If only I were a smarter, better person, I would be spending my evening reading this impressive looking study on the urban poverty boom thats lurking on the horizon… As it is though, I think Ill just look at pictures of a man in England pushing different household objects though pieces of toast.
OK, last night I mentioned that The Ann Arbor Paper chose not to run my cartoon on circumcision. In the process of telling that story, I shared one panel from the cartoon in question. In that panel, I made mention of the fact that Id never really seen an uncircumcised cock. Little did I realize that by mentioning that fact Id be throwing open the floodgates to a veritable tidal wave of sheathed cock Polaroids and riveting firsthand reviews of smegma (the most misunderstood of the soft, creamy skin-grown cheeses).
….Well, as much as I’ve enjoyed all of this, Id like to ask that you all stop now.
So, please stop typing that list of all the uncircumcised dicks youve seen, sucked or otherwise had occasion to stumble across. Im moving on to other things now.
…Wait, before I go, heres a note from a schoolteacher in New York on the subject of my being censored.
i’m writing from school… you will be happy to know your comic was censored AGAIN – at my school, when I look at your website, yesterday’s post has a huge warning saying “Access Denied The requested document, http://www.markmaynard.com/blog.html, will not be shown. Reason: DDR score = 52. This page will not be displayed because it contains prohibited words or it has exceeded its tolerance of questionable words. ” congratulations on being censored by the NYC Dept of Ed. and on your DDR score of 52. Whatever that is.
Can someone tell me what a DDR score is, and whether or not my 52 is on a 100-point scale? And what is the tolerance of questionable words? Did I finally exceed my per-day cock quota? Was yesterdays post the straw that broke the camels cock-laden back?
Oh, one last thing on penises, before we move on, I saw a headline a few days ago in the news that read, Penis Explodes During Sex, and it made me wonder arent penises supposed to explode during sex? If not, Ive been doing something really wrong these past few years.
On that note, I will wish you all sweet dreams. Im going upstairs now to read the transcript of Kerry on Meet the Press and the highlights from Bob Woodwards appearance of 60 Minutes.
Heres a quick clip from that piece about Woodwards new book on how we came to be at war with Iraq:
In his book, Woodward describes Cheney as a “powerful, steamrolling force obsessed with Saddam and taking him out.”
“Colin Powell, the secretary of state, saw this in Cheney to such an extent, he, Powell, told colleagues that Cheney has a fever. It is an absolute fever. Its almost as if nothing else exists, says Woodward, who adds that Cheney had plenty of opportunities to convince the president.
As long as Im quoting stuff, heres something from an article in todays New York Times on the subject of blogging for bucks.
Henry Copeland, founder of BlogAds, a service that provides classified advertising for Web logs, is even more confident. He predicted that blogs that are making $5,000 a month will be making five or six times that a year from now. Soon, advertisers will be able to say “I want to buy ads on 25 different Web logs in Southern California written by women who drive humvees,” and have the perfect audience at their fingertips, he said.
So, what do you think the chances are that theres a mohel out there whos looking to tap into the midwestern Obsessive Compulsive market?
OK, Id like to keep writing, but I need to go upstairs now.
Goodnight, my invisible friends.
Linette and I drove to Chicago a few nights ago to pick up a load of used baby stuff from our friends Elizabeth and Flick. Their son, Ian, has already outgrown his bouncy seat, blanket with a built-in electronic heartbeat, and several pairs of tiny corduroys, and we werent about to let the opportunity pass us by… And, as luck would have it, there were two really cool things taking place that Saturday night in the Windy City – a symposium on everyones favorite band of abused children, the Shaggs and a showing of Jamie Meltzers film Off The Charts, followed by a panel discussion featuring Jamie and a number of people featured in the film, and live performances by a few song poets and some of the bands that admire their visionary work.
Our thought was that we could, in one weekend, whisk away a few hundred dollars of baby merchandise and, at the same time, fill up the next issue of Crimewave… We thought that we were pretty clever.
Thats not how things worked out though.
We got the baby booty, saw some friends, and ate a lot of food, but thats about all that we did. In spite of our interest in these other two events, we couldnt get motivated to leave the apartment of our friends Kurt and Patty.
Id like to blame it on the fact that Kurt had cut off the tip of his thumb, but, truth be told, that was all taken care of by 2:00 AM on Friday night. Sadly, it wasnt personal injury, but just plain laziness that kept us from going out.
Here we were, in Chicago, sitting just a few blocks from a party where 1) there are lots of cool, interesting people, and 2) several of these people actually know our magazine (we interviewed Jamie Meltzer for CW #15 and Im sure we had readers there), but I cant get my fat ass off the couch. Fortunately, I wasnt the only one. None of us wanted to go out. The excuse that we gave was that we wanted to stay in and watch the Chris Rock special on HBO. I didnt make it through the first fifteen minutes of it though. I was sitting on a couch, asleep, with a half a cookie in my hand before he dropped his 20th fuck.
Before someone mentioned the Chris Rock special, I was in fear that Id have to go out. When someone brought it up, it was like a life preserver. I clung to it Id never been a bigger fan of Chris Rock than I was that night.
I hate being 36. I feel old and tired And my guess is that things wont get any better when the baby comes.
It seems as though I crossed a line with my last comic for the Ann Arbor Paper, the one I submitted last night. I just got a note from Laura, the publisher, and she said that Id gone too far.
There were apparently too many mentions of cocks and drawings of foreskins. Laura was cool about it. She said that she liked it, but that it probably wouldnt sit well with their advertisers. A ghost boob, she said, was alright, but a dozen cocks was another thing altogether. (The ghost boob she was referring to was in an earlier comic of mine. Id shown John Ashcroft being afraid that he might see the boob of a ghost when he got to heaven. In that instance, Id shown the boob with a dotted line though. The dotted line makes things less shocking. (I wonder if I could get away with something really, really terrible next time by using a dotted line.))
Anyway, I liked the comic and I didnt think that it really pushed our local boundaries of decency. (Even Linette, who is generally the person who tells me when I get too close to the line, said that she liked it.) Im not angry about having it turned down though. Im not sure if any of you out there remember, but a few issues ago in Crimewave, Linette and I chose to censor a comic that was submitted by our friend Cristina. We hadnt found it offensive, but our printer told us that he couldnt, in good conscience, allow his people to see it. So, we decided to put black dots over the areas showing nipples and pubic hair. (It was a comic about a performance art that Cristina had seen.) So, we felt bad about it, but we didnt want to look for a new printer at the last minute, slow down production and piss off our advertisers. Im sure the folks at the Paper are in the same kind of a bind. Im sure theyd like to print it, but theyre a new entity and they cant afford to cause waves.
I should add that the comic isnt in the least bit salacious. It has to do with my thought process concerning whether or not I want to circumcise my son, if in fact this baby Linettes carrying turns out to be a boy.
I wont give it all away here, but this is the first panel.
So, Ill try to have something in the next issue of the Ann Arbor Paper, but there wont be anything this week. Sorry to all of you who look forward to it.
As for the censored comic, itll probably be in the next issue of Crimewave (unless it upsets our printer).
I hope the above drawing didnt shock any of you.
Oh, speaking of obscene, about a week or so ago Mr. Smallwood sent me notice of an art show opening in LA called Obscene Interiors: Hardcore Amateur D�or. The show is composed entirely of online male personal ad photos, from which the images of the nude men have been Photoshopped out, leaving only the environs of the shoot, whether it be someones oak paneled living room or bedroom filled with I Love Lucy collectibles. Its absolutely brilliant. I wish Id thought of it.
Heres a quote from designer Todd Oldham on the show: “My imagination is far more enlivened when looking at these photos than those of polished, finely tuned interiors. I would gladly take a tour of ‘Obscene Interiors’ any day, over a tour of the White House.”
