But that's not what I want to think about. What I want to consider instead is this scene from Shoot 'Em Up:

Yes, yes! It's amazing! The amazing thing about it, however, is not that Clive Owen can fuck Monica Bellucci while killing a unit of assassins but that he can maintain his erection during a very stressful situation.

Some science: Erections are only possible if the human male is relaxed. To get hard, the body must turn on the parasympathetic nervous system. The opposite of this system is the sympathetic nervous system, which releases adrenalin. This system accelerates the heart and breathing rate (there is danger in the air, one must fly or defend themselves from harm). The parasympathetic system, on the other hand, slows down the heart and breathing rate (the pleasant digestion of a heavy meal, an afternoon nap). The bottom of this slow down is the place where the cock can get hard. And sex is essentially a return to the alert level of the sympathetic system--the moment it is reached, the man ejaculates.

Clearly the hero in Shoot 'Em Up is not human or a man. His flight/fright system does not turn on in a moment of danger. His muscles do not need the extra energy for increased speed and strength. He can kill in a perfectly calm state--the state a normal man/human is in when taking a nap.

Indiana state police said that after a mother was arrested for drunken driving, the three relatives who came to pick up her 1-year-old son also had all been drinking.

A state trooper stopped a minivan for speeding early Saturday on U.S. 30 in Schererville in northwestern Indiana. He arrested the 24-year-old woman on a drunken driving charges. The boy's father arrived later to pick him up, but officers determined he was intoxicated and also arrested him on a drunken driving charge.

Police said the boy's grandparents then arrived. Both of them also had been drinking, state police said, but the grandmother who was driving was not over the legal limit, so officers escorted them home with the child.

Everybody got home safe! Our first ECDAMAAF post with a happy ending!

Carlos Zavala opened the door when he heard the children banging and yelling. Ismael, known as Nick, collapsed into Zavala's arms. He had a broad slash across his throat, and a 12-inch knife fell from his sweater, Zavala said.

Nick died in Zavala's home in the Valley View Mobile Home Park in Dodge Center, about 20 miles west of Rochester. Next door, the children's mother, Teresa Bugarin, 27, soon would be found dead. Her husband, Ismael Bugarin, 33, was found alive with apparent stab wounds.... When the children burst in on Saturday night, Nick's sisters, 8-year-old Jasmine and 6-year-old Sabrina, clung to Castellanos. One had a slash on her cheek, the other a cut under her chin.

When Castellanos asked them what had happened, the girls cried, "My dad! My dad!"

Beyonce wants to be Wonder Woman!

Pop star Beyonce has said she wants to play Wonder Woman in a film of the comic book heroine.

The singer has met DC Comics and film studio Warner Bros to express her interest in future superhero roles on the big screen.

"I want to do a superhero movie and what would be better than Wonder Woman?" she told the Los Angeles Times.

"And it would be a very bold choice. A black Wonder Woman would be a powerful thing. It's time for that, right?"

Light drinking 'no risk to baby'

Yeah! I'm going out and getting pregnant right now!

My supporter, Martin, wrote:

Hello Charles,
Long time reader and admirer. I saw this photo today, and thought that it is definitely something you should see:

Yes, yes, it is something I should see. But wait a minute. Don't go there! Don't go to where my critics have already landed. This has nothing to do with sex. Nothing to do with some cheap, psychological reading of what's darkly happening in this summer swimming pool (the tiger as a form of compensation or a phallic something or other). What we see is not a type of sex but a type of attitude.

Let's think about these images in the light of this splendid story:

The dwelling place of the maiden [Gretchen] whom [the German man] had long been courting without success stood on the bank of some lake or other, and there she would be every evening sitting on her balcony and doing two things at once: knitting a stocking and enjoying the view. My German [man] being sick of the futility of his pursuit finally devised an unfailing means whereby to conquer the heart of his cruel Gretchen. Every evening he would take off his clothes, plunge into the lake and, as he swam there, right under the eyes of his beloved, he would keep embracing a couple of swans which had been specially prepared by him for that purpose. I do not quite know what those swans were supposed to symbolize, but I do know that for several evenings on end he did nothing but float about and assume pretty postures with his birds under that precious balcony.

Nabokov used this story to illustrate the essence or condition of the Russian word "poshlost ," which means super cheesy. One could also illustrate the Russian word with these wet women and their wet tigers.

Covered with bruises from beatings with a leather belt, the nude, starving 9-year-old girl decided it was time to escape her bathroom prison. She pushed out a small window screen and climbed onto the sill. Then, she dropped 12 feet to the ground outside.

Still locked in a separate bathroom was her 6-year-old brother, curled in the fetal position and nearly dead.... When police found the boy, they thought he was dead. Both children were rushed to a Salt Lake County hospital, where they remained in serious condition Wednesday.

No adults were inside the house. But, later Tuesday, police arrested the children's aunt, Mary Heath, 33, and her live-in boyfriend, Sekoa Aiono, 37, both of Eagle Mountain, on suspicion of second-degree felony child abuse neglect. The two were booked into Utah County jail and bond was set at $25,000.

But, hey, at least they weren't adopted by fags.

The Cliffs Notes, in case you don't feel like reading it: the MySpace page was a "joke" that he had nothing to do with; he thinks the kid is going to be a boy and looks forward taking him hunting and fishing; he's going to tattoo Bristol Palin's name on his ring finger because he's forgetful and would surely lose a real ring; and he won't be voting in the election because he failed to register to vote on time.

According to Slog tipper Kay:

I think this article is just chock full of comedic/truth-bending gold.

Calling it the "worst case" of abuse a detective had ever seen, the King County Sheriff's Office arrested a Carnation couple last Friday on suspicion of criminal mistreatment after police found their 14-year-old daughter emaciated, dehydrated and suffering from severe malnutrition.... Police say the mother, 44, and father, 43, a software engineer, had starved the girl, who weighed only 48 pounds and was 4-foot-7. Police described her as resembling a 7- or 8-year-old....

According to police, the girl said her mother disciplined her by "restricting her water intake" to about a half of a small Dixie cup per day. The girl and her brother "were forced to sleep on the floor in the same room as their parents, and a heavy dresser was pushed in front of the door to keep her from sneaking out and getting water."

Maybe this girl's mother and father saw Ohio Republican state representative John Schlichter's recent campaign flyer—the one in which he warned that "same sex couples [are] adopting our children"—and pushed that dresser in front of the door to prevent gay men from bursting into their bedroom in the middle of the night and adopting their kids. Or maybe they're just insanely abusive assholes.

Doctors evaluated the girl's teeth and found all of them to be eroded and chipped. She told investigators they hurt when she eats, and she recently broke a tooth while eating celery.

Doctors extracted six of her teeth under general anesthesia and capped the rest. They said the extreme dental erosion was "likely due to the shutdown of her salivary function due to extreme dehydration over an extended period of time," according to police.... They also collected evidence that the family had health insurance and the girl's little brother had seen a doctor in the past few years. The family's two dogs were in good health and had recent trips to a veterinary clinic.

The kids are in foster care, mom and dad are in prison, and my jaw is in my lap.

It was a church event billed as "Porn and Pastries," and some 300 women, mostly in their 20s and 30s, paid $10 each to attend.

But there were no naked images at the EastLake Community Church in Bothell on Friday night; the baring came when some of those attending told about their private lives.

They were here, in many cases, because of what happens when a woman finds out her spouse or boyfriend has been secretly spending a lot of time looking at porn on the Internet, often while espousing Christian values.

Yeah, it must suck so hard when you find out that the man you married is, you know, a man. Reporter Erik Lacitis gives HUMP! a shout out at the end of his story:

If anything, ["Porn and Pastries"] illustrated what has been historically Seattle's split personality about such matters.

This weekend was an anti-porn weekend.

On Oct. 24 and 25, The Stranger is sponsoring "Hump!", advertised as "Seattle's biggest, best and ONLY amateur and locally produced porn festival."

Lacitis is too polite to mention that all eight announced screenings of HUMP are sold out—that's 2400+ tickets—and that we've added three additional screenings. And if past festivals are any indication, all the added screenings will sell out quickly. So Seattle may be "split" on porn, but the divide isn't even. Not even close. There are way more people in Seattle who want to sit in a theater and enjoy pornography—particularly the kind we show at HUMP!—than there are people who want sit in a church and listen to preachers talk about the evils of pornography.

Get your HUMP! tickets here.

I'm from Cincinnati, Ohio and sing in the gay men's chorus. Last night at our rehersal, a spokeswoman from the county came and talked about becoming a foster and/or adoptive parent. They said they are desperate for homes for these kids. They sought us, the homos, out, begging us to take in these children. Schlichter might want to get acquainted with the facts.

This has to stop. Republican elected officials can't campaign against same-sex adoption in the crudest possible terms—"same sex couples adopting our children," little girls crying because they have two dads—while state employees trawl men's chorus rehearsals begging gay men to become foster and adoptive parents. It's fucking infuriating.

Here you go:

Wanna see more? Of course you do.

Where to begin? Well, let's start with the use of scare grooms in this ad. One grooms is kneeling in front of the other—and you know what that means. Gay men are so obsessed with sex that we can't even refrain from getting it on when we're two inches tall, made of plastic, and destined to stand on top of a wedding cake that will be displayed in a banquet hall in front of our friends, our families, and—the horror!—our children. If this is how tiny gay men made of plastic behave on their cakes (and in our attack ads), imagine who gay parents behave in front of their children!

But this is what's truly priceless about this ad—and what will keep those "Every Child Deserves a Mother and a Father" Slog posts coming...

Ray Pryor doesn't want to raise Ohio's children in the best environment.

Instead he supports same sex couples adopting our children.

Buy our children need a mother and a father to thrive.

That's right, Ohio—scary gay men are coming to adopt "your" children! You remember your children, right? The children you abused, neglected, and abandoned; the children you were unfit or unready to parent; the children that were taken from your homes by the state and are now languishing in foster care. Those are the children same-sex couples are adopting—children who have been failed by their heterosexual parents, failed by the mothers and fathers they "need in order to thrive," children who in many cases would not have homes—no parents at all—if they weren't adopted by loving, fit, vetted, qualified same-sex couples.