I Am A Pervert

This image is fine under UNM Library's Acceptable Use Policy -
But please - no doe-eyed girls with perfect breasts - THAT'S DISGUSTING!!!!

I Am A Pervert - they tell me this all the time.

So recently, I was sitting in the Baking Company in Santa Fe and I ran into this woman I know. A local scenester, she accosted me for "collecting pictures of nude girls" on my flickr site.

"I found you on a search and looked at your favorites," she said. "Is that what you do with your time, just bounce around flickr looking for pictures of nude young girls?"

I started to respond that this was only a mere fraction of what I tend to do with my time, but then she said, "You know, lots of people think nude pictures of women is art, but I don't think there's necessarily anything arty about it."

I guess that was supposed to put me in my place - "What?!? Nude pictures of teenage girls isn't art? Omigod, I'm going to stop looking at them right fucking now!"

The presumption that I'm looking at nude girls for the sake of art is damn near hysterical to me - who said I was looking for the art? I LIKE NUDE GIRLS. Sue me. Jock Sturges likes nude girls too and he gets to pretend it's about art because he's got a kick-ass method of making silver gelatin prints of nude girls. But he still LIKES PICTURES OF NUDE GIRLS. (And trust me, I've met him, and the man IS a fucking pervert.)

So I'm sitting in the library at the University of New Mexico, checking my blogline feeds, one of which happens to be "XXX Babes of flickr." XXX is pushing it a bit - these are fairly vanilla shots, if you ask me, but I subscribe because someone else "fleshes" out the best of the best so I can spend more time doing other things on the Internet and elsewhere and less time searching for that perfect doe-eyed cutie with perfect breasts to add to my flickr favorites.

And I'm looking at this one shot of two girls holding each other - obviously an amateur shot - at the beach, and I'm reaching forward to add it to my flickr favorites when a librarian comes up (I've done this at UNM Library a hundred times) and says to me in a really loud voice, "Sir, those pictures are not an appropriate use of library computers. If you want to use library equipment, you're not allowed to look at pictures like that."

Real loud. Loud enough so that people turn around and look at me - obviously, she's trying to shame me with her policy, to make me dry and run for the nearest exit, but I just look and say,

"Oh really? I haven't read the policy. But you have and you know what's in it. Perhaps I'll just look at something else."

I immediately point my browser to Dave's EMS Headquarters, the homepage of some sad sicko who likes to collect trauma photos that would make your skin crawl just to look at them (example above.) She shakes her head and walks away - because SHE CAN'T DO A GODDAMN THING ABOUT VIOLENCE, but Sex - well sex and nudity are just plain evil. The policy even says so.

I leave the violence and gore on the screen every time I go to the bathroom, and everytime I leave the library - lemme tell you folks, censorship is censorship no matter how you slice it - but how come they get to slice out the sex and leave the violence for everyone to view?