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HARD TO SAY IF YOUR CORRESPONDENT--OR, FOR THAT MATTER, THE GREATER BLOGOSPHERE--WOULD PROBABLY AGREE IS THE CASE ON WEDNESDAYS typically.

Especially when the sky happens to have thin cloud with the prospect of rain possible later in the day and towards the evening. And, for that matter, well into the weekend.

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MEANWHILE, HERE IN THE MINNWISSIPPI, THE BIG STORY IS THE SHOCK CLOSURE OF THE WINONA INTERSTATE BRIDGE (as seen on the Postal Service's stamp commemorating the 150-year anniversary of Minnesota statehood) following routine MnDOT safety inspections turning up corroded gusset plates on the bridge underframe.

Somehow, corroded gusset plates must be a hot item in the news ever since the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis nearly a year ago was so attributed (and notwithstanding the mindset of certain weird and unwholesome pseudoreligious seeing said collapse as Divine Judgement Upon Minnesota for tolerating homosexuals and homosexuality).

Corroded gusset plates have also been attributed for the shock closing of a major bridge heading into beautiful downtown St. Cloud earlier in the spring, which will be replaced by a new structure in due course.

In any case, commuters from Wisconsin areas near Winona are doubtless in for a rude shock in their commuting habits, considering not just high gas prices but also the bridge closure forcing a detour of some 50 miles in toto just to get to work--until, perhance, some class of interim ferry service is provided for. That, and another two years' wait before an entirely new bridge can be constructed to replace the current such, of 1942 vintage and using the now-discredited cantilever truss stylee of construction.

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NOT ONLY DID SEN. BARACK OBAMA MAKE HISTORY LAST NIGHT WITH HIS WINNING THE PRESUMPTIVE DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION (which needs to be confirmed @ the Democratic National Convention this August in Denver), making him the first person of colour to win a major party's Presidential candidacy:

It turns out that Sen. Obama may have unwittingly set himself up as a plum assaination target among racists, White Christian Supremacists and others hoping to use Obama's assaination as the requisite catalyst to set off their greatest desideratum: Full-on RAHOWA (RAcial HOly WAr), pure and simple (cf. Timothy McVeigh's hoping to use the Oklahoma City Incident in 1995 as a "call to arms" among the Great Unwashed to Reclaim Constitutional Law).

Especially if certain elements among these are offering a significant cash bounty to the one who can kill off Sen. Obama during a campaign appearence--and with a bonus if such also touches off RAHOWA as gets beyond the control of National Guard and Reserve troops based stateside or otherwise on furlough from tours of duty in the ur-RAHOWA Against Terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan, in effect forcing sadistic-minded vigilantism among drunk and/or otherwise mentally- or emotionally-unstable elements of "white trash" with arrogant delusions of grandeur beyond their deliberate poverty, fecundity and stupidity.

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COME TO THINK OF IT, METHINKS THOSE IMAGINING THE PROSPECT OF OUTRIGHT RAHOWA ONCE SEN. OBAMA IS OUT OF THE WAY as a "race traitor***undermining [America's] traditional soverignty and soverign identity, antient and pecuilar" must enjoy studying footage on YouTube and other video-sharing outlets across the Information Stuporbahn of the late anti-foreigner rioting across South Africa for ideas and tactics on targeting who they see as "the enemy:"

• Jews, Muslims and other "heathen" as may be regarded as "noncomformist" vis-a-vis Low Church Christian Religiopolitik;
• Hispanics and Latinos;
• Asiatics;
• "chronic and habitual" welfare cases, especially blacks, Hispanics and the disabled; and
• others likely to be seen as "troublemakers."

Especially so the "lone wolf" element who can be provoked into action solely by way of coded messages on their cell phones and Instant Messaging programmes, prepared all along to act as a "united front."

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ONE THING THESE SAME ANTI-GOVERNMENT ZEALOTS AND TRUE BELIEVERS MUST BE PARANOID ABOUT, AND THEN SOME, IS THE NOTION OF FORCING PEOPLE TO "NARK" on their neighbours in the name of Homeland Security.

Which turns out about to be the case in the Venezuela of the same Hugo Chavez which Pat "700 Club" Robertson has previously suggested be dispatched "quickly, yet discreetly" by the CIA for G-d, Country and Cheap Gasoline; Human Rights Watch hath it that the Chavez regime, on much the same lines as their Communist droogs in Cuba, has railroaded through a "decree law" requiring people to "cooperate" with police and intelligence agencies on investigations "to prevent the undermining of [Venezuelan] national integrity from without" under pain of "serious consequences."

The which just pleases the Lou Dobbs/Michael Savage/Glenn Beck crowd having only their own selfish and @ once arrogant interests in deluded "racial honour," does it not?

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BARBIE, THAT MODEL OF CORN-FED MIDWESTERN WHOLESOMENESS AND IDEALISM (the story line behind her hath it that she was "born" in the fictional Wisconsin community of "Willows"), is taking the Bratz, those models of pouted-lips diversity, multiculturalism and street 'tude, to court.

The issue? Plagarism, pure and simple, or so Mattel is telling MGA Entertainment, as is behind the Bratz phenom.

Your Correspondent, personally, sees it as "sour grapes," especially considering where Barbie was herself modelled on the German sexpot doll Lilli, itself based on a cartoon feature in the raffish German tabloid Bild-Zeitung back in the late 1950's.

But then again, how do we know Barbie isn't about to be exploited by certain weird and unwholesome types among white-supremacist Zealots and True Believers whose especial interest is targeting children with a message of "racial honour and consciousness" as is straight out of Nazi Germany and/or apartheid South Africa?

RECENTLY, YOUR CORRESPONDENT GOT TO THINKING @ SOME LENGTH ABOUT ONE OF BART SIMPSON'S LEGENDARY PHONE PRANKS TO MOE'S TAVERN IN SPRINGFIELD as sought out one "Hugh Jass" ("Flaming Moe's" episode), as thus:

Moe: [answering the phone] Flaming Moe's.

Bart: Uh, yes, I'm looking for a friend of mine. Last name Jass. First name Hugh.

Moe: Uh, hold on, I'll check. [calling] Hugh Jass! Somebody check the men's room for a Hugh Jass!

Man: Uh, I'm Hugh Jass.

Moe: Telephone. [hands over the receiver]

Hugh: Hello, this is Hugh Jass.

Bart: [surprised] Uh, hi.

Hugh: Who's this?

Bart: Bart Simpson.

Hugh: Well, what can I do for you, Bart?

Bart: Uh, look, I'll level with you, Mister. This is a crank call that sort of backfired, and I'd like to bail out right now.

Hugh: All right. Better luck next time. [hangs up] What a nice young man.

Which had Your Correspondent wondering if this "Hugh Jass" may have been some long-lost relative of the late Mel Jass, longtime host of Mel's Matinee Movie on WTCN-TV (now KARE) in the Twin Cities until around 1980, whence its long-established independent status was replaced by affiliation with the NBC network.

(Concurrently, longtime NBC affiliate KSTP-TV switched to ABC, and then-ABC affiliate KMSP-TV became independent.)

In any case, @ one point in the early 1970's, "Dialling for Dollars" was incorporated into Mel's Matinee Movie, in case any of you Twin Cities TV fans still recall the segment; Mel would really talk things up with his mostly bored-housewife audience, especially if they were lucky enow to be selected to guess "the count and the amount" telephonically; contestants' names were cut out of Twin Cities area phone books, and were selected @ random from a drum.

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EVEN WITH ONGOING PUBLIC OPPOSITION TO THE DESIGNS OF FREE-MARKET NEOCONSERVATIVE ZEALOTRY AND TRUE BELIEF FOR "COMPLETE, FINAL AND BINDING" denationalisation of State Social Security per Latin American models--and citing highly-devious patsies and bromides to justify same, especially through "stealth" means--there are still such who want to go ahead with denationalisation.

Especially when "targeted" towards the Lower Working Classes, and same being thus "targeted" by virtue of "clear and present need [among that element] to develop a renewed healthy respect for Industry, Self-Reliance, Personal Responsibility, Thrift based on Cash Economy and a Wholesome and Simple Home Life" as was "held to contempt" under the "failed and failing" State system--or so the stereoype-based propaganda line wants you and me thinking. Never mind their not being expected to realise that only "the Four Hundred" are likely to profit all the more from denationalised Social Security while all those grandeloquent arguments about "self-reliance," "personal responsibilty," usw., are reduced to little more than platitude-laden "feel-good" opiates.

Witness what The Capital Times (Madison, WI--and, by extension, the Information Stuporbahn) had to say editorially on the subject the other day:

The job of a newspaper, asserted journalist Finley Peter Dunne, is to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

The Wisconsin State Journal reverses that calculus when it peddles what AARP terms a "myth" in order to scare people into undermining Social Security.

The State Journal says that U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Janesville, deserves praise for coming up with a plan to steer billions--perhaps trillions--of federal tax dollars into the coffers of the Wall Street speculators and insurance industry profiteers who want to privatize America's Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs.

Ryan's so-called "reform" plan is best understood as a scheme to benefit major campaign contributors to the congressman and his political cronies.

If implemented, the Ryan plan would leave the vast majority of Americans with fewer retirement benefits, less access to quality health care and less security. Taxpayers would end up owing more and getting less in return for their commitments.

Yet the State Journal says, "U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., deserves support for proposing a sweeping reform of how the nation pays for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and health insurance."

That statement ought to make Wisconsinites angry.

Why should people be upset that a newspaper that endorsed George Bush for president and Dave Magnum for Congress is promoting radical privatization schemes?

Because the paper is fostering the lie that, without Ryan's so-called reforms, "America will not have the money to keep paying the costs of its social insurance programs as the retiring baby boomers draw upon them."

AARP specifically dismisses this claim as a "myth."

"Those who argue that Social Security needs a dramatic reorganization begin with this premise: the system is failing; Social Security isn't sustainable in its present form. From there, the argument goes that what's best for the country is some form of privatization," explain the AARP analysts. "So, is Social Security about to go bust? Not by a long shot. In fact, Social Security is in better shape today than at any other time since it was enacted in 1935. That's because of some judicious adjustments suggested in 1983 by a commission set up by Ronald Reagan and headed up by Alan Greenspan. Since then, trust fund reserves have gone from nearly zero to $1.6 trillion."

That does not mean that Social Security won't be stressed by the mass retirements of baby boomers and their children and grandchildren.

But the truth is that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid can be preserved with reasonable reforms--like requiring the wealthy to pay Social Security taxes at the same rate as everyone else. As AARP says, "We can strengthen Social Security by making small adjustments, just as we've done in the past. These include raising the cap on wages subject to Social Security (currently you're taxed on income up to $90,000) and investing part of the Social Security surplus in other vehicles that pay higher interest than Treasury bonds do."

So why aren't Paul Ryan and the Wisconsin State Journal telling the truth?

Well, why did the congressman and the newspaper back Bush for president?

Because, unlike the vast majority of Americans, they don't see Social Security as a sacred trust. Rather, they see it as a source of "free money" for the same corporate welfare pigs that are always trying to feed at the federal trough. And they're more than willing to toss Medicare and Medicaid into the same trough.

In a country that defends the right to be wrong, that is the State Journal's right--just as it is the right of politicians like Paul Ryan to misappropriate the word "reform."

But the State Journal's editors abuse their freedom-of-the-press privileges when they lie to the people of Wisconsin with the purpose of scaring us into allowing a raid on the federal treasury--and the retirement security of working Americans--in order to enrich the worst sort of profiteers.

Still, though, it was time to start asking those Zealots and True Believers in denationalised Social Security how they expect to "win over the hearts and minds" of the working classes to "wholeheartedly embracing" "complete and final" denationalisation.

And whether such techniques would involve lies, half-truths, distortions of fact, appeals to anti-Semitic tendencies and feelings, pandering to an idealised Arcadian vision of the past lacking any relation to Reality or Historical Fact (even with carefully-scripted and manufactured displays of emotion) ...

RECENT ITEM FROM CONWEBBLOG as is worthy of notice:

Warner Todd Huston uses a May 28 NewsBusters post to rant against "A Prairie Home Companion" host Garrison Keillor over his inability, as expressed in a recent newspaper column, to understand what is inherently patriotic about riding a motorcycle. Despite attacking Keillor's column as a "screed," Huston was in full screed mode himself, referencing "Lake Blowbegone" and calling Keillor a "pseudo-intellectual" who associates with "tea-drinking, pinky finger lifted, emasculated, lefties." (Of course, a "psudo-intellectual," unlike Huston, would know that putting a comma after "emasculated" is grammatically incorrect.)

If Huston want to do some, you know, actual research into Keillor, he might want to check out last Saturday's edition of "A Praire Home Companion," in which Keillor devotes the "News from Lake Wobegon" to Memorial Day and reads a moving Memorial Day sonnet--both done in ways that even Huston might approve.

Which begs the question of whether "real Americans" (as in poor, undereducated and easily-influenced specimens of the working classes pseudoconservatives claim to be defending) should be expected to drink store-brand coffee with a rather oily taste thanks to the roasting being a little too intense--except maybe in the South, where coffee is usually blended with chicory to pad out the taste.

Unless coffee-and-chicory blends are seen to be as effeminate as tea to the pseudoconservative mind.

Likewise with grain-based ersatz coffees like Postum, Cafix and Pero.

But then again, there was a time when a lot of "pure coffee" sold @ the grocer's was all too often roasted beans and peas, with chicory and rye added to mask any suspicion of bitterness. Such was the kind of adulteration which helped galvanise the cooperative movement from the Rochdale Pioneers on, a form of pressure upon companies to produce only pure and wholesome foodstuffs.

FOR THOSE AMONG YOU PLANNING YOUR ANNUAL VISIT TO THE 2008 EDITION OF THE GREAT MINNESOTA GET-TOGETHER, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS THE MINNESOTA STATE FAIR, here's the latest on the Toyota Grandstand Series concert acts as have been confirmed to date (in chronological order):

• Thursday, 21 August @ 18h30: 3 Doors Down with special guests Staind and Hinder; tickets $32, $47 and $53, depending on location of seating. 
• Friday, 22 August @ 19h30: Brad Paisley with special guests Jewel, Chuck Wicks and Julianne Hough; tickets $45.
• Saturday, 23 August @ 19h30: Backstreet Boys with special guest Girlicious; tickets $29.
• Sunday, 24 August @ 19h: Jonny Lang and Buddy Guy with special guests Big Head Todd and The Monsters; tickets $35.
• Monday, 25 August @ 19h30: Dierks Bentley and Miranda Lambert; tickets $30.
• Tuesday, 26 August @ 18h30: Paramore with special guests Jack's Mannequin, Phantom Planet and Paper Route; tickets $31, on sale from 12h Saturday, 14 June.
• Wednesday, 27 August @ 19h30: Gnarls Barkley; tickets $30, on sale from 10h Saturday, 14 June.  
• Thursday, 28 August @ 19h30: Mark Schultz with special guests Big Daddy Weave and Lincoln Brewster; tickets $28.
• Friday, 29 August @ 20h: A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor; tickets $22 and $27, depending on location of seating, on sale from 10h Saturday, 7 June.
• Saturday, 30 August @ 19h30: The Black Crowes with special guest The Black Keys; tickets $37, on sale from 12h Saturday, 7 June.   
• Monday, 1 September (Labour Day) @ 19h30: Toby Keith with special guests Carter's Chord, Trailer Choir and Mica Roberts; tickets $50.

All shows will be followed by the traditional fireworks display (thanks to Miller Lite), weather permitting.

All tickets are reserved seating, and can be purchased through:

• the Minnesota State Fair Box Office (for telephone orders, mail-order instructions or further information, call [+1] 651-288-4427); or
• through Ticketmaster, as in:
  • Ticketmaster outlets throughout the Upper Midwestern states;
  • online @ www.ticketmaster.com; or
  • by calling (+1) 651-989-5151.

(N.B. All orders placed through Ticketmaster are subject to their usual convenience fees.)

They can also be had through your friendly neighbourhood ticket scalpers, so long as they operate outside the premi of the State Fairgrounds.

From Monday, 9 June, the Minnesota State Fair Box Office will be open weekdays (except the July 4th holiday) 12h-17h, and on Saturdays from 10h-14h. Enquiries or further questions can be directed as above.

As reminder, a separate Minnesota State Fair admission must be purchased for admission into any Grandstand show.

And the 2008 free entertainment lineup for TGMnGT has just been announced, encompassing seven stages throughout the State Fairgrounds with a selection of acts sure to please every taste. For the full details, click here. (BTW, those silly gophers, Fairchild and Fairborne, have  "meet-and-greet" sessions twice a day during TGMnGT in the Visitor Plaza @ shortly after 11h and 16h--just allow a few minootas for them to make their way. Be sure to bring your camera; they're rather photogenic, as I understand. And your autograph book.)

If you still have questions, visit TGMnGT's website or call them during business hours in UTC-5 @ (+1) 651-288-4400.

(As reminder, TGMnGT 2008 is 21 August through Labour Day, 1 September, inclusive.)  

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IN YOUR CORRESPONDENT'S OWN CASE, IT SOMETIMES REQUIRES RESORTING TO SATIRE AND SUCHLIKE AS A WAY TO MAKE CLEAR THE POINT being addressed--a gift, perhaps, from the years of abuse and maltreatment which included attempts to use medications to silence any attempt @ independent thought.

Not exactly a Sixth Sense, but then again....

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CAN YOU IDENTIFY THE GOP PRESIDENTIAL WANNABE WHOSE CAMPAIGN IS CLOAKED IN ALL MANNER OF APPEALS TO "DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION" AND "RESTORE FREEDOM" is actively pushing the following Proposed Constitutional Amendment towards such perceived ends (credit Down With Tyranny for the text thereof):

No person shall be a citizen of the United States unless he is a non-Hispanic white of the European race, in whom there is no ascertainable trace of Negro blood, nor more than one-eighth Mongolian, Asian, Asia Minor, Middle Eastern, Semitic, Near Eastern, American Indian, Malay or other non-European or non-white blood, provided that Hispanic whites, defined as anyone with an Hispanic ancestor, may be citizens if, in addition to meeting the aforesaid ascertainable trace and percentage tests, they are in appearance indistinguishable from Americans whose ancestral home is in the British Isles or Northwestern Europe. Only citizens shall have the right and privilege to reside permanently in the United States.

Which reeks, does it not, with Nazi Germany's desire to create an "Aryan Master Race" as would reclaim German National Honour and Glory from the Allies' "stab-in-the-back" thereof following World War I?

Or, for that manner, apartheid South Africa seeing in apartheid the final achievement of Afrikaner Honour and Glory after years of "British repression" manifested in Die Voortrek through the wilderness from the Cape to the Highveldt, the gold and diamonds discoveries and the Boer War which (to the Afrikaner mindset) "sought to exterminate the proud Afrikaner and his right to self-determination and honour."

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AND SPEAKING OF "BRITISH REPRESSION"--OR, FOR THAT MATTER, "WESTERN REPRESSION"--Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has been using that rather hackneyed platitude @ the current United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO; motto, Fiat Panis, "let there be bread") conference in Rome to shift blame from himself and his corrupt "inside of the inside" for Zimbabwe's ongoing socioeconomic crisis and hyperflation.

Wait a minute--doesn't the European Union (EU), of which Italy is one of the original six members (along with the Benelux states, France and Germany), have a ban on Mr. Mugabe's entering any EU member state by virtue of his association with terrorists or other Undesireable Elements? (Even if he has a diplomatic passport.)

Staying with the FAO conference for the moment, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon (no relation to the so-called "Reverend" Sun Myung Moon of the equally-so-called "Unification Church" and The Washington Times, hopefully) has called upon "developed" states (in particular the "morally superior" United States and the European Union) to scrap "counterproductive" subsidies for cereal grains intended for ersatz fuels and redivert cereal crops to impoverished nations facing food shortages and increasing prices for basic foodstuffs. (One solution Secretary-General Moon might want to recommend as a worthwhile ersatz fuels crop: Cultivating Jerusalem artichokes.)

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AS THE PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARIES SEASON CONCLUDETH WITH THE DEMOCRATIC SUCH IN MONTANA AND SOUTH DAKOTA TONIGHT, The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang is expected to go on live national FreeVee to launch his "campaign" (if you could properly call it such) and lay out his articles of faith.

Which, come to think of it, may have actually been cooked up in some smoke-filled room (locked all the while, and without any semblance of proper ventilation or filtration besides), and consisting of nothing more than carefully-scripted and -nuanced platitudes about "reclaiming American glory and honour," "ensuring complete and final victory" in the ur-RAHOWA on International Terrorism--in a nutshell, "staying the course" with the complacent waste, fraud, mismanagement and corruption of His Fraudulency's Great Within.

Viewers may want to be on the que vive throughout for The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang's lapsing into incoherence, telltale signs of nervous breakdowns or nerves, even unprovoked lapses into Billingsgate, as may be worth "swift-boating" him with.

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COULD IT BE THAT RUSSIAN PRESIDENT DMITRY MEDVEDEV IS ACTUALLY SYMPATHETIC TO DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY FOR ONCE, unlike his predecessor and close droog (and now Prime Minister) Vladimir Putin?

I say this in view of President Medvedev's vetoing legislation passed by the Russian Duma as would have allowed the authorities greater flexibility in shutting down media outlets (be they newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations or even weblogs) for suspected slander, libel or defamation; his contention was that such a concept was (and, come to think of it, is) detrimental to the best interests of democracy in a free and open society.

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MEANWHILE, IN HIS FRAUDULENCY'S NEWEST PUBLIC ENEMY #1 TO DEMOCRACY AND CHEAP OIL SUPPLIES, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS IRAN, the Cultural Ministry has imposed a six-day shutdown on the activities and operations of the quasi-official FARS news agency after its website published what was seen to be "false information" about the sacking of the Iranian Economics Minister.

In the interim, their website has not been updated in any way, shape or form.

But then again, conservative articles of faith towards the Lower Classes being nothing but fear, loathing and contempt thereof must seem to include a carefully-crafted, yet deliberate, programme of prolefeed in its purest and simplest form. As in nothing less than deliberately false, misleading or inaccurate news and information with an unhealthy emphasis, for the most part, on sport, crime, astrology and celebrity gossip, with the requisite "nutritious" appeals to patriotism and bigotry (usually in the same context).

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MEANWHILE, IN THE MINNWISSIPPI REGION'S WEATHER AS I WRITE THIS (knowing how many of you readers must come to expect the details thereof as a given to blog entries as discuss the day's headlines), it's cool and feeling damp to the point where rain could be likely later on in the day.

And, come to think of it, rain is likely to be the rule more than the exception for the rest of the week. Which, under the right conditions, may translate into another round of flash flooding as could rival the devastation of last August (and yet, many parts of the district as saw flood damage are still rebuilding--especially so Rushford, about 20 mile south of Winona as the crow flies).   

HAVING BEEN BROUGHT UP IN A MILEU OF ABUSE AND CRUELTY DURING MY LAST TWO YEARS OF HIGH SCHOOL, as included "suggestions" that I consider working in adult videos as being about the only "worthwhile career option" for someone with "serious mental disorders" like myself (aside from highly-expendable positions which were described by a racially-offensive term unfit to be repeated) who was otherwise expected to play along with Vocational Rehabilitation (VR), only to wind up on Social Security disability benefit, the following item from the "WaiWai" department of Japan's Mainichi Daily News brings back a sense of emotion.

Not to mention serving as a worthwhile lesson and advice for such from workfare "basket cases" whose teenaged children are being "advised" by high-school guidance counsellors to say No to State welfare, knowing all along that more conventional jobs are becoming evern more difficult to find, let alone hold down, so making such all the more suspectible to the procurer's advances:

Dealing with phone calls from literal jerks, picking out color coordinated condoms and selecting materials for simulated semen are just some of the duties of women working behind the scenes at adult moviemakers, according to Friday (5/9-16).

"I work in admin," a female office worker from an adult movie production company tells Friday. "My job involves everything from dealing with guys who call the company while they're masturbating to selecting condoms that aren't going to stand out on screen during filming."

Friday interviews the admin worker, a female assistant director and an adult actress to see what it's like from a women's side behind the scenes of the stick flick caper.

The picture the women give of the adult movie industry in Japan is a detailed one, with answers to 50 questions posed by readers of the magazine's mobile phone site.

Sexual harassment is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a part of their daily working lives.

"I'm used to the sexually abusive phone calls or requests for sales of adult items," one of the women says. "The problem with this job is dealing with the prejudices of the people around you. Many of the women working in this business never tell their boyfriends or parents what line of work they're really in."

Job interviews are also somewhat out of the ordinary.

"Women get asked questions like 'Do you enjoy sex?' or 'Do you masturbate?' and it's normal to be asked to flash your breasts," one of the women tells Friday. "It'd be sexual harassment in any other workplace, but for this job it's vital information the company needs to know."

Payment is an issue that seems high on the minds of most readers.

"Directors get paid according to how well their movies sell. It can run into the hundreds of thousands of yen per movie in some cases. Editing work is all done on a contract basis, so editors get paid pretty well," the adult video company employee says.

"Famous actresses can get paid ₯1 million or more per movie. For actresses on studio contracts, though, the rate is more like ₯80,000 to ₯100,000 per flick. The more popular an actress is, the more she's likely to get paid."

Appearances in direct-to-video porn are likely to be made by ordinary women.

"We get university students, office workers, part-time workers, housewives, nightclub hostesses, the works," one of the women working behind the scenes says. "It all depends on how well talent scouts have talked them into it. One thing all the women have in common is a tendency to be unable to say 'no.'"

In a business where companies disappear overnight, it's surprising to learn that payment is not always immediately done in cash.

"It really depends on the production company," one of the women says. "Some places only pay on a certain day each month."

The women also provide insight into what shooting schedules are like for the adult video market.

"The movies are all basically shot in a single day. If there are dramatic scenes involved, it might take a few days at most. But the production staff are all paid on a daily basis, so we can't afford to take time," one of the women says before going on to describe typical filming locations.

"Normally, the movies are made in a studio that costs several hundred thousand yen an hour to rent out. There are also studio sets with office, train or apartment scenes in them. The hardest shoots are outdoor locations. We've got to pay to rent out private property and usually have to restrict scenes not easily viewable, like building rooftops."

There are also onerous tasks like watching movies as they're being screened by industry watchdogs to prevent them from incurring the wrath of authorities–an easy thing to do considering the display of genitalia in Japanese adult movies is regarded as illegal.

"Normally, what happens is that applicants from a company looking for screening approval will sit down with a couple of old guys from Biderin (the Nihon Ethics of Video Association) in a dark room and watch the movie. If genitalia appears on the screen, everybody shouts out 'Hey, it's on screen,' or something like that and the old guys will tell us to blank it out better with the digital mosaic," one of the women says.

The women hasten to add that the adult video industry is, despite widespread perceptions, not exclusively a man's world.

"There are women adult video directors and plenty of movies made entirely from a women's erotic point of view," one of women working behind the scenes in the industry tells Friday.

"They've normally got these absolutely gorgeous hunks doing all the acting. I don't mind watching these movies at all."

And come to think of it, just how many "workfare" clients wind up being "advised" (as in tricked) to work in the adult trades as a better ticket towards self-reliance and personal responsibility than traditional 9-to-5 menial positions?