Spiny anteater penis

Steve Johnston of the University of Queensland in Gatton, Australia, and his colleagues inherited a male spiny anteater that was not so shy. The creature had been ‘retired’ from a zoo as it produced an erection when being handled at public viewing sessions.

By filming this animal, the researchers have been able to describe the unique spiny anteater erection and ejaculation behaviour for the first time.

The spiny anteater's four-headed phallus had been puzzling scientists. "When we tried to collect semen by [electrically-stimulated ejaculation] before, not only did we not get a single drop, but the whole penis swelled up to a four-headed monster that wouldn't fit the female reproductive tract, which has only two branches," says Johnston.

“Now we know that during a normal erection, two heads get shut down and the other two fit," he told New Scientist. The heads used are swapped each time the mammal has sex.

The animal kinkdom

No, that's not a typo. It seems animals (and even insects) can be sexually kinky.

From a article about aquatic scientist, Sheree Marris' new book, "KamaSEAtra: Secrets of Sex in the Sea":

"One of the things that I did learn was the real meaning for the word dork.

"A dork is a whale's penis and I thought, `how cool is that?'

"When we're calling someone a dork we're basically calling them a big dick because these things are absolutely huge."
...
The result is an accessible, humorously written book divided into bite-sized chapters like "Orgies", "Does Size Matter", "Sneaky Sex" and "When Love Hurts" with a photographic spread on each page.

One of her personal favourites is the Deep Sea Angler (Melanocetus johnsoni), a grotesque looking fish that lives deep in the ocean.

"The female angler isn't the most attractive thing but she's in the deep deep depths so it doesn't matter," says Marris.

To attract a male, she secretes a sweet smelling perfume that arouses him so much that he is compelled to pursue and bite onto her.

"This is some extraordinary love bite because he never lets go," Marris says.

"He becomes fused to her and basically becomes a blob of testicles on her skin.

"She then chemically commands him to release sperm when she wants, so she's got this permanent sex slave.

"One female brought up from the depths had 11 males attached to her, she was one lucky girl."

Readers also will learn that the humble barnacle has the longest penis in relation to body size in the world.

"It's stuck to a rock so it's going to be pretty hard to meet the opposite sex," Marris explains.

"So it has this penis that can be rolled out and just go wandering around the rockpools in search of a mate."
...
For example, dolphins enjoy casual and recreational sex just as much as we do, she says.

"Females rub themselves up against the beach and actually masturbate, males stick their penises in each other's blow holes and rub against each other with their penises erect. They've been seen trying to put their penises in the shells of turtles. they're not so sweet and innocent."

Homosexuality is common in many species for what could be evolutionary reasons.

Even beetles practice sodomy:

Gay sex - in beetles, at least - gives males a chance to indirectly fertilise females they may never encounter directly.

Homosexual copulations are common in insects, where they pose the same conundrum as in mammals: what evolutionary advantage, if any, might such apparently fruitless activity provide?

Over the years, biologists have proposed a range of explanations. Homosexual activity might, for example, help males practise for straight sex, or they might offer males a way to assert dominance over one another.

Snapshots from the past

I titled the last one "farmers" but they are probably cowboys in the Old West.

Daily beefcake

This picture was titled "I found Nemo":

Popeye and Bluto

I already had the two cartoons but I Googled to see if there were any other Popeye and Bluto pics worth saving and found this one of Tank Abbott whose nickname is Bluto:

Saturday celeb: Hatch's tat

Richard Hatch was the $1,000,000 winner of the first American Survivor series:

Prior to his Survivor appearance, Hatch was a corporate trainer from Newport, Rhode Island. He spent five years in the United States Army - two of them at the United States Military Academy (would have been Class of 1986) of which he dropped out after two years. He is also a licensed real estate agent, and has also worked as a car salesman and a bartender.

I vaguely knew about him because he was openly gay on the show but I did not know that had been sent to prison for tax evasion:

On January 19, 2005, the United States Attorney's Office in Providence, Rhode Island, reported that Hatch had failed to report the $1,010,000 he had received from the Survivor show on his Federal income tax returns (the additional $10,000 was paid for his appearance at the live Survivor reunion after the finale). Hatch also allegedly failed to report approximately $321,000 he received that year for appearances on radio station WQSX-FM in Boston. Prosecutors stated Hatch would be charged with filing a false tax return. An agreement was arranged whereby Hatch was offered a lenient sentence in exchange for a guilty plea. Hatch withdrew from the arrangement. He subsequently said he was basing his defense on his belief (which he now acknowledges was not correct) that CBS had arranged to pay the taxes before awarding him the money.

Hatch was indicted on September 8, 2005. The 10-count indictment included all of the above charges, plus additional charges that he failed to report rental income from properties he owned, failed to declare an automobile he won on Survivor, used money as personal income that was paid to a charity organization he had set up, and had knowingly submitted false statements in the above transactions.

On January 25, 2006 a jury in Providence, Rhode Island found Hatch guilty of tax evasion. The verdict stated that Hatch evaded taxes on his Survivor winnings, on $327,000 he earned as co-host of a Boston radio show, and on $28,000 in rent on property he owned. He was acquitted of seven bank, mail and wire fraud charges.

Hatch faced up to 13 years in prison and a fine of $600,000. On May 16, 2006 he was sentenced to 51 months in prison, plus three years of supervised release after serving his sentence.
...
Hatch contends that he was prosecuted because "he is gay."

Could an older friend have prevented Tyler Clementi’s Suicide?

Daniel Blatt at Gay Patriot:

The Tyler Clementi story has weighed on me much since I first read the entire details about this young man’s unfortunate. And not just because of the sadness of the tale, but also because it, to a small degree, parallels a conversation I had with a young gay man at my alma mater, now a senior.

Last weekend, when on campus visiting as part of my obligations as a member of the executive committee of our Society of Alumni, I chanced upon that student. I had first met him three years ago at a “Send-off” party the LA Alumni Association organized for area undergraduates, in particular, the incoming freshman class.

I sensed that he was gay and seeing myself in him and recalling my own difficult freshman year, sought to reach out to him as best I could. I recalled e-mailing him and offering words of encouragement and support, letting him know that alumni were there to support him. But, I didn’t tell him I was gay. Because I believe each individual must come to terms with his sexuality on his own timetable and in the way appropriate to him, I didn’t want to force the matter, put any undo pressure on him.

Well, this weekend, when I ran into him in Williamstown, I did come out to him, having read in an e-mail on the college’s gay and lesbian alumni listserv that he had come out. He was surprised to learn I was gay — and wished I had said as much in that 2007 e-mail.

And now, having learned that his freshman year was also difficult, I realize that perhaps I erred and should have come out. Then, perhaps, he might have been better able to turn to me, an older gay man who was concerned about his well-being. Having that support might have made his first year away from home far less difficult than it was.

For if Tyler Clementi had had such a friend, he might be alive today.

Armpit fetish?

The guy who did this series obviously has an armpit fetish. Mind you the guy in the pics sure has a nice big thick nose-tickling bush.

Friday fun pic

Daily beefcake

An Arab riding an Arab?

The "girlification" of modern men

Toby Young in the British Spectator:

The feminisation of the latest generation of young men never ceases to amaze me. With their long, blow-dried hair, their expensive designer clothes, their ‘man bags’ and jewellery, they are like some terrifying new genetic hybrid: half-man, half-Barbie doll. God help us all if President Ahmadinejad ever decides to launch an invasion. If these milksops are responsible for the defence of the realm, the mullahs will be in Downing Street within 24 hours.

Whatever happened to the solid yeomanry of England? The obvious answer is to blame the Femi-Nazis. The relentless feminist critique of masculinity that has been blaring out of our schools and universities since the 1960s has taken its toll. Today’s young men have been ideologically programmed to believe that any overt display of masculinity — tucking their shirts in, for instance — would be an endorsement of ‘the patriarchy’. Far better to make common cause with the oppressed by using moisturiser and eating salad.
...
The problem with this explanation is that there’s little evidence the latest generation of men are having less sex. I went to a wedding recently at which the groom was an ex-public schoolboy in his twenties. No more prime specimen of girlie manhood are you likely to see. Here was Osric from Hamlet made flesh, a prancing popinjay of prettification. He’d probably spent more getting his hair done than the bride had spent on her dress. It was stomach-churning.

Yet the effect of this wet noodle on the assembled women was electrifying. As he got up on stage and started telling his bride how much he loved her, bursting into tears within 30 seconds, they literally began to drool. For them, this Barbie Man was the new masculine ideal. And let me tell you, his bride was an absolute knockout. In the good old days, men would have conquered continents for less. Yet here she was, giving herself to a man she probably could have beaten in a fight.

No, it isn’t that men have become more girlish as they’ve become more asexual. Rather, they’re being sexually rewarded for symbolically castrating themselves. To all intents and purposes, today’s young men have swapped places with women, parading in front of them like peacocks, while the newly empowered sisterhood stand on the sidelines, pointing at the men they want brought to their bedchambers.

And why have men done this? Why have they forfeited their role as protectors and breadwinners? Why do a third of university graduates want to put on aprons and clean up baby sick? Because it is so much easier than being a man. Kipling had it right. There’s no higher standard to which men can hold themselves — ‘And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son’ — so it’s hardly surprising they’ve have run crying into their mothers’ arms. I blame the feminists, but not for beating men into submission. Their crime was to give men the licence they craved to surrender all by themselves.

There is a glimmer of hope in all this. As the high ground of mascul-inity has been deserted by men, women have rushed in to claim it for themselves. If you’re looking for courage, tenacity and strength, look no further than the current generation of young women. When the mullahs cross the English Channel, it’ll be this lot they’ll have to contend with. While their boyfriends are at home nursing their broken nails, these harridans will be manning machine-gun posts.

This has been going on for quite a while. As an employer, I first noticed nearly twenty years ago that, if I needed someone to do a man's job, hire a young woman because the young men were mostly lazy sloppy slackers.

Tyler Clementi - "A very sad case out of Rutgers"

Via Daniel Foster at The Corner:

Peter Hansen, founder of Jersey Conservative, has a most thoughtful take on the tragic — on so many levels — case of Tyler Clementi, a Rutgers freshman who leaped from the George Washington Bridge after a roommate secretly taped and posted to the Internet a humiliating video:

A very sad case out of Rutgers today shows how the modern mania for livestreaming video, combined with an absolute lack of moral standards, has led to the suicide of a talented young violinist.

The facts of the case are simple. Mr. Tyler Clementi, a freshman at Rutgers, requested exclusive use until midnight of the room he shared with Dharun Ravi. Mr. Ravi acceded, but then went to the room of his high school friend Molly Wei. Mr. Ravi turned on a hidden webcam to watch the unwitting Mr. Clementi have an encounter with another man. Mr. Ravi posted the video of this encounter online, and another such video two days later. Mr. Clementi soon thereafter leapt to his death from the George Washington Bridge.

As seems clear from Mr. Ravi’s Twitter feed (since deleted, tellingly), Mr. Ravi was disgusted at having to share a room with a gay man. That’s his prerogative – everyone is entitled to feel safe in a private refuge. Mr. Ravi, however, denied the same right to his roommate. If Mr. Ravi did not want to live with Mr. Clementi, he could have asked for a room transfer. Instead, he used streaming video to expose and humiliate Mr. Clementi to all the world. Through Mr. Ravi’s malevolent act, the Web turned a human life with all its complexities into just another meaningless, tawdry Web image for people to laugh at.

The horrible irony is that a fleeting Web shot, so easily forgotten by viewers, is to the victim as shattering as a bullet. The immediate impact is over instantly, but the damage is permanent. Mr. Ravi created an image that could be dredged up from a hard drive at any moment, to haunt Mr. Clementi for the rest of his life. This goes beyond blackmail. It is the reduction of a human life into one degrading instant, forever replayed, allowing no progress and no redemption.

Tyler Clementi, 18, threw himself off the George Washington Bridge after the video of him with another male student was streamed online:

Tyler Clementi, 18, who was studying at Rutgers University in New Jersey, USA, jumped from the George Washington Bridge.

He posted a final message on the social networking website Facebook, which read: "Jumping off the gw bridge sorry."

Paul Mainardi, a lawyer for his family said: "Tyler was a fine young man and a distinguished musician. The family is heartbroken beyond words."
...
Fellow students Dharun Ravi, who was Clementi's room-mate, and Molly Wei, have been charged with invasion of privacy and could face up to five years in prison if convicted.

They are accused of placing a camera in the room and streaming the images straight on to the internet.

In a message posted on microblogging website Twitter on Sep 19 Ravi allegedly said: "Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly's room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay."

Top - Tyler's photo from his Facebook page; bottom - Tyler Clementi, Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei:

Daily beefcake

Another cowboy

Cowboy

Remember this guy? I found another pic of him.

Bush & Rove Didn’t Put Marriage Amendments on State Ballots?

From Gay Patriot:

It has long been a media talking point that then-President George W. Bush and his evil henchman Karl Rove were behind the diabolical scheme to put marriage initiatives on various states’ 2004 ballots in order to increase social conservative turnout, thus generating more votes for Republicans. Only problem is that they never came up with much evidence to support their claim, save their belief that Bush and Rove were horrible, no good, very bad men who would stop at nothing to secure a second term for the demon son of the 41st president.

Well, according to Jordan Lorence, senior counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, a group which defends traditional marriage, those two weren’t much help. He recalls that back in 2004, he sat

. . . in meetings with pro-marriage leaders, hearing them lament the lack of support they were receiving from Rove and the Bush Administration. Particularly, leaders from Ohio expressed frustration that the White House was ignoring their efforts to pass a marriage amendment in the state that put Bush over the top in 2004.

Let’s be clear: Bush did publicly support a marriage amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but his officials did little, if anything, to help enact the state marriage amendments.

Even in 2006, when eight more states added marriage amendments to their constitutions, the Bush White House stayed out of the battles. Perhaps Bush or Rove uttered some words of support for the state amendments, but they certainly did not initiate and lead the movement, nor do I believe they would claim to have done so.

Rub-a-dub dub, three gay men in a tub?

We have grown up to believe that the three men in a tub, of Rub-a-Dub Dub fame, were doing nothing more dubious than chatting about their respective trades:

But, according to a study of the origins of our nursery rhymes, the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker may have been indulging in a more salacious activity.

Albert Jack, the author of a new book, said that the tub referred to a peep show that was a popular adult attraction at travelling fairs.

While it was possible that three men provided homosexual entertainment, he pointed out that the original 15th century rhyme was: "Rub-a-dub dub three maids in a tub, and who do you think were there? The butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker, and all of them gone to the fair." The rhyme was sanitised by the Victorians, he added.

From top to bottom: three bears in a tub; three cowboys in a tub and three WWll German soldiers. (Click here for an X-rated version of three men in a tub.)

Another new link

I will ad this website to the sidebar - Affectionate Men:

A Photographic History of a Century of Male Couples

I found these photos to be both beautiful and profound. The times between 1860 and 1930 men were more free to hold hands, hug, even kiss, without the fear of being riduculed, beaten or labeled.

Regardless if the men pictured here were lovers or friends, the photographs let us all realize that today we live in a society where our emotional freedom and tolerance of others should have moved forward. Instead we seem to be moving backward every day.

Here is one of the pics:

Daily beefcake

New link

This blog is funny: Lurid Digs. I have not included it on the sidebar because it is X-rated. Here is one of their few G-rated pics entitled, Little Shop of Horrors:

Daily beefcake

Seamen

Are these guys really seamen or underwear models posed against a Naval background?

Some faggy gossip

This map is from Mapping Stereotypes. (The other maps are fun too - click this one if you want to make it bigger.) This is what British gays think of Europe:



















Meanwhile back in the real world; Israelis demonstrate for more settlements on the West Bank. (They all look a bit gay to me, especially the one with the Abercrombie and Fitch T and the older guy looks like a metrosexual but the cutie on the right can light my menorah anytime) :

The "conservative Judy Garland" and the Homocons

Ann Coulter at the GOProud fundraiser:

"Gays are the molecular opposites of blacks," Ann Coulter tells a room full of gay men (some of them black), because "everybody likes the gays moving in next door." And yet, the self-proclaimed right-wing Judy Garland explains, gay marriage "is not a civil right — you're not black."

Welcome to Homocon 2010, a fundraiser for gay conservative organization GOProud, held in PayPal founder Peter Thiel's candlelit New York apartment on Saturday night. Tickets went for $2,500, and the attendees — from middle-aged millionaires in dark suits to twenty-somethings in T-shirts proclaiming FREEDOM IS FABULOUS — are laughing uproariously at Coulter's punch lines. Afterward they hug her, beg for photos, and thank her "for saying what needs to be said" and "for everything you do."

This inexplicable, masochistic affection for Coulter (who went on to say that "I don't care how many studies Ted Olson produces" about gay couples making good parents, because the ideal is "one mother, one father") mirrors the conflicted loyalties of gay conservatives: who do you listen to when Republicans demonize you to win an election? Coulter may continue the line that gay marriage "was foisted on Americans by the courts," but as a movement, these men — and some women — remain more serious than their keynote speaker in their efforts to shift the GOP establishment into focusing on economic issues rather than social ones.

After all, it was Olson, George W. Bush's Solicitor General, who successfully argued for overturning California's Prop 8, and the Log Cabin Republicans who won a lawsuit that (kinda) overturned Don't Ask, Don't Tell — while Democrats failed to push the repeal through Congress, and the Obama Administration continues to defend a discriminatory policy that it opposes.
...
In her speech on Saturday, Coulter says that "not only can gays be conservative, you pretty much have to be," because they are the "highest income demographic," because "gays are too stylish to work for the federal government," because radical Muslims want to execute them, and because "once [scientists] find the gay gene, guess who's getting aborted?"

This is the same Coulter, of course, who is comfortable with the word "faggot," wrote that Rick Santorum's comparison of gay sex to bestiality is an "indisputably true point," told an interviewer that sexually active gay men should "feel guilty about it," and mocked the "irritating lesbian" teenager in Tennessee who wanted to bring her girlfriend to senior prom. When The Politics Blog asks her why gay conservatives still gravitate toward her, Coulter dips back to the humor well: "Gays are the least politically correct people in the world — they like my jokes." And then there's this, which is apparently not a joke because she repeats the sentiment a half-dozen times throughout the night: "Gays are against gay marriage."

Never mind that numerous attendees (especially the younger ones) challenge her viewpoint on Constitutional grounds during the question-and-answer session. "The equality clause is about just the blacks," she snaps in response. Nevertheless, this isn't a dealbreaker for her gay fans. As lesbian conservative radio host Tammy Bruce — a GOProud advisor — whispers to a friend, "She's so wrong, but I love her."
...
So it would seem, from one strange night anyway, that gay conservatives don't mind government intervention as long as it levels the playing field. They don't want equal results, just equal opportunity, and it's hard to argue with that — unless, of course, you're Ann Coulter, who is aware of the irony in her position: "I'm 120 years old and I'm not married." Which leaves you wondering: Is this culture warrior serious about every word that comes out of her mouth, or none of them?

The answer, whatever it means, is "yes."

[Cross-posted at BAR.]

Daily beefcake

Daily beefcake

I love redheads.

They're gay, conservative and proud

From Politico:

NEW YORK — Even among the gays, the right is on the rise.

The broad surge in the conservative grassroots made it as far as PayPal founder Peter Thiel’s grand apartment overlooking New York’s Union Square Tuesday night, where about 150 backers of the conservative gay group GOProud gathered to laugh at Ann Coulter’s red meat riffs on Democrats, blacks, and the Obamas at a fundraiser organizers touted as “Homocon.”

GOProud is the tea party of the gay rights movement, with well-tailored dark suits in place of revolutionary war garb.
...
GOProud is an explicitly gay group that isn’t particularly focused on gay rights, and Coulter’s speech – full of conservative red meat, and only the occasional Judy Garland joke – reflected its focus.

The gay right is thriving at a moment that the mainstream gay rights movement faces a profound crisis.

The set of Washington-based establishment groups led by the Human Rights Campaign have close ties to the White House and have turned gay righs into a plan of the Democratic Party platform.
...
The realization that their alliance with the Democratic Party has – for the moment – failed to produce key policy shifts is producing a round of finger-pointing and bloodletting inside the traditional gay rights movement, with calls for resignations and turns toward the courts and toward civil disobedience.

The gay right, meanwhile, has taken its place at the vanguard.
...
“We’re Joe Miller; Log Cabin is Lisa Murkowski,” said GOProud founder Chris Barron, dismissively. “We’re not interested in having a seat at the table as part of the establishment.”

Attendees at “Homocon” universally attributed the rise of the gay right to the rising conservative tide generally.

“It really was the economy stupid. There’s a move to the right in general,” said Thiel, who was also an early investor in Facebook and is a prominent supporter of libertarian causes. "An awful lot of Republicans want to get out of the gay issue in general.”
...
Coulter’s presence at the event was controversial, as other gay activists pointed out that she’d made a series of anti-gay remark — she called former presidential candidate John Edwards a "faggot" — which she explained away at the top of her speech as humor.

“The people who get gay jokes are gays,” she said, adding that when she talks to Christian audience, “Out of sweetness they don’t laugh at the gay jokes.”

Coulter’s jokes Tuesday riffed on the theme that GOProud doesn’t make same-sex marriage central to its appeal; it considers, Barron says, national security and the economy more important.

Marriage “is not a civil right – you’re not black,” Coulter said to nervous laughter. She went on to note that gays are among the wealthiest demographic groups in the country.

“Blacks must be looking at the gays saying, ‘Why can’t we be oppressed like that?’”
...
One, radio host Tammy Bruce, who is on GOProud’s board, said the moment has the “same energy” as the radical ACT-UP protests in the 1980s, which drew attention to the AIDS crisis.
...
As for Coulter, she told POLITICO the embrace of gays on the right could only be reciprocated.

“Right wingers have always liked gays. Look at all of Ronald Reagan’s gay friends,” she said, proceeding to cite an unverified rumor dating back half a century: “Look at my personal hero Joe McCarthy and his” – airquotes – “special assistant.”

It looks like Tammy Bruce has finally switched from being Democrat to Republican.

Joe McCarthy's “special assistant” was Roy Cohn whose lover, G. David Schine, also worked for McCarthy. I wrote about this 3 years ago.

From L to R - Schine, Cohn and McCarthy:

Bears without bare chests