pantoum's Diaryland Diary

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DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS AND NEW GEOGRAPHIES

328.

It�s late Monday evening and I am kicked back on my sofa with a glass of red wine and an attitude, reading Jeanette Winterson�s Passion:

How is it that one day life is orderly and you are content, a little cynical perhaps but on the whole just so, and then without warning you find the solid floor is a trapdoor and you are now in another place whose geography is uncertain and whose customs are strange?

Just reviewed a DVD of my best grrrl�s latest award-winning film and gawddamn is she a fantastic filmmaker. I hope everyone gets the chance to see this film.

�

Meanwhile, here�s an article I discovered last week:

AUTHORITIES SHUT DOWN DUNGEON
(Waynesville NC) At least six men traveled from across the nation and South America to have their genitals mutilated and be trained as sex slaves at a rural house south of Hazelwood, about 30 miles west of Asheville.

Sheriff Tom Alexander and DA Micheel Bonfoey arrested three men on felony charges of castration without malice, maiming without malice, and practicing medicine without a license. The sheriff and prosecutor said the victims were all willing participants.

The men�two, ages 60 and 61, who identified as a couple and a third, 49, who identifed as a �slave��were given court-appointed lawyers. They are in the general population at the county�s Detention Center.

The victims met the men through a locally produced Website that published photographs of men engaging in sadomasochistic behavior. Yahoo! shut down the site in December 2004. The castrations took place last year beginning in March and continued through November, according to police documents.

One of the men��Master Rick��had logged onto the Internet only the day before his arrest looking to add to his �stable of slaves,� according to press reports. His advertisement ran on collarme.com and two other similar Web sites.

�This is NOT a game with Me. I live this lifestyle, have currently 1 live in 24/7 slave, whom I Own,� he wrote in an ad. �Looking to train other slaves and to add to My stable of slaves also. Am always open to giving experiences and expanding limits, but only with Male slaves and subs (submissives).�

During a search of the home, investigators found DVD recordings of the castrations.

DA Bonfoey said a case of castration without malice is extremely rare. Consenting to castration, he said, is not a defense under NC law.

He said the castration law was likely written to protect sex offenders against vigilantes.

First a high school prep student in Durham NC shot and killed his parents. Then a Muslim student mowed down a bunch of academics on the UNC Chapel Hill campus. Then privileged white Duke University lacrosse players allegedly raped a black stripper (who is also a university student at a predominantly university in Durham), and witnesses say that one lacrosse players told her to �thank your grandfather for my nice cotton shirt� as she was leaving their party house. Then three people were shot at a raucous street festival in Chapel Hill NC and the little village declared that almost 250 police officers was too few to control the raucous crowd. And now a Chapel Hill NC high-school student is in custody after taking a student and teacher hostage yesterday and firing his shotgun in the classroom (which, I�m sure, made all those students and teachers in lockdown and those parents gathered outside the building worrying and the cops still rattled from this weekend�s multiple shootings believe that hostages were being killed).

So. What is going ON in NC people?

You know, the Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina has the highest concentration of MDs/Ph.Ds in the country. Is too much privileged angst clashing with too much class anger to blame?

�
Meanwhile, the New York Times ran an article about fashion at Columbia University (�where privilege and experience meet�). One female student, who describes herself as not trying to hard, apparently wears vintage boots and a Valentino scarf and carries a Ferragamo bag that she picked up in Paris.

(Did I mention that the African American stripper who was allegedly raped by three privileged Duke students told police that she strips in order to pay her college tuition or that our conservoheartless president wants to pare back the federal student loan program?)

(Wonder how far the sale of one designer bag would go toward paying off one state-university student's tuition?)

Meanwhile, a male student at Columbia wears a John Varvatos jacket that his fashion consultant/personal shopper chose for him when his mom sent him to Bloomingdale�s �to treat himself. �

And there it is. We are a country of haves and have nots and I'd be willing to bet on the reality that no one at Columbia is stripping to pay tuition.

Meanwhile, Filmgrrl and I are making plans to see Guardian, a play starring the actor who plays The L Word�s Shane as the infamous Lyndie England of abu Ghraib, when I�m in NYC.

11:27 p.m. - 2006-4-25

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