I really don’t know how Terri stumbled across The Curious Dr. Humpp…  And I’m kind of surprised that Netflix carried something that unusual…  But they do, and she did, and we watched it last night.  Wow…

The Curious Dr. Humpp is a 70’s era sexploitation film, which means it’s basically some goofy softcore pornography.  Sure, there’s an evil scientist and a bunch of weird henchmen who are conducting strange experiments on people…  And there’s a plucky reporter who’s out to make a name for himself…  And some police officers trying to apprehend the villain…  But it’s all basically just an excuse to put naked people on the screen.

Dr. Humpp is a mad scientist obsessed with sex.  Since sex dominates humankind, he seeks to dominate sex…and therefor humankind.  He’s got an army of brainwashed robot-people to do his bidding, and some kind of sex-derived fountain of youth formula.  He kidnaps young folks, dopes them up on aphrodesiacs, forces them to have sex, and then extracts some kind of chemical from them to keep himself alive.

But, like I said, that’s all basically an excuse for some weird softcore pornography.

The thing was filmed in 1971, in black & white, so it isn’t exactly the most stimulating pornography available.  Everyone is very hairy, and the women look like they need to eat something.  There’s lots of moaning and groaning, lots of kissing and fondling.  But nothing actually explicit.

And, of course, you’ve got mad scientists and weird henchmen walking through every few minutes.  And some hilariously bad acting.  And all sorts of terrific mad scientist props like lightning machines, a talking brain in a jar, and plenty of bubbling and smoking beakers.

It was an interesting movie…  Certainly unique…  But I can’t say I really enjoyed it.  The movie was just too weird and dated.

…at least if you life in California.

Greta Christina has a great post over on the Blowfish Blog today explaining why she doesn’t care about Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter.

She basically says that there are so many other things wrong with Sarah Palin as a candidate, that her pregnant daughter just doesn’t matter.  And I might, under other circumstances, agree with that.

If it was just some random person with a pregnant daughter I doubt if I’d care at all.  Especially since her daughter is 17 - very nearly an adult.  But it isn’t some random person, it’s the potential Vice President of the United States of America.

Sarah Palin is opposed to any kind of birth control being made available to teenagers.

Sarah Palin supports abstinence only sex education.

And Sarah Palin, like any politician, will use her position to promote the causes that she believes in - in this case, likely her positions on birth control and sex education for teenagers.

This isn’t just a matter of me disagreeing with her.  Sarah Palin now has concrete evidence in the form of her own pregnant daughter that these abstinence only, no birth control policies don’t work.

This isn’t some statistic…  It isn’t someone down the street, or a random woman you met while campaigning…  It isn’t some situation where you can say “yeah, but it won’t happen to me“…  It’s her own daughter.  It is happening to her.

And Sarah Palin is apparently not responding to the evidence in front of her own eyes.  She still apparently believes that abstinence only sex education is a great idea, and that birth control should not be given to teenagers, even though her own daughter is pregnant.  Even though she can see with her own eyes that those policies failed.

And that worries me.

Not because the policies failed, but because Sarah Palin seems unable to grasp that.  She is not learning from the evidence in front of her own eyes.

I don’t want someone in office who is unable to learn from their mistakes.  I want someone in office who is able to understand what is going on around then and adapt to whatever the situation demands.

You know, I’m getting real sick of the vilification of sex and sexuality here in the United States.

Maybe I’m just flat-out stupid, but it seems to me that in the “land of the free” you should largely be free to screw around with whoever you want, however you want to (assuming that it’s all sane and consensual). But these days there are an awful lot of sex-negative stories floating around, and I’m really getting tired of it.

There’s the Max Hardcore trial… Lots of really nasty porn, all kinds of disgusting stuff, but all of it sane and consensual. And obviously people out there want to watch it, because the guy is in business. But he’s now been found guilty of several charges of obscenity and faces all kinds of fines.

What the hell is wrong with obscenity? The legal definition of obscenity seems to basically be…

The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether ‘the average person, applying contemporary community standards’ would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

So, stuff that is basically designed to get you off and has no artistic merits. Ok. So what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with wanting to get off? Why is that not protect speech? Assuming we aren’t talking about child pornography or showing the stuff to minors or whatever… Assuming everyone’s a consenting adult who is watching the stuff intentionally to get off on it. What the hell is the problem?

Where does the government get the right to tell me that I can’t watch something because it is obscene? Or that somebody else can’t sell me a movie because it is obscene? Or someone else can’t film a movie because it is obscene? Why does it matter?

Then we’ve got a story coming from California… Another pornographer facing obscenity charges… The twist in this case is that the judge himself is apparently into porn. There are apparently some rather explicit pictures on his personal website. And while absolutely nobody has suggested that the pornographic images on the Judge’s site are illegal, now folks are talking about kicking him off of the case because of it.

I guess it could be seen as a conflict of interests… But if he isn’t breaking the law, what’s the problem?

And if there’s obvious similarities between the Judge’s porn and what this pornographer is on trial for, obviously the fetishes depicted aren’t nearly as “extreme” as they’d have you believe.

And Slashdot has a story today about a US citizen who had his laptop seized by customs officials on his way back into the country because they found photos of “two naked women.”

That’s right, they seized his laptop because it had porn on it.

Now, since then they have turned up more pictures on his laptop that may be child pornography (they aren’t sure)… But the reason they seized it in the first place was for pictures of naked women - adults. Straight-up legal pornography. Apparently that’s enough to get your laptop seized these days.

And, of course, let’s not forget that it is not yet OK to be gay in the United States. There are battles all across the US to earn the right to marry a same-sex partner. And the military still has its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

Why is it that everybody is so concerned about what other people are doing behind closed doors? Why is it so wrong to want to enjoy yourself? Why does the government get a say in what my wife and I do in the privacy of our own bedroom?

‘Just Do It’: Couple has sex for 101 days

After 14 years together, Douglas and Annie Brown were a typical couple, approaching middle age while raising kids and leading careers. But where was the time for sex? In an outlandish experiment, the Browns decided to give their marriage a jolt — by having lots and lots of sex. Here, an excerpt from “Just Do It: How One Couple Turned Off the TV and Turned On Their Sex Lives for 101 Days (No Excuses!).”

Finally something interesting on the Today Show!