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Todd
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Posts by Todd
Dr. Donsbach Tells You What You Always Wanted to Know about Prostate
02 years ago
by Todd
in Doctor's Orders
Dr. Donsbach Tells You What You Always Wanted to Know about Prostate front cover
By Dr. Kurt Donsbach
Published in 1983 by The International Institute of Natural Health Sciences, Inc.
I know I am different from most people, but the first thing I wondered when I read this book’s title was whether I could trust a book with such a grammatically awkward title. (I can’t.) Actually, that was the second thing I wondered. The first thing I wondered was if (and how) the book would handle the delicate discussion of the simple joys of having a finger up your ass. As much as I might like to claim otherwise, I honestly was not terribly surprised that the book did not discuss the joy of manual stimulation of the prostrate with a finger or other object. I would have been more surprised if it had, and you could have knocked me over with a feather if it had delved into the obscure subject of prostate milking.
Thanks to the fine folks at quackwatch.org, I was able to learn everything I wanted to know about the storied career of Dr. Donsbach. I personally am quite skeptical of alternative medicine, but even alternative medicine’s advocates would be well advised to be suspicious of the likes of Dr. Donsbach.
Even if I wasn’t able to read the quackwatch.org article, it takes little time for even a layperson like me to determine that Dr. Donsbach’s medical advice isn’t to be trusted as he devotes the book’s first half to outlandish and unsupportable claims about the restorative properties of nutrition as it relates to prostate health.
The most entertaining portion of this book is Dr. Donsbach’s “Liver-Kidney-Bowel Cleansing Fast.” Unless you enjoy scat play, I can’t imagine that anyone would ever attempt to follow this particular program.
Even though absolutely nothing in this book seems factually reliable, I did enjoy it thoroughly. However, it was the same sense of enjoyment that I derive from driving by a car wreck.
Sex Disasters and How to Survive Them
02 years ago
by Todd
in Doctor's Orders
Sex Disasters and How to Survive Them front cover
by Charles Moser, Ph.D., M.D. and Janet W. Hardy
Published in 2002 by Greenery Press
While most of Sex Disasters and How to Survive Them deals directly with the physiological side of sexuality, it does highlight a few emotional and legal issues that could arise from sex.
Written in an easy to digest “topic and explanation” format, the tone is light and easy to follow. Unfortunately, the topics aren’t organized, so if one hoped to find to find information on a pressing issue they would be forced to hunt through the index. Worse still, many explanations lack the comprehension one wants in the midst of that sort of crisis.
To be fair some of the topics such as “My Girlfriend and I were making out and her Doberman snarled at me” don’t really demand a great deal of detail. Then again, how likely is someone to seek out this book for that sort of advice? Having been confronted with issues covered in this book after I read it, my answer is not at all.
I have high expectations of Greenery Press. Their books tend to be the very best on topics devoted to sexuality (alternative or otherwise). Maybe it’s just cynicism, but I suspect that if coauthor Janet Hardy weren’t the head of Greenery Press this book wouldn’t bear their logo. Sex Disasters and How to Survive Them certainly is certainly the weakest of their titles I’ve encountered so far. (Note: little did I know that Intimate Invasions would make this seem like a modern classic. Oh well.)
If you happen to have had the sort of puritanical parents who refused to let you attend the fun portion of high school health class, then this book might be beneficial to you. Otherwise save your money and buy your lover something nice.
Jesus Christ: Serial Rapist
02 years ago
by Todd
in Multimedia
Directed by Bill Zebub
Released in 2005 by Bill Zebub
This review is the first I have ever done for something that I don’t have in my personal collection. It is also the first movie reviewed here. This is a hard movie to describe and harder still to review.
As I thought of what to say about it, my thoughts were informed by concepts like subversion and transgression. This isn’t because of what the film contains but rather because of what the film lacks. Even the most inept filmmaker includes elements like plot, setting, character development, narrative, and so forth. Despite protests from some corners, this is true even in porn. There’s a reason a cumshot can also be rightfully called a climax. Somehow Jesus Christ: Serial Rapist contains a savant-like genius because it contains virtually none of these elements.
It is as though the Zebub has thrown down the gauntlet and challenged the viewer to a mano-a-mano endurance contest. Where most directors might wish to challenge the audience to rethink their own values or worldview, Zebub’s opus is tacitly hostile towards its audience. The result is a trial of wills that even an Andy Warhol fan would be wise to not take.
Actually, that’s all wishful thinking. The best part of Jesus Christ: Serial Rapist is the title. The movie consists of a few random bondage scenes that introduces a slideshow all set to a droning death metal soundtrack. It’s a giant mess right from the beginning as the introductory title card (there’s no dialogue) contains a misspelling that gets things off on a confusing club foot.
The movie then goes tediously from one incoherent bondage scene to the next separated by title cards that are designed ostensibly to propel the story. Unfortunately, there isn’t a story to tell, or if there was one, the movie failed to communicate it. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; sometimes a plot ruins what would be otherwise enjoyable porn. Worse still, there’s nothing remarkably erotic, sexy, or even titillating about the scenes. It’s as though the camera cuts away before the foreplay even begins leaving us with an incoherent mess.
After we endure the pointless bondage scenes, the movie’s second half begins. It consists of bad crucifixion bondage photographs (many of which were badly Photoshopped). The title card that introduces this mess claims that video slideshow was sent to the police. I can only imagine them being interested in tracking down its creator to punish him for boring them with this tedium.
The version I saw of this was apparently a remake. As bad as this was to sit through, I shudder to think of how awful the original was if this was an improvement. After all was said and done this was an hour and a half of my life that I want to squander on something, anything, else. Other than people I dislike and porn addicts, who would find this the methadone of erotica, I hope no one else suffers the misfortune of sitting through this film.
The Submissive Female
0
The Submissive Female front cover
by Anthony Parr, Ph. D.
Published in 1971 by The Dolphin Press
Reading this book left me with one unanswerable question: why are Danes so hairy? Don’t get me wrong, I like some hair down there. In fact, it creeps me out when there isn’t hair down there. The desire for hairlessness seems like the purview child molesters. Creepy.
I don’t know why, but I frankly never imagined the Danish as hirsute. Part of me is curious to search the internet for modern Danish porn to see if Danish women have discovered the necessity of pubic grooming. But the other part of me is scared nothing’s changed, so I’ll continue in blissful ignorance.
The hairy sex pictures were really the highlight of the Submissive Female. In this book, Parr sets out to trace the lowly social status of women throughout history. He begins with conjecturing about the status of females in pre-history assuming they were only valued for their ability to bring males pleasure. Subsequent chapters focus on the status of women in Greek and Roman societies, 17th century England, Russia, and France.
As he traces through these societies, Parr often focuses on women of high status and relates how they cruelly treat their slaves and servants. He credits this behavior to their identification with their own abusers, but shows no evidence to back up this claim.
There really isn’t much to recommend here. There are a few titillating passages which merit some interest. Unfortunately, I can’t help but think the original stories which Parr cites are vastly more entertaining and informative than his presentation of them.
SM 101: A Realistic Introduction
2
SM 101: A Realistic Introduction front cover
by Jay Wiseman
Published in 1996 by Greenery Press
I remember back in the 1980s there was a commercial for an instructional break dancing video. The break dancing fad was already on the wane by the time the video marketers decided to shamelessly capitalize on it, but that mattered little as the video’s target audience was clearly middle class parents, rarely the avant-garde of anything. The fashions and set design of the commercial clearly showed the influence of “street” culture. But these weren’t the frightening urban streets of Harlem’s slums; these were the cul-de-sacs of suburbia. What really resonates in my consciousness was the cheery announcer allaying the fears of parents everywhere with the promise that the video offered “the safe way to break.” You know the fun is over, and mediocrity has set in, when something is safe enough to sell to the middle-aged middle class.
Naturally, you may be wondering what that has to do with an introductory book on sadomasochism. On the surface, not much. But after reading SM 101: A Realistic Introduction, I couldn’t help but be reminded of how something seemingly relegated to our cultural fringes could be commodified into something “safe” and not so frightening that everyone can embrace it.
Doing so was not Wiseman’s stated objective. In the introduction, he states that his purpose in writing the book is to give readers as much education about S/M sex as one might expect from an introductory college course. He does a very good job of this, but something is missing. Or more to the point, there’s just too much of something.
After finishing and contemplating the work, I initially wondered if Wiseman didn’t have a safety fetish that borders on the pathological. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. Surely we all want to avoid injuring our lovers even as we do evil, sadistic things to them. Likewise no matter how outré someone’s fantasies are, no reasonable person wants their fantasy fulfillment to end with a maiming. It would surely be irresponsible, at best, to offer instruction on S/M and not take pains to make sure the advice didn’t includes lots of information about safety.
So while it should be hard to fault the book for including too much of an emphasis on safety, I can’t help but think there is a natural tension between that which is safe and that which is fun. That isn’t to say that safe and fun are mutually exclusive; while every person clearly has a threshold where being endangered can only be perceived as a terrifying fear, lots of people experience some amount of fear or awareness of danger as excitement or fun. Were that not the case there would be no lines at roller coasters or horror movies. Likewise, S/M should be fun. If it isn’t, what’s the point in doing it?
While debate about what exactly S/M is and is not will never reach unanimity, without doubt a large part of it involves exploring, both physically and psychologically, the darker places of our consciousness. If S/M is completely safe is it any fun? Is it still even S/M? I think the answer to both questions is clearly no.
That’s what troubles me about this book’s excessive emphasis on safety: I don’t think that its overemphasis was intended for someone interested in learning about S/M. Instead, I get the feeling that Wiseman obsessed about safety to allay the arguments of those who claim S/M is abuse. The trouble is, not only are critics of S/M unlikely to read this book in the first place, they are also unlikely to persuaded that S/M isn’t abuse no matter how safe and consensual it is.
Despite this criticism, this book is still a wonderful resource for someone interested in learning about S/M, and to be fair, much of the safety information (e.g. safe calls) is essential advice that one would be foolish to not observe. Wiseman writes in an affable conversation style that is clear and avoids the fictionalized interludes that drag down many books of this type. While some of the information about using the internet as a resource is out of date, given the way that the internet has changed since the last revision, this was inevitable and forgivable.
If Wiseman revises this book again (this is the second edition) and focuses on the novice S/M audience – instead of the vanilla audience he’ll never convince anyway – he will have written a book that will remain essential reading for S/M novices for generations to come. Even if Wiseman doesn’t revise the book, flaws and all, for those wanting to learn about S/M the book is worthwhile.