The Parts of the Body

The nectarine and curious peach

Into my hands themselves do reach.

Andrew Marvell

Summer Reading (#12)

via Things

The Eating Habits of Marlon Brando, Part Seven

By the 1980s, there were reports that one of Brando's girlfriends had left him because he failed to keep his promise of losing weight. Marlon seemed to be dieting, but to her astonishment, he never lost weight. She found out that his buddies had been throwing bags of Burger King Whoppers over the gates of his Mulholland Drive estate late at night to relieve the hunger pangs of their famished friend.

IMDB

hott nuns (#1)

Evelyn Waugh on an idiosyncrasy of his father's

He answered letters that needed no answer, thanking people who thanked him for a present, so that, when he encountered anyone as punctilious as himself, a correspondence was likely to start which ended only in death.

“The Axis of Love”

Terry Rodgers

WHY I WANT TO FUCK RONALD REAGAN

RONALD REAGAN AND THE CONCEPTUAL AUTO DISASTER. Numerous studies have been conducted upon patients in terminal paresis (GPI), placing Reagan in a series of simulated auto crashes, e.g. multiple pileups, head-on collisions, motorcade attacks (fantasies of Presidential assassinations remained a continuing preoccupation, subject showing a marked polymorphic fixation on windshields and rear trunk assemblies). Powerful erotic fantasies of an anal-sadistic surrounded the image of the Presidential contender.

Subjects were required to construct the optimum auto disaster victim by placing a replica of Reagan’s head on the unretouched photographs of crash fatalities.

In 82% of cases massive rear-end collisions were selected with a preference for expressed fecal matter and rectal hemorrhages. Further tests were conducted to define the optimum model-year. These indicate that a three year model lapse with child victims provide the maximum audience excitation (confirmed by manufacturers’ studies of the optimum auto disaster). It is hoped to construct a rectal modulous of Reagan and the auto disaster of maximized audience arousal.

Motion picture studies of Ronald Reagan reveal characteristic patterns of facial tones and musculature associated with homoerotic behavior. The continuing tension of buccal sphincters and the recessive tongue role tally with earlier studies of facial rigidity (cf., Adolf Hitler, Nixon). Slow-motion cine films of campaign speeches exercised a marked erotic effect upon an audience of spastic children. Even with mature adults the verbal material was found to have a minimal effect, as demonstrated by substitution of an edited tape giving diametrically opposed opinions...

INCIDENCE OF ORGASMS IN FANTASIES OF SEXUAL INTERCOURSE WITH RONALD REAGAN. Patients were provided with assembly kit photographs of sexual partners during intercourse. In each case Reagan’s face was super imposed upon the original partner. Vaginal intercourse with "Reagan" proved uniformly disappointing, producing orgasm in 2% of subjects.

Axillary, buccal, navel, aural, and orbital modes produced proximal erections. The preferred mode of entry overwhelmingly proved to be the rectal. After a preliminary course in anatomy it was found that the caecum and transverse colon also provided excellent sites for excitation. In an extreme 12% of cases, the simulated anus of post-costolomy surgery generated spontaneous orgasm in 98% of penetrations. Multiple-track cine-films were constructed of "Reagan" in intercourse during (a) campaign speeches, (b) rear-end auto collisions with one and three year model changes, (c) with rear exhaust assemblies...

SEXUAL FANTASIES IN CONNECTION WITH RONALD REAGAN. The genitalia of the Presidential contender exercised a continuing fascination. A series of imaginary genitalia were constructed using (a) the mouth parts of Jacqueline Kennedy, (b) a Cadillac, (c) the assembly kid prepuce of President Johnson...In 89% of cases, the constructed genitalia generated a high incidence of self-induced orgasm. Tests indicate the masturbatory nature of the Presidential contender’s posture. Dolls consisting of plastic models of Reagan’s alternate genitalia were found to have a disturbing effect on deprived children.

REAGAN'S HAIRSTYLE. Studies were conducted on the marked fascination exercised by the Presidential contender’s hairstyle. 65% of male subjects made positive connections between the hairstyle and their own pubic hair. A series of optimum hairstyles were constructed.

THE CONCEPTUAL ROLE OF REAGAN. Fragments of Reagan’s cinetized postures were used in the construction of model psychodramas in which the Reagan-figure played the role of husband, doctor, insurance salesman, marriage counselor, etc.

The failure of these roles to express any meaning reveals the nonfunctional character of Reagan. Reagan’s success therefore indicates society’s periodic need to re-conceptualize its political leaders. Reagan thus appears as a series of posture concepts, basic equations which reformulate the roles of aggression and anality. Reagan’s personality. The profound anality of the Presidential contender may be expected to dominate the United States in the coming years. By contrast the late JFK remained the prototype of the oral subject, usually conceived in pre-pubertal terms. In further studies sadistic psychopaths were given the task of devising sex fantasies involving Reagan. Results confirm the probability of Presidential figures being perceived primarily in genital terms; the face of LB Johnson is clearly genital in significant appearance--the nasal prepuce, scrotal jaw, etc. Faces were seen as either circumcised (JFK, Khrushchev) or uncircumcised (LBJ, Adenauer). In assembly-kit tests Reagan’s face was uniformly perceived as a penile erection. Patients were encouraged to devise the optimum sex-death of Ronald Reagan.

J.G. Ballard

"Fragment" by Philip Guston (1975)

I Remember

I remember the sound of the ice cream man coming.

I remember once losing my nickel in the grass before he made it to my house.

I remember that life was just as serious then as it is now.

Joe Brainard

ethnographic

Shadi Ghadirian

from the Ghajar Series

1998-1999 (Iran)

Ancient Ocean, crystal-waved,

you resemble somewhat those bluish marks that one sees upon the battered backs of cabin-boys; you are a vast bruise inflicted upon the body of earth: I love this comparison.

“Les Chants de Maldoror”

Intriguing Facial Hair: Terry Riley

I'm so like this on planes: Duke Ellington at sea

Duke's friends decided that a tour of Europe for him and his band might be the solution. The thought of such a thing alarmed Duke, who had an almost psychopathic fear of the ocean. His explanation was when he was sixteen he had read a book about the suffering of those who went down on the Titanic. "What about icebergs?" he asked his friends. He was unconvinced when told that a collision was not inevitable. Nevertheless, Mills booked him and his band for a European tour, and they finally boarded the Olympic, bound for England, in the summer of 1933. Duke was full of foreboding. His anxiety grew when a passenger told him that at night the ship was steered not by human hands but by an automatic pilot. "I couldn't understand," Duke says, "how an automatic pilot could see an iceberg. I decided that I wasn't gonna take any chances by sleeping at night. I slept in the day and stayed up all night, but it was very lonesome." Duke tried to keep the band awake and alert through the dark hours by buying the boys quantities of a drink composed of Bass ale, brandy, and champagne, but the plan was self-defeating. One by one, Duke's companions would succumb to sleep, and by four or five in the morning he would find himself deserted. He would pace the deck miserably, waiting for daylight.

Richard O. Boyer
"The Hot Bach"
The New Yorker (1944)

with cephalopod, position #10

kinda turns me on, too

The musk smell on Jannaire was faint, because her own smell, or reek, to be more exact, of primeval swamp, dark guanoed caves, sea water in movement, armpit sweat, mangroves at low tide, Mayan sacrificial blood, Bartolin glands, Dial soap, mulberry leaves, jungle vegetation, saffron, kittens in a cardboard box, Y.W.C.A. volleyball courts, conch shells, Underground Atlanta, the Isles of Lesbos, and sheer joy—Patou's Joy—overpowered the musk oil. I was overwhelmed by the nasal assault, overwhelmed by her female aroma, and although I could not, at the time, define the mixture—nor can I now, exactly—there wasn't the faintest trace of milk.
"Jannaire," Larry said, "this is Hank Norton, my best friend. Hank. Jannaire."
She raised her arm as Larry handed her the bourbon and Coke, and a thick tuft of black steelwool under her arm bugged out my eyes. I mentally visualized the same thick inky hair of her bush. Tiny stop-and-go rivulets of sweat inched down my sides.
"Stay here, Jannaire," Larry said. "I've got to make a phone call."
"We'll be right back," I said.
Larry and I entered the kitchen. "Did you smell her, Hank?" he said. "Driving here from Hojo's in the car I had to turn off the air conditioner and roll the goddamned windows down."
"I'll take her off your hands, Larry," I volunteered casually.
"How? I can't just ditch her."
"No problem. You just said you had to make a phone call. I'll just tell Jannaire for you that your boss sent you out on an emergency mission of some kind."
"You don't have to do this for me, Hank."
"What the hell. You'd do the same for me."
"I'm not so sure that I would. What is that smell, Hank?"
"Woman, that's all woman."
"Did you see her fucking armpits? I've never seen a woman with unshaved armpits before, have you?"
"No, but it kinda turns me on. Is Jannaire a Catholic?"
"She must be. There isn't a Protestant in America who'd let hair grow under her arms."

from Kiss Your Ass Goodbye by Charles Willeford