Susie Bright's Journal

The Queen of Mean Gets Her Bottom Tapped

My friend Jack Boulware sent  me this erotic satire about Ann Coulter, the savage kitten of the right-wing nutbox.

Mean —  but  funny.

This fantasy about Miss Ann has driven me over the edge of my usual kindly manners.   Has anyone begged for more ridicule in recent memory? I'd love to hear your historical comparisons!

A Public Sexual Health Announcement:

While people can and will enjoy getting buggered throughly, no pleasure can be derived from anal intercourse without lubrication (lots of it) and relaxation (take all the time in the world). That's when the pleasure become possible, and the mystique of getting "plowed hard" becomes something that makes any kind of erotic sense.

But you already knew that, right?  It's just fun imagine "CoulterGeist" getting some retribution, at last!  What I wouldn't give to really understand her sexual motivation...

The stunning patriotic poster I've posted here is from The White House.

Jeff Gannon Makes Monica Look Like a Slouch

Military Call Girl Jeffie Gannon has been visiting the White House just a WEE bit more than the average press correspondent.

Secret Service documents requested by Rep. Louise Slaughter and Rep. John Conyers (through the Freedom of Information Act)  disclose that Gannon/Guckert visited the White House over 200 times during his two year fling at the WH, whether there was a press conference or not— all on his little ole' day pass!  Once there, he stayed for HOURS before and after press briefings, no doubt dusting the china.

John Byrne at Raw Story  (luv you)  has the whole story and a link to the primary documents, but here is a brief peek:

"Perhaps more notable than the frequency of his attendance, however, is several distinct anomalies about his visits.

"Guckert made more than two dozen excursions to the White House when there were no scheduled briefings. On many of these days, the Press Office held press gaggles aboard Air Force One—which raises questions about what Guckert was doing at the White House. On other days, the president held photo opportunities.

"On at least fourteen occasions, Secret Service records show either the entry or exit time missing. Generally, the existing entry or exit times correlate with press conferences; on most of these days, the records show that Guckert checked in but was never processed out."

Please tell me he saved a navy blue handkerchief.

Yukon Gold, Enemas On Hold, and Podcaster Ponderings

Here's the scoop on my three newest shows...

A lot of people have asked me if Audible will start podcasting my shows. I don’t know how that would work, because the whole way Audible makes money, (and in turn, pays me) is to sell subscriptions to my show, or sell episodes a la carte, just as they do with audiobooks and other audio shows/magazines/journals. Podcasting is free to listeners, yes?

(Speaking of audio magazines, Audible is right now working on making The New Yorker  into an audio-listening experience!  My mom would have loved that. Actually, she would have been a great audio performer for it!  She was always calling me up on the phone and reading her favorite articles to me).

There is one slightly different way to access my In Bed show aside from Audible.com— that’s accessing my episodes through the  iTunes Music Store. You just put my name in the search box, and you’ll see every show I’ve ever done (almost 200 now) with the title and time. They are all $6 or $7 dollars... I have no idea why a few of them are a dollar more than the others. That’s more expensive than subscribing to Audible, but it’s kinda fun for picking and choosing.

Anyway, if you have some words of wisdom about podcasting, I’d love to hear them! Of course, your comments on any of the shows, or the topics I cover in this bunch, are much appreciated...

Episode 197
I start off with a news item from Spring Hill, Tennessee, where a woman was recently fined for selling a vibrating bath sponge at a library flea market.  I bet it was one of those rubber ducky ones that I covet so much.

I’ve been on a insomniac reading kick lately. I love Candida Royalle's new book, How to Tell a Naked Man What to Do... She's like the Older Sexy Know-It-All Sister I never had... it's almost diabolical how she seems to have the perfect answer to every femme question.

It’s not actually  about telling men "what to do,"  at all. It’s about women cultivating and enjoying their sexual style. It also has candid observations about what it’s been like to be the first “straight feminist” to make erotic movies for women, that revolutionized the porn industry in the process.

On an almost completely different topic, except for its sauciness, I fell in love with a history book set the mid 1800's in Alaska, about the amazing women who worked the Alaskan gold rush:  Lael Morgan's Good Time Girls of the Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush. It's filled with breathtaking photos from the period, and remarkable diary entries and journals from people who lived through the experience.

Finally, in the Try This at Home mailbag, I answer a letter from a woman who thinks her man fits her like a glove, in all ways but one (small) one.

Episode 198
There have always been a lot of sexy things you can do in your car, and recently, the California State Assembly upheld the right to play porn on your in-car DVD system, in spite of complaints from parents who found themselves in awkward situations during rush hour. I nearly lost control myself one evening on Interstate 5, but you’ll have to tune in to hear the rest of that story!

After years of opening sexually explicit mail out in my local post office with complete nonchalance— no matter how many dirty looks that Passport guy gives me—  I finally opened a package that gave me pause. The contents?  A book about erotic enemas. I’m sorry, but I had a laughing fit at the zip code directory table.  But upon closer inspection, this book is impeccably written, erotic, and informative.

In the Try This at Home mailbag, I offers some advice to a man who says he loves living with his girlfriend, but finds it impossible to masturbate while cohabitating... and it's not a happy secret.

Episode 199
This week, I investigate a phenomenon called post-coital anxiety syndrome. It’s about a particular panic that can follow orgasm— so is it stupid talk show theory, or a serious stigmatized dilemma?

In my book review section, I admire a middle-of-the-road, Midwestern look at the transsexual experience called Just Add Hormones.

Finally, I read a letter from a reader who said she literally  “blew out her chakras” from listening to audio erotica. Some girls have all the fun.

An individual In Bed show costs about $5 to listen to, but if you want a free one-month trial, no strings attached, come to this page and give it a whirl.  If you end up subscribing to Audible, it’s pennies... you get my show (or any other periodical) every week of the month, plus any one audiobook you like, for $14.95. 

Okay, Who Here Reads Hebrew?

I was checking out the referrals for my blog--- my latest way to dilly-dally and meet new people--- and I came across this Israeli web site that has been sending a lot of traffic my way in reference to Dworkin's death.

http://www.goleshet.com/432-sex.html

The entire thing is in Hebrew, and I am sadly monolingual, but it features this two-photo collage of Andrea Dworkin looking soulful with me right underneath her pressing my vibrator to a red rubber dress! It's that old photo Annie Sprinkle took of me and put on her notorious playing card deck... (out of print, sorry to say).

Anyway, I want to know what it says! What kind of site is this? If any of you are able to clue me in, I'd love to find out.

Meet Me at the Left Bank

Several of you have written me about my upcoming visit to St. Louis, begging me to break out from the Romance Convention I'm attending and meet you someplace... uh.... "less romantic," shall we say.

I perfectly understand. How about a Marxist bookstore?

I'm just kidding, but actually, I have cooked up something for those of you who would rather retch than meet Fabio.

I'll be coming over to Left Bank Books, in St. Louis, at 1:00 pm on April 29th, to sign some stock and just hang out with whoever shows up. I'm sure we can get something to drink, and I would love to just hang out with you for a little bit.

Anyone who can meet me there, would you please email me ASAP? I'd like to know who and how many I'm looking for when I get to the bookshop.

xo, Susie

Old School Erotica Treat

One of my favorite erotic filmakers is Radley Metzger, who created The Opening of Misty Beethoven,  and Therese and Isabelle, the1967 feature that took Violet LeDuc’s novel and brought lesbian sexuality to the big screen for the first time. Radley made several classic erotic films released before X-rated cinema became the cookie-cutter scene we know today.

Metzger is a beautiful cinematographer; that’s one of the things that keep you riveted to his pictures. To my delight, it seems a contemporary porn artist, Clayton Cubutt, has taken some stills from one of Radley’s old movies, “Barbara Broadcast,” and turned them into web-based art installation. They're mesmerizing, and I’m very grateful to Jonno at Fleshbot for turning me onto the site. Here’s what Jonno wrote:

If you've never seen "Barbara Broadcast," the delightfully surreal 1977 classic directed by Radley Metzger, we're not sure photographer Clayton Cubitt's visual synopsis of the film would be the best introduction; after all, he compresses the action into a mere 31 vidcaps, concentrating more on the formal aspects of the cinematography than on the film's narrative or cast, which includes legends Annette Haven and Constance Money. However, as the latest artsy example of his "visual research in porn aesthetic", we think the project is pretty darn brilliant. And even those 31 caps look a hell of a lot more interesting than most of the hardcore stuff being shot today."

 

To read the rest of Susie's history in erotic cinema and porn, check out: 

The Erotic Screen, Vol. 1: The Golden Hardcore and the Shimmering Dyke-Core 

 
Available at Amazon, B&N, & Smashwords. Here's the whole Table of Contents.

Interviews from the 1980s with legendary artists like Russ Meyer, John Leslie, Sharon Mitchell, Jeannie Pepper, Christopher Rage... and many more.

My Favorite Wicked Story from Best American Erotica

Every year I publish Best American Erotica, I always pick one story that I especially like to read aloud at book events. Usually, the first time I read it, it’s in bed with my lover, because I get so inspired I have to try it out on him.

My favorite “read-aloud” story in this year’s BAE 2005 is "Surviving Darwin” by Alicia Gifford.

Why do I like this story so much?

For one, it’s told from the point of view of a very wicked female character, a rather unusual naughty nurse. As a recovering Catholic, I can’t resist voicing her amoral thoughts.  It’s a noir story, with no golden heroes to applaud, and a lot of suspense... it’s a kinky crime story, actually.  The explicit sex passages are brief, but in her case, understatment packs a whallop.

I asked Alicia if I could offer you a reprint of the story here on my blog, and she kindly agreed. Other authors in BAE 2005 include Mary Gaitskill ("The Ugly Cock Dance") and Nelson George "(It’s Never Too Late in New York") as well as Steve Almond remembering the best Ecstacy party ever.

It’s never too late, whereever you are, to check out a copy!  If you read Alicia's story, or any of the others, I'd be interested to hear what you think.

Abstinence Uber Alles

Here’s the report on the complete nonsense of  “Abstinence-Only”  sex education curricula in American public schools. 

These whoppers aren't flukes; if you're a parent, this is more than likely the curriculum your kids are receiving right now.   If you're young, I'm sure you're all to familiar with this baloney from firsthand experience.

(Don't you luv the little Abstinence graphic I found to illustrate this post?  It's just that simple!)

Some of the falsehoods are scientific bloopers and misinformation. The bad facts aren't neutral or aribitray— they're designed to promote unreasonable fear and dread about premarital sex. For example, getting cervical cancer has NOTHING to do with having sex before marriage... DUH. But these programs beg to differ!

But the material that sent me over the moon were the pieces of wisdom doled out about what young men and women really want out of life:

Some excerpts:

Stereotypes that Undermine Girls’ Achievement
Several curricula teach that girls care less about achievement and their futures than do boys.  One curriculum instructs: 'Women gauge their happiness and judge their success by their relationships. Men’s happiness and success hinge on their  accomplishments.'

Another curriculum lists 'Financial Support' as one of the 'Five Major Needs of  Women,” and 'Domestic Support' as one of the 'Five Major Needs of Men.'

The  curriculum states: ' Just as a woman needs to feel a man’s devotion to her, a man has a primary need to feel a woman’s admiration. To admire a man is to regard  him with wonder, delight, and approval. A man feels admired when his unique characteristics and talents happily amaze her.' 

GAG ME!   

And for you science purists, here's another tidbit:

Abstinence-Only Curricula Contain Scientific Errors     
In addition to the inaccurate and misleading information discussed earlier, a number of the abstinence-only curricula contain erroneous information about basic scientific facts. These errors cover a variety of issues:   

•  Human Genetics. One curriculum states: 'Twenty-four chromosomes from the mother and twenty-four chromosomes from the father join to  create this new individual.' 

In fact, human cells have 23 chromosomes from each parent, for a total of 46 in each body cell. 

The same curriculum also teaches: 'Girls produce only female ovum, boys, however, have both  male and female sperm.'

This too is inaccurate. Females produce ova with X chromosomes, and males produce sperm with either X or Y  chromosomes. These combine to make an XX combination (female) or an  XY combination (male).

Read it and weep!  Or better yet, organize to get rid of it. My hat's off to Waxman for leading up this investigation.  Few politicians will do anything to promote the public sexual health, and I was amazed that he had the guts to do something like this.

Why Do I Blog?

I wrote a story about “Why I Blog” for MJ Rose’s Buzz Blog, that you may be interested in reading, especially if you ever question your own love/hate relationship with your blogging habits!

I answered MJ's questions just after I  posted the Gannon/Guckert expose, and had received a lot of feedback... the first time I did a big story for myself, rather than another news outlet.  I would have had difficulty placing that story in conventional editorial pages, not so much because it's "sexy," but because  of various newsroom prejudices surrounding the issue of my authorship.   

Anyway, take a look at it, and tell me what you think. If you are running a blog, why DO you do it?  And if you're an avid blog reader, but not publisher, tell me about that... I'm interested in people's motivations, as MJ was in mine.

Addicted to Porn - Congress Takes Cash from the People They Love to Trash

The latest In Bed with Susie Bright, #196, is out! In this edition:

You would not believe— (okay, maybe you would) —  how many rightwing Congress people are taking sizeable campaign contributions from porn-profitting businesses.

This week, I out a number of U.S. representatives and senators who are “on the take,” thanks to a jaw-dropping, annotated report from the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) in Washington.

What’s so beautiful about CREW is that they aren’t anti-porn, they’re anti-hypocrite. They were so fed up with Congressmen exploiting the Janet Jackson/FCC/morality spin, that they decided to hose them down with their own duplicity! 

Not only does CREW  detail how much money each congress member got from porn profit-makers— they also quote exactly what kind of hysterical anti-sex rhetoric these same hypocrites are spewing when they think no one is scrutinizing their bank account.

Some excerpts:

“Rep. Michael Oxley (R-OH) accepted $24,500 from corporations and executives who profit from pornography.  In 1998, Oxley said, 'there are literally thousands of sites devoted to every manner of perversion and brutality... unfortunately, the Web is awash in degrading smut.'  In addition, Rep. Oxley has made it a personal mission to ‘protect young people from the corrosive, debasing effects of the voluminous graphic adult content readily available on the World Wide Web.’

“Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) accepted $47,000 from corporations and executives who profit from pornography. Yet along with Rep. Cubin and 10 other Republican Congresswomen, Rep. Wilson signed a letter to Vice President Al Gore in 2000, calling on him to return contributions from an Internet adult entertainment trade association and a Chicago strip club owner. Rep. Wilson has also been a strong proponent of broadcast decency, including proposing that decency be considered as a factor in license renewals.

"In 2004, after the Janet Jackson breast-baring incident during the Superbowl half-time show, Rep. Wilson erupted at a Commerce subcommittee on indecency, targeting Viacom president Mel Karmazin. ‘You knew what you were doing!’ said Wilson, who was so angry that her voice cracked and her eyes filled with tears.

“Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) accepted $46,000 from corporations and executives who profit from pornography.  In 1998, when the Clinton administration was pushing to wire all the nation’s classrooms for the Internet, McCain introduced a bill to prohibit the government from granting subsidies to any school or library that didn’t screen the material on its computers, saying ‘[i]n order to get rid of the smut and the peddlers of smut, you have to energize communities.... We have to make them aware they’re on the Internet and they’re awful hard to get off the Internet.’  In addition, when Sen. McCain ran for President in 2000, he ran television ads touting his anti-pornography record."

Is Tom DeLay on the porno-trough list too? You betcha!  So are William Bennett, Joe Lieberman, and many more of your local favorites!

If you listen to my show, you’ll get to hear me rolling on the bed with laughter, and offering my own personal insights into this den of two-faced twerps.

Many people don’t realize who the largest porn-producing corporations are in the United States... it’s not Mom and Pop operations anymore.  Writer Eric Schlosser most famously revealed the corporate changing-of-the-guard in pornography empires several years ago in US News and World Report, with further investigation in his book, Reefer Madness, but remarkably, most Americans have no clue that it’s companies like Comcast, Marriott, General Motors, and AT&T who make the most money from porn.

Finally, in my Try This at Home mailbag, I get a letter from a long time Virginia Woolf fan who is now wondering about Woolf's sexual imagery. Don't forget, you can alwasy send me your confidential questions and feedback about the show to [email protected]

An individual In Bed show costs about $5 to listen to, but if you want a free one-month trial, no strings attached, come to this page and give it a whirl.