1273: Soul Sister

[Keith]

"Sometimes I forget other people can hear us."


Stuckey and Murray — Trying to break even since 2001

John Foti

[chadfromboston]

This has nothing to do with the episode, and I don't know if other people mentioned it, but on the latest Marc Maron podcast, he interviews someone named Jonathan Ames, and they talk all about Bowery Poetry club and Rev Jen! It was pretty cool, I love hearing about the crazy shit that went on at that place.

[freeloader1]

Watched it live and loved the guests Stucky and Murray where hilarious! It was also nice to see that Stucky is from Alabama and still cool enough to be on KATG.

[Junkenstein]

Originally Posted by chadfromboston

This has nothing to do with the episode, and I don't know if other people mentioned it, but on the latest Marc Maron podcast, he interviews someone named Jonathan Ames, and they talk all about Bowery Poetry club and Rev Jen! It was pretty cool, I love hearing about the crazy shit that went on at that place.

Johnatahyan Ames is a super cool writer that helped Rev Jen producing some of her stuff.

He writes cool stuff, reccomended.

[mcbane89]

Considering I can't understand shit T.I. says when he's rapping his gibberish in that weird low southern growl, and as Ozzie Ozzbourne has shown speech impediments get better when the person is performing, not worse, what are the odds the jumper was swayed by anything he said when "talking him down"?

T.I.: "Shawty saw the drop top like the bezzle in my watch"! *

Jumper:... "What"?

T.I.: "I came a long way from a posta, posta" *

Jumper: "Wha..? What did you say? ... I ... I have no clue what that means".

T.I.: "Till I kosta nostra kept the toaster closer, than I supposed to well I poast ya procha"!

Jumper: *Looks around* "Am I on camera, the fuck is going on"?

T.I.: "Then choke you like a croacha croacha rocha"! *

Jumper: "... I can't hear shit you're saying... and honestly I forget why I'm up here. I'm just... I'm just gonna go... is that.. I don't... ok".

The odds that a T.I. would be allowed to talk someone down, that person could understand T.I. was trying to talk him down, and to have that person and scenario be real is about the same odds as Danny Lobell telling the truth about anything. And I bring that up to illustrate that doesn't this story sound like something Danny Lobell would say? Except more outlandish?



*All reall T.I. lyrics from the "song" 'Bezzle'.

[DWarrior]

Regarding aliens:

The area of the observable universe is about 230,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000,000,000 square miles. Of course it would only be natural to assume some form of alien life exists in such vast space.

However, the earth is only a tiny spec compared to this, area of the earth as a percentage of the universe is a measly 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000084%, so it would be very improbable to have some random person observe a UFO in the sky.

And that is how rational people (and robots) reconcile believing that extraterrestrial life most certainly exists, yet not expecting aliens to show up at their doorstep.

[baristaman]

Originally Posted by DWarrior

Regarding aliens:

The area of the observable universe is about 230,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000,000,000 square miles. Of course it would only be natural to assume some form of alien life exists in such vast space.

However, the earth is only a tiny spec compared to this, area of the earth as a percentage of the universe is a measly 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000084%, so it would be very improbable to have some random person observe a UFO in the sky.

And that is how rational people (and robots) reconcile believing that extraterrestrial life most certainly exists, yet not expecting aliens to show up at their doorstep.

I think you're off by a 0 -slurp-

All kidding aside, I couldn't agree with you more. Alien existence is way more possible than a magical sky daddy but we'll never know either way.

[hayroob]

Originally Posted by DWarrior

Regarding aliens:

The area of the observable universe is about 230,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000,000,000 square miles. Of course it would only be natural to assume some form of alien life exists in such vast space.

However, the earth is only a tiny spec compared to this, area of the earth as a percentage of the universe is a measly 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000084%, so it would be very improbable to have some random person observe a UFO in the sky.

And that is how rational people (and robots) reconcile believing that extraterrestrial life most certainly exists, yet not expecting aliens to show up at their doorstep.

Saved me the trouble of typing that bit.

Beyond the likelihood of alien life finding us and us spotting it, there's the issue the life that is out there has to not only exist, but be sizably more advanced then us and willing to travel profound distance across a mostly empty universe.

Some kind of life probably exists, but that doesn't mean that life is visiting us, and there's a good chance that most of the life out there is microbes.

[fluxquanta]

Word on the alien stuff.

Originally Posted by baristaman

I think you're off by a 0 -slurp-

A real slurpy nerd would've said "off by a factor of 10".

[mcbane89]

On the topic of the HIV positive porn actor I found an article on jezebel.com that had this pretty remarkable information:

In the discussion of one porn performer testing positive for HIV, a detail has been overlooked: the performer crossed over from gay porn to straight, which matters to the extent that the two industry sectors have very different safety norms.

AVN.com says that the performer who tested positive "performed in both straight and gay adult videos," generally a pretty rare phenomenon in the industry. His partners, both professional and personal, have been quarantined, but in the meantime it's reignited a longstanding debate over how best protect the health of performers.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which is pushing for mandatory condom use in all porn produced in California, said the performer's infection was "totally preventable" and "living proof that testing is not adequate protection against HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases."

But the truth may be more complex, because this particular performer (whom AVN is referring to as Patient Zero) came from the world of gay porn, where condom use is mainstream and testing is not, to the world of hetero porn, where testing is mainstream and condoms are not.

In gay porn, political pressure from health and rights groups has meant that, except for a few fringe studios, condoms are the norm. Because of the implicit assumption that many of the performers are HIV positive and that open knowledge of that would end their careers, testing is not usually a requirement.

By contrast, the current standard for heterosexual porn is to be tested at least once every 28 days for HIV, chlamydia, and gonorrhea, every sixty days for syphilis, and to "authorize access to the results of those tests through a computerized data base to both other performers with whom they might be hired to work and to producers who might hire them," according to a highly informative (and opinionated) blog post written last year by director and pro-porn activist Ernest Greene (also known as Ira Levine and Nina Hartley's husband.)

Greene, who's closely involved with AIM, an organization that offers HIV tests to performers that have shorter windows of detection than the tests usually available in clinics, pointed out in 2009 that this practice has kept HIV infection extremely low. "During [the past] dozen years, a total of five active players on the heterosexual side of the industry have been diagnosed as HIV positive. Four cases were discovered in 2004 and one on June 4 this year," he writes. "Our good fortune in porn is directly attributable to two things: constant voluntary testing and the much-derided conceit of the external ejaculation, which significantly reduces the risk of serum transmission through mucous membranes." That's heterosexual porn in particular; Greene says the rates are probably much higher in gay porn, but no one can know without widespread testing.

Why not just require all performers to use condoms always? As Fleshbot editor and Jezebel contributor Lux Alptraum wrote the last time this issue came to the fore,

The reason for condom scarcity in straight porn, ultimately, is you: the consumer. Porn companies make porn without condoms because that is the kind of porn that patrons want to see. And porn companies want to give you what you want-it's how they make a living.
The one porn production house that has mandated condom use, Wicked Pictures, says the decision hurt sales.

Greene also says that condoms are less effective in commercial use than they are in personal use. He says it takes two and a half hours to shoot a hetero sex scene,

"during which male performer's erections rise and fall, condoms frequently tear or unravel and the degree of latex abrasion on the internal membranes of female performers' vaginas lead to micro-abrasions that make them more vulnerable to all kinds of STIs. Most condom-only female performers eventually abandon condom use, not under pressure from producers, but rather because of the constant rawness and end-on-end bacterial infections produced by countless hours of latex drag.
If that made you cross your legs in sympathetic pain, you're not alone. And what all of this actually means, Greene says, is that condoms can be a less safe choice for female performers than tested barebacking. Greene also argues that it is "legally impossible" to require both condoms and testing, since anti-discrimination laws would mean that employers couldn't keep out HIV-positive performers.

That reasoning has its skeptics: one blogger notes an inconsistency in this reasoning: "If it is illegal for producers to 'even ask about a potential employee's HIV status,' as [Ernest Greene] states, could it be considered illegal for AIM to give those employers that information?" In other words, if disclosure of HIV status is already taking place and taking performers out of the industry, why would adding condoms to that mix change anything?

In any case, given the frequency of testing in the straight porn community, it is likely that Patient Zero was infected from someone in his personal life, which may end up limiting the scope of infection. We'll find out soon enough

.


That's an amazing statement to me. There isn't any testing in gay porn "...because of the implicit assumption that many of the performers are HIV positive and that open knowledge of that would end their careers, testing is not usually a requirement"? What the fuck? That is beyond ridiculous, especially if any of these actors are allowed to cross over into straight porn, where I would hope they would test a "new" actore before his first film, especially if they had any knowledge of him having a gay porn career where they would have to know testing isn't really done. I know that by engaging in the porn industry you're taking some risks, but jesus, does negligence cover this? What are the next crop of 18 year old trainwrecks supposed to do now? Those stripper stages are awfully hard on the joints.