[NON BLOG] Fetishes

After CFTAG this afternoon, I headed east to Church and Wellesley, there to find that the Church Street Fetish Fair was in full progress. There were a fair number of people there, fetish aficionados and tourists like myself passing by the booths and the open stores. I ran into bitterlawngnome at the booth for his Eighteen Men calendar.

I don't get it. The word "fetish" was originally applied in the 18th century as part of an evolutionary theory of religion which held that "fetishism" was the inevitable first stage of any religion, holding as it did that inanimate objects possessed power over humans. Only later did Freud appropriate the term for his "sexual fetishism", while Marx preceded his fellow German-speaker by expounding upon "commodity fetishism". A fetish, going back to the original Wikipedia article, is an "object created by people that has power over people," perhaps originated from some highly positive sexualized association between an object and some sort of sexual sensation, perhaps not, who knows for certain?

This theory is all purely speculative on my part, I fear, because I just don't get it empirically and first-hand. I certainly don't mind if others like it, but I don't get it. When I first entered the grounds of Northbound Leather back in July 2002, I was able to do so without any particular twinges because it just didn't register with me as anything particularly triggerish. I can still do that, but the assorted garb still doesn't resonate with me, doesn't click. I react to leather, in the Northbound Leather context, in somewhat the way in which I imagine that a man rating 6 on the Kinsey scale would react to a cute woman (or, for that matter, a Kinsey 0 man would react to a cute man): Yes, it's there, what of it? If sexual attraction is predicated on connections being made, the connections just aren't here for me.

A pity, perhaps, though it doesn't keep me from wishing the Fair's aficionados well. We all do share, in common, an attraction to non-obvious objects. When you think about it, the mechanics of sex don't make all that much intuitive sense, do they?

UPDATE (12:02 PM) : Revised to be much clearer. Also, to not sound like an idiot.

[URBAN NOTE] Gender on the TTC

Out of curiosity, have other people noticed that the people sitting on the banks of seats in TTC vehicles--streetcars, subway cars, buses--sort themselves out by gender?

[NON BLOG] Coffee-free, Day 7

Tea is my methadone.

[LINK] More from Iraq

My congratulations to the United States for dropping the ball completely on human rights in Iraq. I truly wish I could say that I was surprised.

[LINK] The Maori Seats

Over at the Head Heeb, Errol and Tim have an informative series of posts (1, 2, 3) on the Maori Seats, the seats reserved in New Zealand's parliament for that country's indigenous people.

[META] Blogroll Addition

I've added J. Otto Pohl's Otto's Random Thoughts to the non-SHWI segment of the blogroll.

[LINK] The Euro-Russian Alliance in Space

Via Will Baird:

It's all but official—Russia and Europe will soon embark on a cooperative effort to build a next-generation manned space shuttle. Speaking at the Paris Air Show, in Le Bourget, France, in June, Russian space officials confirmed earlier reports from Moscow that their partners at the European Space Agency would join the Russian effort to build a new reusable orbiter, dubbed Kliper. After the cautious optimism they expressed at the beginning of 2005, Russians are now confident that their European partners will be on board for the largest, boldest Russian endeavor in spaceflight in more than a decade.

[...]

The Russians, encouraged by support from their prospective foreign partners, came to Le Bourget in June with a better, bolder Kliper than the one they were showing off just a few months ago. Instead of the wingless vehicle originally envisioned [see News, "Russians Propose a New Space Shuttle," IEEE Spectrum, February], RKK now favors a minishuttle with swept wings. It will double the cargo and crew capacity of the Soyuz capsule, replacing its venerable predecessor, which served more than four decades as the transport and resupply vehicle for the International Space Station (ISS).

This is cool. Now, if only we can develop an economic rationale for space colonization and exploration.

[NON BLOG] Two Bits for a Haircut

More like 136 actually, tip included, and Canadian bits at that. I had my regular monthly haircut with my politely flirty hairdresser at House of Lords again. I tried a shorter haircut than usual, for a change.

House of Lords is almost famous for its loud dance remixes. The notable remix tonight was The Romantics' 1983 hit "Talking In Your Sleep", that song about unwitting betrayals. So far as I could tell, all that the remix did to the song was put some of the vocals through a vocoder.

[LINK] Terrorisms, then and now

In its latest issue, The Economist has a worthwhile article, "For jihadist, read anarchist," examining the numerous similarities by anarchist and Islamist political violence and terrorism.

What prompts the leap from idealistic thought to violent action is largely a matter for conjecture. Every religion and almost every philosophy has drawn adherents ready to shed blood, their own included, and in the face of tyranny, poverty and exploitation, a willingness to resort to force is not hard to nderstand. Both anarchism and jihadism, though, have incorporated bloodshed into their ideologies, or at least some of their zealots have. And both have been ready to justify the killing not just of soldiers, policemen and other agents of the state, but also of civilians.

The comparison shouldn't be taken too seriously, of course; there obviously isn't an identity between the two political ideologies. There's enough held in common to be provocative, though.

[MUSIC] David Bowie, "Jump They Say"

Of late, I've been listening to the two-disc mix CD of David Bowie that talktooloose burned for me last week. I own most of the songs on the two discs in one form or another, but that doesn't matter terribly. The ethos of the mix CD doesn't seem to be so much about providing songs as it is about ordering songs, giving them some structure relative to each other, sequencing them. "Beauty and the Beast," "Heroes?" and "Fantastic Voyage"? "Fashion," "China Girl," and "Jump They Say"? It works.

"Jump They Say", as it happens, is one of the Bowie songs on this mix CD that I didn't own beforehand. It occupies an interesting position in Bowie's career. After reaching his alleged artistic nadir with the group Tin Machine, Bowie returned to his solo career with 1993's Black Tie, White Noise. The album seems to have been received ambivalently, as (after the Rough Guide to Rock Music) a pale echo of his 70s glories, perhaps unfairly. In retrospect, Black Tie, White Noise might more fairly be placed at the beginning of a renaissance that took off with 1995's Outside to the recent Reality. It might: I still have to listen to the album. For the time being, I just have "Jump They Say."

I caught a snippet of the video on MuchMusic once almost a decade ago, Bowie on top of a skyscraper, dressed in a business suit and buffetted by the wind, someone with a Super-8 camera filming him as he hung on. I thought thatthe guitar was more Reeves Gabrels and less Nile Rodgers, but there one goes. The song that I hear right now, coming out of my computer's speakers,, anchored by Bowie's saxophone and his typically pathetic vocals and lyrics.

They say hey that's really something
They feel he should get some time
I say he should watch his ass
My friend don't listen to the crowd
They say 'Jump'

Got to believe somebody
Got to believe

I like this sort of defiance. I don't, of course, know for certain whether the defiance is actually in this song or whether I'm projecting onto it, but I truly do like this defiance in his decidedly audible musical package.