i remember back in 2001 or 2002 when i started to get really interested in japan, i would read the mainichi daily news website every day to keep up to date on what was happening in japan. the news wasn’t only interesting, but it made for good conversation with japanese girls and the knowledge of international news made me seem more worldly (or at least i thought so).

the mainichi daily news site was supposed to be direct translations from their japanese site. for the most part the news articles were decent, although they really liked to use puns and corny headlines. i even emailed them a couple of times complaining about it, but never got a response.

along with the regular news, they’d have a weekly article from the “waiwai” section that had some pretty raunchy articles with the sleeziest headlines. they were always about crazy things like mother-daughter prostitute teams and why japanese guys don’t like to go down on girls. anyway, i always found these pretty entertaining, but i guess everyone else didn’t feel the same way, with some feeling that the site portrayed japanese as deviant sex maniacs (ummm…) the site also apparently had some strange meta tags to drive sketchy traffic like “hentai”, “japanese girls” and “ganguro” (all meta keywords for kentomatic btw =p). after some complaints and then an internal investigation, the shit hit the fan, and people got fired.

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last night i was watching a disturbing documentary on bbc america called my secret female body. the story followed the life of a girl that felt “trapped” in her body and decided she wanted to instead be a man. she began taking male hormones, which caused her to grow facial hair, get a deep voice and stop having a period. but she/he had big breasts that she had to tape down every time she went out. the hormones eventually brought her d-cups to b-cups, but that still wasn’t enough so she went to have a double mastectomy.

when she/he went for consultations, they blurred out her boobs, and after the surgery, they didn’t blur them out anymore. so that got me to thinking… when is a boob a boob? usually, on tv they can show all the cleavage, side, upper and under boob they want, as long as there’s no areola or nipple. but what about when a woman gets her breast tissue removed and still has a nipple, is that really no longer a boob? i mean because of the skin and swelling, they still looked like a-cups, and it’s still a female nipple, so how is that not still a regular, ole’ boob? either way it was disgusting, and for all practical intentions now just moobs, but clinically they were still boobs.

even worse, she/he now wants to get a penis installed. they make it out of pieces of your forearm. they didn’t get into too much detail about it since she/he will have to wait a few years for the psychiatric evaluations required to do this type of surgery, but the one point they glossed over that i was dying to know: will it work?

well, it’s all very simple actually:

Because of all the preservatives in food, people today can consume enormous quantities of organic phosphorus. Once a certain amount of organic phosphorus builds up in the body, it attaches itself to calcium and is expelled through waste products. But what this means is that a large build-up of organic phosphorus leads directly to a calcium deficiency,” Yamanaka tells Weekly Playboy. “Then you’ve got the human nervous system, which is made up of sympathetic nerves and parasympathetic nerves. Parasympathetic nerves feed only on calcium. When the body doesn’t have enough calcium, the parasympathetic nerves don’t work as well as they should. That sends the balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves all skew-whiff. When the sympathetic nerves work stronger than the parasympathetic nerves, it becomes easier to get nervous and aroused. ‘Rage’ attacks have been discussed pretty frequently in recent years and they’re probably triggered by this mechanism. If there is a decreased sexual desire or erection problems, it probably means the parasympathetic nerves aren’t working as well as they should be.

the rest of the wacky article:

http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/waiwai/news/20070220p2g00m0dm023000c.html

can’t say that i care much, other than enjoying all the commotion it causes around the office and on the internets. i really was getting pretty annoyed constantly hearing about this woman, who was famous only for being a slut, gold digger and a drunk. but it seems like this is the last week i’m gonna have to hear about all of it, seeing that just about everyone that was involved with her is now dead (first her rich hubby, then his son, then her son, and now her). i’m guessing the lawyer won’t mind having that paternity test now to prove that someone else is the dad since there isn’t any money for him in it. a fitting end to a long 15 minutes. the autopsy won’t be released for a couple of weeks, but $5 says that it was old man marshall’s ghost that did her in.

i know rape is one of those really touchy subjects for some people, but since this is my blog, i’ll rant however i want. according to the time magazine article, some poor joe was convicted of first degree rape, because while he was having consensual sex with some woman, she changed her mind and he did not stop immediately. it didn’t say how immediately he didn’t stop.

now if someone tells you to stop doing something physical to them, you need to stop, whether you’re banging them or punching them in the face, or what have you. but if both people agree to have sex and then she changes her mind mid-bang, and you don’t immediately stop, it just doesn’t seem fair to be convited of rape. maybe assult or battery or something else, but to call it rape just doesn’t make sense to me. like the article says, it kinda makes rape seem like less of a terrible thing if it can be charged to someone under those circumstances.

i remember in this woman’s studies class i took once (which turned out to be a mistake), the teacher constantly reminded the class that rape was an act of power and agreession, not horniness. but in the situation described above, it started on regular horny pretences. anyway, sure he should’ve stopped, but he shouldn’t've been convicted of rape. he’s appealing the ruling, but until then this guy’s sitting in jail.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1584786,00.html?cnn=yes

there’s some funny/looney stuff on both sides in the article:

If the law doesn’t recognize a woman’s right to say no during sex, they say, there is no recourse for a woman who begins to feel pain or who learns her partner isn’t wearing a condom or has HIV.

how the fuck does a woman find out mid-sex that her partner has HIV?! it’s like:

woman (during intercourse): “Let me just open these test results… WHAAAAAA???”

and how nuts is this guy:

“At a certain point during arousal, we don’t have complete control over our ability to stop,” he says.

are you kidding me? back in the day, if i heard someone come home earlier than expected, you better believe i could turn it off just like that.

from news.com.au:

Natasha Timarovic, 27, was cleaning her teeth at in her home in the Croatian city of Zadar when lightning struck the building.

She said: “I had just put my mouth under the tap to rinse away the toothpaste when the lightning must have struck the building.

“I don’t remember much after that, but I was later told that the lightning had travelled down the water pipe and struck me on the mouth, passing through my body.

“It was incredibly painful, I felt it pass through my torso and then I don’t remember much at all.” Doctors at the city hospital where she was treated for burns to the mouth and rear said: “The accident is bizarre but not impossible.”

She was wearing rubber bathroom shoes at the time and so instead of earthing through her feet it appears the electricity shot out of her backside,” a medic told local newspaper.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20548077-13762,00.html