Do you expect to have sex because it’s Valentine’s Day?
Controversial Billboard Shows Mary and Joseph in Bed
Just in time for Christmas, a New Zealand church has erected a billboard that depicts the Virgin Mary and Joseph in bed together. Even if you’re not a believer, this will probably make your skin crawl.
The billboard — paid for by St. Matthew-in-the-City, an Anglican church in the town of Wellington — reads, “Poor Joseph. God is a hard act to follow.” Uh, gross. According to the Huffington Post, the “progressive Christian” Anglican church hopes that the billboard will “get people talking about the Christmas story.”
Church leader Archdeacon Glynn Cardy told the A.P., “This billboard is trying to lampoon and ridicule the very literal idea that God is a male and somehow this male God impregnated Mary … We would question the Virgin Birth in any literal sense. We would question the maleness of God in any literal sense.”
We’d think there’s a more subtle way to do this, but it seems subtlety is not St. Matthew-in-the-City’s strong suit: A press release on the church’s Web site asks, “Is the Christmas miracle a male God sending forth his divine sperm, or is the miracle that God is and always has been among the poor?” Did we mention: gross?
Look, we’re not jumping into the religious debate on this one, but this is probably the worst example of using sex to drum up publicity since the Screech sex tape.
Will print mags soon disappear completely??
Article by Sally Jackson
THEY can gird their loins and stiffen their resolve all they like, but for porn publishers the pun stops here.
Because, despite what the billboards promise, it seems there isn’t a potent enough nasal spray in the world to rouse the moribund adult magazine market, The Australian reports.
Last week the sector took another blow with the news that Playboy Enterprises is to outsource the business operations of its namesake magazine in a bid to reduce costs after losing about $US21 million on the title in the past two years.
Jonathan Littell wins the bad sex in fiction prize
Article from BBC News
Author Jonathan Littell has won the 17th annual Bad Sex In Fiction Award, for his novel The Kindly Ones.
The book, which was originally published in French, won the Prix Goncourt in 2006 and has sold over a million copies in Europe.
Judges at the Literary Review gave him the bad sex prize for a passage that begins: “This sex was watching at me, spying on me, like a Gorgon’s head”.
The award was accepted by Littell’s agent. He has yet to comment.
In one excerpt, the author describes a sexual encounter as “a jolt that emptied my head like a spoon scraping the inside of a soft-boiled egg”.
The Literary Review said Littell’s book was “in part a work of genius”, adding they hoped the author would take their dishonour “in good humour”.
The shortlist for the prize also included works by Paul Theroux and musician Nick Cave.
Last year, the award was won by Rachel Johnson for Shire Hell.
The late John Updike won a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2008 ceremony, after his novel The Widows of Eastwick garnered him a fourth consecutive nomination.