Observances on Airline Security and Blurography
Airline travel is an entirely different species since two towers in New York City crumbled to dust. If traveling by plane was once a domesticated housecat, it is now a wild platypus. Yes, folks, it has become so crazy up there, so out right loonylicious, that it has become comparable to a duck-billed, egg laying, flat-tailed, web-footed venomous mammal. I tell ya’, if a duck-billed, egg laying, flat-tailed, web-footed venomous mammal isn’t the epitome of crazy then I don’t know what is. I think things could only get more ludicrous if one could crossbreed a duck-billed, egg laying, flat-tailed, web-footed venomous mammal with, say, Michael Jackson. But, really, all you insane breeders and scientists out there, lets not and say we did, okay?
After the tragic attacks of 9/11, potentially harmful items were banned from commercial aircraft. Things like nail files, clippers, disposable razors, scissors, corkscrews and, yes, even icepicks have been cut from the online carryon roaster. While all the above got the ax, in a controversial decision, US congress decided to allow pilots there own firearms in the cockpit. A BBC report back in 2003 had one pilot stating that he believed at least of third of domestic pilots, about 30,000, could be carrying weapons within the next five years. We’ve heard of postal works going postal, I can only hope, when I am up 40,000 feet, somebody with loose wiring doesn’t decide to go pilotal!
Things would only get Daffy Duck daffy (and I am not talking that sissyboy Chuck Jones Daffy Duck. No sir. I am talking the Bob Clampett duck on acid Daffy of the 30s and 40s) after the 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot where a terrorist plan to detonate liquid explosives on UK and US planes was foiled. In September of last year the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) would beef up there team of the banned by disallowing a multitude of other items from carryon baggage. Some items to get the boot this time around: toothpaste, shampoo, bubble bath, chapstick, mouthwash and gel or aerosol based deodorants. Some peculiar items are also listed: cotton swabs and gel-filled bras. Not to make light of terrorism or anything but I get a perverse kick out of the thought of somebody bringing down an aircraft with something that is meant to increase their wife’s cup size. Watch out, brave traveler, for the Exploding Cotton Ball of Doom!
It all leads me to wonder if, in the not to distant future, we will be simply bared from brining anything but ourselves onto an aircraft. Will the terrorists fashion some strange khaki slacks bomb, earring detonators or go the full MacGyver and create some type of deadly gas omitting exploding wool knit sweater? ? I really hope I am not planting any seeds here but I cannot help but think of a time when we all sit nude on an aircraft, oblivious to our nakedness as Adam and Eve before the serpent and the apple, and just accept the nudity as routine for air travel.
Keeping on topic, The Company sent me out a guide to getting started in Japan. It has served most useful for budgeting, researching health insurance and basic cultural education. However, one sentence gave me pause and then, in turn, gave me an afternoon of research and head scratching: “There are very strict censorship laws in Japan. Please refrain from bringing any pornographic items through customs.” An online search dug up the most beautiful Japanese female forms in a variety of poses and contortions. Hey, I never stated I DISLIKED the research! In most cases, though, the lower extremities of these lovely creatures were either blurred out, blacked out or distorted by pixilated mosaics. It was as if I were in slammer getting my first steamy letter from my dame on the outside to find the guards had snipped out all the best bits! This was robbery!
Outraged by this censoring of the holiest of holies, I brought the subject up with an online aquaintance who joked that maybe the Japanese had a problem with pubic hair. Why not, I thought? Sure, it was a silly notion but no sillier then actually filming the act, marketing the act and then bogarting the goods. If this were the case, however, was I going to have to turn over my pubes at costumes? Would there be a skilled barber there with trimmers and shavers?
“Yes, sir, it is the law. You must deposit your genital hair in this bag. It will be returned to you when you leave Japan.” What if they lost my bag or, even worse, they returned to me a bag with different colored short and curlies?
“This one has your name on it, sir. It must be yours?”
“But I am not blonde, you dolt! Look here! See? Brown! The carpet matches the curtains!”
“I am sorry sir but we are all out of brown. We could give you some red if you like?”
“Oh for crying out loud! Just give me the blondes and a black sharpie and we’ll call it even!”
Further investigation on Wikipedia yielded the answer: "In Japan, it is illegal for any commercial work to display the human vulva and phallus in an explicit manner." The article goes on to explain that “until 1991, the entire pubic region, including hair, was deemed obscene and unpublishable”. Ah, truth is stranger then fiction, huh? The "joke" seems much more plausable now, doesn't it? The Japanese are perturbed by pubes! Such laws date back to the Meiji period (1868-1912) and they have never been altered. That’s a long time to be carrying a grudge over genitalia.
The online downloading community, I imagine, has been much maligned by this Blurography. In some cases, hentai (animated pornography) productions do not even draw that region of the body on their characters even if they are to appear nude in the film. Those poor sexless cartoons join the ranks of Barbie’s Ken –the poor eunuch.
From what I gather, Japanese pornography is known in this neck of the woods as being rather violent. Themes of rape and sadomasochism are prevalent. Other aspects of Japanese porn are, well, just plain odd. Roshutsu is a genre where participants expose themselves outdoors. Bukkake is a form of group sex where dozens of men ejaculate repeatedly onto a man or woman for the purposes of erotic humiliation. Gokkun deals with women who devour an abundance of semen, drinking from martini glasses or jars, licking off plates or trading with multiple partners. Hamedori involves the male actor filming the act allowing the viewer to experience it vicariously through him. Zenra consists of women performing every day tasks in the nude. Finally, the crème de la crème of Japanese pornographic weirdness, I give you Tamakeri. Tamakeri is when a female forcefully kicks a man in the testicles. “Some Tamakeri fetishists report that they prefer to witness kicks that resound with a hearty slap,” states Wikipedia. Ummmm yeah.
With all these strange acts, genres and fetishes does it really matter if we see some penetration or, shudder, a few short curly black hairs? Are all the Japanese women shaved balder then Patrick Stewart? Inquiring minds want to know. Does this act of censoring carry over into reality? Do women carry pixelation screens as well as prophylactics? Have the Japanese invented a technology that just perpetually blurs genital regions upon the removal of clothing? Before you laugh remember, readers, that stranger things have happened. Just look at the platypus.
