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Saturday, December 10, 2016

Bad Sex in Fiction Awards ceremony celebrates 24th year

5:00 PM Bilal Muazin No comments

â€œItâ€™s terribly British, isnâ€™t it,â€ said the man next to me at last nightâ€™s Bad Sex in Fiction Awards ceremony at the (appropriately named) In and Out Club in St Jamesâ€™s. He was referring, of course, to the yearly bash â€" now in its 24th year â€" in which the Literary Review magazine nominates half a dozen passages from contemporary fiction seen to represent sex at its most cringeworthy, reads them out to champagne-infused guffaws, and then awards a prize to the author of the worst.

It is a terribly British event, but it also provides a snarky satisfaction that transcends nationality. Because for anyone with the sneaking suspicion that the sexual act is better done or seen than artistically described â€" that its complex idiosyncrasy is one of the few things that lie outside the remit of the otherwise resourceful English language â€" the Bad Sex Awards hits its mark.

Yet as the entrants this year make clear, writing about sex with flagrant abominableness is still cheerily far from going out of fashion. Hearty examples were a passage from Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellisâ€™s The Butcherâ€™s Hook:

When his hand goes to my breasts, my feet are envious. I slide my hands down his back, all along his spine, rutted with bone like mud ridges in a dry field, to the audacious swell below.

â€œAudacious swellâ€? Quite.

Then there was the American Gayle Formanâ€™s entry, from Leave Me:

They were in that room, Jason had slammed the door and devoured her with his mouth, his hands, which were everywhere. As if he were ravenous. And she remembered standing in front of him, her dress a puddle on the floor, and how sheâ€™d started to shake, her knees knocking together, like she was a virgin, like this was the first time.

Erri de Luca.
Claudio Onorati/EPA

But the gong went to the Italian poet and translator Erri De Luca for The Day Before Happiness (de Luca understandably wasnâ€™t present). â€œMy prick was a plank stuck to her stomach,â€ the Neapolitan was justly rebuked for writing:

With a swerve of her hips, she turned me over and I was on top of her â€¦ I was her plaything, which she moved around. Our sexes were ready, poised in expectation, barely touching each other: ballet dancers hovering en pointe.

Not everyone felt this deserved the award â€" as an American woman nearby remarked to me, this could clearly be read as satire, plain and simple. Perhaps, but satire doesnâ€™t necessarily get you home dry, especially when itâ€™s ambiguous. After all, the book, a coming of age story, is not particularly comic in the way that, for instance, the early sex-mad tomes of Philip Roth and Martin Amis were.

In fact, the awards were conceived not to discourage writing about sex, but to discourage writing about sex badly. The wording of the original mission statement in 1993 by Auberon Waugh, then editor of the Literary Review, is revealing: the bash was to â€œdraw attention to poorly written, perfunctory or redundant passages of sexual description in modern fictionâ€.

It would be helpful to have some guidance on what non-redundant, good sex writing looks like, since itâ€™s not entirely clear whether it can exist in a literary form at all. After all, the most sexually charged novels of the last 100 or so years use the rule of thumb that the act is unmentionable, boring, or best only suggested.

The novels of Dickens, Eliot and Trollope are full of sexual yearning, and their emotional and erotic pull are none the worse for the veiled references to kissing and love. Even in 20th century novels with subject matter devoted to romantic entanglements, the sexual act is not necessarily spelled out or even mentioned â€" Iris Murdoch doesnâ€™t go further than â€œmaking loveâ€ as an account of the nocturnal activities of her highly sexually charged couple Dora and Paul in The Bell (1958).

And while Margaret Drabbleâ€™s super-sexy characters Clara and Gabriel get pretty steamy in Jerusalem the Golden, nothing beyond the fact is spelled out. Itâ€™s a blessed relief which does nothing to diminish the profoundly saucy atmosphere of the book.

The awards are also a humorous reminder not just of the imaginative power but also of the literary value of discipline and restraint in matters of bonking. A recent book about prime minster Herbert Asquithâ€™s passionate attachment to Venetia Stanley tells of his thousands of letters to her, all passionately headed with variants of â€œmy own darlingâ€ and â€œdarlingestâ€.

Asquithâ€™s desperate fixation with Stanley pours out from every page, but had he indulged in anything more sexually explicit than the desire to â€œgo for a little drive, or will you come to Downing St & have a talkâ€, it would hardly have helped, and probably only hindered, the accumulated intensity of his fixation. Voluble lusters: take note.

Zoe Strimpel, PhD Candidate, University of Sussex

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Friday, December 9, 2016

British police say soccer child sex scandal may affect 98 clubs

6:00 AM Bilal Muazin No comments

LONDON British police investigating allegations of widespread child sex abuse at soccer clubs dating back to the 1970s said on Friday they had identified 83 potential suspects and possible links to 98 clubs, including some from the Premier League. Police forces across the country launched inquiries after former player Andy Woodward revealed he had been abused as a boy by a youth team coach, prompting other ex-professionals to come forward with more allegations. The National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) said 639 referrals had been made to officers from a helpline set up by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children charity, involving about 350 potential victims. "Allegations received by police forces across the country are being swiftly acted upon," said Chief Constable Simon Bailey, the NPCC lead for child protection. "We are also liaising closely with the Football Association to ensure all relevant information they hold is shared to inform investigations moving forward." The harrowing tales of abuse suffered by the former players, some of whom have broken down in tears in television interviews, have shocked Britain. They raise questions about the scale of the problem, how much clubs and soccer authorities knew, and whether they tried to cover it up. English soccer's governing body, the Football Association, has launched an internal review into what it admitted could be one of the sport's biggest crises, and promised to fully publicize its findings. The NPCC said not all the 98 clubs whose names were mentioned to the police were under investigation. "The figure spans all tiers of football, from premier clubs through to amateur," it said in a statement. It added that 98 percent of the victims were male, aged between seven and 20 at the time. The soccer abuse revelations are the latest in a series of pedophile scandals to have hit Britain in recent years. Victims said the scale of wrongdoing was likely to be worse than in the case of TV star Jimmy Savile, a cigar-chomping BBC television host who abused hundreds of youngsters over six decades until his death in 2011. (Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Mark Trevelyan) Next In Sports News

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British police say soccer child sex scandal may affect 98 clubs

5:00 AM Bilal Muazin No comments

> Cardinals set to sign Fowler: MLB The St. Louis Cardinals have agreed to a free agent deal to sign former Chicago Cubs center fielder Dexter Fowler, Major League Baseball reported on its website.

> Russia's $30 million center for acrobatic rock'n'roll, sport of Putin's daughter MOSCOW Russia is building a $30 million complex for acrobatic rock'n'roll, a niche sport in which President Vladimir Putin's daughter is a leading dancer and has a senior role for development, a Reuters review of public documents has shown. "

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Thursday, December 8, 2016

Pizzagate gunman refuses to dismiss online conspiracy theory claims about child sex ring

1:00 PM Bilal Muazin No comments

Edgar Maddison Welch, 28 of Salisbury, N.C., surrenders to police Sunday, Dec. 4, 2016, in Washington. Welch, who said he was investigating a conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton running a child sex ring out of a pizza place, fired an assault rifle inside the restaurant on Sunday injuring no one, police and news reports said. (Sathi Soma via AP) Â (Sathi Soma)

The man accused of firing an assault rifle inside a Washington pizza shop refused to completely dismiss the online conspiracy theory accusing the eatery of running a child sex ring that brought him there in the first place -- although he said he regretted how he handled the situation.

Edgar Maddison Welch, 28, told the New York Times in a Wednesday videoconference that the online articles he read about Comet Ping Pong pizzeria â€" which linked the supposed ring to Hillary Clinton â€" left him with the â€œimpression something nefarious was happeningâ€ and he wanted to â€œreally able to look into it.â€

Court documents showed that Welch entered the eatery and fired an AR-15 rifle several times inside the restaurant but later exited with his hands up. He surrendered to police when he found no signs of children being held as sex slaves.

"I just wanted to do some good and went about it the wrong way," he told the newspaper.

While Welch acknowledged that his â€œintelâ€ on the restaurant was not 100 percent, he refused to dismiss that what he had read online was untrue, conceding only that there were no children "inside that dwelling."Â

He also rejected the term â€œfake newsâ€ believing that it diminishes stories shared outside the mainstream media.

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Welch told the newspaper he started driving to Washington from his Salisbury, N.C., home intending only to give the restaurant a "closer look." But while on the way, he said he felt his "heart breaking over the thought of innocent people suffering."

Welch would not say why he brought an AR-15 into the pizza shop and fired it, the newspaper reported.

On Thursday, a judge delayed a preliminary hearing for Welch. His public defender requested the delay, saying she needed more time to investigate the case. He will be back in court Tuesday.

Welch appears to have lived an aimless life that became turbulent in the weeks before he was drawn to the nation's capital by a fake news story.

Friends and family say he is a well-meaning father of two girls who wanted to be a firefighter. But he also unnerved some with his religious fervor and sometimes had trouble detaching himself from the internet.

In the weeks before his Washington arrest, there were other signs of turbulence. In late October, Welch struck a teenage pedestrian with his car in his hometown, requiring the boy to be airlifted to a hospital, according to a police report that said he wasn't immediately charged. More recently, days before he drove to Washington, he was dropped from the rolls of a volunteer fire department.

In past years, he was convicted of drunken driving and minor drug charges.

But the one constant, friends and family say, was his love for his two young daughters.

"He's a father and a very loving man, very concerned about children," said his aunt Tajuana Tadlock, adding: "He's not a vigilante, by no check of the words."

Tadlock said Welch's parents haven't been able to talk to him to ask what he was thinking, and the family's only information comes from the news and the public defender.

In recent years, Welch often mentioned his Christian faith. Interspersed with Facebook posts about his daughters are the registered Republican's musings on the Bible and religion.

Danielle Tillman of Raleigh said she met Welch a few months ago and has known his current girlfriend for years. She recalls Welch made her uncomfortable while talking at length about religion. At one point, he grabbed her hand and prayed, asking for "the demons to come out of me," she said.

Welch's family has roots in the Salisbury area, where his father and grandfather served in local government, according to the Salisbury Post. Friends say he attended West Rowan High School. A woman at the family's property declined to answer questions this week.

Around age 18, Welch pleaded guilty to misdemeanor drug possession charges in neighboring Cabarrus County, according to online records of the January 2007 offense.

Welch enrolled at Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington, but court records say he didn't graduate.

On a break from college in 2009, Welch was interviewed by the Salisbury Post after he made it halfway through a hike of the 500-mile Colorado Trail. He told the newspaper the hike helped him overcome an addiction to the internet.

"It's a good feeling, going solo," he told the newspaper. "There's something spiritual about it."

In April 2013, Welch was charged with impaired driving with a blood-alcohol content of .09, court records show. He pleaded guilty, was sentenced to probation and community service and underwent alcohol counseling.

Rowan County records show that after a short marriage, his wife filed for divorce in November 2014. The thin file doesn't say why they split up. The divorce complaint was dismissed in 2015 after neither attended a scheduled hearing. Documents related to his arrest say they remain separated, and his two children live with him.

Welch twice served briefly as a volunteer firefighter, and his aunt said he was recently taking classes needed to get a paying job as a firefighter.

Locke Fire Chief Rusty Alexander said Welch barely showed up at the fire station after joining in 2012, and lasted about six months.

"He tried it, and basically it wasn't for him," Alexander said.

In May 2016, Welch became a volunteer firefighter in the town of Spencer, Chief Gray Grubb said. Grubb said Welch stopped attending training sessions and didn't answer alarms, so he was removed from the active roster Nov. 30.

"When we interviewed him, he seemed like a good guy," Grubb said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Pizzagate gunman refuses to dismiss online conspiracy theory claims about child sex ring

11:30 AM Bilal Muazin No comments