I have to admit, I was stoked that for once I wouldn’t have to delete my internet history when looking at porn. This time, should someone be on my computer and see “Annie Sprinkle and Dwarf” or “Little Oral Annie,” I could legitimately explain that I was doing research for this piece. Which I was, of course.

I don’t know if many people chomp at the bit to talk to a former porn-star-turned-sex-educator, but I was more than willing. I used to work at a store in Portland where a number of people trained in the delicate arts of pole dancing and amateur porn bought their props, and they’re human just like the rest of us. But Annie Sprinkle is a real porn star, having starred in real films with the likes of Ron Jeremy. (For those of you who don’t know who that is and claim to have never watched porn, you know who you are, just go watch Boondock Saints again.)
Dr. Sprinkle has garnered attention over her illustrious career for her outspoken nature and activism. Her parents were lefty activists through the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, but she says she didn’t begin her career in pornography, at the tender age of 18, as an activist. Instead, it wasn’t until later in her career, when she was nearing 30, that she took a gender studies course and realized that feminist wasn’t a dirty word. She took more classes, eventually receiving her Ph.D. She has written a number of books, from an autobiography to a sex-help book. Her movies have been remastered and are available for purchase on her website.

On an unusually bright spring day outside of the Erb Memorial Union, Dr. Annie Sprinkle, who claims to be the world’s first porn star with a Ph.D., was setting up the Sidewalk Sex Clinic. She had a radiant personality that emitted rays of calm and cheer, methodically laying out her books, pamphlets, videos (some openly displaying her breasts), and tarot cards. Her cohorts were struggling to pin up the Sidewalk Sex Clinic sign, and passing by me she winked and quipped, “How many sex educators does it take to pin up a sign? A brothel.”
The clinic was up and running, and she was available for questions. But by the time my turn came around, her voice was raspy from speaking (she’s had a long tour, and it’s far from over) and I had missed her talk from the night before. I figured she wasn’t too interested in going over things she had already covered, questions she had already answered, and talking too much about herself. Instead, I decided, this was an opportunity to hang out with someone who had worked in the world’s oldest profession, and hell, what isn’t totally awesome about that? I had already seen her in her most naked, vulnerable form, and here she was in front of me, asking if I wanted her to read my sexual tarot. Hell yes!

I am at best skeptical of things such as tarot readings. Much like psychics on TV, I feel that most of it is crowd sourcing, a skilled performer feeling out his or her audience, and reacting to answers on a generalized basis. However, with each subsequent card I pulled, Dr. Sprinkle read me like a book. She was enthusiastic about my first three cards pulled – explaining to me that I was inventive with sex, open minded, but also in a transitional period. I’m leaving school soon, and I hadn’t told her, how could she know that? Last I pulled the Fool Child card, which made her giddy with excitement, as few pull that card and it is the karmically highest card one can get. I don’t think I have to explain too much about what a Fool Child card might mean, and I have plenty of friends who would probably agree about it while simultaneously rolling their eyes.

My day couldn’t have been better spent than with Dr. Annie Sprinkle. In the afternoon I attended her eco-sex walk, a New Agey communion with nature that some 20 other people joined in on. I met a variety of people, from students who enjoyed the outdoors, to an older woman rediscovering her sexuality, to a guy who fucks trees. Seriously. He couldn’t wait to tell us about his first sexual experience with an apple tree, or how hiking through the Appalachian Trail he would steal off to rub one out on some moss.

Dr. Sprinkle concluded with a ceremony marrying anyone who was interested the earth. This was a bit much for me, but she performed it in earnest and those who participated left with a bright smile. Eugene is a good fit for a former sex star, and although I don’t think I discovered my ecosexuality, it was a blast to see that others did.

It saddens me how common it is to go to a show where no one is dancing. Too often I show up to a crowd of people standing still and looking completely uninvolved in front of a group going wild right in front of them. Aren’t we as an audience obligated to contribute at least some energy? Isn’t music meant to make us move our bodies?

Thankfully, The Rebirth Brass Band knows how to get the people moving. Although you might not expect to have fun listening to a “brass band,” you should know that Rebirth blends a traditional New Orleans second line sound with some heavy funk that gets the party started. I got down. Hard. Thankfully Eugene’s scores of weirdo hippie dancers (you know, the ones with the super baggy pants, wife beaters, and beanies) as well as some adults showed up, making it a decent crowd to jive with, despite the noticeable lack of fine ladies (my only criterion for “fine” being under 30). That didn’t stop me from dancing all night, as the deep grooves surged through my body along with the sweet and bluesy harmonies put out by the trumpets and saxophones.

While it’s good to know that rebirth can groove, the true reason to check them out is to hear a kind a music you never hear unless you’re in New Orleans. They embody a deep tradition of second line music, which is basically rhythmically intense New Orleans parade/party music — the kind that people go crazy on at Mardi Gras. You could tell these guys were really psyched on what they were doing when they repeatedly yelled, “We won a fucking Grammy y’all. Yeuh!” (They were the 2012 Grammy winner for Best Regional Roots Album.)

This video is a good representation of what they do: http://youtu.be/3E1VBCcA76E

Here is probably their most popular song and my favorite of the night (skip to 4:13 to check out the lyrics: “Can’t you see how much I want to fuck you!”): http://youtu.be/NLdgKIWjtro

If this group ever comes back, be there. Good times.

words BEN STONE
art CHELSEY BOEHNKE

“Should be a short article,” UO astronomy professor James Schombert wrote me recently. I had asked him if we could meet to talk about the search for extraterrestrial life. “The current scientific opinion on extraterrestrial life is that there is no evidence, so there is nothing to discuss.”

Interesting.

There is no evidence. That simple fact is a huge buzzkill, but it hasn’t dampened astronomers’ curiosity. People do still discuss this stuff. For years astronomers have been expecting that proof of alien life forms is just around the corner. In 2007, the head astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute predicted that we will know if we are alone or surrounded by 2025. You can’t blame scientists for being hopeful — there is a lot of universe to check. According to the New York Times, about “10,000 billion billion” solar systems may exist in the observable universe. And the search for extraterrestrial life isn’t like the search for some unknown frog species that hasn’t been noticed because it chills too hard. If we were to discover extraterrestrial life, it would be the most important discovery ever made. It would redefine what humans mean in the scheme of the universe. It would justify a level of stoke that science hasn’t inspired since Bill Nye’s theme song (Bill! Bill! Bill!).

The first time I heard someone talk seriously about the prospect of extraterrestrial life was a year ago in Astronomy 122. You can tell I was buggin’ out by how rambling and sketch my notes were that day. In the margin of one of the pages, I wrote the phrase “Now it’s useful to do something disturbing.” That was how Professor Gregory Bothun introduced the work of an astronomer named Frank Drake, who blew minds in the ‘60s when he wrote up a short formula to find out what the hell is even going on out there in space. It went like this:

N = R* • FP • NE • FL • FI • FC • L

Drake designed this formula to predict how many alien societies there are in the Milky Way galaxy that throw down detectable signals, or “N.” For a breakdown of what the other variables mean, peep Figure 1.1 on the next page. For all you haters who don’t want to read the sidebar, it basically means that we can’t use the formula to get consistent results because we have no idea what the last four values are. Accordingly, scientists have used this formula to form wildly different theories about life in the universe. Some have calculated hundreds of millions of alien civilizations to exist in the Milky Way, and some have calculated absolutely zero. Thanks to this equation, we now know that the Earth is either one little house party in a pretty lively neighborhood in the universe, or we are the party. Which would be, as Professor Bothun said, disturbing.

So the value of conclusions drawn by Drake’s equation seems hella dubious. But while the second half of Drake’s equation underscores how little base knowledge we have in alien matters, the first three variables represent what we do know about the process that produced a fly planet like ours in the middle of all these rocks. As far as humans are concerned, that process had two particularly fortunate developments during the messy creation of Earth a few billion years ago.

First, when the ruckus of our young solar system simmered down and all the newly formed planets started falling into their orbital tracks, the Earth dropped into orbit at the perfect distance away from the sun — the “habitable zone.” And second, towards the end of this formation period, gravity slapped a huge field of ice onto the Earth’s surface. Because of these two developments, Earth then had a huge body of water in liquid form for little organisms to get busy in. Astronomers now use these two qualifications as starting points in their searches for life on other planets.

At the forefront of the search for planets with climates similar to Earth’s is a fresh little NASA spacecraft called the Kepler. It uses light sensors to detect tiny drops in the levels of light coming from stars and uses that data to identify planets with Earth-like orbital patterns. On December 5, NASA reported that the Kepler and its crew on Earth had finally scoped a planet that hangs around perfectly in the habitable zone of a distant star. At 600 light years away, though, it’s hard to say what this star will actually tell us about life in the near future. And even if we get close enough to study this planet, the New York Times says we’ll probably just find tribes of “alien pond slime,” which is kind of disappointing and kind of dope at the same time.

On a more local tip, scientists in Antarctica are conducting research that may have heavy implications for our knowledge of extraterrestrial life. In February of this year, Russian scientists at the Vostok Research Station finished drilling through two miles of ice to reach Lake Vostok, a huge freshwater lake that has been cut off from air and light for between 15 and 34 million years, according to the NYT. When their drill hit the lake, the pressurized water shot up the borehole and froze, forming a plug that will seal the hole until the scientists return next season to test the water. If samples of the water turn up some sort of life forms, which have been living alone in super-medieval conditions for ages, scientists think that there might also be organisms doing laps in the cold water on Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. Unfortunately, that is a possibility predicated on something we don’t even know to be true yet.

So scientists are in slow-motion pursuit of extraterrestrial life. But there is still no clear evidence of such life, and it seems unlikely that we will discover any in the near future. I asked Professor Schombert what he thought about this. “All science starts at this stage and grows,” he replied. “My personal opinion is that these types of searches require technology that we do not have at this time.” Rats.

One can only discuss these challenging hypotheticals for a while before looking up at the stars, saying, “What, are you kidding me?” and considering the simpler alternative. Say we are the only living things in the universe right now. What does that even mean? On its face, that’s a profoundly depressing thought. It means we will never meet any radical-looking space cousins who can tell us what’s going on here*.  It also means that in the billions of years that this universe has existed before us, no alien camp has ever been successful enough at super-fast space travel to colonize other areas of the universe and outrun exploding stars.

But the slightly less depressing, arguably trippier aspect of this scenario is a piece of knowledge dropped by Professor Bothun last year that I will now paraphrase. Everything we feel and do in our lives may be inconsequential, and we may be at the mercy of all the hardcore objects and properties that the universe can throw down upon us. But if we are the only life forms out here, we represent something really beautiful — the ability for the universe to see itself. And it would literally be the wackest thing to ever occur in the universe if we didn’t try to sustain our ability to check out and think about our surroundings for as long as we can.

Professor Schombert is right. There is really no substance to discussions about extraterrestrial life, only theories. Sometimes it’s useful to have trippy discussions to put things in perspective, though. It might be vain to think that we are the only intelligence in an impossibly big universe full of the same things that allowed us to develop. But considering what we know, the only logical thing to do is to live like we are alone.

________________________________________________

*Although in 2010, mighty astrophysicist Stephen Hawking warned that if aliens do come to earth, our interactions with them would probably mirror that of Christopher Columbus and Native Americans when he rolled over in the 1400s. And Columbus was a real son of a bitch.

words and photos WILL PAUGH

“I used to go into Yahoo chatrooms during 7th grade and catch pedophiles,” Cody tells me. “With the name lonelyprincess13 I’d just turn in the evidence to the police. It was more because I was bored.”

He wears his long brown hair in a slick ponytail. Around his neck is a string with a red USB drive tied to it. It’s not clear whether he sports it for fashion or function, but either way, it seems to complete the package: Cody is a seasoned resident of the digital world known as Second Life. Years as an ever-present observer and curious participant make him the perfect guide. In my expedition into the virtual world, he’s my Sacagawea. He sits in the corner of a Portland Starbucks. Hands folded, he concentrates on every word that leaves his mouth. As the transition lenses on his glasses become clearer, so does his story. Cody Izzo is from the Internet.

What separates Second Life from a video game is that it is quite literally a digital life with no linear goal or instruction. Second Life only limits users to make what they can imagine, and this has spawned a world that is a canvas for creativity. Each resident is free to sculpt whatever he or she wants using Second Life’s built in 3D modeling tools. More advanced users can script their own movements for avatars to perform. Every inch of Second Life is user-generated. Started in 2003 by digital game developer Linden Lab, Second Life began as nothing more than a small island with a few trees. Today it holds over one million subscribers who have contributed to a constantly expanding landscape. Recently the active regions of Second Life have been estimated to be around 795 square miles.

But what can you expect from a digital world where anything goes? Because users enjoy free reign to make their own content, Second Life has developed a seedy underbelly — full of sexual deviance and plenty of computer-generated semen. For users like Cody, it’s a sign that Second Life is going to shit.

Cody first logged on to build his own structures. It was the perfect atmosphere to practice architecture as a hobby. Over 300 universities around the world have taken advantage of Second Life, and created virtual classrooms as a platform for teaching. Even Harvard Law has held mock-trials in Second Life courtrooms.

Cody has been told that he has an eye for detail, and it wasn’t long before he realized that he could turn this into a profit. “I own a land rental business,” Cody says. “But it’s all part time.” Cody was converting digital currency into hundreds of real dollars each month at the peak of his business. And all before he graduated high school. Now 20, Cody has moved most his attention from architecture to the social features of Second Life.

Next to Cody is Carson, a quiet 20-something sitting behind what must be the world’s largest laptop. He flies around Second Life as a yellow My Little Pony avatar. Carson is part of a My Little Pony community that Cody facilitates, and prior to meeting in first life the two had only talked online for a total of half an hour. “Bronies,” also known as male fanatics of the children’s show My Little Pony, are just one example of the many specialized groups that Second Life caters to. These fan bases are the lifeblood of Second Life and keep it thriving to this day.

Cody doesn’t mind stepping in and helping these groups out: “If people want help running a community I’ll do it, even if I don’t give a crap what it is. It’s more that I get the feeling I’m helping people out.” Because he isn’t invested in certain groups, he is asked to mediate them. He objectively dissolves conflicts and keeps things running smoothly within the community. Cody does it to make friends online; he could care less whether he receives a paycheck, he says, because at the end of the day he is conscious that Second Life is separate from reality. Nothing is real except for the socialization, which Cody prizes as the most important aspect of Second Life.

There is an almost infinite number of communities on Second Life that can accommodate anyone’s craving, and this is where the less-than-savory side of the virtual world begins to show. Because users can create whatever they want, fantasies are no longer hindered by social norms or the law. “People give a blind eye to certain things, and that’s where we get into morality in a sense. There is prostitution, even a slave trade,” Cody says. The strangest part of all this is that people willingly participate in these shady activities; no avatar can be forced to do anything. Cody does not take part in this behavior, but enjoys harassing, or “griefing,” those involved whenever possible. For Cody and many other Second Life residents, detachment from real life does not mean abandoning ethics. “I’ve known and seen a few people who turn to that, and I just tell them to fuck off because that’s weird for me to see that.”

While walking through Second Life it’s not unusual to bump into Dora the Explorer having sex with an alien. Not everyone in Second Life is down with this, just as we can hope that not everyone in the real world is. Second Life just doesn’t do anything to keep the pervs out. Like the Internet as a whole, freedom of creative expression comes first. Even if it means that children’s cartoon characters get desecrated.

But in order to do the nasty in Second Life, one must first have the necessary equipment.

Standard avatars aren’t born with reproductive organs so they must be purchased from what is known as a “dick baron.” Cody has a hard time keeping a straight face when this topic is brought up. “These are people that actually make virtual penises, and make hundreds of thousands of dollars off of it. They make various animal ones too. It gets ridiculous.” Dick barons, like real world vendors, have stores with billboards and mannequins advertising their junk. Many dick barons do not limit themselves to one gender, and sell impossibly proportioned parts for both men and women. While their products are made out of pixels, their paychecks are anything but artificial. “The barons I know don’t really care about it. They say ‘I can make money off this, why not? If I have an excuse to sit at home and play video games all day and make dicks for a living, why not?’”

While Second Life to some means an opportunity for artistic invention or harmless recreation, it’s hard to ignore the shady behavior that Second Life is notorious for. The focused attention on the perverted threatens to bring down all of Second Life’s reputation.

Warren Degenhardt, who knows Cody from high school, sees none of the positives that motivated Cody to create an avatar. “There are entire cities that probably took weeks to model that are completely abandoned, and where is everyone? Crowding around watching a donkey fuck.” Warren says. “It’s a stain on the Internet.”

Even Cody is losing optimism for the future of Second Life. “The more years pass by, the more it seems Second Life degenerates.” Cody knows that at first glance no one will remember Second Life’s creative potential, but the dark rampant sexual activity. “It seems that it has become the greatest and probably the worst thing for certain people. Some can make a pretty decent living off of it, and others have quit their jobs and digressed into fucked-up shit.”

___________________________________________

Second Life Fun Facts:

• Throughout SL there are many child adoption agencies. Adults role play as children looking for a loving home.
• Ben Folds held a concert in SL, got drunk, shot lasers from his eyes, took his shirt off, and fought fans with light sabers.
• In SL, American Apparel has virtual stores full of virtual hipsters shopping for virtual clothes.
• Drew Carey thinks SL is dope and occasionally goes on for virtual dates with his wife.
• Affairs on SL have inspired very many real world divorces.
• One SL user created a concentration camp for furries. It was very graphic, and the user was banned.
• Furries are very common.

words BRETT SISUN
art SHININGGRASS

My name is Mock Conroy, and I am journalist. I am also a ghost hunter.

Have you ever thought about living in the housing cooperative near 16^th and Alder? Lorax Manor may seem like a lovely place with kind housemates, humble responsibilities, and tasty vegan cuisine. But beneath the writing on the walls lurks something else, something “Janet” might never forget.

Janet requested that her name be changed for the purpose of this story. She lives on the second floor of Lorax Manor. She recently called me up in my office and requested my assistance immediately.

I rushed over on my red tricycle and found her sitting alone in her room, facing the window. I placed my hand on her shoulder and asked, “What’s happened, Janet?”

“I didn’t know anything about it until I saw it,” she stuttered. “Thomas said that it was the ghost that lives in the attic. She was a sorority girl and she killed herself here!”

“Calm down Janet! What did you see?”

“White Balloon,” she replied, as her face turned pale. I pulled out my notepad and began writing.

“I was talking to Laura in my room, when I glimpsed something through the slit in the doorway. I cracked it open and saw a white balloon floating up the stairwell, just about a foot above the ground,” she said, trying to keep her voice down. “Laura and I stopped talking. We stared at it. That’s when it turned the corner, and started floating up the second flight of stairs. We froze, watching it. When it again turned the corner and began floating up the final flight of stairs, we looked at each other. We knew we had to follow,” she said, holding back her tears.

“Oh it was terrible! It wanted us to follow. We crawled up the stairs on our hands and knees, like scared animals, and we turned the corner. There it was in front of the attic door, just floating, and then, it dropped to the floor!” Janet grabbed me by my black pea coat and sobbed shyly into the stitched wool.

“We think she lives in the attic, but she might be everywhere at the same time! Or maybe it’s just in my head! Can you help us, Mock?”

“Well,” I cleared my voice, putting the notepad back into my breast pocket, “being that I am a journalist and a ghost hunter, I’ll see what I can do. We need to go into the attic and confront this ghost, but we will need some protection, too.”

“Here!” Janet said as she rummaged through her closet and pulled out two bike helmets. “These have magic protection!”

“Good thinking,” I said as I strapped one on. “Lets go!”

We darted up the stairs and found our way to the metal attic door. We cracked it open. There were no signs of the supernatural, so we continued in until we were both standing in the middle of the dark attic.

“Hello! Hello?” I turned to Janet. “What’s her name?” I whispered.

“I think its Mildred.”

“Ah, Mildred, hello? We come in peace! Please leave the folks of the Lorax alone!?”

Suddenly, a noise came from the corner of the room. A can of paint fell from a shelf. We heard steps coming towards us and grabbed each other.

“Oh Jesus,” I said. Janet screamed. A ball of fur appeared. It had dreadlocks. It was, it was… Fox. Fox, the guy who lives in the attic, of course.

“What’s the commotion, guys?” he asked.

“Is there a ghost that lives up here?” I inquired.

“No ghost. Just me.” We thanked Fox for his help and left the attic, relieved with our discovery.

So, as of now, the Lorax is a safe place to live. As far as I can tell, there are no ghosts in the attic of the manor. Just hippies, case closed.

WIN WIN – Releaserpm (Nadastrom Moombaton Remix)

Openers: Simon Says, Dubadank, Corey Mines.

The show starts at 9. $12 in advance. $18 at the door.

It’s a great time to be a Queens-based rapper of Indian descent. Big Baby Gandhi, a rapper/producer with a genius, raunchy flow, is the newest addition to Greedhead, the desi-centric record label headed by Himanshu of Das Racist. With vintage Bollywood samples that call to mind Madlib’s India-inspired instrumentals and some classically shouty rhymes by the Mahatma himself, this slap bodes well for his upcoming mixtape, No1 2 Look Up 2, which is slated to drop March 30. Check out Big Baby Gandhi’s fucking hilarious debut mixtape, Big Fucking Baby.

What UO bicycle advocates and commuters think about the innovative bike facilities on 13th Avenue and Alder Street.

This slap is the title track from Nite Jewel’s upcoming album, One Second of Love, the anticipated follow-up to her lauded 2008 LP, Good Evening. With a low, raunchy synth line chugging perpetually and a quintessentially electropop drum beat, “One Second of Love”  is ideal for solo bedroom dance fits. The album comes out March 6. Look for a review of it in the upcoming issue of Oregon Voice, slated to drop Friday March 9.