Up against it

There’s a certain special pleasure in being able to write parallel scenes involving some of American society’s most privileged offspring and some of its least privileged that converge on a single erotic image, in this case that of a naked woman squashed up against glass.

I’ve covered some of this material before in a post I wrote at ErosBlog over a year ago, which was prompted by my discovery of this image of actress Yukari Sakurada, up against the glass in some interesting showertime activities.  I’ll re-run the images for the benefit of the new audience.  They’re bigger this time.

The images are bigger, I mean.

Naturally this brought to mind a scene that stuck firm and fast in my mind since I first saw it as a teenager:

The awe-inspiring Uschi Digard putting her natural endowments to good use in the “Catholic High School Girls in Trouble” sequence in Kentucky Fried Movie (1977). A real two-fer, and no I don’t mean in the obvious sense:  I mean in that it served both as a prime inspiration for the parallel scenes in Invisible Girl, Heroine and for the whole concept of Mary Magdalene College.

Well, since we’re into mad science here it means that the research goes on and on, and I’m pleased to note that we can add another image to the collection of inspiration for the scene, this one from Good Luck Chuck (2007).

I’m afraid that even Jessica Alba couldn’t save this film from making Kentucky Fried Movie look urbane by comparison, but we’ll always take what we can get.

IMDB seems to indicate that the actress playing the woman in the shower is named Susan McClellan, but I fear I haven’t more to add.

Dreaming of orgies

The rather exciting, aphrodisiaic-driven Sigma formal that Maureen gets such a close view of of course has its own long pedigree:  another dream of a morality-free zone, a melting world of pleasures taken and given.  The idea of the orgy appears over and over in the world’s erotic art, so it behooves me to give a few examples.  Take, for instance, this exquisite carved-ivory reel from Japan.

In a very different cultural context, consider the temple sculptures at Khajuraho:

One thing you’re supposed to learn about in a modern college education, of course, is other cultures.  The Sigmas and their dates are putting this precept into practice.

Of course, I wouldn’t be a a sex blogger worthy of the name if I at least once post one other very famous orgy scene, this one drawn by the great Wally Wood for Paul Krassner‘s The Realist.

(Click on image for larger version.)

Popular culture is a common area of study in contemporary higher education, too.

Tentacles, sexy, but no tentacle sex

I’m not sure this has all that much to do with anything, but I spotted it today and just had to post it.

The link (click through for larger image) indicates that it is “Master of the Seas,” by RAFAELGALLUR.  The male figure reminds me of Santo (the masked Mexican wrestler-hero, not El Santo, the awesome movie reviewer, though the latter would be cool).

I guess there could be a Gnosis College link, although it isn’t obvious yet.  I have recently started work on a story that involves the adventures of Edith Sterling, a teuthologist at Gnosis who’s having trouble getting tenure…so there’s a definite octopus linkage going on.  But that’s a story for another time.

Hat tip on this one to PZ Myers at Pharyngula.

_Invisible Girl, Heroine_ now available

I’ve been busy enough with my blue pencil to get the fourth Gnosis College script out, Invisible Girl, Heroine.  Set the semester after the events of Progress in Research and re-introducing some of the protagonists of Study Abroad, it marks Maureen Creel‘s beginning to come into her own as a mad-scientist aspirant.  It also introduces the villain who will keep life dangerous for our Gnosis heroes for this and the next three scripts.  On top of all this, you get to indulge your inner perv with a look into some of the grim goings-on at the State Home for Wayward Girls.  So do have a read, yes?

Tax time

Sorry if productivity has been a little bit on the low side over the past few days, but even mad scientists have to take some time to prepare their taxes, and I’m sure you all know what that’s like.

The agents of the taxation authorities get all shirty when you try to explain the depreciation schedule on your matter tranmogrifier or deductions for plutonium expenses, so doing things right is a big deal.

But fear not.  More material soon…

Kiss me quick

Continuing for a moment the subject of movies in erotic mad science that don’t really do enough with the concept, I should at least note the existence of (and share a few pictures from, naturally) the 1964 nudie-cutie Kiss Me Quick!, one of the first productions of sexploitation king Harry Novak.

A mad scientist named Dr. Breedlove is conducting experiments on young women in his castle.  The purpose of the experiments is unclear, but has something to do with “perfecting” the young women, who don’t seem to be in much need of perfecting if you ask me, but maybe I’m just not insane enough.  In any event, a very dim alien named Sterilox teleports into Breedlove’s mad-lab with the aim of bringing back with him a “perfect specimen,” for purposes of…manual labor on his homeworld (told you he was dim).  Mostly the movie is, like most nudie-cuties, an excuse for its comely female cast members to wiggle around fetchingly wearing as little as the law and custom of the time would allow.

Still, there is some appeal to the mad-science setting does carry some appeal.  Breedlove has built as sex machine (of course) of which his assistant Kissme is rather fond.   Here, Breedlove admonishes her never to use the sex machine when he is not around:  “You’re going to sex yourself out of the world, one of these days.”

Personally I think this might have been a much more interesting movie had Kissme gone ahead and done exactly that, but I wasn’t around in 1964 to be asked about it.

Aside from pretty girls and lab equipment, there are always Breedlove’s lunatic pronouncements to help carry us through the movie.  A personal favorite:  “Don’t be alarmed girls.  I had you forcefully [sic] abducted and brought here to my castle for your own good.  You’ll see.  Just just continue to do as I’ll say, and I’ll make you like you always dreamed you would be made.”

Really.

So not a complete waste of time for the thaumatophile.  There’s even now a DVD from Something Weird Video in which you can hear commentary from Harry Novak himself.

Electrical effects

Time for another little breather while I get to work putting together Invisible Girl, Heroine for publication to the wider world.  In the meantime, for your enjoyment…

I suggested a little while back that Fred Olen Ray might have something to offer us thaumatophiles in the form of a new movie called Bikini Frankenstein.  I plunked down the cash and I had high hopes, but on the whole, meh…  Not that there isn’t lots of well-filmed and enthusiastically-acted softcore sex involving very pretty people.  Fine if you like that sort of thing, but I couldn’t help somehow feeling like the whole mad-scientist angle was underdeveloped.

Save for one scene, though, in which Dr. Frankenstein brings his creature, played by Jayden Cole to life, which involves some nice…electrical effects.

And you know how us would-be mad scientist types really like electrical effects!

On the whole, though, I think I still prefer a rather more classic sort of Frankenstein parody.

Ah, now that’s more like it.

Aloysius’s reading

The reading material with which the somewhat burnt-out Aloysius is trying to relax near the end of Progress in Research is for real, and has a real antecedent in my own developing erotic consciousness.

Background: way back in my early graduate student days I read a comic drawn by Phil Foglio called XXXenophile that made me very happy.

XXXenophile was merry erotic romp through the conceits of fantasy and science fiction: magic, cloning, time travel, sex with aliens, and so forth. It wasn’t heavy material, and nowhere near as dark as many “adult” comics. It was happy and funny and sexy and fun, and doubtless influenced the brighter side of my own writing about Gnosis.

So as I was writing the Gnosis College scripts, perhaps just after finishing the first draft of Study Abroad, it occurred to me to wonder what good ol’ Phil Foglio had been creating as of late, seeing as he had been such a good influence on me in my impressionable youth.  So I googled around and found out:  a web comic called Girl Genius, which are the adventures of one Agatha Heterodyne in a mad-science, steampunk world.

It was with a peculiar mix of delight and dismay that I discovered that Agatha is a student at an institution of higher learning called Transylvania Polygnostic University.

I didn’t steal the idea, Phil!  Honest!  It’s just that γνῶσις, a Greek noun meaning knowledge, especially knowledge in a higher or esoteric sense, is one of those things in memetic space that many people are just bound to stumble across.

It’s probably a little late for me to make the change now, and I do like the word Gnosis for any number of private reasons.  But I can at least offer the shout out to Phil Foglio.  So here it is.  You can subscribe to XXXenophile online now at Slipshine, and keep up with the adventures of Agatha Heterodyne’s adventures at the Girl Genius site.

Dr. Faustus sez, check it out.

Born again

Both Kitty and Tricia found themselves in very sticky respective situations, but luckily Aloysius was able to improvise a solution that got them more-or-less back to normal.  Among other things, Aloysius proved that having the rudiments of a classical education can come in handy, and not just for the purposes of adding a little seasoning to one’s kinky blog.

The scene is an homage to pregnancy and lactation fetishes, which aren’t really my thing all that directly, but throw in a little spin involving strange machines and syringes and the Apsinthion Protocol, and you have a fun bit of thaumatophilia going on, from my perspective.

I knew of the existence of the fetishes before writing the scene, but I had little idea before doing a little reading up on the subject just how damn much there was on the Internet about it.  And I must confess, that some of it is undeniably appealing.

Hat tip on this one to Due Joy, which struck me as one of the nicer blogs on the subject.