Thursday, June 19, 2008

All Done Here

Relocated to:
BOOKSAGA: Adventures in the Book Trade

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Weird Books Guaranteed to Make You Happy

Okay I'll admit it. Some of the books I link to on this site aren't all that weird; sometimes they're just a little quirky and sometimes they're just books I found interesting enough to want to draw your attention to. So yes it's all kind of a mixed bag here at Publishing Oddities.

However there is available a wonderful magazine about collecting truly weird books with reviews and articles. It's called Book Happy, and there are seven issues in all.

Here's a partial list of contents: Confessions of a Cheap Book Fiend; Collecting Contactees; Satanic Panic books; Nonfiction paperback sleaze; Youth Studies Alcohol; The Ultimate Weird Book Caper; Jack Chick; Orfeo Angelucci; Bad Drug Books; White Slavery books; The Worst Science Fiction Novel Ever Written: Galaxy 666; Harry Stephen Keeler; Theodore L. Shaw; Crucified Gods Galore; Handbook on Hanging; How to Electroplate Baby Shoes; Rebellious Wives & Slacker Husbands; Novel of Chiropractic; Bad Poetry; Health Books for Hillbillies; Weirdest Book Ever Published; Obscure Genres; Hypnotism books; David Icke & co.; Kenneth Goff, L. Ron Hubbard, Brainwashing & Psychopolitics; Book Hell; Wickedest City in the World; much more. Contributors include: Donna Kossy, Ken DeVries, Dan Howland, Lyell Henry, Rob Tucker, Greg Bishop, John Marr, Chris Mikul, Seth Deitch, Dan Kelly, Ray X, & others.

Find out more at http://www.book-happy.com by clicking the "Book Happy" link.

True Norwegian Black Metal

Description: "When we’re on the road, all we watch is VBS, and our favorite series is Norwegian Black Metal." (Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters) Documentary photographer Peter Beste has spent the last five years working in the milieu of the Norwegian black metal scene. This scene, with its notorious events of murder, church arson, and self-mythology, is absolutely sealed to outsiders. The international black metal fan base is one of the most devoted, fanatical, and proprietary in the world. Beste’s access and insight into this world is unprecedented and has yielded an amazing photographic journey, along with a very popular documentary series on VBS.tv, also available on YouTube. Beste, together with Johan Kugelberg, noted writer, editor, and collector of documentary photography, has brought the images into a hermeneutic narrative that makes for a compelling experience along the lines of Anders Petersen’s CafĂ© Lehmitz, Ed Van Der Elsken’s Love on the Left Bank, or William Klein’s Life Is Good and Good for You in New York. (more...)

Happy Kitty Bunny Pony: A Saccharine Mouthful of Super Cute

Description: From turn-of-the-century novelties and Depression-era distraction, through wartime comfort, to Hello Kitty and Jeff Koons, cuteness has thrived in the fertile soil of American modern-age media and pop culture. What is it about fluffy bunnies with bows, baby ducks splashing in puddles, kittens snuggled in baskets, and little lambs on their way to school? Happy Kitty Bunny Pony celebrates America's "cult of the cute" in all its campy, kitschy, ironic glory. (more...)

Greetings From the Gayborhood: A Nostalgic Look at Gay Neighborhoods

Description: From the Castro to Chelsea, Greetings From the Gayborhood celebrates twelve traditionally gay neighborhoods in America, past and present. Featuring archival images along with nostalgic and sometimes kitschy ephemera (bar ads, event programs, matchbooks, flyers, and more) this scrapbook-style collection is the perfect souvenir for where the boys are and were. Donald F. Reuter has chronicled the evolution of gay neighborhoods in twelve cities--Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC--and studied how gentrification has affected them and their role in the greater community. Greetings From the Gayborhood is a spirited and sexy time capsule that celebrates the history, creativity, and longevity of gay America. (more...)

Sunday, June 8, 2008

And Speaking of Odd Book Finds...

I put this up on my other book blog about my recent unusual book find, though it certainly relates here.

http://booksaga.blogspot.com/2008/06/unusual-book-find.html

Getting Out: Your Guide to Leaving America

"Taking a decidedly pessimistic view of the current American moment, Ehrman's well-designed, all-encompassing guidebook provides detailed instructions for fleeing 'before America comes crashing down upon you.' Ehrman includes a large number of first-person stories from folks who did just that, starting new lives in China, Australia, Slovakia and Israel, among other destinations" (Publishers Weekly). (more...)

Lourdes Grobet: Lucha Libre

Description: Take one part Mexi-Monster cinema, one part Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, throw in a little Zoro, the WWF, and the knit-costume-wearing performance art collective Forcefield, and you come up with the raw, vivid, and psychologically unhinged world of Lucha Libre, the sports-entertainment phenomenon that first swept Mexico and now the world. (more...)

No Regrets: The Best, Worst, & Most #$%*ing Ridiculous Tattoos Ever

Description: Dr. Phil, Gay Unicorns, and Jesus Christ... They're all tattooed on someone's ass. Or face, or whatever. Remember that time you were wasted and thought it would be a good idea to get a tattoo on your leg of Maury Povich shaking hands with Sasquatch, but your friends talked you out of it at the last second? Well, some people don't have any friends... (more...)

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Dances with Werewolves (Memoirs of a Spanking Model)

Since her teens, Niki Flynn has been able to achieve sexual satisfaction only by imagining elaborate punishment scenarios in which she is restrained, caned and spanked. After meeting an English spanking enthusiast online and relocating to the U.K, she became involved with the notorious Lupus Films in eastern Europe. Soon she evolved into an underground adult film star who submitted to harrowing scenes of torment and severe corporal punishment for the entertainment of a large audience of educated voyeurs. This is her story. (more...)

A Practical Guide to Racism


A Practical Guide to Racism tackles America’s tragic flaw from a new, illuminating perspective. As a world-renowned expert on ethnography, as well as phrenology and the rhythm method, C.H. Dalton is uniquely qualified to offer his perspective on this difficult topic.

The book is divided into nine chapters, one for each of the nine races: Whites, Blacks, Jews, Asians, Indians (and Injuns), Arabs, Gypsies, Hispanics, and Merpeople. In each chapter, Dalton provides a comprehensive and unapologetic handbook to the race in question, as well as a history of their oppression, and a guide to the stereotypes about them and their basis in fact.

In several helpful appendixes, Dalton examines, in turn, sexual races like Gays and Women, ancient races like Phoenicians and Doozers, and interracial dating. He also provides a handy guide to "The Good Ones" from each race, and their crania.

Finally, Dalton has compiled the first complete glossary of racial epithets, including a selection of his own suggestions for additional slurs. Like "Frazetta," a slur for a rugged, muscled white person holding a battleaxe. (E.g., "Hey, look at that Frazetta standing triumphantly over the corpse of that Orc!") (more...)


Other People's Love Letters: 150 Letters You Were Never Meant to See

"If I have learned only one thing from a) personal experience and b) Vivian Cash's fascinating memoir, I Walked the Line, it is this: No human can compose a love letter without seeming slightly insane. Love letters are like suicide notes--if someone is in the emotional position to consider writing one, they're generally in the worst psychological position to make any cogent sense. That disconnect is what makes Other People's Love Letters: 150 Letters You Were Never Meant to See a painfully entertaining twelve-minute read. The book delivers exactly what it purports: random personal letters from people who are either wildly ecstatic or profoundly depressed over the condition of their romantic existence. (One of my favorite entries is from a person who just printed the word liar 183 consecutive times.) Judging from the contents of these notes, we appear to live in a society that is sex crazed and optimistic yet consumed with deep regret. This is probably true" (Chuck Klosterman). (more...)

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Off Topic

My new blog: BOOKSAGA: Adventures in the Book Trade

How Animals Have Sex: A Guide to the Reproductive Habits of Creatures Great and Small

Whether in the wild or in captivity, our furry, scaly, and feathered friends exhibit an incredible determination to mate. Find out which animals engage in dance competitions, cannibalism, and intercourse that lasts for six months. Discover why lady weevils have a really hard time of it. And why the female Mormon cricket isn't offended when her partner insists on weighing her first. Marvel at the transgender clownfish, and gaze with envy at the humble barnacle and its remarkable sexual-organ-to-body-length ratio. In the world of animal sex there are apparently few traits or behaviors nature has deemed too bizarre to evolve.

Barcode Jesus

Everyone knows that in this day and age religion is just a product. Scott Blake demonstrates the point with this ingenious flipbook. Watch as a mosaic portrait of the Son of God dissolves into a single (and scannable) barcode. (Available from BlueQ.com)

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Trance formation of America

O'Brien's story is one of a survivor of a CIA-sponsored program called MK Ultra, which aimed to explore the limits of human "suggestibility." The program began following World War II, when numerous top Nazi scientists resettled in the United States, at the invitation of the CIA, to continue their research into mind control. The project was based upon the research finding that if a person is severely traumatized, he or she will "split" off a "multiple personality" as a defense mechanism. It was those "multiples" that CIA scientists sought (successfully) to "program." Today thousand of people exist as mind-controlled slaves whose "programs" for various activities, such as performance in pornography films, prostitution, message carrying, and drug "muling," can be "accessed" by their "controllers" by cryptic keywords.

A reader curious about O'Brien's book should be forewarned of the exceptionally bizarre nature of its revelations. In fact, at least in my view, the revelations are so bizarre, it would probably be a bad move to read this book without first reading something that "builds" up to it. A good primer on the subject would be John Decamp's _The Franklin Cover-Up_.

Those who do read the book and are of sufficient independent thought to see through the haze of disinformation put forward every day by the state-influenced newspapers and magazines and see the truth in O'Brien's book are placed in a difficult position. They're in possession of extremely rare knowledge, and, futhermore, extremely bleak knowledge. For the picture painted by O'Brien, unfortunately, is nearly without hope. (from Amazon review)

Anal Intruders from Uranus

Description: Women are anally violated by space aliens, super villains, monsters, and more. These girls may not like it at first, but once they try green, they become juiced-up sex-machines. (Available from LastGasp.com.)

H. R. Giger's Necronomicon

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Sunday, May 11, 2008

Whales on Stilts

"Lily Gefelty's father works for a mad scientist. When she overhears him say that he wants to take over the world, her oblivious father assures her, 'Honey, sometimes adults use irony. They don't really mean what they say.' Nonetheless, the 12-year-old calls on her two best friends to investigate. The trio soon learns that Larry does indeed plan to conquer the world using mind-controlled whales on stilts with laser-beam eyes. No adult will believe them, so it's up to the kids to save the Earth" (School Library Journal). (more...)

The RE/Search Guide to Bodily Fluids

Description: Mucus, saliva, sweat, vomit, urine, farts, feces, earwax and more are humorously (and seriously) described in this anthropological/historical investigation. (more...)

Zen of Farting

Description: In 1993, a Taiwanese fisherman opened a chest that had been in his family for centuries. Inside, he found a manuscript which may be as significant as the Dead Sea scrolls—a manuscript which will revolutionize our thinking about the origins of Zen. Written on a rice paper scroll, the manuscript records the teachings of the founder of Zen, the Master Reepah Gud Wan. It makes it quite clear that Reepah, a legitimate teacher of Buddhism, was frustrated by the inability of his students to grasp the abstract concepts of the Buddha. In desperation, he decided to play a joke on them. He invented the Zen of Farting, confident that even the densest pupil would realize that he was making a joke and laugh at his excessive seriousness-—not to mention his farts.

The joke went over like a stale air biscuit. Soon, the Master had thousands of students eager to learn this brave new spiritual teaching, the Zen of Farting. Thus was Zen born. (more...)

Sunday, May 4, 2008

The Museum of Bad Art: Masterworks

Located in the basement of a theater, the Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) is a unique institution dedicated to the celebration of artistic effort, however misguided. The Museum of Bad Art: Masterworks presents a pulsating collection of more than seventy never-before-published pieces of artwork from MOBA's permanent collection. Comprised largely of canvases found discarded on curbside trash piles or obtained for a pittance at thrift stores, this innovative compilation occupies a niche previously ignored in the international community of art collection, preservation, and interpretation. If the subjectivity of art appreciation were ever in doubt, this astonishing assortment of artistic commentaries will fan the flames of controversy. It is clear that many of these artists suffered for their art; now it's your turn. (more...)

Aesthetic Surgery

From liposuction to lip implants, this book explores all the ins and outs of body sculpting, focusing on the artistry of aesthetic surgery and the extremes to which people go to "improve" their looks. Topics include: History of aesthetic surgery (with unpublished medical photos!); Ethnicity and aesthetic surgery; Surgery in movies; Spotlight on Ivo Pitanguy, the "Michelangelo of the scalpel"; Interviews with the world's most famous aesthetic surgeons; Before and after photos of transformed body parts, from the top of the head to the tips of the toes; Caricatures and jokes about aesthetic surgery; Bibliography including links to plastic surgery websites. (more...)



Deathtripping: Underground Trash Cinema

This exhaustive study focuses on the New York filmmakers that coalesced around the radical manifesto espoused by downtown filmmaker Nick Zedd: "none shall emerge unscathed." Placing their work within the wider alternative film and downtown post-punk scenes, Deathtripping offers detailed analyses of the movement’s films alongside interviews with the filmmakers and their collaborators, including Richard Kern, Nick Zedd, Tommy Turner, Beth B, Joe Coleman, and Lydia Lunch. (more...)

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Facebuilder for Men

Description: Just as strength training exercises build and define body muscles, Facebuilder defines, builds, and tones facial muscles. Carole Maggio's program offers quick and remarkable results-visible in less than a week. (more...)

The Art of Pole Dancing: A Spin-by-Spin Guide

Description: This sizzling guide features 50 of the best basic moves, from hip swivels, knee drops, and thigh wraps to booty shakes and splits. Attractive photographs open every chapter, and each choreographic morsel is illustrated with line drawings (more than 200 in all) as well as easy-to-follow instructions that will soon entice anyone to move boldly to the music! (more...)

The Black Man's Guide on How to Cheat on Your Woman

Description: Women on the side hold the same complicated value as a complicated video game. It s fun to play and it may involve some time but when it is all said and done, you can always turn the damn thing off and get back to real life. This book will teach you how to maintain your home life and how to play the streets. Women know we cheat! This is not some new profound thing. It's how you do it! There are rules to this game. After reading this book you will be a better cheater, well informed or a committed man! (more...)

Sunday, April 20, 2008

In Praise of The Backside

Description: "An ethnological and sociological reflection is lead by Professor Döpp in this fascinating matter that brings to the most incongruous revelations. Beyond our cultural and religious upbringings, women and men pursue their fantasies, which the author tries to unravel with the rigour of a scientist for the pleasure of our eyes." (more...)

Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments

Author Boese (Hippo Eats Dwarf, The Museum of Hoaxes) returns with another look at scientific oddities, this time focusing on unlikely but actual experiments. Included are notorious examples such as the Stanford Prison Experiment and Stanley Milgram's infamous shock treatment obedience experiment, but it's the lesser-known studies that will generate the most interest. Disembodied heads, animal resurrection ("Zombie Kitten," "Franken-Monkey") and the direct stimulation of a subject's emotions (via electric brain prod) are some of the more grim activities Boese describes (though, thankfully, he steers clear of examples from Nazi Germany). (more...)

Church Pimps


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Sunday, April 13, 2008

Natural Bust Enlargement with Total Mind Power

How to use the other 90% of your mind to increase the size of your breasts. (more...)

Exercising the Penis: How to Make Your Most Prized Organ Bigger, Harder & Healthier

"After searching hours online on penis enlargement, I came across this book... I bought the book in hopes that it could help me do that. It did... It also has got a lot of great tips" (from Amazon review). (more...)

Bombproof Your Horse

Description: A clearly illustrated manual that shows equestrians how to prepare their mounts for the unexpected, turning them into safer, more pleasurable mounts. (more...)

Sunday, April 6, 2008

The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew It Was None of His Business

This picture book tells the tale of a little mole who puts his head up above the ground only to have some animal go to the toilet on his head. The mole, who is very short-sighted and wears thick glasses, doesn't see who it was so he goes in search of animals to ask. Each animal says 'no' and then shows what their own poop looks like. Eventually the mole finds out which animal is responsible and has his revenge.

15 Point Guide To Peeing in the City

It's tough to find a public restroom in the city but who says you need one? Ray Tempus teaches us to think outside the lavatory with his pocket sized urban survival guide. Tricks and tips for both genders.

People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It

When people die by accident, in violence, or maybe they're drunk, stoned, or angry, they get freeze-framed. Even if they die naturally but have no clue what to expect, they might not notice they're dead. It's frustrating to see and not be seen. It's frustrating to not know what you're supposed to do next. It's especially frustrating to be in someone else's body and think it's your own. That's if you're dead. If you're alive and that spirit has attached itself to you, well that's a whole other set of frustrations.

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Field Guide to the North American Bird

An illustrated guide to everyone’s favorite hand gesture, complete with a history of the bird, bird applications and etiquette, and how-tos for executing more than 50 birds. Brush up on classic birds like the Peel the Banana and the Volume ("Can you hear this?... Or do you want me to turn it up?"), then expand your vocabulary with more advanced birds like the Cell Phone, the Pulley, and the Helium Balloon. Includes a chapter on "Birds of the World," for the globetrotting bird-flipper. Flash the finger from China to the Czech Republic. (more...)

The Haunted Vagina

It's difficult to love a woman whose vagina is a gateway to the world of the dead.

"Steve falls madly in love with Stacy, but it isn't until they move in together that he hears voices coming from Stacy's southern junction. When a skeletal creature makes its way through Stacy into their world, Stacy convinces Steve he must go exploring to find out where this mysterious passage leads. After his fist foray, Steve almost doesn't make it back from the alternate world, but the next time Stacy sets him up for a full spelunking" (from Amazon review). (more...)

Oh Shit! It's Jesus

"Evolution, Bible thumpers, and Christian hypocrites. What do they have to do with Jesus? Jesus was a peasant day-laborer. His teachings and his miraculous deeds were revolutionary. When religious leaders saw Jesus walking up, out of frustration they would say 'Oh shit! It's Jesus!' Jesus was trouble. He taught that God was more concerned about social justice and the loving restoration of individuals, rather than blind allegiance to an oppressive and irrelevant religious system. When Jesus would walk along the shore of a fishing village, a life hardened fisherman would see Jesus and joyfully shout out 'Oh shit! It's Jesus!' After a hard day of labor, fishermen, women from the fields, and children would sit in the evening sun and listen to Jesus teach about the love and mercy God desires for everyone. The reality and message of Jesus' life are amazing. You may see organized religion and the church as a negative option for your spiritual life, but I encourage you to look at the actual life of Jesus as a positive choice for your spirituality." (more...)

Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships

"In this wide-ranging examination of the emotional and physical relations between humans and the inanimate objects of their desire, AI guru Levy first addresses the question of love with robots, and moves on to consider the mechanics of actually having sex with them. In order to put the reader at ease with the possibility of human-robot love, Levy compares the phenomenon to the ways in which humans fall in love with each other, their pets, and even their motorcycles. From there, Levy argues, it is a short emotional step to the affection people can be expected to display towards robots" (Publishers Weekly). (more...)

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Die andere Seite der Schonheit (The Other Side of Beauty)

"Here's something for connoisseurs: a 109-page, oversized trade paperback--a book of art photographs imported from Germany. Called The Other Side of Beauty, its subject is female body hair. Of it's more than 80 photos, dating from 1933 to 1995, when the book was published (most pictures were shot in the 1990s), most photos focus on women with hairy armpits (and occasionally just their pits), but 20 of the photos include full-body shots with hairy pussies as well. In most cases with the pits and in all cases with the pussies, these women are abundantly hairy--they don't merely sport a few dainty wisps" (http://www.hairtostay.com/books.htm). (more...)



Man-ipulation

The black male, digitally manipulated. (more...)

The American Males Guide on How to Get More Pussy

Book Description: "THIS IS NOT ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE HOW TO PICK UP GIRLS BOOKS. THIS IS A HOW TO GET MORE PUSSY BOOK!!! The four basic primal instincts that motivate men to work are food, shelter, money and sex. When you need food you go to the grocery store, when you need shelter you see a realtor, when you need money you get a job, and when you want more sex you study THE AMERICAN MALES' GUIDE ON HOW TO GET MORE PUSSY." (more...)

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Mirka

Gilles Berquet (Le Banquet) is thought to be a master of erotic photo in the wake of artists such as Pierre Molinier. Mirka Lugosi, one of France's leading illustrators and Berquet's model and muse, has carved her own niche in the specialized field of fetish art. In this book, Mirka embodies several characters in Berquet's imaginative, arty, and profoundly unsettling photographic style, infused with kinky and fetishistic elements. Mirka's adventures on screen on the included DVD are reminiscent of surrealist short films. (more...)

I.N.R.I.

"This is Christ's life and gospels portrayed as if it were for a special millenial edition of Vogue. Quick summary: lots of dramatic stills of beautiful, androgenous, young adults playing the roles of Christ, Mary, the Apostles, Judas, etc. in contemporary settings like a garage (aka, the manger) or a ghetto in the USA" (Amazon review). (more...)

To be Eaten

A banquet cooked and served by photographer Sara Sapetti. A feast of gluttony, hedonism and cannibalism, where the author plays on the thin line between eating and being eaten. (more...)



Sunday, March 9, 2008

Special Achievement in Book Cover Design: Visually Hungry, by Rankin


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Holy Bibel

This pocket bibel full of misspellings and misunderstandings is way more fun than reading the 'real' Bible. This latest translation throws out all the boring details and mushy love-thy-neighbor stuff and just Yuks it up the way Dog intended. Plus you get all the cool, dramatic illustrations thrown in for free. Its authentic look makes it perfect for discreetly easing the stress and monotony of morning mass or Sunday school class. (more...)

I Date a Hooker

This photo documentary book follows author Jeff Fischer as he treats several hookers to proper, romantic dates. From the beach to the bowling alley to the gun club, Jeff gets to know these girls in one fully clothed, and often awkward evening. More than just sexy, this book is sweet and sincere and respectful, reminding us to see through the skin to the human side of these professionals, and, of course, to "always wrap it up." (more...)

Sleep

From the mid 60's to late 70's, New York photographer Michael Putnam chronicled images of people asleep in public places. It's like an old-fashioned Life magazine essay; wordless yet rich and profound with unanswered questions. (more...)

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Mouthpiece

Justin Quinnell, using his mouth as a pinhole camera, captures on film his visit to the dentist, portraits of friends and family, snakes, tortoises, alligators and angry cats, the everyday acts of having a bath, cleaning his teeth and eating his dinner. More surreal are the landscapes, the icons of world travel; included are the Lincoln Memorial and the Twin Towers. (more...)

A Girl's Pocket Guide to Trouser Trout

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Blood & Dishonour: The Dark, Bloody and Perversely Erotic World of the Satanic Sluts

Devoted to all things dark, satanic and creatively alternative, over 50 of the world’s sexiest women have outraged the boundaries of taste and convention and are shown in all their glory; raw, uncut, uncensored, sometimes bloody, sometimes bound, but never bowed. Forget clichĂ©s like "Girl Power," "Grrrl Power" or "Riot Girls," forget Bunny Girls, the Pussycat Dolls and Christina Aguilera, forget second and third wave feminism, forget erotica, forget softcore, forget hardcore, forget Britney, Bratz Dolls and Buffy, in fact forget everything and every notion that surrounds female empowerment, eroticism and fetishism and prepare to peel back the skin on the dark side of femininity. (more...)


Sunday, February 24, 2008

Witkin

"This chronological presentation of more than 100 works from a 20-year period allows the reader both to survey the path of that evolution and to recognize the recurring subjects of [Witkins's] shifting style. The themes of heaven and hell, suffering, beauty, and motherhood are as constant as his portrayal of mutilated and malformed flesh, masks, and the thorns and grapes that refer to Christianity and pagan myth" (Library Journal). (more...)



The Full Body Project: Photographs by Leonard Nimoy

In his provocative new book, photographer and actor Leonard Nimoy captures images of full-bodied women, some of whom are involved in what is known as the "fat acceptance" movement. (more...)

The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification

Julian Montague has created an elaborate classification system of abandoned shopping carts, accompanied by photographic documentation of actual stray cart sightings. (more...)

Sunday, February 17, 2008

First person to leave a comment using the word "punany" in a sentence gets Bill Brownstein's Sex Carnival. (Based on my current visitor stats I'd say your odds of winning are about 50-50.) To claim free book, send an email to weirdmedia@gmail.com and include a valid mailing address (USA only). Note: By using the word "punany" in a sentence you are acknowledging that you are at least 18 years of age and wish to recieve Sex Carnival.

About Sex Carnival: Sex Carnival is a whimsical, eye-opening record of one man's travels into the bold new world of porn. Bill Brownstein provides a guide for the uninitiated and the bewildered, a hands-on intro for anyone who wonders why the porno biz has become so mainstream in just the last few years. Brownstein's global travels take him from watching Tristan and other sex superstars accept their trophies at the annual porn awards ceremony in Las Vegas to witnessing the weekend shopping sprees of Dutch families as the kids push their grocery carts through the biggest sex supermarkets on earth. He takes us from dungeons and dragons pleasure chambers in New York to a different kind of pleasure-the rough trade in Hamburg. And along the way, he stops off to catch some lap-dancing in Montreal and all kinds of unexpected action at the sex bars of Paris. Brownstein provides a lively account of the business of sex and reveals his encounters with a universe of titillation that is fresh, original, naughty, and very bizarre.

Pees on Earth

"A photographer and multimedia artist whose work has appeared in Vogue and Playgirl, Jong likes to pee in public places. Jong relieves herself in New York City, Hawaii, Shanghai, Mexico and Florida; in city, suburbia, on the beach and, doglike, into snow. The captionless photos are interrupted by Jong's interview of ex-prostitute/sex maven/performance artist Annie Sprinkle, whose name may be inspired by her own public peeing performances, and who categorizes Jong's work as 'post-porn:' 'sex- or body-oriented material that goes beyond mainstream porn or erotica'" (Publishers Weekly). (more...)



Fetish Bubblegirls

Fetish Bubblegirls presents the work of internationally recognized graffiti artist Tilt in an unabashedly new, colorful, and playful volume. Graffiti has always been an inherently dangerous, high-wire act--the execution of art in risky, often illegal situations. And one could argue for a strong parallel that exists between the classic graffiti writing's extensive use of bubbly, curvaceous shapes and the female form. The French born graf writer obsessively explores these tensions and parallels in Fetish Bubblegirls as he explores the world in search of beautiful young canvases on which to execute his art. (more...)

A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis

A man can hold his manhood in his hand, but who is really gripping whom? Is the penis the best in man--or the beast? How is man supposed to use it? And when does that use become abuse? Of all the bodily organs, only the penis forces man to confront such contradictions: something insistent yet reluctant, a tool that creates but also destroys, a part of the body that often seems apart from the body. This is the conundrum that makes the penis both hero and villain in a drama that shapes every man--and mankind along with it.

Whether enemy or ally, demon or god, the source of satisfaction or the root of all earthly troubles, the penis has forced humanity to wrestle with its enduring mysteries. Here, in an enlightening and entertaining cultural study, is a book that gives context to the central role of the penis in Western civilization. (more...)

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Story of the Eye

In 1928, Georges Bataille published this first novel under a pseudonym, a legendary shocker that uncovers the dark side of the erotic by means of forbidden obsessive fantasies of excess and sexual extremes. A classic of pornographic literature, Story of the Eye finds the parallels in Sade and Nietzsche and in the investigations of contemporary psychology; it also forecasts Bataille's own theories of ecstasy, death and transgression which he developed in later work.
"Unashamedly surrealistic, both disgusting and fascinating, and packed with seemingly endless violations" (Amazon). (more...)

David Lynch: Snowmen


Exhibiting his characteristic preoccupation with ominous beauty as these ephemeral folk sculptures decompose in front of snow-covered tract houses, Lynch pays scant regard to the cheerier and more genial properties of snowmen, and indeed some of these images will remind viewers of the shadowy black-and-white tones of Lynch's 1977 film Eraserhead. (more...)

Ripple: A Predilection for Tina

Introduction by David Cronenberg.
"Artist Martin DeSerres, 38, was getting by on children's book illustration when a grant he had applied for finally came through, enabling a project he called 'The Eroticism of Homeliness.' Finding models was at first difficult, but Tina, a teenager, eventually kept her appointment with him. Chubby, bespectacled, pimpled, she seemed overweeningly shy. But she warmed to posing, especially in the nude. And Martin fell for her. Sex ensued, and it was the experienced, even jaded man who felt, perhaps, in love. For Tina, everything was much more casual. She enjoyed pleasing Martin and fulfilling his fantasies, but when he tried to fulfill hers, such as she had told him, she recoiled and eventually left" (Booklist). (more...)

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Saudek

The Czech Republic has long been a land of mystery and magic, home to alchemists, artists, and the original bohemians, all of them weavers of spells, creators of fantastic worlds of the imagination. Internationally famous Czech photographer Jan Saudek is no exception, and equally as uncompromising in pursuit of his own unique vision. For over four decades Saudek has created a parallel photographic universe, a two-dimensional home full of longing, peopled with the most extraordinary characters and colored by desire. The timeless strength of his hand-tinted photographs lies in their poetic compositions and their forceful--at times ribald--pictorial language, with its overtones of medieval genre pictures and Baroque mythology. Rejecting the traditional beauty in his famous nude photographs, Saudek shows the distinctively different: old women, fat women, children; real people in tableaux vivants that remind us of everything from surreal early movies to fin-de-siecle carnival nights. They exist outside time, a uniquely colored and almost mythical theater of dreams. (more...)



The Big Penis Book

(more...)

Death of a Transvestite

Hero/heroine Glen Marker sits on Death Row and offers to tell his life story in all its sordid detail in exchange for his last wish: to die in drag! In vivid pulp style, the author paints a portrait of the luscious Glenda on a one-way trip to the Big House.

Killer In Drag

Meet Ed Wood's alter ego Glen/Glenda, whose ravishing beauty and musical voice bewitch every male in sight. Impeccably attired in either gender, hired assassin Glen becomes Glenda when it's time to work. But big trouble starts when Glenda decides to give up the murder racket, take up with a sugar daddy, and finance a sex change operation.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Atlas of Creation


The Atlas of Creation uses 759 heavy, glossy pages to illustrate its author's view that the scientific theory of evolution is just plain wrong. The thick, 11-by-15-inch tome, with hologram-like images on its cover, was written by a mysterious Turkish man, Harun Yahya (whose real name is Adnan Oktar). Nearly every page features brilliant color photos of fossils and animals, all which supposedly prove that creationism is correct, and evolution is balderdash.

On page after page, the same formulaic argument appears, which is typified by this quote from a page with a photo of a 150-million-year-old shrimp fossil:
"Since shrimp first came into existence, they have always displayed all the same organs and characteristics as they have today and have undergone no changes in all that time. This shrimp fossil shows plainly that evolution is an imaginary scenario" (p. 110).

The book has been mailed unsolicited—at undoubtedly ludicrously high postage costs-—to scientists, academics, members of Congress, museums, and now apparently think tanks across the United States. Copies have also turned up in France.


Excerpt:
"All the living creatures in the fossil record appear intact and in their perfect forms. For instance, before crocodiles and squirrels, there exist no fossils belonging to any strange creature partly resembling a crocodile, and in other parts to a squirrel or other living creatures. Squirrels have always remained squirrels, and crocodiles have always remained crocodiles. All these facts reveal that the claim of the theory of evolution, that 'Living beings have gradually evolved over millions of years of time' is simply a product of imagination."

Bathroom Graffiti

Ferem has spent the past several years collecting and compiling photographs of exceptional bathroom graffiti, making for the perfect bathroom book. Divided up into thematic sections like "Men’s Rooms," "Women’s Rooms," "Art" and "Politics," unlike other graffiti books, the examples in Bathroom Graffiti are not so much about graffiti as an art form as much as they are about graffiti as the result of personal expression, which will never find its way into galleries or ad campaigns. (more...)

Dr.Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation

Evolutionary biologist Olivia Judson presents "letters" from sexually frustrated animals, birds, and insects who ask "Dr. Tatiana" to explain some sexual oddity. You'll learn why one stick-insect copulation lasts for 10 weeks (to prevent other males from gaining access to the fertile female) and why the black-winged damselfly's penis has bristles (to scrape out his rival's sperm). You'll learn that male and female orangutans masturbate with sex toys fashioned from leaves and twigs, that slugs are hermaphrodites with penises on their heads, and that females in more than 80 species eat their lovers before, during, or after sex. You'll also ponder human sexuality when you learn that "monogamy is one of the most deviant behaviors in biology" and "natural selection, it seems, often smiles on strumpets."

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Behind Closed Doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer

The life-size, adolescent-girl dolls created by German artist Hans Bellmer in the 1930s are the subject of Therese Lichtenstein's highly original book. Disturbing and controversial, Bellmer's dolls--with their uncanny, fragmented bodies and eroticized poses--were just as shocking during Bellmer's time as they are today. Until now there has been little available in English about Bellmer's dolls, and Lichtenstein's book will be welcomed for its fresh interpretation of the artist's work and his place in European modernism. Eighty striking photographs accompany the text.
Working during a time when Nazism was on the rise, Bellmer created several dolls with fragmented bodies that could be dismantled and arranged in various configurations. Using a narrative format, he then photographed the dolls in a range of grotesque--often sexual--positions. The images he conveyed were of death and decay, abuse and longing, in stark contrast to Nazism's mythic utopian celebration of adolescence. (more...)

Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman created her first photograph at thirteen and took her ownlife at age 22. She left behind a hauntingly beautiful legacy. Flailing, groveling, jumping, and hiding--often dissolving into a blur before the camera--she used her body as an actor in a mysterious drama. In less than a decade Woodman created a body of work that has secured her position as one of the most original American artists of the 1970s, and the first-ever child prodigy of photography. (more...)


Samples:




Taryn Simon: An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar

In An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, Taryn Simon documents spaces that are integral to America's foundation, mythology and daily functioning, but remain inaccessible or unknown to a public audience. She has photographed rarely seen sites from domains including: science, government, medicine, entertainment, nature security and religion. This index examines subjects that, while provocative or controversial, are currently legal. The work responds to a desire to discover unknown territories, to see everything. Simon makes use of the annotated-photograph's capacity to engage and inform the public. Transforming that which is off-limits or under-the-radar into a visible and intelligible form, she confronts the divide between the privileged access of the few and the limited access of the public. Photographed with a large format view camera (except when prohibited), Simon's 70 color plates form a seductive collection that reflects and reveals a national identity. (more...)

Sunday, January 13, 2008

The Ticking

The story of Edison Steelhead, a boy who at birth takes his mother's life and his father's deformed face. Secreted away by his father to be raised in a remote island lighthouse, Edison relates to his surroundings in the only way he knows how -- by capturing them in his sketchbook. Able to find beauty in even the most grotesque of things, Edison embraces his own unsettling appearance and sets out to confront the rest of the world. Waiting for him on its alien shores are the sights and experiences that will give shape to both his future and his past. A gorgeous, compelling hardcover graphic novel by Renee French and designed by Jordan Crane. "Finds its way into the most guarded corners of our psyches and allows us to revel in all that is awkward, embarrassing, or sticky about being alive." -Myla Goldberg, author of Bee Season. (more...)

The Ethical Slut

Beyond the often unrealistic ideal of lifetime monogamy lies an uncharted jungle of delightful options -- everything from committed multi-partner relationships to friendly sex, casual sex, group sex and more. This book provides a road map for exploring this sometimes difficult, often rewarding territory. Warm, informative details about how to get your needs met, manage your jealousy, make agreements that work for all concerned, talk to your friends and relatives, and build a life full of all the sex and love you want.


Get you some.

Dream: The Dark Erotic Visions of John Santerineross

John Santerineross proves his genius of dark erotic art with this book of disturbing yet titillating images, an exploration of John's dream imagery and iconography through the use of photographic medium. Reminiscent of Gilles Berquet (but somewhat Gothier), John demonstrates his intelligence and talent in producing work that is provocative, chilling and erotic. The eerie, sensual, often kinky images are accompanied by an introduction from underground erotic writer Nina Hugo, and a short story by artist and writer Bajema.



Get this book before it goes out of print.

Saturday, January 5, 2008

The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir

"I am sitting on the threshold. Perhaps this is the final paradox of God's paradoxical machinations: my ass is my very own back door to heaven. The Pearly Gates are closer than you think." Bentley is writing of her rhapsodic experience with sodomy. So some will call this memoir blasphemous, others spiritual; some pornographic, others erotic. What it is, is wonderfully smart and sexy and witty and moving, a tale of unbounded passion that leads to transcendence. The tale is paradoxical in more ways than one: aside from Bentley's ass leading to heaven, she finds that submission leads to freedom—-a freedom she had never known as a dancer with the New York City Ballet (about which she wrote her first book, Winter Season), nor in her failed marriage, nor in any of her other polymorphously perverse sexual experiences" (Publishers Weekly). (more...)

Sunday, December 30, 2007

Elmer Batters: Legs That Dance to Elmer's Tune

This large book is loaded with full-color and black-and-white images of the work of Elmer Batters, and came from the publisher wrapped in a genuine nylon stocking. Batters passed away in 1997, and this is a great tribute to his work. For collectors of foot and leg fetish art, this is the book for you. There are some graphic images, which some may find as explicit matetial. (out of print)

Exquisite Mayhem

In the early Seventies, Ehret began to stage and photograph female wrestling scenarios in his studio. This erotic photographic genre has come to be known as 'apartment wrestling'. Shot on sets with controlled lighting, his photographs have a sense of uncanny drama absent from previous examples of the "cat fighting" fetish style. This book is the first to present, to a mass audience, the golden age of pro wrestling and its illegitimate sibling: apartment wrestling. By bringing together, for the first time, these two separate bodies of Theo Ehret's work, Exquisite Mayhem presents the roots of today's overtly eroticized theatrical world of pro wrestling. (out of print)

Saturday, December 22, 2007

The Atrocity Exhibition

"The first U.S. edition was to have been by Doubleday, also in 1970, but the entire edition was destroyed just prior to publication, with the exception of a few advance review copies and file copies. Senior management at Doubleday had taken exception to the contents, which included Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan and Plan for the Assassination of Jacqueline Kennedy. It isn't clear exactly how many copies still survive (perhaps around a dozen), but this is certainly the rarest of Ballard's books; there was a copy for sale in 2006 by bookseller Lloyd Currey for $7,500.

"Following the pulping of the Doubleday edition, E. P. Dutton took the book up, but eventually decided against publication after advice from their lawyers. The first U.S. publication was therefore not until 1972 when Grove Press published the book under the revised title Love & Napalm: Export U.S.A., with a preface by William Burroughs. This edition went out of print fairly quickly, and the book did not reappear in the U.S. until 1990 when Re/Search brought out a large format, extensively illustrated, paperback edition. This reverted to the original title and retained the Burroughs introduction; it also added sidebar annotations by Ballard, as well as four additional pieces - three of Ballard's 'surgical fictions' from the 1970s, Princess Margaret's Facelift, Mae West's Reduction Mamoplasty, and Queen Elizabeth's Rhinoplasty, and (rather incongruously) a story from the late-1980s, The Secret History of World War 3." (http://www.holli.co.uk/JGB/ballard.htm)

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Arnold Odermatt: Karambolage

With thoroughness and a meticulous attention to detail, Arnold Odermatt photographed automobile accidents on the streets of the Swiss canton of Nidwalden between 1939 and 1993. For 40 years, the Swiss police office recorded the wrecked cars left in the wake of excessive speed, drunk driving, right-of-way errors, and plain foolishness, in poignant, sometimes funny, and always strange atmospheric photographs.
(out of print)

Friday, December 14, 2007

Pierre Molinier

Pierre Molinier began his career by painting landscapes, but his work turned towards a fetishistic eroticism early on.

Molinier began to take photographs at the age of 18. When Molinier's sister died in 1918, he had sex with her corpse when he was left alone to photograph it. "Even dead," he said, "she was beautiful. I shot sperm on her stomach and legs, and onto the First Communion dress she was wearing. She took with her into death the best of me."

Molinier started his erotic production around 1950. With the aid of a wide range of specially made "props" – dolls, various prosthetic limbs, stiletto heels, dildos and an occasional confidante – Molinier focused upon his own body as the armature for a constructive form that ultimately produced a large body of photographic work. Most of his photographs, photomontages, are self-portraits of himself as a woman.

He began a correspondence with André Breton and sent him photographs of his paintings. Later Breton integrated him into the Surrealist group.

In the 1970's, Molinier's health began to decline. He lost the will to live after he was no longer able to maintain an erection. Like his father before him, Pierre Molinier committed suicide at 76 years of age by self-inflicted gunshot wound while masturbating.


Samples:



Thursday, December 13, 2007

Evidence

In 1977 photographers Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel sifted through thousands of photographs in the files of the Bechtel Corporation, the Beverly Hills Police Department, the Jet Propulsion Laboratories, the U.S. Department of the Interior, Stanford Research Institute and a hundred other corporations, American government agencies, and educational, medical and technical institutions. They were looking for photographs that were made and used as transparent documents and purely objective instruments--as evidence, in short. Selecting 50 of the best, they printed these images with the care you would expect to find in a high-quality art photography book, publishing them in a simple, limited-edition volume titled Evidence.


Some samples:




New edition available at Amazon.com

Monday, December 10, 2007

Miroslav Tichy

Miroslav Tich was born in 1926 in what is now the Czech Republic, and studied at the Academy of Art in Prague. After the communist takeover, he is widely reported to have spent as many as eight years in detention camps and mental hospitals. In the late 1950s, he began to make photographs with cameras he designed himself, salvaging their lenses from eyeglasses and making their bodies from tin cans, toilet-paper rolls and cigarette boxes. He chose his subjects from the streets and from public and private spaces of his small town, where he is not a favorite with the ladies--some have reported his peeping-tom-like activity to the police. The resulting images, grainy and often overexposed, cropped and developed at home, framed on card stock, decorated in pencil, and then left to deteriorate around Tich 's house, are haunting.



Tichy's homemade camera:



Some samples:





(via Amazon)

Thursday, December 6, 2007

The Paranoid's Pocket Guide to Mental Disorders You Can Just Feel Coming On

With complete descriptions of the symptoms, diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, and treatment for psychosis, this book could convince even the most rational readers that something—or someone—is out to get them. From the slightly odd Stendhal Syndrome (the fear of artwork) to the mentally debilitating Athazagagoraphobia (the feeling that you’ve forgotten something important) and the downright bizarre Windigo Psychosis (the belief that you are a wild and ravenous monster), The Paranoid’s Pocket Guide to Mental Illnesses You Can Just Feel Coming On is a fascinating compendium of psychological illnesses for all of us to fret and agonize over.
More...

The Deviant's Pocket Guide to the Outlandish Sexual Desires Barely Contained in Your Subconscious

So you like animals. Everyone likes animals. But if you really, really like animals — or clowns, or trees, or dressing up in a fur suit before you enter the bedroom — then this book is for you.
More...

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets: The Comics of Fletcher Hanks

One of the strangest cartoonists of American comics' Golden Age, Hanks had a short career—the 15 stories collected here were all published between 1939 and 1941—but the deranged, nightmarish vigor of his work has made it something of a cult item. Hanks created pulpy characters like Stardust the Super Wizard, the scientific marvel whose vast knowledge of all planets has made him the most remarkable person ever known and the jungle heroine Fantomah, whose face becomes a snarling skull when she uses her magic powers. The artist's manic obsessions turn up again and again: global-scale atrocities, miraculous rays and, most of all, poetically apt punishments. In a typical story, Master-Mind De Structo tries to suffocate America's heads of state with an oxygen-destroying ray, so Stardust turns him into a giant head, then hurls him into a space pocket of living death occupied by a headless headhunter. Hanks's artwork is crude and technically limited (each of his characters has exactly one, wildly caricatured, facial expression), but nearly every page has some image that sings out with deep, primal power.
more

Monday, December 3, 2007

Naked Lunch

Burroughs's literary experiment--the much-touted "cut-up" technique--mirrored the workings of a junkie's brain. But it was junk coupled with vision: Burroughs makes teeming amalgam of allegory, sci-fi, and non-linear narration, all wrapped in a blend of humor--slapstick, Swiftian, slang-infested humor. What is Naked Lunch about? People turn into blobs amidst the sort of evil that R. Crumb, in the decades to come, would inimitably flesh out with his dark and creepy cartoon images. Perhaps the most easily grasped part of Naked Lunch is its America-bashing, replete with slang and vitriol.
(Cover shown is the Flamingo Sixties Classic 2001 edition)

Friday, November 30, 2007

The Third Policeman

A comic/surreal tale of a one-legged gentleman farmer who participates in a botched robbery-turned-murder, only to find himself having a long conversation with the dead man shortly after the deed. The farmer is sent to a two-dimensional barracks of three metaphysical policemen. Here he finds himself in a world where people can become bicycles and eternity is within walking distance.
(Shown is cover from the Flamingo Sixties Classic 2001 edition.)
More at Amazon.com

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

How to Shit Around the World: The Art of Staying Clean and Healthy While Traveling

Monday, November 26, 2007

Ruby Ann's Down Home Trailer Park Cookbook

Friday, November 23, 2007

Overheard in New York

Blonde: You're seeing your astrologist tomorrow?
Tattooed girl: Yeah, my pussy's been tingling lately, and I need to find out why.
More at Amazon.com

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

A Beginner's Guide to Immortality: Extraordinary People, Alien Brains, and Quantum Resurrection

Part memoir and part surrealistic perspective on culture, A Beginner's Guide to Immortality illuminates some of the most mysterious phenomena affecting our species. What is creativity? What are the religious implications of mosquito evolution, simulated Matrix realities, the brain’s own marijuana, and the mathematics of the apocalypse? Could we be a mere software simulation living in a matrix? Who is Elisabeth KĂĽbler-Ross and Emanuel Swedenborg? Did church forefathers eat psychedelic snails? How can we safely expand our minds to become more successful and reason beyond the limits of our own intuition? How can we become immortal?
More at Amazon.com

Monday, November 19, 2007

Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School

Demonstrates how the "specter of the fag" becomes a disciplinary mechanism for regulating heterosexual as well as homosexual boys and how the "fag discourse" is as much tied to gender as it is to sexuality.
More at Amazon.com

Friday, November 16, 2007

The Book of Bunny Suicides

The Book of Bunny Suicides follows over one hundred bunnies as they find ever more outlandish ways to do themselves in. From supergluing themselves to a diving submarine, to hanging around underneath a loose stalactite, these bunnies are serious about suicide.
More at Amazon.com

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

FUCK this book



Juvenile, profane, and timeless, Fuck This Book collects images of real public signs that have been mischieveously altered by stickers bearing the most expressive of all four-letter words. The results show a world persuasively transformed. Please Don't Fuck the Pigeons, indeed. What happens if one triggers the Automatic Sprinkler Fuck Off Valve? And is it any wonder The Fuck Depot is so popular? All photographs are unretouched--the result of countless hours on the hunt for the almost perfect sign, in need of just the slightest improvement.
More at Amazon.com

Monday, November 12, 2007

Hips

Hips is a collection of 250 arresting and inspired photographs of hips (some in costume, some in body paint, some in nothing at all), taken at the vibrant and insanely creative annual international arts festival known as Burning Man. Each subject is photographed in the exact same position, but the images themselves are varied and unique, providing a rich kaleidoscope of self-expression and individuality wherein conventional rules and regulations no longer apply.
via Amazon

Friday, November 9, 2007

Charlie White: Photographs

Full color images and complete details of Charlie White's three recent photographic projects. This is a thorough treatment of an artist whose images have explored the limits of pornography, the modern psychological landscape, and the emotionally fraught relationship between self-perception and appearance.

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Helmut Newton's SUMO


Weighing over 65 pounds, measuring more than two feet long, and breaking any previous size record in book publishing, SUMO contains 480 pages of every aspect of Newton's career of subversive and erotic photography.

Monday, November 5, 2007

Kohei Yoshiyuki: The Park

Kohei Yoshiyuki's nighttime photographs, taken with infrared film and flash in Japan's Shinjuku, Yoyogi and Aoyama Parks during the 1970s, capture the illicit sexual encounters, both heterosexual and homosexual, that frequently occurred there under the cloak of darkness. The Park's images not only reveal hidden sexual exploits, but also uncover many spectators ardently lurking in the darkness, waiting to join in--and quickly raise issues of voyeurism and surveillance. Originally published as Document Kouen in Japan in 1980 and long out of print, the austere and acclaimed first edition of this book now commands prices near $1000 per copy. This new, updated edition, featuring an interview of the artist by colleague Nobuyoshi Araki and an essay by the noted photo critic Vince Aletti, contains all 60 works from the infamous Park series, reproduced from new scans in deluxe duotones. This work has not been seen by the public since the 1970s, and has been known only to cult collectors until now.
Buy this book from Amazon.com

Some samples:





Friday, November 2, 2007

2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl

"In 2012, his part memoir, part anthropological journey through many things spiritual, metaphysical, and just plain eerie, Pinchbeck illuminates not the world’s end but the many ways in which our social structures are disintegrating. Into 2012 Pinchbeck fits Jung, crop circles, Martin Heidegger’s critique of technology, the ecological theories of Rudolf Steiner, the parables of Christ, Jared Diamond’s Collapse, and even the confessions of Whitley Strieber." — LA Weekly
Buy this book from Amazon.com

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Cunt Coloring Book


Buy this book from Amazon.com

Monday, October 29, 2007

The Modern Drunkard

Attempting to deconstruct America's joyless obsession with sobriety, The Modern Drunkard offers today's befuddled drinkers a comprehensive and instructive manual on how to drink-and how to do it well. Through articles, anecdotes, cartoons, and illustrations, Frank Kelly Rich campaigns to revive the lost art of tippling and taps a deep vein of boozy lore and legend through the ages, uncovering etiquette and expertise from some of history's greatest guzzlers.
Buy this book from Amazon.com

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Room With a View

The young, buxom "Burlesque Queen" of Portland, Oregon, has begun a distinctive photographic career by posing in a vanishing breed of unique motel room environ-ments across the country. Writes Lucy in her introduction, "Room With a View is not merely a pin-up book: it is as much about the room as it is about me. I think of myself as a fixture in that room, like a lamp or a chair. The kind of motel rooms that particularly attracted me had wood paneling, forgotten '60s- and '70s-era oil paintings, strange lighting, fantasy themes, tiled bathrooms, wacky wallpaper, and no outside view."
Buy this book from Amazon.com

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Sexuality, Magic, and Perversion

Sexuality, Magic, and Perversion surveys such outre subjects as sex magic, left-hand Tantrism, and the initiates of Aleister Crowley’s Order of Oriental Templars. This fascinating and highly readable book also discusses the role of magical fantasy in contemporary pornography. Appendices cover obscurities such as Ralph Chubb’s homoerotic mysticism and the women bishops of the Mariavite Church in Poland. (Out of Print)

Monday, October 22, 2007

Strange Creations: Aberrant Ideas of Human Origins from Ancient Astronauts to Aquatic Apes

Charles Darwin wasn’t the only one to come up with a contemporary explanation for the origin of human beings. Homespun fantasies and myths abound — the imaginative creations of dreamers, cult leaders, amateur scientists, racists, and rogues. Among the theorists this collection introduces are the eccentric English lord who believes that men are a cross between extraterrestrials and their Martian servants, a successful television journalist whose book suggests that humans evolved from aquatic apes, and a UFO investigator convinced that humans were bred as pets for brilliant dinosaurs. (Out of print)

Friday, October 19, 2007

Fat Pig

Cow. Slob. Pig. How many insults can you hear before you have to stand up and defend the woman you love? Tom faces just that question when he falls for Helen, a bright, funny, sexy young woman who happens to be plus sized-and then some. Forced to explain his new relationship to his shallow (although shockingly funny) friends, finally he comes to terms with his own preconceptions of the importance of conventional good looks.
Buy this book from Amazon.com

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Toilets of the World

Powder room, comfort station, privy, loo, dunny … the infinite variety of names we invent for this universal necessity, the toilet, is matched by an extraordinary variety of designs worldwide, from miniature log cabins in the Canadian wilderness to state-of-the-art cubicles in Japan, and from huts on stilts in the Caribbean to solar-powered sanitary ware in New Zealand. This light-hearted but highly informative photographic journey reveals the idiosyncrasy and inventiveness that characterize the construction of the humble toilet around the globe.
Buyt this book from Amazon.com

Monday, October 15, 2007

Photography for Perverts

Learn how to meet and work with exotic models, and how to find techniques that match your wildest visions, plus tips on where to exhibit and publish your explicit photographs. Included are legal and ethical disscusions, a guide to fighting censorship, and a large selection of radical sex resources--all illustrated with Gatewood's mindblowing photos.
Out of print. Available through third parties at Amazon.com

Friday, October 12, 2007

Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow

A leading exponent of punk-based, DIY art, Smith here presents his most ambitious project to date — an art book exactly as long as the work it’s interpreting: 760 drawings, paintings, photos, and less definable images in 760 pages. Extraordinary tableaux of the detritus of war — a burned-out Königstiger tank, a melted machine gun — coexist alongside such phantasmagoric Pynchon inventions as the “stumbling bird” and “Girgori the octopus.” Smith has stated his aim to be “as literal as possible” in interpreting Gravity’s Rainbow, but his images are as imaginative and powerfully unique as the prose they honor.
Buy this book from Amazon.com

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

The Art of Seduction

1. Choose the right victim; 2. Create a false sense of security - approach indirectly; 3. Send mixed signals; 4. Appear to be an object of desire - create triangles. 5. Create a need - stir anxiety and discontent; 6. Master the art of insinuation; 7. Enter their spirit; 8. Create temptation; 9. Keep them in suspense; 10. Use the demonic power of words to sow confusion; 11. Pay attention to detail; 12. Poeticize your presence; 13. Disarm through strategies of weakness and vulnerability; 14. Confuse desire and reality - the perfect illusion; 15. Isolate the victim; 16. Prove yourself; 17. Effect a regression; 18. Stir up the transgressive and taboo; 19. Use spiritual lures; 20. Mix pleasure with pain; 21. Give them space to fall; 22. Use physical lures; 23. Master the art of the bold move; 24. Beware the aftereffects.
Buy this book from Amazon.com

The 48 Laws of Power

Law 7: Get others to do the Work for you, but Always Take the Credit; Law 8: Make other People come to you – use Bait if Necessary; Law 9: Win through your Actions, Never through Argument; Law 11: Learn to Keep People Dependent on You; Law 14: Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy; Law 17: Keep Others in Suspended Terror: Cultivate an Air of Unpredictability; Law 38: Think as you like but Behave like others; Law 44: Disarm and Infuriate with the Mirror Effect; Law 48: Assume Formlessness.
Buy this book from Amazon.com

Monday, October 8, 2007

Astonish Yourself: 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life

Droit's strange and delightful little volume explores some of the biggest questions in philosophy with exercises instead of terminology-laden tracts, by encouraging readers to discover the ways in which small or familiar acts--fasting, prowling, playing--can become "the starting point for that astonishment which gives rise to philosophy." There are exercises to calm, to disorient, to humanize, to displace; for instance, listening to shortwave radio at night, Droit writes, will help readers realize that "perpetually around you, woven into the air...are these hundreds of voices murmuring, in dozens of unknown or unrecognizable languages, of which you know nothing, expect that they spread an obscure and changing human crust, unendingly, over everything." Other exercises include: telephoning at random; drinking while urinating; looking at people from a moving car; contemplating a dead bird; turning off the sound on the TV; looking for blue food; considering humanity to be an error; smiling at a stranger.
Buy this book from Amazon.com

Friday, October 5, 2007

Puppetry of the Penis

A few years ago, Simon Morley and David Friend began performing their repertoire of "dick tricks" in Melbourne, Australia. Hitting England's shores to overwhelming critical acclaim at the 2000 Edinburgh Festival, their show has also played in Montreal and Toronto, and is on its way to Broadway. (Out of Print)
Find a seller through Amazon.com

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

A Hand in the Bush

A slick hands-on guide to the ins and outs of vaginal fisting.
Buy this book from Amazon.com

Monday, October 1, 2007

Scarecrow and Other Anomalies

Consuming all of the most fantastic symbolist, futurist, cubist, surrealist, expressionist, anarchist, dadaist, existentialist, post-modernist and every other -ist compositions that can be had, Girondo's Scarecrow stands alone as a one-of-a-kind, bug-eyed creation.
Buy this book from Amazon.com

Friday, September 28, 2007

David Lynch: The Air Is on Fire

The first major collection of artwork by the acclaimed movie director David Lynch. This catalogue of his artistic output, published on the occasion of a large-scale exhibition at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, covers a wide variety of disciplines: painting, photography, drawings, sculpture, furniture, music, and "moving pictures." His art echoes his films in theme and aesthetic, yet offers viewers a fresh and more intimate glimpse into his singular universe. The book also contains several essays that analyze his artworks, as well as a conversation with Lynch, interviewed within the context of the show. 469 illustrations in color.
Buy this book from Amazon.com

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Visions from Within the Mechanism: The Industrial Surrealism of Jeffery Scott (1019)

The stunning and hyper-realistic photography presented here is not captured in real time, but through a laborious process of manipulation. Each picture represents an average of fifty hours of meticulous work in which elements are assembled from dozens of images to construct the combined whole. Mr. Scott conjures amazing characters, environments and situations that thoroughly blur the line between the real and the imagined. Layer upon layer of information reveals in-depth philosophies, concepts and stories.
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Monday, September 24, 2007

Feminine Anarchy 2 : Girls Pissing in Public

Description: "These uninhibited girls claim their right to pee in the corner or to let their warm juice soak through their panties and trickle down their long legs. Conservative men may perceive this as a threat to the traditional privilege of taking their cocks out of their pants and pissing wherever they choose."

What the Fuck: The Avant-Porn Anthology

Description: "The writers herein are not afraid to explore and exploit the nature of postmodern human sexuality in the 21st Century, with their own brand of twists and curves."
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Saturday, September 22, 2007

Outer Dark

Description: "Outer Dark is a novel at once fabular and starkly evocative, set is an unspecified place in Appalachia, sometime around the turn of the century. A woman bears her brother's child, a boy; he leaves the baby in the woods and tells her he died of natural causes. Discovering her brother's lie, she sets forth alone to find her son. Both brother and sister wander separately through a countryside being scourged by three terrifying and elusive strangers, headlong toward an eerie, apocalyptic resolution."
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The Photographer's Sweethearts

Heavy, heavy, stuff.
"Setting herself a difficult task, British Columbia's Hartog debuts magnificently with a tale - said to be based on real events - of a pedophile and his not-quite-transcendent love of nature and children: a first novel at once so riveting and disquieting that it may well prove unforgettable. In the early 1900s, young Louie Olsen has come from Denmark to California to see the towering sequoias for himself and to live close to nature while observing its wonders through the eye of his camera. Foremost among those wonders is the naked beauty of children, and Louie's own childlike ways give him no lack of young acquaintances. Poetic in evoking California's landscapes and seasons, this is also painfully meticulous in detailing the black deeds of a complex man descending through a darkness still quite human to a place where demons dwell" (Kirkus Reviews).
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Sex Machines

Description: "After contacting an active but intensely private Internet community of sex machine inventors, photographer Timothy Archibald eventually won their trust and was invited into workshops and homes. The resulting book is a powerful document that is by turns thought provoking, humorous, and always fascinating. Sex Machines celebrates the American spirit of invention while exploring the desires and confusions that exist between men and women in our changing culture. Many of the inventors seen within these pages are otherwise ordinary family men who were inspired to help repair strained relationships or simply enhance their wives' sexual pleasure... Like the work of Bill Owens, Studs Terkel, and Diane Arbus, Archibald's photographs and interviews find unexpected beauty and mystery among the lives of regular people-this time, as they engender a new form of 'marriage enhancement' and sexual liberation in the suburbs and small towns across America."
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Position of the Day Playbook

Description: "Each sexual position comes with an estimated caloric expenditure (for each person involved), a list of possible side effects (leg cramp, lawsuit), and equipment recommendations (hanging bar, stethoscope, cowboy hat)."
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What's Your Poo Telling You?

Description: "This witty, illustrated description of over two dozen dookies (each with a medical explanation written by a doctor) details what one can learn about health and well-being by studying what's in the bowl. All the greatest hits are here: The Log Jam, The Glass Shard, The Deja Poo, The Hanging Chad... the list goes on. Sidebars, trivia, over 60 euphemisms for number 2, and unusual case histories."
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What Shat That? A Pocket Guide to Poop Identity

Description: "Ever paused to ponder poo? This unique book will resolve all scat squabbles and doo-doo debates. Ideal for nature lovers and backyard biologists, What Shat That? is an original and authoritative survey of the substance that unites all creatures big and small. All major international species are covered, along with more wild and exotic species, while full-color photos capture each turd in all of its glory."
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Philosophy in the Boudoir: Or, The Immoral Mentors

"Further develops [de Sade's] arguments on morality, and...a good deal of these arguments are actually pretty compatible with Camus. If you can get past (or enjoy?) all the anal sex bits, this is actually some pretty smart philosophy with what appears to be de Sade's characters debating either side of his own arguments" (from Amazon.com review).
Description: This most joyous of de Sade’s works follows three aristocrats as they indoctrinate EugĂ©nie de Mistival in "the principles of the most outrageous libertinism."
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Naked Girls Smoking Weed

"As if the nudity weren't enough, this book's also packed with all kinds of educational tidbits about pot" (TLA Video).
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Le Banquet

"A book by Berquet is always a banquet for the eyes. In this collection, he offers us more than 50 new erotic images that keep alive the transgressive humor of the Surrealists. Sexually imaginative, wildly explicit, nasty, twisted, kinky, and even perverse... all with first-rate artistic excellence and a brilliantly passionate vision" (Last Gasp).
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Femmes Machines

High weirdness!
Description: Women hooked to biz contraptions, connected by tubes, penetrated by manufactured devices under the amused eye of suave movie stars in the black-and-white, highly delineated world of this book. Another approach to cyborg sex.
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Friday, September 21, 2007

Bizarre Books: A Compendium of Classic Oddities

Description: In the course of their writing and publishing careers, Russell Ash and Brian Lake have collected hundreds of the book trade's most bizarre titles. From unintended double entendres (Making It in Leather) and astonishingly specialized subjects (Great Locomotive Boiler Explosions) to weird books on sex (Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition), and religion (Hell: Where Is It?), the authors have left no page unturned in their quest. Along the way, they have also catalogued some noteworthy authors, including Violet Organ, Fernando Poo, Bishop Frediricus Nausea, and O. Hell.
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Codex Seraphinianus

A page from the Codex Seraphinianus, by Luigi Seraphini. Copies of this book usually fetch around $550.00.
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Thursday, September 20, 2007

The Curious Sofa: A Pornographic Work by Ogdred Weary

"The Curious Sofa tells of the delightfully open-minded Alice who, approached one day in the park while she's eating grapes, takes a taxi ride with a young gentleman during which she does something that she's never done before. The story then proceeds to a country house, during which various upper-class folk introduce Alice to a dizzying variety of fun, variously involving a French maid, a Countess, a married couple who each have a wooden leg, numerous 'exceptionally well-formed' gentlemen and an enthusiastic Old English sheepdog. You don't actually see anything, thanks to Mr. Gorey's discreet placing of trees, bushes, clothed persons and screens between us and the action, so fans of genuine porn can expect to be disappointed. But this is still a highly titillating book" (Amazon.com review).
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Satan Burger

Absurd philosophies, dark surrealism.
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How to Good-Bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way?

Description: I think constricting anus 100 times and denting navel 100 times in succession everyday is effective to good-bye depression and take back youth. You can do so at a boring meeting or in a subway. I have known 70-year-old man who has practiced it for 20 years. As a result, he has good complexion and has grown 20 years younger. His eyes sparkle. He is full of vigor, happiness and joy. He has neither complained nor born a grudge under any circumstance. Furthermore, he can make love three times in succession without drawing out.
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