AdamSmith

Asians and Latinos, please. The best threads on here have all been about our obsessions, one way or t'other.

You have bitched about this laziness of mine before. But if you mouse over the link -- no need to make the deep commitment of actually clicking! -- your browser will show that it reads "iamus-computer-composes-classical-music". Too late the phalarope?

Fairly cool... http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jul/01/iamus-computer-composes-classical-music

To Lucky:: Quoth Charlie Brown, "Sigh." To lookin: I was just thinking the same thing! One more... http://www.maleescortreview.com/forum/index.php?/topic/2782-martha-stewart-likes-big-wieners

Is it this late, again, already? http://www.maleescor...nces-of-summer/ And can it really have been five years?

Why does that sound to me like St John chortling as he pens (quills?) the Book of Revelations? ...I know, I know. You needn't bother. (Although one is ever curious as to the form this time!)

What he needs is to lose those pedal-pushers and the shorts under them, and get into Chris Atkins's loincloth. As do we all!

He would be welcome to abuse my rosebud all night long. Despite his not being Asian or even Latino. http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/justin-bieber-has-a-happy-trail?s=mobile

Why does everything sound like a double entendre to me?

Hilarious to see Nagoya on this list. Been there a few times consulting to Toyota. Then when you go to Tokyo and say you were just in Nagoya, everybody loves making cracks about Nagoya being the boondocks, hicksville, etc. Some of the Japanese terms for this are quite colorful (though regrettably I can't remember any of them -- too much sake & whiskey in my hosts' geisha lounges ).

She said so.

Incredible. Even though this all somehow puts me in mind of Umberto Eco's priceless description of California's Madonna Inn, in his book Travels in Hyperreality... The poor words with which natural human speech is provided cannot suffice to describe the Madonna Inn. To convey its external appearance, divided into a series of constructions, which you reach by way of a filling station carved from Dolomitic rock, or through the restaurant, the bar, and the cafeteria, we can only venture some analogies. Let’s say that Albert Speer, while leafing through a book on Gaudi, swallowed an overgenerous dose of LSD and began to build a nuptial catacomb for Liza Minnelli. But that doesn’t give you an idea. Let’s say Arcimboldi builds the Sagrada Familia for Dolly Parton. Or: Carmen Miranda designs a Tiffany locale for the Jolly Hotel chain. Or D’Annunzio’s Vittoriale imagined by Bob Cratchit, Calvino’s Invisible Cities described by Judith Krantz and executed by Leonor Fini for the plush-doll industry, Chopin’s Sonata in B flat minor sung by Perry Como in an arrangement by Liberace and accompanied by the Marine Band. No, that still isn’t right. Let’s try telling about the rest rooms. They are an immense underground cavern, something like Altamira and Luray, with Byzantine columns supporting plaster baroque cherubs. The basins are big imitation-mother-of-pearl shells, the urinal is a fireplace carved from the rock, but when the jet of urine (sorry, but I have to explain) touches the bottom, water comes down from the wall of the hood, in a flushing cascade something like the Caves of the Planet Mongo. And on the ground floor, in keeping with the air of Tyrolean chalet and Renaissance castle, a cascade of chandeliers in the form of baskets of flowers, billows of mistletoe surmounted by opalescent bubbles, violet-suffused light among which Victorian dolls swing, while the walls are punctuated by art-nouveau windows with the colors of Chartres and hung with Regency tapestries whose pictures resemble the garish color supplements of the Twenties. The circular sofas are red and gold, the tables gold and glass, and all this amid inventions that turn the whole into a multicolor Jell-O, a box of candied fruit, a Sicilian ice, a land for Hansel and Gretel. Then there are the bedrooms, about two hundred of them, each with a different theme: for a reasonable price (which includes an enormous bed King or Oueen size if you are on your honeymoon) you can have the Prehistoric Room, all cavern and stalactites, the Safari Room (zebra walls and bed shaped like a Bantu idol), the Kona Rock Room (Hawaiian), the California Poppy, the Old-Fashioned Honeymoon, the Irish Hills, the William Tell, the Tall and Short, for mates of different lengths, with the bed in an irregular polygon form, the Imperial Family, the Old Mill. The Madonna Inn is the poor man’s Hearst Castle; it has no artistic or philological pretensions, it appeals to the savage taste for the amazing, the overstuffed, and the absolutely sumptuous at low price. It says to its visitors: “You too can have the incredible, just like a millionaire.” Well, maybe not quite. http://www.madonnainn.com/

Why we love 'em so much...? 'Sexual depravity' of penguins that Antarctic scientist dared not reveal Landmark polar research about the Adelie penguin's sex life by Captain Scott's expedition, deemed too shocking for the public 100 years ago, is unearthed at the Natural History Museum Robin McKie, science editor guardian.co.uk, Saturday 9 June 2012 06.31 EDT Dr George Murray Levick's observations of Adelie penguins were recorded in his notebook. Photograph: R Kossow/NHM It was the sight of a young male Adélie penguin attempting to have sex with a dead female that particularly unnerved George Murray Levick, a scientist with the 1910-13 Scott Antarctic Expedition. No such observation had ever been recorded before, as far as he knew, and Levick, a typical Edwardian Englishman, was horrified. Blizzards and freezing cold were one thing. Penguin perversion was another. Worse was to come, however. Levick spent the Antarctic summer of 1911-12 observing the colony of Adélies at Cape Adare, making him the only scientist to this day to have studied an entire breeding cycle there. During that time, he witnessed males having sex with other males and also with dead females, including several that had died the previous year. He also saw them sexually coerce females and chicks and occasionally kill them. Levick blamed this "astonishing depravity" on "hooligan males" and wrote down his observations in Greek so that only an educated gentleman would understand the horrors he had witnessed. Back in Britain he produced a paper (in English), titled Natural History of the Adélie Penguin. However, the section about the animal's sexual proclivities was deemed to be so shocking it was removed to preserve decency. Levick then used this material as the basis for a separate short paper, Sexual Habits of the Adélie Penguin, which was privately circulated among a handful of experts. Two Adelie penguins with a chick. Steve Bloom/Alamy In fact, Levick's observations turned out to be well ahead of their time. Scientists had to wait another 50 years before the remarkable sexual antics of the Adélie were revealed. By this time his pamphlet and its detailed records of Adélie shenanigans had been lost to science . But now a copy of Sexual Habits of the Adélie Penguin has been unearthed, thanks to sleuthing by Douglas Russell, curator of birds at the Natural History Museum, who discovered a copy among records of the work of Scott's expeditions and has had it published in the journal Polar Record, with an accompanying analysis of Levick's work. "The pamphlet, declined for publication with the official Scott expedition reports, commented on the frequency of sexual activity, auto-erotic behaviour, and seemingly aberrant behaviour of young unpaired males and females, including necrophilia, sexual coercion, sexual and physical abuse of chicks and homosexual behaviour," states the analysis written by Russell and colleagues William Sladen and David Ainley. "His observations were, however, accurate, valid and, with the benefit of hindsight, deserving of publication." Levick's lost masterpiece certainly has its eye-watering moments with its descriptions of male Adélies who gather in "little hooligan bands of half a dozen or more and hang about the outskirts of the knolls, whose inhabitants they annoy by their constant acts of depravity". Injured females are mounted by members of these "gangs", others have their chicks "misused before the very eyes of its parents". Some chicks are crushed and injured, others are killed. It is startling stuff, though Russell told the Observer that recent studies have helped understand the behaviour of these "hooligan" penguins. "Adélies gather at their colonies in October to start to breed. They have only a few weeks to do that and young adults simply have no experience of how to behave. Many respond to inappropriate cues. Hence the seeming depravity of their behaviour. For example, a dead penguin, lying with its eyes half-open, is very similar in appearance to a compliant female. The result is the so-called necrophilia that Levick witnessed and which so disgusted him." In addition, the penguin is the most humanlike of all birds in its appearance and its behaviour is most often interpreted in anthropomorphic terms, added Russell. For this reason, Adélie behaviour, when it was observed for the first time in detail, seemed especially shocking. "Levick was also a gentleman, travelling with a group of men in very difficult circumstances, witnessing behaviour he neither expected nor understood," said Russell. "It is not surprising that he was shocked by his findings." The discovery ofLevick's paper is important because its helps shed new knowledge on a species that has been called the bellwether of climate change. "The Adélie needs pack ice from which to dive to get fish. When that ice disappears, numbers may crash – and we will have a clear warning that things are getting bad," said Russell. Levick's experiences with the Adélie penguins were not the only root of his suffering in the Antarctic. In February 1912, he and five other members of Scott's team were waiting to be picked up by the expedition ship, Terra Nova, but found that pack ice had blocked its route. The men had to spend an entire Antarctic winter huddled in an ice cave with no provisions and only an occasional seal or penguin to eat. "They ate blubber, cooked with blubber, had blubber lamps," recalled one expedition member. "Their clothes and gear were soaked with blubber, and the soot blackened them, their sleeping bags, cookers, walls and roof, choked their throats and inflamed their eyes." Remarkably, the men all survived and Levick returned to England in 1913 – in time to sign up for the first world war. He served in the Grand Fleet and at Gallipoli, and after the war founded the British Schools Exploring Society in 1932, of which he was president until his death in June 1956. An obituary described him as "a truly great English gentleman". • Levick's notebook is on display at the Natural History Museum until 2 September as part of the Scott's Last Expedition exhibition http://www.guardian....scott-antarctic

http://www.cartalk.com/content/time-get-even-lazier Some people can't stand 'em, but to me their schtick never gets old. I took my car to Ray's garage one time and they did a great job. They only take cash. They'll be missed.

The Brattle Theatre in Cambridge (our Cambridge, not the Brits') runs a "Bugs in Drag" compilation once a year. Ever a tad startling to be reminded there were enough of those episodes to add up to a feature-length show.

For some reason your phraseology makes me imagine fashioning a diploma into a condom. Safire sex?

Your calling Bradbury a "contributor" prompts MsGuy to wonder what screen name Our Favorite Martian employed when posting here. For my part, I will never forget my young self thrilling to "I Sing the Body Electric," among others.

May be too late to help now, but ... men4rentnow shows a nice selection of companions in Seattle. Much better than a hot water bottle! (Unless you have some fetishes you have not mentioned. )

Given this thread's title exquisitely juxtaposing the words "fragrance" and "fans," I have not been able to escape the image of a giant industrial blower positioned directly behind the Bieb's rosebud...

Good point. So they are raw material -- we have our educational work cut out for us! Right again. Bless Biggs's heart, I should have said, "Every really good classical organist but Bach." (Those not in on this the first time around can follow our wrangle post hoc at http://www.message-f...091-Organ-meats )

ROFLMCO (C: Cassock )

A singularly cynically adaptive organization. (Extra credit: Distinguish from the cynicisms of other organized religions.)

Some eclectic trios (groupings in lieu of bio-commentary)... da Vinci Michelangelo Warhol Stein Toklas Sontag Proust Rechy Cheever Cliburn Liberace Every classical organist but Bach

You may not have been here back when I described catching sight of Dersh at the clothing-optional beach on Martha's Vineyard, taking full advantage thereof. Eyeball-frying, in TY's apt term.

What a notion... http://www.pepysdiary.com/ ...and the back story: http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/06/lessons-in-blogging-and-tweeting-from-samuel-pepys/