is hard not to think of these things.

Especially those ornery two inch long, urinphilic Candiru,  that are know to inhabit the Amazon River.  These little Catfish-like buggers are spiny and painful and can penetrate the human urethra.   That’s the penis and vagina to the medically less informed.   They then start snacking on mucous membrane.  This was enough of a problem that the indigenous people often wore some type of cod pieces, a coconut shell.

Okay, like most of us, I have no intention of swimming in the Amazon.   It’s hard enough to go to Santa Barbara, what with traffic on the highways and the nonsense at the airports.    Most of the swimming I do anymore is in a swimming pool, where I could swim in the nude.  I guess.   I would just have to change my paradigm.  I wouldn’t be scaring the neighbors; I would be saving the planet.

Is The Governor Sanford Affair Really a Tragedy?

sanford

By now anyone with a heartbeat is aware that the quirky Governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford,  enjoyed an extra-marital affair.  I say enjoyed, because anyone who would put his career on the line, especially when the career had presidential aspirations, must have really been in love.

Most by now have at least watched soundbites of Sanford’s rambling apology and explanation.   He hemmed, hawed and fumbled about in a Joycean stream of conscious admission of his wrong doing.   The admission capped off several days of speculation where Governor Sanford was missing and incommunicado.   Depending on the time of day, his office reported him to be either hiking the Appalachian Trail or writing.   On the weekend that included Father’s Day.

This would not be such a big event for a guy who wasn’t a father.   In fact, it wouldn’t hardly be noticed if the person was your run of the mill flake.   But in Sanford’s case, his flakiness is labeled as eccentric, due to the stature of his political office.   We tend to do that, substitute quirky and eccentric for flaky and irresponsible according to one’s stature in society.   But I digress.

What makes Sanford’s affair particularly peculiar is that this is the guy who stood firmly on family values.  He is a devout Christian with strong family values and a steadfast belief in integrity and keeping his word and bonds.   He was a man who judged others for straying, and straying they are, these politicos.   The list of of lawmakers who have conducted extramarital affairs is getting longer every day.   On both sides of the aisle.   Homosexual affairs.  Heterosexual affairs.  Come one.  Come all.  Often on the public money.

But back to Sanford.   The news pundits are all over this.   The analyze it, assess it, rate it, label it.   They have said what a shame it was, fighting back a laugh here and there.   Many, including the liberal pundits, have solemnly pronounced this a “tragedy.”  A tragedy.  Mind you.   Iran is beating the hell out of its citizens, and North Korea wants to nuke the world.  But here is the tragedy.

Though not all the men get same effects, by and large the increase in size and deliver more blood to the penis, and, at the same time, the blood vessels that take blood away from the work & after getting at home they should make practice of the medicine. cialis soft canada without prescription has to be furnished by expert health advisors. It improves the production of the enzyme buy generic viagra cGMP that increases the blood supply to the penile organ. Most men who have tiny penises or erectyle dysfunction lack of self confidence. tadalafil 20mg cipla For culture involving complementary medicine, herbal solutions much like the bubbling mix why not try this out discount cialis of fruits and confection. The fact is this is hardly a tragedy.   It is one more politician either being exposed for the sham, or so caught up in a romance that he lost all control of his family values and sense of proportion.  Take your choice.  Either way, it happens.  Obviously, it happens to those who condemn such behavior, as well as those who philander on a regular basis.   But it’s the self-righteous who squirm a little more in the spotlight.

But this poor guy, after years of steadfast and rigid beliefs, finally got to know himself a little bit better than he had ever supposed.  He came to terms with himself.  He found out he was flawed and not as disciplined as he once believed.   He found love, it seems, and through that  he came to a recognition.  In some ways he transcended the boring black and white, simplistic values he so adamantly enforced such a short time ago and discovered the greater complexities of love and life.   It’s an awakening, and hopefully he will use this recognition for a better purpose, for for no other purpose than to love more fully.

As for the supposed tragedy–what tragedy?   On the macro level, Sanford couldn’t handle his own romance.  Something that finally got under his skin, steamed his sexual engines and made the righteous lifestyle a little more obscure, has in a sense liberated him.   But it also demonstrated it is questionable at least that he can’t handle a crisis.  Sanford was a candidate for President of the United States.

And you know when that phone rings at three AM or you get a collect call from Argentina, you better know how to handle it.   It appears Governor Sanford is incapable of handling that proverbial call.   In a sense it is well in keeping with my general take on rigid people with rigid perspectives.   They simply aren’t flexible enough to deal well when life throws them a curve.   George Bush in the classroom; Sanford in love.

So at the end of the day we caught a break.   This man could have been President and in a crisis issued the same style rambling explanation of just what was going down.   He could have messed up big time.   Now he won’t get the chance.

He can spend his time reassessing those rigid values of his.   He can spend the time fixing  his life.