News You Can't Use: The Apocalyptic Rise of Nude Dating Shows

One might argue that rise of the "hook-up" culture and the easy, meaningless encounters it promises combined with the decline of traditional courtship rituals is having some sort of negative effect on society as a whole but this hypothetical arguer is clearly wrong. After all, we now have something called "nude dating shows" which, and this is just me guessing here, combine unclothed bodies and the high drama of "swipe right!" in front of an audience of drooling, hooting scumbags. Still, not everyone is convinced, including the author of today's subject who likens it to Saint John's Revelation. It's just limp penises, dude.

That’s it. There’s nowhere left for the dating show to go. Between TLC’s Undressed and Channel 4’s Naked Attraction, the entire genre feels like it’s reached its natural endpoint.

Talk about a small imagination. We haven't even started in with the chemsex, or the harems, or animals...

We’ve had shows like Blind Date, where desirability is judged by personality. We’ve had shows like Take Me Out, where desirability is judged by physical appearance. 

As opposed to basing desirability on not immediately screaming and giving me a full face worth of  wasp spray. 

And now we find ourselves at a terrible new dawn, where desirability is judged by genitalia.

"You seem nice, but that thing looks like it was made by a blind woodsman with a dull axe."

Undressed puts two strangers in a room and makes them undress each other before they sit on a bed and get subjected to a hideous Clockwork Orange-style barrage of orders from a giant faceless screen.

You're actually thinking of 1984 (All right contestants, here comes a chopper to chop off your heads!), which is why you get assigned to cover the naked dating craze and not prestige topics like accidental celebrity nudity.

Meanwhile, Naked Attraction – which starts tonight – promises to present its subjects with a cavalcade of naked strangers and ask them to pick the sexiest.

It's like choosing your favorite hanging dead rabbit from a Chinatown market.

Naked Attraction is barely even a dating show. It’s Am I Hot Or Not. It’s a knobbly knees competition. It’s a place where your parents can validate all the unspoken disappointment they ever felt about you.

Your parents are very disappointed you showed your completely flaccid joystick on the Sex Box.

It feels like we’ve painted ourselves into a corner here, doesn’t it? How can anyone keep making dating shows any more, now that there’s a programme about people picking willies from a lineup?

Tonight the slippery slope let me down.

The bottom of the barrel has been located. Dating shows: completed. Well done everybody.

That sounds like a challenge to me.

These people realise that nudity is weird and shameful, and that it should be hidden from a prospective romantic partner until the last moment possible, long after the point at which they can politely back out.

Your body is an evil thing, full of death, decay and demons. It should be covered as completely as possible and any intimacy (hopefully there's none!) should be done under the cover of complete darkness and under the influence of as many numbing agents as possible.

But perhaps my natural inclination to equate Undressed and Naked Attraction to the death of all civilisation is premature. 

And speaking of other things that can go wrong when you're "dating."

Hot sexy singles naked! Look at this, oh wow!

They understand that nudity is humiliating, because it is, and the parts of the show where the contestants work through their anxiety over this is much better than the rest of the show, where they tend to just get barked at by a Twister-obsessed Jumbotron. 

Personally I think the barking is the best part, but I suppose I could be wrong.

Full Article.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

News You Can't Use: ‘Star Wars’ Lightsaber Causes Farmingdale State Scare, Cops Say

Today's little morality fable features many of the best elements of the student loan racket, including the extended adolescence (rapidly approaching extended infantilism), the constant fear of deadly violence from an unhinged classmate, personal atomization and, of course, the steady infiltration of prison language and culture and militarized goon squads into our daily lives. There's also a "funny" bit about mistaken impressions and a movie that I guess a few people saw, but with so much going on we should just dive right into this glorious feast instead of padding out an introduction like this is an undergraduate paper or something.

A college student with a “Star Wars” lightsaber in a campus parking lot sparked an alert Wednesday morning at Farmingdale State College, where staff and students were briefly advised to shelter in place, officials said.

It turns out it was quote unquote "Star Wars" some sort of obscure lazy sci-fi that you, as a regular sex-haver, probably are completely unaware of. This led to a command to "shelter in place" which I guess means hide under your bed, tuck your head between your knees and start kissing your butt goodbye.

A student alerted campus police about 9:45 a.m. after seeing a person assembling what appeared to be a rifle in a car in a campus parking lot, Suffolk County police said.

Rifle, plastic toy, it's an easy mistake to make when you're deep in debt, getting a B+ in Finger Painting 327 and are about as isolated from reality as a person can get without entering a zen monastery or Tibetan cave.

“It was not a weapon. It was a toy lightsaber,” Insp. Mathew Lewis, commanding officer of the First Precinct, said after the investigation.

After an extensive morning panic, the fully deployment of all the police tanks and general chicken minus head ineffectual motion we've made this determination. The bell tower blaster was actually a lowly space nerd stick.

Campus police alerted the county police, and officers from both forces flooded the parking lots to find the car, Lewis said.

The land of the free and the home of the brave.

Officers finally found the occupant of the car, also a student, at his off-campus job and established that the supposed weapon was a toy, Lewis said.

Total cost of these Keystone Kops follies to taxpayers: 1.7 million dollars.

We're here to protect you and we care deeply about your individual rights.

The school issued an alert to students, faculty and staff advising them to shelter in place, according to a text message a student showed a reporter. The alert was lifted shortly before 11 a.m. 

As it turns out there was no deranged shooter randomly blasting you and your friends. Isn't that a relief? Please go about the rest of your day as if nothing happened.

Full Article.

Komment Korner   

not as clumsy or random as a blaster, an elegant weapon from a more civilized age

get a dog or a girlfriend for God's sake!

Fortunately the SAFE ACT limited the amount of batteries allowed in the light saber to 1 or we may have had a crisis of epic proportions.

God bless our Imperial Storm Troopers for keeping the Deathstar safe and...secure....oh, wait....nevermind.

dont be such a square

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.