I can't stop watching the music video for Beyoncé's new tune "Single Ladies":

I've watched it about 50 times and could watch it 50 more times. Some of the hidden power of Beyonce's video is revealed when compared to Grace Jone's recently released video for the tune "Corporate Cannibal," a video and song that best expresses the kind of evil at the root of the current collapse of global capitalism.

It's not my critics that matter; it's my supporters, one of whom just sent me a link to these incredible images:

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.

Another little girl fails to thrive, despite having male and female role models in the home.

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 Associated Press gets an interview with Levi Johnston.

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.

This little girl has a mother and a father—but she's not thriving.

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.

From today's Seattle Times...

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.

In the comments thread on this post, Ferretrick writes...

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.

Dan, be nice! Everybody knows less is more... ^{NSFW, natch}

I've received a couple of emails scolding me for gaying up the Slog this morning. Sorry about that—everyone else was in a meeting, and I was Slogging solo, and I suppose it was thoughtless of me to post about gay parents and gay bashings and gay websites filled with pictures of hot French swimmers. "Some of us here reading are straight," writes [redacted], "how about throwing us a bone?"

Here you go:

Wanna see more? Of course you do.

Check out this campaign mailer from Ohio. A Republican state representative—John Schlichter—is attacking his Democratic opponent for supporting adoption rights for same-sex couples.

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.

A second couple who belong to an Oregon church that practices faith healing have been indicted on criminal charges after the death of a child.

A Clackamas County grand jury has charged Jeffrey Dean and Marci Rae Beagley with criminally negligent homicide in the death of their 16-year-old son, Neil, who died from a treatable condition.

This is Ben Massing. He's straight. So don't look, gay men, or he'll sue.

Well, gee. It's too bad that two of the three little girls adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Bowman of Maryland are dead, but at least they had male and female role models.

Renee Bowman, 43, has been arrested on allegations that she abused her 7-year-old daughter, who was found walking barefoot on a neighborhood street Friday night.

The neighbor recounted today that the disheveled girl told him: "My mother just beats me. She just beats me to death." ... Bowman admitted to beating the girl with a "hard-heeled shoe" and later told Calvert County authorities, who had executed a search warrant at her home and found the freezer with human remains, that they were "of her two other adopted daughters," according to a news release from the Calvert County Sheriff's Office.

Police told the Associated Press they cannot be sure the remains are of the two girls, ages 9 and 11, until autopsies are performed.

The seven year-old girl was found wandering the streets in a pink nightgown when a neighbor, Phillip Garrett, saw her wandering the streets barefoot in a nightgown. The details of their encounter are heartbreaking:

Garrett, 21, was smoking a cigarette with his neighbor on his front lawn. He called out to her. "I said, 'What's wrong? Are you OK?' " According to Garrett, the girl answered, "My mother just beats me. She just beats me to death."

...

Garrett, who is a fashion designer and lives with his parents, said he embraced the girl... He carried her into his neighbor's home and called 911. The girl told Garrett that she had not eaten in days, and he ordered a pizza. She requested pepperoni and ham, he said.

As they waited for about an hour, he said the girl told him she had stayed outside the whole night and had tried to knock on people's doors but no one answered.... Of her two sisters, Garrett said, "She said her siblings had been beaten to death and one day, they just didn't come back."

Wait a minute—Garrett is a fashion designer and lives at home with his parents? Holy crap, sounds like he might be a homosexual. Think of the danger that little girl was in—alone with a homosexual like that? Mercy.

This blog made me laugh and laugh. The images (a topless woman) and the words (concerning the customs of Zanzibarians--"When offering or accepting things, try and remember to offer and receive with your right hand. This is the hand which should also be used for eating." ) are not consistent.

As for this prize:

..it's a part of a very long tradition:

And the award for best ever use of censorship bars goes to this video for "Toe Jam" by The BPA, featuring David Byrne and Dizzee Rascal.

SFW? NSFW? You decide.

UPDATE! It's been brought to my attention that this was already posted by Dean Carlson--way back in July--on Line Out. He even wrote something informative about it, whereas I did not.

Here we have a visual problem. The women in the middle (a Swazi princess--indicated by the red feathers--at the reed dance ceremony) is, one, modern and, two, in a very traditional situation. Her face is Vogue, but her breasts are National Geographic. How should we look at her? The traditional breasts negate the modern face (we are seeing nothing)? Or the face negates the breasts (we are seeing everything)? Or should there be no negation and just a coexistence of the two codes (everything/nothing)? Or should we look at the face as the surface (the modern city), and the breasts as the buried past (the ancestral underground)? But these breasts are fresh; they are not old, cold, or dead. Both face and breasts are youthful, yet one is about the youth of now and the other about the youth of the past. How does one resolve this visual complex?

Uh, has this already been all over the web? I haven't seen it, a Google image search isn't giving me any matches to it, and the letter-to-the-editor writer (the email they sent is in a thread that mentions http://whatreallyhappened.com and alaskacafe.blogspot.com, though I can't find it on either site) hasn't gotten back to me. It's gotta be fake, right?

Did anyone else just put on Hall & Oates' "Sara Smile"?

Texas:

A San Antonio couple is accused of trying to trying to trade sex with the woman's 5-year-old daughter for an apartment, a used car and child care for her 10-month old daughter.

Jennifer Richards, 25, and her married boyfriend, Sean Michael Block, 40, appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Nancy Stein Nowak on Friday.... According to an affidavit, the investigation began when an informant told the FBI about a text message allegedly sent by Block reading: "Nice piece 5 yrs old belongs to my gf and she wants to sell it."

Richards and Block crafted a deal that, in addition to the apartment and used car, included child care for Richards' 10-month-old daughter, whose sexual service the couple intended to sell later, Rex Miller, the FBI's lead agent on the case, testified.

Thanks to Slog tipper Shannon.

The AP:

A Poulsbo woman was jailed after being accused of beating up her fiance at their prenuptial party.

Kitsap County sheriff's deputies say 31-year-old Amber Barnes' 12-year-old son told her he saw her fiance kissing one of her women friends early Thursday morning.

Deputies say Barnes gave her friends the boot, told her fiance to leave, too, and then started hitting him in the face.

I'm thinking police might want to check with that 12 year-old. Was he pleased about his new step-dad-to-be? Was he the only witness to the alleged kissing of-one of mom's friends? Hm...

Well, at least the swinging couple in Des Moines who opened their home to what sounds like some pretty raucous sex parties—fifteen mattresses, bondage crosses, sex swings, a mobile dungeon parked in the driveway—are being persecuted by their neighbors, city officials, and, judging from the photo in today's Seattle Times, carbs. There's comfort in all of that, I suppose. But I have a bone—heh, a bone—to pick with the Super Friends of the Super Sacred Institution of Marriage, Local Chapter (Archbishop Brunett, Rev. Hutcherson, Dino Rossi, John Carlson, the Washington State Supreme Court, et al).

Where is the outrage, gang?

I'm reading this story—which includes a picture that provides readers with a glimpse of hairy manass (look to the right and down)—and it's the usual collapse-of-western-civilization stuff. Regan "Draco" Lane-Smith and "Naughty" Nonah Elliston are running a sex club in the suburbs, blah blah blah, and the neighbors are upset, blah blah blah, and—ZOMFG!—think of the children! (For the record: I wouldn't want to live next door to a straight swinger's club, or have to explain to my kid what goes on in one.) But it isn't until paragraph nine—nine!—that we learn something that should concern the Super Friends of the Super Sacred Institution of Marriage.

Elliston, 40, and Lane-Smith, 39, met at a swingers party in Puyallup seven years ago and married three years later....

A few years into their marriage, they decided to find a house that would perfectly suit them and their hobby. They spent six months searching. They wanted to be clear of schools and churches.

Again, where's the outrage? Marriage is, according to the Super Friends of the Super Sacred Institution of Marriage, all about children. Gay people, the SFSSIM argue, should not be allowed to marry because we don't have children. (Except when we, you know, do.) And marriage, according to the SFSSIM, is all about monogamy, which gay men aren't very good at.

Well, Elliston and Lane-Smith are childless and they're clearly not monogamous—and they're married! Legally married! Surely this legally married couple, willfully childless and cheerfully non-monogamous, represent a greater threat to the Super Sacred Sanctity of Marriage than gay couples do. For crying out loud, SFSSIM, Elliston and Lane-Smith recruit. They advertise! They encourage other straight married couples to adopt their non-monogamous lifestyle, to come to their parties, to ride on their sex swings and swim naked in their pool.

Where's the organized movement to strip people like this—a real and present threat to the super sacred sanctity of marriage—of their right to marry?

Hello? Super Friends?

He was clearly a troubled young man. Thank goodness he had male and female role models in the home, a mother and a stepfather who could, by example, teach him all about traditional family values and appropriate gender roles. Because, like John McCain said when he came out against gay people adopting, "two parent families are best for America... because family values are important and when we have two parents families that are parents are that are the traditional family." And two gay guys or two lesbians with kids may be a lot of things, but they're not, you know, two parents. I mean, come on.

Anyway, it's great that this troubled kid had a mom and a dad, a traditional family and was exposed to the kind of traditional family values that are so important to John McCain.

It's awkward, of course, that kid plotted with his mother to murder his step-father, and it's sad that he won't be able to recreate the kind of traditional family structure that he was exposed to at home until he gets out of prison in twenty or thirty years. But, hey, at least he had a mother and a father—until, you know, he shot his father four times in the back of the head.

It's not even 10:00 a.m., and we have a winner.

Man with rifle and 10lbs of pot caught driving over 90mph while taping himself masturbating

Here's a link to a more complete story, from the Northern Territory News. This man is an end-of-days hero, Mad Max incarnate, speeding through the Australian bush with a whole lot of pot and a whole lot of testosterone.

Sgt Edwards said Mr Erhardt was arrested and told officers he had "found'' the drugs at a rest stop 100km north of Coober Pedy -- and he intended to smoke all of it at his Noonamah home.

Mr Erhardt also told police he had used the rifle to shoot "kangaroos from the vehicle whilst driving north.''

Mr Erhardt applied twice for bail last week so he could get married before going to jail.

Mr. Erhardt is also a father of three.

Thanks to Slog tipper Matthew.

Wow.

(Thanks, Hickey.)

To find out what these boys have been up to, click on the photo.

Violence broke out Sunday in Anderson when an 18-year-old man returned home from a gay pride parade and was assaulted by his father.... The teen told deputies that his father “has a problem with him being gay and that is why he hit him with the baseball bat Sunday,” Weymouth said in his report.

Via Towleroad.

Since Savage is on vacation, I'm throwing this up.

An Illinois woman faces at least 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to doping her 6-year-old twin girls with cough syrup and taking nude pictures of them with her boyfriend.

(Thanks, Julia.)

A sign outside a Bait 'n Peaches store in Ruston, Louisiana.

I have no idea what this means. It's inscrutable on so many levels.

Via Tech Master Brian G., who reports that the peaches were delicious.

Brad, as you may have heard, has been at the Stranger for 14 years, ending today. I've been here something more like 14 months. So I don't have as many Brad memories as some of my colleagues, and thanks to the pot, a lot of the Brad memories I do have are hazy at best. But there is one time I can semi-coherently recall hanging out with Brad outside of work.

Grand Archives were playing the Triple Door. I was going because that sort of thing is kind of my beat here (and because, hey, Grand Archives). Brad was going because he knows all those dudes form back in Jesuit school or whatever. So we combined forces to seek out somewhere to drink downtown before the show. After being rebuffed at a few overcrowded yuppie bars, we ended up down at the Alibi Room, drinking bourbon at the bar. We talked about the ladies. We talked about life. We were about go watch Grand Archives. You know, real guy stuff. And it was sweet. I get the feeling that, if I had come around a little earlier, or if Brad was sticking around a little longer, he might've imparted a lot of dudely wisdom upon me. Or at least more bourbon.

Now it's gonna be all ladies and fags around here. Thanks, Brad.

Amanda is formally charged with murder:

Prosecutors investigating the killing in Italy last year of the British student Meredith Kercher today laid formal charges of murder against her American flatmate, Amanda Knox, Knox's Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, and Rudy Guede, a citizen of the Ivory Coast.

A judge in the central Italian city of Perugia must now decide whether they should be put on trial. Because of the gravity of the charges, under Italian law the judge must now arrange a closed-doors preliminary hearing to review the evidence and decide if there is sufficient evidence for an indictment.

This is Amanda months and months before the murder of her roommate, Meredith...

If she is tried, found guilty, and sentenced, this might be her in some sad and sunless cell in the far future...

It would be easier to take conservatives seeking to "protect" marriage seriously if they proposed some sort of penalty for heterosexuals that make a hash of marriage over and over and over again. Perhaps a four-strikes-and-you're-out law?

First things first: You can now be charged with attempted sexual assault in Wisconsin even if your intended victim is dead. In 2006 three young men tried to dig up a body after seeing a picture of the deceased woman—a twenty-year old looker who died in a motorcycle accident—in a local paper. A lower court ruled that the men could not be charged with attempted sexual assault because the law didn't mention necrophilia. But the Wisconsin State Supreme Court disagreed with the lower courts, and reinstated attempted sexual assault charges against the three boys.

Oh, the heartland.

Slog tipper Brie noticed an odd detail in the report:

The men went to the cemetery with shovels, a crowbar, a tarpaulin, and a box of condoms, which the men had purchased that evening on their way to the cemetery.

Why condoms, Brie asks? Considering how few young men seem to think they need to use condoms with living, breathing, ovulating women, it seems odd that these young men would think to purchase a box of condoms on the way to a cemetery. Perhaps these boys know something about embalming fluid that we don't—maybe it burns?—or maybe they were worried about catching the mother of all cooties. Details will, presumably, come out during the trial, so we'll be staying tuned to WISC-TV for complete coverage.

Thad J. Smith was arrested Monday night on charges he shot his three children several times with an air-powered pellet gun in what he later described to police as "good fun." ...

Marengo police arrested Smith Monday night after his ex-wife reported that the couple's children—a 10-year-old girl and twin 9-year-old boys—returned home from a visit with their father sporting numerous welts on their bodies, the police said. When questioned, Smith admitted shooting the children with small, plastic pellets fired from an air-powered gun, Deputy Police Chief Joseph Hallman said.

"He said the children were willing participants," Hallman said. "I don't know if it was some kind of a game with them or what he was doing."

If it was a game, it was completely one-sided. The children, Hallman said, told police they never fired a shot back at their dad.

A British man who fled the U.S. after his wife and baby daughter were shot to death in their home has been convicted of murdering them....

Prosecutors say Entwistle was in debt and dissatisfied with his sex life when he fatally shot his wife and daughter as they snuggled in bed in their Hopkinton home in 2006.

From the PI...

Federal Way police have arrested a father who said he fell asleep with his 7-month-old boy near a backyard fire pit Saturday night and awoke to find the child burned to death....

The father told police that he fell asleep holding his child while sitting on a bench adjacent to the pit. He said he awoke to find the child missing and went into the house to see if the boy was with his mother, then returned to the pit and discovered the body shortly before midnight.

Could've been worse—he could've had one of them gay dads that talks about bathhouse sex at the kitchen table.

Readers who wonder why I post those distressing "Every Child Deserves a Mother and Father" items might want to check out this ad, which the Family Research Council ran in newspapers in California this weekend:

Yes, yes—every child deserves a mom and a dad. Someone run down to the morgue and tell this kid how very lucky he was to have a mom and a dad.

Ad via JoeMyGod.

A couple accused of tying their 13-year-old son to a tree for two nights to punish him for disobedience has been charged with murder in his death, authorities said Friday.

Brice Brian McMillan, 41, of Macclesfield, told a deputy that the child was being disobedient and was forced to sleep outside Tuesday while tied to a tree, the Edgecombe County Sheriff’s Office said. The teenager was released Wednesday morning but again tied up that night for bad behavior, authorities said.

The boy was left tied to the tree until the following afternoon when his stepmother found him unresponsive, Sheriff James Knight said in a statement.

So it would appear that Italian men now have to provide proof of erection-obtaining-abilities to a Catholic priest in order to get married in the Church.

An Italian bishop has refused to allow a church wedding for a paraplegic man who was rendered impotent by a crippling automobile accident.

A spokesman for Bishop Lorenzo Chiarinelli of Viterbo explained that although the bride was aware of her fiancé's condition, their union could not be celebrated as a Christian marriage because impotence is grounds for annulment.

The Catholic priesthood: Nice work if you can get it, huh?

Thanks to Slog tipper Griet.

A Loveland man suspected of fatally bludgeoning and stabbing a process server was strangling his children in their home when deputies found him, the Larimer County Sheriff's Office said....

The children, a 10-year-old boy and a girl, 12, were taken to Medical Center of the Rockies, where they remain hospitalized, officials said.

Should straight marriages be legal in Utah?

This morning I read something in the paper about a mother rushing her son to the hospital after the boy fell off some playground equipment and landed on his head. The story said the boy died, and I felt terrible for the mom. Still do, even though there was no playground equipment and no fall and the story now qualifies for an ECDAMF. From the Seattle Times:

Police have arrested the boyfriend of a woman whose 3-year-old son was fatally injured at a Tacoma apartment complex.

Police spokesman Mark Fulghum says the injury occurred Wednesday inside an apartment, not on a playground set as officers were first told.

The 25-year-old man was booked into the Pierce County Jail at 1:30 a.m. today for investigation of second-degree murder. He had a 2004 conviction for assaulting his own son.

The man had been watching his girlfriend's boy while she was at work. When the mother returned she drove her son to St. Clare Hospital in Lakewood where he was declared dead.