while I was away
Well, I'm back. A day later than expected, thanks to last-minute car failure that resulted in a seriously frustrating 24 hours at the mercy of the AA, but home. I collapsed straight into bed when we staggered in last night and I've been in the office all day today.
So I don't have any kinky news for you. But the world, when I returned to it from the isolated depths of rural England, had plenty of news for me. In the Guardian on the train home I read that Darryn Walker, the blogger who was prosecuted for obscenity after writing a fantasy about abducting, raping and murdering girls band Girls Aloud, has been acquitted. A win for free speech, whatever your opinion about Mr Walker's taste or lack of respect for his fantasy objects. If the prosecution had been successful this would have been the first obscenity conviction of a textual crime, and I'm pleased that the precedent hasn't been set.
The bad political news is that Night Jack, the anonymous Police Constable who won the Orwell Prize for his blog about the police force, has been outed by the Times. Not the first, although political bloggers tend to get less publicity than sexual ones, but policing has been rife with scandal over the last few months, so the story is big. I didn't always agree with Night Jack but I supported his right to privacy, and I think his exposure is a sad, shameful and unnecessary thing. My day job isn't anywhere near as sensitive and interesting as his, but I've already come to terms with the possibility of being outed one day to loved ones who would be hurt by the revelation. I would rather break the news to them myself, and there's a tightening in me at every public humiliation which brings that inevitability closer.
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The kink world has been busy in my absence, too. You've probably already seen them, but since I got back online I've been hungrily devouring Adele Haze's and Ludwig's accounts of their latest shoot with Lupus Pictures.
Adele has excelled herself in a series of wry, beautifully described posts, starting with a selection of The Annotated Lupus Tweets, which she follows up with a gorgeous post about Remembering the Pain, and an indulgent look at the Lupus Marks in Development, a narrative I never tire of seeing recorded in pictures. Ludwig, meanwhile, tells of unexpected Czech lines, false moustaches and caning positions. Definitely a film to look out for.
3 comments:
That was a very shitty piece of journalism from The Times. The only good thing to come from it was the near-unanimous solidarity NJ got from other bloggers, anonymous and non-anonymous alike. Apologists for The Times, like Danny Finkelstein, couldn't understand how anyone could possibly object. I suppose that just demonstrates the difference between the "feral", unregulated blogosphere and the respectable, professional media who have all been on expensive ethics courses.
Sadly, it doesn't seem that the written obscenity fight is over yet. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/06/dangerous_writings_endangered/
Heresiarch - ha to your last sentence: I'm sensing a long-nurtured bitterness here. Seriously, I don't really bother myself with what the meeja think of bloggers (except the Graun, which is unashamedly pro) - do people really think the blogosphere is "feral"? I've seen us characterised as a load of self-indulgent, ranty livejournallers who are incapable of doing actual research and only want to write about their favourite recipes or cat, but never as some sort of wild, uncivilised force of nature. I quite like the image, actually.
Michael - oh dear lord. Surely, surely it is obvious to anyone with a brain that censorship is yesterday's news? This has been tried before a million times without success, and it will fail again; if not during this party's government then during our lifetimes. Society is getting steadily more liberal when it comes to published material and freedom of speech: every so often a collection of old farts rise up indignantly about it, but it never lasts. If you take the long view, censorship has never worked. It perplexes me that people still think it's worth wasting energy on.
Having said all that: shit. Ah well. If we have a fight on our hands, I'm ready for it. *rolls up sleeves*
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