Pr0n and Women

Pornography

We had this topic come up in church. There's an article in Christian Weekly (or something), about this site, www.XXXchurch.com. According the article, this church reaches out to porn stars and porn addicts. As opposed to condemning them, they're more "Hey, God loves you!" which I think is great!

We had a discussion about porn.

Porn is this thing that most Christians don't want to talk about. It's this big taboo. While people might openly admit to lying or stealing or envying, it's unlikely that people will admit to actively consuming porn. When someone says they're an alcoholic and going to AA meetings, we congratulate them, pat them on the back. When someone says they're addicted to porn, we suddenly have somewhere else to be.

No, I'm not leading up to a dramatic reveal, although I will admit to having actively consumed porn before (though, in truth, some of the stuff I've seen was just plain gross).

I wanted to bring this up, because I'm an artist.

It's no secret by now that I love the female figure; nude or otherwise; and that it's riveting to draw. So many curves; soft gradients; absolutely beautiful. But am I producing porn?

I heard somewhere that viewing artwork is a delicate procedure. Hold it too close, and it becomes pornography; too far, and you become cynical.

I guess that's a sad fact I have to deal with as an artist. Despite my intentions, there is always the chance that my work can be viewed in a way I did not intend. And sometimes it'll be a pleasant surprise, and other times it'll be "mor b00bs plz, kthx".

Aside: Kay, wow. Firefox recognizes "b00bs" as a valid word. Wow.

It's not something that I'll be able to solve, at least, not immediately.


Women

I suddenly remembered something from when I was about six or seven.

I used to catch the last ten minutes of some soap opera when I came home from school. Once, there was a scene with a man and woman arguing or something; and the woman was going to either kill him or break up with him or something like that. And I thought, "Wow, women are powerful and awesome!" And that idea stayed with me for a long time.

Then I saw Disney's Pocahontas.

There's this scene with, I think it's Governor Ratcliffe, and he's singing about having riches or something, and he's coming down this staircase with a bunch of poofy-dress-ed women waving fans and swooning around him. And this completely blew my mind.

I think, first of all, I went, "What's going on? Women don't like him! He's a jerk!"

My next thought was a little frightening: "Maybe it means he's more powerful than the women."

And my next thought was, "Man, I want to be so powerful that women flock to me!"

--Charissa

PS: If you check out that IMDb link, the plot outline reads: "The daughter of a Native American tribe chief and English soldier share a romance..."

At first I thought the word "share" was incorrect.

Math Porn!

Excerpt kinda, because I haven't written anything beyond it

There are times I feel his sweet, calloused hands gently across my face, my neck. He whispers something intangible as he presses his lips quickly against my cheek. We kiss; wet, sweet and breathless; kiss again. I can feel him radiate heat; the smell of sweat mingles fancily in the warm air. Soft satin, cool to the touch, stretches beneath our forms. I run my fingertips down his chest; the hair curls slightly more from moisture. His broad chest, exquisitely muscled and blanketed in textured but pliant skin; it feels wonderful beneath my touch.

It's usually at about this time that I must look up, breathless, into those brilliant blue eyes; brush some hair from his face; feel the curves of his jaw and the dimples of his smile.

"Sometimes I wish you were a woman," I breathe into his face. We kiss again.

Writing

Sometimes, I write math porn. And, what's cool: I'm not alone! Joey Comeau writes math porn, too. His is different from mine, obviously.

Also, there's this gallery.

My math porn is different, because I know of at least three very attractive people who are proficient in Math, and it drives me nuts. There's one idea that I keep trying to make into a finished, polished story, and publish it, dang it!

I have at least four versions of Strip Calculus running right now. Not one is finished; and I doubt any will finish soon. However, I have been working on version "2c" lately, and it seems the most likely candidate.

With any amount of luck, I'll be uploading it soon.

--Charissa

Quick Update

Origami

For my birthday, I received an Origam gift box and extra book from Mark! OMG! The gift box has printed paper (strange and elegant designs that remind me of wallpaper), gold and silver foil paper, a protractor, two 'bone' crease tools (one for making sharp creases, the other for "drawing" the crease patterns), a square board with grid and markings on it, and an origami instruction book. I'm only a little irritated that both books contain mostly diagrams that are reliant on cutting paper.

This is mostly an announcement that, as soon as I get my camera, I'll be posting picture of both the modular origami polyhedra and the new models--animals and flat geometric patterns. Man, I can't wait to get that camera!!


Teaching Math

I've been in correspondence with one of the students who had questions about exponents/roots, and after the two weeks between classes when I was helping her with that, she wrote back to say I'm a good explainer! That totally made my day!

We started conic sections on Saturday with the Circle and Ellipse. At the end of class, the teacher wrote this on the board:

"Next week: line, parabola and hyperbola."

The students had mostly never heard of hyperbola, and some never heard of parabola. The teacher said to look it up on the Internet, and I wanted to jump up and say, "MATHWORLD DOT WOLFRAM!!" but of course, that would have been inappropriate, so I didn't. Sigh.


Film Festival

One of my friends has a film in a Canadian film festival, and his film made it as far as a public showing! I'm so excited! I'm going to the showing, hopefully with a friend who is/was a major artistic-film-maker-type-person. In truth, I wonder if she'll like my friend's film, but I invited her mostly for the other films. Heh.


Army

My unit did a field exercise this past weekend. They slept outside with little form of heating for two nights. Yowza! I went on the last day to help with breakfast and tear-down. Man, I suck at moving things. I definitely need to work out. But with the army, I get a personal trainer and access to the gyms, so I'll have to make use of that. Sheesh, though, I wish I had more free time...


Art

I'm donating Boobfest III to the queer student group at the university I used to go to. At least, I'm donating a print--and I think I'll take it back at the end of the school year.

Also, that student group is planning on booking a small art gallery in one of the centres at the university--there's this glass room beside a major traffic junction and across from a Tim Horton's / food court, I think, which is totally a great place to put an art gallery.

If we end up booking it, I'll totally submit: my nude pieces; the Origami I'm proud of (goldfish in the bowl!!), including an enclosed chain of connected coloured boxes that are ordered to make a rainbow (sort of; I'm missing a real *purple* but I have this dull mauve thing); and any other artwork I deem public-worthy--which is not much, so I'll have to get busy making more, dammit! Mmm, I'm excited!


...Will update this entry with links and text formatting later.
--Charissa