Rex Bikini's Blog

Linguistic Anomaly

2012-01-31T10:24:00.000-08:00

Only "adult" thing
not sexy-fun is "adult
contemporary."

"Adult" is always
sexy-fun, except before
"contemporary."

Love in Youth

2012-01-31T01:52:00.000-08:00

Easier to see
inner beauty when outer
form is not busted.

Inner beauty is
easy to adore before
face becomes busted.

Lemon Bar

2012-01-30T15:35:00.000-08:00

Zesty lemon bar:
How your rich, buttery crust
crumbles in my mouth.

Marcel

2012-01-30T11:51:00.000-08:00

Cool kids crust into
adult platitudes - now, lone
babel, no answers.

Cool kids crust into
adult platitudes - babel
to me, lost. No answers.

Reverence

2012-01-26T20:44:00.000-08:00

Everyone does it.
I refuse; no reason. Why
am I so awkward?

Fully Lined Pants

2011-11-14T01:51:00.000-08:00

Fully lined pants should
adhere less. Oddly, they make
crazy camel toe.

Critic

2011-10-31T22:25:00.000-07:00

Education killed
that old wonder of reading
mediocre books.

Leverage

2011-10-18T21:44:00.001-07:00

I could get fly, but
he'll always be flyer, since,
once, I adored him.

iPad

2011-09-25T22:21:00.000-07:00

Apple, smug bastards,
call my bluff, knowing I need
them more than they me.

September Remorse

2011-09-04T00:44:00.000-07:00

My world is darker
than when I had you. Summer
finished our vengeance.

Apotheosis of Lil Jon

2011-09-01T01:47:00.000-07:00

Apotheosis
of Lil Jon was "Shots" - renamed
"Drink" - flawless again.

Reflections upon the Waterslide Park

2011-08-13T23:13:00.000-07:00

Skin does not flatter
most folks. Better to hide one's
fat, hair, pus, rash, junk.

The Remains of the Day

2011-08-05T22:10:00.000-07:00

Lord Darlington wasn't a bad man. He wasn't a bad man at all. And at least he had the privilege of being able to say at the end of his life that he made his own mistakes. His lordship was a courageous man. He chose a certain path in life, it proved to be a misguided one, but there, he chose it, he can say that at least. As for myself, I cannot even claim that. You see, I trusted. I trusted in his lordship's wisdom. All those years I served him, I trusted I was doing something worthwhile. I can't even say I made my own mistakes. Really - one has to ask oneself - what dignity is there in that?

...

As I watch them now, they are laughing together merrily. It is curious how people can build such warmth among themselves so swiftly. It is possible these particular persons are simply united by the anticipation of the evening ahead. But, then, I rather fancy it has more to do with this skill of bantering. Listening to them now, I can hear them exchanging one bantering remark after another. It is, I would suppose, the way many people like to proceed. In fact, it is possible my bench companion of a while ago expected me to banter with him - in which case, I suppose I was something of a sorry disappointment. Perhaps it is indeed time I began to look at this whole matter of bantering more enthusiastically. After all, when one thinks about it, it is not such a foolish thing to indulge in - particularly if it is the case that in bantering lies the key to human warmth.

It occurs to me, furthermore, that bantering is hardly an unreasonable duty for an employer to expect a professional to perform. I have of course already devoted much time to developing my bantering skills, but it is possible I have never previously approached the task with the commitment I might have done. Perhaps, then, when I return to Darlington Hall tomorrow - Mr Farraday will not himself be back for a further week - I will begin practising with renewed effort. I should hope, then, that by the time of my employer's return, I shall be in a position to pleasantly surprise him

Ant

2011-07-22T00:05:00.000-07:00

Ant staggering with
hopeless load wins my respect.
I do not kill her.

J-Curve

2011-07-17T01:21:00.000-07:00

Bad, worse, better: theme
of life is J-curve - perhaps
because I'm "Jenny"?

Ventriloquism

2011-07-17T01:14:00.001-07:00

Talk through doll, lips sealed:
How'd we decide, "That's what I'd
like to do or see"?

There Is No Escape

2011-07-11T22:10:00.000-07:00

What is best in life?
To avoid getting noticed
by government swine.

Bureaucratic Fines

2011-07-11T22:01:00.000-07:00

Bureaucratic fines!
Draw blood from stone, just enough
to dodge civil suit.

Two Neo-Nazis

2011-07-09T03:45:00.000-07:00

Perfect satanic
couple. Yet I envy how
they found each other.

Neutered Dog

2011-07-07T22:27:00.000-07:00

Can't stop sniffing bush.
Confused old man, never grasped
this phantom longing.

I Am Deaf Donald

2011-07-05T21:05:00.000-07:00

He wants more. Lamed by
cowardice, I offer mere
incoherent love.

Aphrodite, Exquisite Comedienne

2011-07-02T04:04:00.000-07:00

Dread goddess of love:
We, your slain, know not why we
adore random schmoe.

I had a lovely dream last night

2011-06-27T00:25:00.001-07:00

... that my dead friend came by to see me. There was some kind of ceremony in the background; I think it was my cousin's wedding, but when I retell the story it will be Gianni's own funeral. I asked him to stay. He said he could stay with me until the ceremony was over. We sat on a blanket on the grass and watched - it was like the Hollywood Bowl then - and he put his head on my shoulder until it grew dark.

Yesterday was Gianni's memorial service. I couldn't go. I like to think Gianni wanted me to know that I could take as long as I needed to let him go.

A Strange Thing Happened to You

2011-06-22T17:51:00.000-07:00

Remote in death, you
become platitudes. Perfect -
not the friend I miss.

To Gianni

2011-06-21T22:19:00.000-07:00

I'm in anguish that you're dead. It's almost physical. I always knew, from the moment I read Laura's email, that it was the guilt that would destroy me, and yet knowing that never made it any easier. I still want you back like you were my best friend in the world. You and I have unfinished business. I should have had dinner with you that day you wanted Mongolian beef, and I said I was vegetarian, and that I was having dinner with another friend. I should have invited you to come too. I should have invited you to have dim sum at my graduation party, because I knew how much you loved dim sum. I should have told you I was graduating. I should have said good bye.

I should have been sad that you were unhappy, instead of feeling smug that you needed me more than I needed you.

At first it gave me comfort to see how much your friends loved you and missed you, because they reminded me of what it was like not too long ago, when you were still alive. But then slowly something strange happened. The memories became more remote, more perfect. You became a sublimation. You were flawless, kind and generous and joyful. It's true those were your best qualities, but you were so much more. You were also childish and cowardly and at times a little dumb. You were a real person, just like I am now, still living.

THAT is the person I miss, my friend, the one who kills me by having gone away. The more I read these sublimations, the more palpable it is to me that you are truly dead. It's unbearable. I'd rather pretend like none of this happened, that the goofy coward were still there if I were hungry and wanted a late-night snack. I should have said yes to your late-night taco truck.

Ceremony

2011-06-15T21:05:00.000-07:00

I was there. May 28, 2011 at Gilman.

Eggshell Vanity

2011-06-01T16:52:00.000-07:00

Beautiful Tesla.
How it would intoxicate
to wreck with mere key.

You Watered My Wings

2011-06-01T00:35:00.000-07:00

You watered my wings, and cooled my anxiety,
baked in the carcass of my old teenage lust.
Your lithe back is my Socratic satiety.

I won't impose on your mind, for defeat has so blighted me.
I refuse to besmear you with my heart's scabby crust.
You watered my wings and cooled my anxiety,

and for one perfect moment, I lingered delightedly;
I watched your lips as you carelessly cursed.
Your lithe back is my Socratic satiety.

I could have kissed you, in grateful piety,
but I held back, fearing to leave you nonplussed.
You watered my wings and cooled my anxiety

but I knew you'd not grasp, until my harsh moiety
became yours, and degraded, you committed to dust
that lithe image, once my Socratic satiety -

Only then would you know why I choose anonymity,
nor pester you with my reanimated lust.
You watered my wings and cooled my anxiety.
Your lithe back was my Socratic satiety.

Note to Future Self

2011-05-28T16:57:00.000-07:00

I got a giant check from my firm yesterday for no reason, other than they believe I'll contribute value in the future. It's quite astounding when you think about it, and I owe a great debt to the superhuman negotiating skills of the lawyers who came before me, straight out of law school and making ridiculous demands.

Perhaps the lesson from this is should act like an even bigger asshole whenever I can get away with it. I was reading some old blog posts where I was contemplating that I need to put my foot down more often so that I don't eat shit all the time. And my recent service on the KZSU board proved to me that most people are terrible leaders or managers, because they're too worried about being confused themselves that they don't put any thought into communicating a comprehensible message. I was basically the only person who could relate to the new student manager (the board told him to make a choice; he made a choice; the board wanted to veto it and then suggest the exact opposite choice) who was struggling under the direction of a disaggregated board that was punting all it's inability to find consensus onto him. In short, I was the only one who remembered what it's like to be ordered around, irrationally and with no opportunity to negotiate.

On the other hand, my view now is that in the grand scheme of things, nothing I have to offer now is really worth the compensation I'm getting. People are taking a leap of faith on me. So to that end, I should stop and think whenever I feel like complaining that my work is too boring, or my clients are too trivial, that the conversations I have to have are too insipid, or that people are trying to control me because I'm too pretty.

I should ask myself: is this a reaction a spoiled asshole would have? And if the answer is yes, I should cut it out.

The Beige Asian Bayesian

2011-05-25T09:40:00.000-07:00

Margaret Cho must know Bayesian
statistics, because she jokes Asian
requires updates on age
from a priori of beige,
which looks younger - an inference that's "beige-ian."

Beach Shoes

2011-05-24T18:39:00.000-07:00

If you wear beach shoes
with suits or formal wear, I'll
assume you're pregnant.

Upon Refusing My Rite of Passage

2011-05-23T22:18:00.000-07:00

Outsider: I choose
to be. I cannot hope folks
have character, depth.

I think, not all folks
can lack integrity. But
then I fear to hope.

Cardigan Sweater.

2011-05-19T16:00:00.000-07:00

Cardigan sweater:
warm, but not monolithic.
Friendly, versatile.

Cardigan sweater:
friendly, not monolithic,
unlike pullover.

Nepotism

2011-05-17T14:53:00.000-07:00

I pledged $500 toward the class gift. Not because I'm so grateful law school has raped my wallet for the last three years. I did it purely out of the corrupt calculation that I might someday have kids who will want to go to Stanford or SLS, but because I raised them to be deadbeat no-accounts, wouldn't be able to get in on their own merits. And so I sowed the seeds for some good old-fashioned future nepotism.

This does not bode well for me. I'm officially on my way to becoming Shitty Mommy: already planning on spawning shifty kids, already planning on buying my way out of the consequences.

Excel

2011-05-17T04:06:00.000-07:00

I hate Excel! Who
decided life needs mathy,
Byzantine spreadsheets?

I hate Excel! If
we need Byzantine spreadsheets,
we shouldn't do it.

Sean Penn

2011-05-09T15:52:00.000-07:00

Madonna, Robin,
Sarandon, Portman, Scarlett:
What is Sean Penn's charm?

Circle Pitters

2011-05-09T02:49:00.000-07:00

Selfish circle pit:
externalize harms, but take
no personal risk.

Quote of the Night

2011-05-07T02:54:00.003-07:00

"Let me hear all you beautiful ladies in here!"
"Woooo!"
"You: shut up."

Humpty Hump

2011-05-07T02:48:00.000-07:00

Do me baby! Do
the Humpty Hump. Come on and
do the Humpty Hump.

Whom Do Hipster-Haters Hate?

2011-05-03T22:15:00.000-07:00

Hipster haters: you,
too, lost irony license,
used humorlessly.

Eleven Years Ago Today

2011-04-30T20:53:00.000-07:00

Eleven years ago today I was at my Admit Weekend and the best party of my life. There was a live band that played GNR's "Patience," and I danced to it with a shirtless wrestling team, and back then I was so impressed with their muscles that I didn't care how short they were, and at the end of the night there was spontaneous nekkid-ass-naked streaking out into the streets (by everyone but me and the shirtless wrestling team). It was glorious. I thought, Stanford is the coolest place in the world!

...and thus began my great duping.

The eleven years since then were in some ways be a fruitless attempt to rediscover such a night. I would have thought, given how angry I am now, that I would begrudge my 18-year-old self that innocence that made it possible to be so enthralled with a good time. I was surprised to realize I don't. It warms me to have that happy memory, and to know there was a time when I could experience perfect joy. I know I couldn't have that now, but it has everything to do with how I have changed inside, and nothing to do with how the world has changed. That too makes me happy, because it makes me think of how much wealthier I am now in experience, though at a dear cost. I couldn't know the kinds of magnitude of beauty and intelligence and integrity and truth that I know now, because back then I hadn't experienced disappointment and hatred and pain.

And so I cosy up to the old memories of a bygone happy self, while I spend my day hacking up a phlegm-addled lung, watching Capital Market lectures on video to make up for my delinquent mediocrity, and printing, organizing, tabbing my hundreds of pages of reading, most of which consist of meaningless SEC filings.

Postscript: Then I went to Walmart and tried to buy some industrial-strength shoe glue. The cashier wouldn't let me because I had left my ID in my car, and he wasn't convinced that I wasn't a glue-huffing teenager. Ha! How little I've progressed, and yet how far I've fallen.

Nasal Drip

2011-04-29T12:53:00.000-07:00

Can't sleep, can't breathe! Throat
is all choked up, because of
phlegmy nasal drip.

Freak

2011-04-29T00:32:00.000-07:00

Kind, interesting
handsome man: sure malfunction,
or miracle freak?

Kind, interesting
handsome man: miracle, or
beware malfunction?

Giant Neck

2011-04-26T02:14:00.000-07:00

Me and my giant
neck! Thyroid, lymph nodes, throat: my
grief, pain, pestilence.

Chunky Heels

2011-04-25T23:34:00.000-07:00

Sick of stilettos!
Designers, bring back chunk heels -
cute, yet sensible.

Angsty

2011-04-25T02:12:00.000-07:00

Strange or natural
to be angstier adult
than I was a teen?

Americanism

2011-04-25T02:06:00.000-07:00

My American
independence makes me mean,
miserly outcast.

Comfort Food

2011-04-20T02:36:00.000-07:00

Impotent, I watch
you leave; then eat comfort food,
with slain, voided heart.

Po Po

2011-04-16T14:37:00.000-07:00

Ticket me for cash,
do naught when I'm assaulted.
Fascist fucking pigs.

My Thyroid

2011-04-14T13:50:00.000-07:00

My thyroid is bad-
ass: functions normally, but
is bigger than yours.

Peep-Toe Shoes

2011-04-14T00:45:00.000-07:00

Peep-toe shoes are dumb.
Toe cleavage ain't worth it, stuffed
in ill-fitting hole.

Plussed

2011-04-14T00:30:00.001-07:00

If the word nonplussed
means confused, then plussed must mean
having clarity.

Adulthood

2011-04-13T02:52:00.000-07:00

Adulthood: all seek
to sell you something, strip-mine
you, or defeat you.

All seek to sell you
something; mine you for gain; or
defeat you for fun.

Ambiguities in Form

2011-04-11T14:21:00.000-07:00

Limitations of
otherwise mighty haiku:
long vowels, diphthongs.

Marinade

2011-04-11T14:04:00.000-07:00

Kal-bi marinade
is tastiest marinade,
even on tofu.

Telos

2011-04-11T01:20:00.001-07:00

Never powerful,
yet I fear youth's passing; this
husk's feeble defense.

Embrace what I must
become, without pretense? Blind,
brittle, babbling end.

Or resist? Stockpile
armory, untrue to me
now, in bravado.

Killer Essay on Rebecca Black's "Friday"

2011-04-05T18:28:00.000-07:00

SO. GOOD.

Arms So Freezy: Rebecca Black's "Friday" as Radical Text
Dana Vachon

Rebecca Black wakes somewhat too perfectly in the early scenes of her viral video, "Friday." Her eyes open exactly as the clock beside her bed flashes seven. She wears full make-up. Rare for a teen, she isn’t tired, longs not for any receding dreams.

Her cultural debt is less to Molly Ringwald in Sixteen Candles than Evie Vicki the robot girl from Small Wonder, we realize, as in a voice controlled by Auto-Tune she enumerates the banalities of an anti-existence: “Gotta be fresh, gotta go downstairs, gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereal… gotta get down to the bus stop.”

She offers the camera a hostage's smile, forced, false. Her smoky eyes suggest chaos witnessed: tear gas, rock missiles and gasoline flames. They paint her as a refugee of a teen culture whose capacity for real subversion was bludgeoned away somewhere between the atrocities of Kent State and those of the 1968 Democratic Convention, the start of a creeping zombification that would see youthful dissent packaged and sold alongside Pez and Doritos.

“Look and listen deeply,” she challenges. An onanistic recursion, at once Siren and Cassandra, she heralds a new chapter in the Homeric tradition. With a slight grin, she calls out to us: “I sing of the death of the individual, the dire plight of free will and the awful barricades daily built inside the minds of all who endure what lately passes for American life. And here I shall tell you of what I have done in order to feel alive again.”

***

Ms. Black first appears as her own computer-generated outline: wobbly, marginal, a dislocated erasure. The days of the week flip by accompanied by dull obligations—“essay due”—and tired clichés—“Just another manic Monday…” Her non-being threatens to be consumed by this virtual litany of nothing at all until, at long last—Friday.

She moves from a home made vexing by obligations to the bus stop and there, in the public sphere, appears to find freedom from authoritarian programming in the form of a Mercedes convertible filled with high-status peers.

They stop and invite her to join them, a moment evoking Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night but with a postmodern twist suggestive of a post-historical amnesia: On this "Friday," it is no longer French leisure but German engineering that promises delivery from the snares of family and self-image.

“Gotta make my mind up,” she sings, overjoyed to finally exert some control over her fate; “Which seat can I take?”

Yet here the discerning viewer notes that something is wrong. Because it is a simple matter of fact that in this car all the good seats have already been taken. For Rebecca Black (her name here would seem to evoke Rosa Parks, a mirroring that will only gain in significance) there is no actual choice, only the illusion of choice.

The viewer knows that she’ll take the only seat that’s offered to her, a position so very undesirable as to be known by a derisive—the “Bitch" seat.

She might well have been better off on the school bus, among the have-nots. But Rebecca Black's world is so advanced in the craft of evisceration that this was never a consideration. John Hughes died while out jogging, these are the progeny of his great materialist teen-villain, James Spader, a name that would come to be synonymous with desperate sex and high-speed collision. And as she gets in the car Ms. Black’s joy is as patently empty as her liberation.

“Partying, Partying,” she sings, in hollow mantra.

“Yeah!” an unseen mass replies, a Pavlovian affirmation.

For Time—in its relativity, brutality and absurdity— is one of "Friday"'s great targets. In an instant day passes to night, and the realism of the bus stop gives way to a surreal blue-screen panorama of a full moon and false city running on loop as Ms. Black rides in the convertible, apparent-heiress to the grand American tradition of high school cruising, that curious space birthed by Cold War highways (themselves relics of our atomic fears) in which teenagers first experienced themselves as such.

Only Rebecca Black is not cruising. She is manifestly standing still, with not even a wind machine to help sell the con. This, the viewer cringingly notes, is not freedom but freedom’s cheap simulation, not the speeding liberty of earlier generations but a gross, benumbed mockery of it—the individual has collapsed, and language with him.

“The crying tires, the busting glass, the painful scream that I heard last…” sang J. Wilson and the Cavaliers, when pop still admitted technology's collusion with death. But that time is gone. For Rebecca Black there is only graphic effect, materialist schizobabble, “I got this, You got this…” she sings over and again, citizen as gaping appetite, grammarless and hungry.

***

And then arrives at a house party, a place absent of authority, the aim of Friday night.

“Partying, Partying,’” she sings again, now in detached self-narration.

“Yeah!” reply her friends, and then the sequence is repeated to evoke the grand progenitor of all American music, the call and response of a Negro spiritual, harkening back to our nation's great unhealing wound, slavery itself.

Are these not slaves of a kind? Are they not trapped here? Is consumerism not just another form of forced labor? In an age of harvested data and biological determinism there is no will and so no freedom of it—only constant manipulation of the pleasure principle, the bleary throbbing of overtaxed dopamine centers.

Three girls march single-file into the house, eager for introductory lessons to chemical abuse, sexual politics, personal branding—the sickly trinity of numbness that will see them through whatever non-lives the data banks ladle out to them.

We return to the computer graphic calendar sequence, the litany of days: Ms. Black’s image flickers across the screen, now doubled, fractured, schizophrenic, threatening Kleboldian frenzy—as we cut to an African-American man in his early thirties.

He wears diamond earrings, a light beard, drives across the familiar blue-screen cityscape. He alone seems untaken by the false images around him. Is it because he can’t forget American brutality? Does ancient bondage keep him from modern numbness? Is he protected from pharma and plasma by fire hoses and cotton fields?

In broadest terms, the answer is yes: Ms. Black’s parents have paid this rapper to appear in the video as a conduit to ghetto rawness, hired blackness, an invigorating hit of the Other. He is a peddler of “the real” in a false-era of commoditized suffering.

But who is he within the text?

“Yeah, Yeah, R. B., Rebecca Black,” he raps. “So chilling in the front side, In the back seat, I’m driving, cruising… Passing by is a school bus, in front of me...” he continues, though by now the core questions have been raised.

How does he know the name of a girl so many years his junior? And why, after speaking her name, does he talk not of the front seat, but the front side, known slang for female genitalia? Why, after referencing this, does he so pointedly, grinningly, look to his own groin?

Does he note the school bus because he knows it to be Rebecca’s primary mode of transportation? Is it possible that he is now pursuing her, "driving, cruising” to the very party that she is at? Is there any other plausible explanation?

But why would he be headed there?

Here we may profitably consider two of rap’s classic male types.

He may be a “hustler”, a drug-dealer archetype, a man raised in the projects amid roaches and rags, smokers out back, selling their mother’s sofas, look-outs on the corner. As such he would be headed to the Rebecca’s party to sell her and her friends assorted narcotics.

But such a view is cynical, perhaps racist, certainly lazy. Consider his genital self-referencing, his otherwise inexplicable interest in Ms. Black, whose apparent lack of drug-involvement further discredits the hustler scenario.

He is far more likely a “player” or “pimp," rap’s Lothario archetype, a man whose interest in loving then leaving women is grounded in 1) “Cheese” and 2) The assertion, less misogynistic than anti-Abrahamic, that he doesn’t need them.

Perhaps this explains the outsized revulsion/fascination engendered by "Friday," which we may now understand as a double-backed retelling of Lolita and Othello: The man before us is clearly speeding towards a illicit sexual assignation with our underage heroine.

***

The beating heart of "Friday" is indeed this hip hop Humbert Humbert with whom Ms. Black has joined in a meta-taboo of race, class and sex.

What we are seeing here is no mere rap interlude but a sly reference to the endless driving scenes in Kubrick’s adaptation of Nabokov's work, a crypto sex scene from which we return to the suburban house party.

Where Ms. Black stands no longer among but above her peers, clearly celebrated for refusing the carnal diktats of a society which claims to revere sex and youth and the individual but which, by packaging these ineffables as items of disposable convenience, renders all to nothing.

She has followed the sexual urge across every boundary to recover a clear and choosing self, and in her freedom all may find hope.

A phallic tree trunk behind her marks the completion of the anarcho-sexual odyssey, cock as axis mundi, Moses as Lolita. Then, to further highlight the doneness of the deed, she’s suddenly in a red-lit room, a private space, sustaining a single note at once suggestive of childish tantrums, orgasmic ecstasy and Taliban ululation.

At last she is free from Auto-Tune. Deprogrammed, as it were.

We cut to our pimp, her lover, driving with one hand on the wheel, the other waving in R. Kelly-esque bravado, as he races fast back into the undifferentiated Other. The city is no longer visible out his windows. It has been replaced by streaming, colored lights that serve to unify him with the now-aptly named Ms. Black—together, they have obliterated the false landscape.

People are scandalized, as they ought to be.

The apparent frivolity of "Friday" is only its most cunning aspect, a bubble-gum Trojan horse containing a radical text throwing itself against the gears of a death-bound society. And in Ms. Black’s voice we hear the full cry of a revolutionary age, Benghazi echoing across Orange County, the ancient wail of all who have ever wanted more.

Pharrell

2011-04-05T16:35:00.000-07:00

Who can figure out
Pharrell? Teen-faced thirty-eight
and not part Asian.

How to Stop Prostitution

2011-03-29T02:18:00.000-07:00

Stop criminalizing the victims.

The policy behind the prohibition of prostitution is to stop the exploitation of women. Sometimes people argue - correctly, I think - that prostitution exploits and harms all women, even those who are not prostitutes. But it seems like people often buy the theory that we should be concerned about the prostitutes themselves. The argument goes that particular women - the poor, the uneducated, and the minorities - are particularly vulnerable to sexual exploitation because they have few other options for survival. In order to protect these women from taking this "easy out," we as a society outlaw prostitution.

If this argument is followed to its logical conclusion, it makes no sense to make criminals of those women who succumb to the very harms that the law wants to protect them from. The prostitutes are the victims. Punishing them would be like punishing slaves, on the theory that forced labor is illegal.

I had this revelation when a friend told me that teen sexting is a felony: child pornography. That is, a teenager who takes salacious photos of herself on her cell phone can face up to 2 years in prison. When I heard about this, it occurred to me that something was wrong. True, the teen was the one holding the camera and committing the act we want to discourage; but it was also true that the whole point of having that law was to protect that teen. While the prohibition made sense, I thought there should have been a better way to sanction that activity, other than jail time.

Another analogy might be certain parts of immigration policy. For example, the T visa pardons those illegal immigrants who enter the US as a result of trafficking, and the U visa pardons those illegal immigrants who were the victims of serious crimes. The purpose of these laws is not to establish that sometimes, it's okay to enter the country illegally. Neither visa really addresses the immigrant's wrongful acts, and to be fair, it seems like in a lot of cases the immigrant is partially responsible for his or her own exploitation. Instead, these visas address a completely different policy goal, which is to stop activities that hurt people. Lawmakers determined that this policy is best served by encouraging the victims to come forward and cooperate with the police. The victims are given visas so that they can do this better, and not because they somehow "deserve" to be in the country because of their sufferings. The thorny issue that their immigration was in all other respects illegal is tabled in service of a goal separate from immigration policy per se.

This area of the law strikes me as being particularly enlightened and instructive. In an ideal world, surely there wouldn't be illegal immigrants any more than there would be trafficking or crimes. But ours is not an ideal world, and we can recognize that the existence of an undesirable act does not mean that we need to criminalize every one involved in it. Some people should be held accountable, and others should not.

The same holds true for prostitution. By subjecting the victims of the undesirable act to criminal liability, we discourage them from coming forward and reporting their exploiters. Pimps and johns are able to intimidate them into silence because these women are, in the eyes of the law, guilty. Instead of equating the victims with their exploiters, we should do for prostitution what we did in the T and U visas, and give the victims an incentive (or at least take away a disincentive) to further law enforcement efforts. We should attach criminal liability only to pimps and johns - those participating in the exploitation that the law means to prohibit.

Freeing the prostitutes from such liability would not only encourage prostitutes to report their victimization; it would also discourage johns from initiating the activity in the first place. Even if there were a prostitute who was perfectly capable and willing to sell her body in the ideal capitalist market of autonomous buyers and sellers, the john would have reason to rethink the transaction if he alone were to face adverse consequences. He would no longer be able to hide behind the prostitute's mutual guilt. This outcome would advance the other half of anti-prostitution policy: to halt the exploitation of all women through the commodification of the body. Thus, even if we were in a world where we could argue that prostitutes are not victims of their socio-economic disadvantages, and thus not in need of protection or undeserved pardon, we can still effectively stop an activity that society has deemed harmful.

To Dave K, with Gratitude for Setting Me Straight

2011-03-27T00:13:00.000-07:00

Then I remember
why I left them in my past:
bullets wisely dodged.

Things Must Change

2011-03-26T00:14:00.001-07:00

Things must change. If not,
your younger, happier self
mocks unbearably.

I Learned So Little

2011-03-17T23:38:00.001-07:00

Nostalgia series
didn't quite work out because
I learned so little.

Science Fair Project

2011-03-17T21:54:00.000-07:00

Baking soda plus
red vinegar. Volcano
in paper mache.

Just Say No

2011-03-17T17:43:00.000-07:00

Just say no to drugs.
If they were your real friends,
they'd still think you're cool.

Algebra

2011-03-17T17:36:00.000-07:00

"When will we ever
use algebra?" we'd complain.
Picked our battles well.

California Public Education (Circa 1995)

2011-03-17T03:03:00.000-07:00

Denzel Washington's
claim to fame in "science" books:
symmetrical face.

Pi

2011-03-14T19:39:00.000-07:00

Man's antithesis:
infinite, without order,
perfect, and cream-filled.

The Game

2011-03-14T01:02:00.000-07:00

"Game" should expand pie:
make utils for both lovers,
not zero-sum prize.

Haiku

2011-03-11T21:39:00.000-08:00

The vicissitudes of life. 
Sad, to become finally 
A bamboo shoot.

- Basho

Scratched Vinyl

2011-03-11T00:14:00.000-08:00

Like scratched, wrecked vinyl,
soul worn with needled groove of
once-comforting songs.

Low Expectations

2011-03-10T19:18:00.000-08:00

Expect the worst: get
the worst. Prince slipped through the cracks.
My cynical fault.

To M.

2011-03-09T22:01:00.001-08:00

He was right to leave.
I'm doomed to unhappiness,
being dead inside.

Charlie Sheen is Not Filial

2011-03-08T21:14:00.000-08:00

If this op-ed is not a parody, I will know that there is joy and goodness and harmony and love in this cold world. Only a true God could deliver a gift this beautiful.

http://beijing.globaltimes.cn/two-cents/opinion/2011-03/630731.html

By Hao Leifeng

Actor Charlie Sheen is a classic example of the difference in Western and Eastern values and norms.

Ignoring public pleas from his father, Sheen has continued a weeklong media blitz, exhibiting obvious signs of mania. With no firm hand to guide them, Western media has deliberately goaded him into making increasingly delusional statements, more concerned about "winning" higher ratings than Sheen's own sense of pride, or the negative example his brash public admissions about his private sex life and unverifiable international conspiracies could be setting for society.

How many young people have been led astray by Sheen's boasts about his substance abuse and freewheeling sex life? And that was when he was in character on national television, as a randy bachelor in Two and a Half Men.

Sheen attracted 1 million Twitter followers in just 24 hours, yet more evidence that microblogs spread the most unhealthy contagions in society like a disease. Chinese family, coworkers, or the authorities would have taken firm steps to make sure someone like Sheen did not make a public spectacle of himself.

Take Edison Chen, who humbly apologized and slipped away to Canada. Or Li Gang's father, who wept as he sought forgiveness on his son's behalf.

The fact that Sheen continues to embarrass himself unabated, becoming even a hero to many, points to the vast differences in cultures.

His employers are unhappy that he was distracted with prostitutes and drugs, and didn't show up to work on time. Why not take a tip from the Chinese business community, and make visits to a KTV parlor part of Sheen's workday?

And instead of epic parties at his home with porn stars, why not keep Sheen occupied with business banquets?

Sheen goes on television and boasts that he has two girlfriends, who both sleep in the same bedroom. Is he too poor to set up his wives and mistresses in different houses?

In Chinese society, these problems are dealt with delicately and privately. Sheen is like a typical Westerner throwing fuel on the fire with each interview and tweet. It is almost as if he feels no shame and is loving the attention.

Racism, spousal abuse, addiction, politics, mental illness, boasting about mistresses, - these are all subjects best dealt with behind closed doors.

As much as Sheen has lived a life most Chinese men can only fantasize about, our admiration of him can only go so far. He has not only lost face with his public rants, but also crossed a cultural barrier no Chinese can abide.

He ignored his own father's advice to keep quiet, who was once the president of the US. Sheen is a disgrace, unfilial to his father and his fatherland.

Martin Sheen should at once go on television and tearfully apologize on behalf of his son for his inability to keep up appearances and keep his mouth shut.

Venus de Milo

2011-03-07T23:39:00.000-08:00

Funny aesthetic
Romans had: perfect beauty
was armless woman.

Venus

2011-03-07T19:50:00.000-08:00

Sexy butterball,
camel toe, no face - hot damn!
Willendorf Venus.

Sexy butterball,
camel toe, no face - wet dream!
Willendorf Venus.

Science Joke

2011-03-07T11:50:00.000-08:00

In grade school we learned
about Homo erectus.
Hee hee hee! Good one.

Extinction

2011-03-06T18:27:00.000-08:00

Did she die relieved,
last Neanderthal, cornered
by Cro-Magnon hate?

My Dream Guy

2011-03-01T23:57:00.000-08:00

Former heart-throb, now
fat: my dream guy. For clearly
he don't give a fuck.

Edifice

2011-02-28T22:40:00.000-08:00

After building home -
labored edifice - I, trapped,
yearn to move elsewhere.

Old People Suck

2011-02-24T21:29:00.000-08:00

Incumbents in good
jobs. Send back soup. Self-finance
with long-term G-bonds.

The Average Human Life Span Used to Be Forty

2011-02-24T21:26:00.000-08:00

How they terrorize
young folks, as if they knew: they,
old, were obsolete.

I Love Sarah Jane

2011-02-21T23:53:00.001-08:00

Holy shit! It's violent, poignant, and very sweet.

Nightmare

2011-02-21T19:12:00.002-08:00

I had a horrific dream last night that I was decapitated. I was frantically trying to bandage my head back on, walking around and clutching my spewing neck. Then I fell into a bathtub, thrashing in a pool of my own blood. I couldn't get my head back on.

It didn't feel like a dream.

Miscommunication

2011-02-21T02:36:00.000-08:00

Whenever I pray
for peace, I fear God might hear
a request for death.

Fellini

2011-02-21T01:38:00.000-08:00

I will never find
Trevi nymphs - life from dream. I
must build the sculptures.

I'm drawn to this scene because it gives form to the hope that somewhere, in some time, we might finally find that thing we yearn for and search for: the sweet life. Here, Silvia and the Trevi Fountain are the sweet life. We don't recognize it as such when we see it, and we don't know what to do with it when it comes to us; and when we reach out to touch it, it turns to stone beneath our fingertips. But Fellini gives us a constructed facsimile of the sweet life so that I can believe it exists. I suspect that if I ever find it on my own, it will only be because I built it myself, like Fellini did.

Lit Candle

2011-02-17T01:50:00.000-08:00

Wax from lit candle
melted and cooled into shape
of drooping scrotum.

Tautology

2011-02-16T22:59:00.000-08:00

"It is what it is."
Empty phrase! Tautology,
dumb yet pretentious.

Palm Itches

2011-02-16T20:50:00.000-08:00

Palm itches to rip
out spine when I hear boast: "I
work hard and play hard."

Palm itches to slap
a ho when I hear the boast:
"I work hard, play hard."

Palms itch to smack self-
entitled brats who boast, "I
work hard and play hard."

Dollar-Fine

2011-02-09T00:50:00.000-08:00

When you say I'm fine
instead of calling me dime
call me Hamilton.

Credit Cards

2011-02-08T03:08:00.000-08:00

Cash is the Asian
way. Credit cards fill me with
bureaucratic rage.

Cash is the Asian
way. For credit cards are hell
and fill me with rage.

Sriracha

2011-01-28T00:01:00.000-08:00

I love Sriracha
like moonlit nights; or daybreak
warmed with rooster's crow.

Alien Desire

2011-01-24T16:25:00.000-08:00

Tall, hunky Asian -
muscled, aviatored - I
thought I knew better.

I Reboot

2011-01-19T20:53:00.001-08:00

Utter failure is
liberating. Nothing left
to lose. Risk. Reboot.

Student

2011-01-13T14:38:00.000-08:00

While I wait for you
to fall in love with me, I
might as well learn law.

Marionette

2011-01-13T01:20:00.000-08:00

I'll wait for you til
my bones parch with longing, til
you could not want me.

I Have Another

2011-01-12T01:53:00.000-08:00

I have another,
handsomer than you, but not
as devastating.

A Drinking Song

2011-01-12T00:54:00.000-08:00

WINE comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That’s all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.

- WB Yeats

Neologism

2011-01-04T13:47:00.000-08:00

We need new words for
"douchebag." It's been colonized
by the enemy.

Sassy Moms

2011-01-01T04:20:00.000-08:00

Sassy moms, with age,
morph into Larry David,
though not as feckless.

Bunion

2010-12-27T12:51:00.001-08:00

"Wear sensible shoes."
So says my bunion. Insult
upon injury.