{look upon my works, ye mighty}

I'll be back in Boston by the 2nd of September and dude, Davis Square just hopped right to the top of my flist of places to go (apart from Harvard Square so that I can pick up my comics fix, of course). Why?

Well, because of this wank, wherein an idiot suggests opening a hair salon for men along the lines of hooters in a Davis Square comm and the members don't react happily. In the b0ston comm, where the guy posts again about the idea, people also think it's stupid and someone even sarcastically suggests Davis Square. XD

It even hits the b0ston snark comm, and the post on the Red Sox comm has killer tags.

*grinning like a wild thing* Best comment to the entire mess was this one, reproduced in full below:

It's a sorry state of affairs in this country when the lure of titties is necessary to get men to groom properly.

That said, I think Davis would likely be a nightmare choice of location for a business like this. It's the wrong crowd. Since you don't know the area, its only fair to tell you that heterosexuality is far from universal in this neighborhood. We have a very strong representation of gay, lesbian, bi, transgendered, polyamorous, pagan, geek and everything else that doesn't fall smack into the mainstream. Which is not to say there aren't heterosexual men here who like boobies. There are. But there are a lot of women who like 'em, too.

Honestly, I would skip all of Somerville, all of Cambridge, and probably most of Boston except Kenmore and the Fenway area. Someone said Nashua, and that's probably a good bet. You also might do well out in the Route 1 area, where there are a lot of sports bars and strip malls where what you're doing could work out well.

I spend enough time feeling rather dismayed to be American that it's fantastic when something happens that makes me gleeful to be a Bostonian. XDDDD

Now, most of you reading my journal know that I'm all for free press. Hell, I blog. That in itself is a form of expression that could be curtailed theoretically.

You probably also know that I'm against the Bush administration's decision to allow the flag-draped coffins of soldiers to be photographed, mostly because it seems ridiculous that those people would have died for their country and we can't even see that.

You've most likely also heard me talking bluntly about the lack of proper war coverage and how everything is being censored horredously, as opposed to in the past when the graphic images of the war-zones allowed people to see how awful war really is.

However, there is a huge difference between legitimate journalism and trading pictures of mutilated Iraqi corpses for porn.

Click the link if you want to read about how not only have American soldiers been exchanging incredibly horrific photos for amateur porn, in a trade-off that's soiling not only the whole idea of a free press but also the reputation of the American army. Like they aren't already been viewed as Geneva Convention-violators and torturers, we now have to deal with them being so completely disrespectful and jeering to the people they killed as to trade photos of them for porn?

Come on.

This is the army supposed to be 'liberating' Iraq, the strong arm of American 'diplomacy'.

Excuse me if I missed something, but how the hell is blowing someone's brains out, taking a photo, then profiting from the first two actions for the sake of free porn a diplomatic action? I can't see it as anything but barbaric.

Normally, I would be happy that these photos are up. I'd want to know where the American equivalents are though if it was only the Iraqi troops being shown killed, but I'd be glad that at least someone was showing what a gory debacle war is.

Note the normally, because all bets are off when a photo of a man lying in a mess of intestines and brains is being used as currency to get access to chats with underdressed females.

Such a fair trade, right?

So nice to know the family of the dead Iraqi is actually getting something to relieve the pain of having lost him - except they're not, since this is for the soldier's personal profit, and even if it wasn't, who would honestly, truly feel better about the death of the loved one knowing that photos of their corpse can get you free porn?

I'd go into a little bit about what this could say about the cultural link between violence and sex, but I'll save that for another day in favor of spotlighting another issue: the American press is ignoring this travesty.

The owner of the site was interviewed by European journals (you know, those people that live on that small, cultured continent and are in still shock that Bush got re-elected?) and is quoted in the article I linked to as saying "I've done interviews with the Italians, the French, Amsterdam. ... They were very critical, saying the US wouldn't pick it up, because it's such a sore spot. ... It raises too many ethical questions. ... I started to laugh, because it's true."

Someone enlighten me here: WHAT ethical questions could this possibly raise?

Soldiers killing people, fine.

That's what they're paid to do.

It sucks, I hate it, and I'm completely against the war in Iraq but ethically, it's accepted as standard behavior for soldiers.

Soldiers killing people and exploiting the dead bodies, (and thereby violating the first law of the Geneva Convention which states officiers need to "ensure that the dead are honorably interred, if possible according to the rites of the religion to which they belonged" so nice going there with making us look like barbarians again), is wrong on a whole different level.

You want people to see what the war is really like?

Stop flaming anyone that posts real, unedited photographs of the results.

Let the media distribute it publicly.

Have it on the newspapers, show it on the TV.

What you don't do is make people go to a porn site, where disgusting captions such as "What Every Iraqi should look like!" accompany the pictures, turning what should be a shaming experience into a poor display of nationalism and inhumanity.

If this made you think, pass it on. I got the link from nefthoron, and you too can either write about it, or just link people back here. The media won't do it? Fine. We'll just create such a firestorm that they'll have to pick up on it eventually because people need to know what's going on.