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Jun 2012 27

by Blogbot

This year for Comic Con we’re cooking up an extra-special cosplay wardrobe, with a little help from clothing manufacturer and retailer American Apparel, pop-culture designers and event planners Bubble Punch, and our fave Sunset Strip geek emporium, Meltdown Comics.

Comic chic chicks Chubby Bunny and Yume Ninja of Bubble Punch have designed three different sexy cosplay themed outfits for our ladies to wear while they man our Comic-Con booth. Each of the outfits was made using basics available at your local American Apparel store. The ladies at bubble punch have shot a series of “How To” videos with Milloux and Ackley Suicide, the first of which, showcasing our Stormtrooper outfits can be seen above.

Watch this space for two more videos in our “How To” Comic Con cosplay series.

The costumes will be debuted live at a special pre-Comic Con party to be held at Meltdown Comics on July 7th (starting at 7 PM).

To RSVP for SuicideGirls Pre-Comic Con Party visit our Facebook event page.

You can also catch our ladies in their cosplay outfits at booth #1730 of Comic Con San Diego 2012. If you’re planning on attending the convention on more than one day, be sure to come back and visit us again, since our team of sexy booth girls will be cosplaying new outfits each day!

Related Posts:
Cosplay With SuicideGirls At A Pre-Comic Con Party At Meltdown
SuicideGirls Team With Bubble Punch And Meltdown To Transform American Apparel Basics Into Sexy Cosplay Outfits For SG’s Comic-Con Crew
Dirty Laundry: Cosplay 4 Comic Con

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Jun 2012 27

by Bob Suicide


[Bob Suicide in Beyond The Sea]

If you haven’t finished the game stop reading now…unless you’re like me and you don’t mind a spoiler here and there. Although, with the amount of news surrounding the Mass Effect 3 ending, I can’t imagine the size of the rock you’d have to live under to avoid spoiling it. But, if you haven’t seen the new DLC, don’t worry I’m not going to give anything away. It’s a free download. So, I recommend taking a peek if you’ve finished ME3. Even if you hate it, you can just delete it from your hard drive. A word of warning though, just like the original ending, you can’t delete it from your brain.

In case you missed it, here is my review of the original ending to ME 3*:

Unfortunately, the new download doesn’t change the ending in any major way, it merely adds more dialogue to it in the hopes that it will “explain” it more. Herein lies the problem: sure the ending sucked and the cut scene was pretty lame, but the real issue isn’t the “unanswered questions” – it’s the game play and the overall storyline.

As a stand-alone vignette, the ending cut scene was “fine.” I don’t care that Shepard died. I don’t care that I didn’t get to see what happened to Joker and EDI. I don’t even worry about what the universe is going to do now that the mass relays are destroyed. They’ll figure it out. There are TONS of franchises out there than have open-ended endings that allow the viewer to imagine the real conclusion to the story. And, not all of them are as bad as the ending to The Sopranos. Remember how Milo and Otis just walked off into the wild blue yonder. Well half of you imagined them making it back to the farm and the other half imagined aliens beaming down and a mutant bear attacking…both are fine endings. And, therein lies the joy of a properly structured open-ended ending.

The problem lies in the whole structure of the final mission. It’s a complete departure from the complex character interaction and unique choice model found throughout the rest of the series.

For some reason, I really thought the download would include a change in the final mission’s gameplay. I’m not sure if I read that somewhere, it’s more likely that I just imagined that all my prayers would be answered. ‘Cause, honestly, that’s the only way it would fix it for me. That’s where they dropped the ball.

But, the lack of a change in gameplay highlights just what we’ve come to expect from what was recently voted the worst company in the US by Consumerist readers. I wholeheartedly support placing the blame on the shoulders of game publishers EA. Honestly, you can blame them for anything bad that happens this year. It makes life SO much easier.

This is EA’s fix. It’s like putting a Band Aid on a gangrenous wound.

You still lost the leg.

You’ll never get those hours of game play back. You’re still left with the feeling that the choices you made didn’t matter and all of the wonderful gaming experience built up by 1 and 2 was dashed in a second by some star child’s really shitty logic. Logic, which includes pears of exposition like, “You wouldn’t know them.” Thanks.

But, at the end of the day, the download is better than the original ending. Something is better than nothing. And, Canadian developers BioWare should be lauded for their ability to listen and respond to the fans in a way that no other company has dared to do. Dragon Age 2 aside, they’ve been at the forefront of game development; churning out some of top games and revolutionizing the gaming experience. Combining that with the unique desire to please their fanbase – a desire typically only found on Kickstarter these days – makes this a company I want to love and support.

They’ve provided a compromise and they did it for free. BioWare has opened a door and hopefully, other developers will dare to walk through it. For the amount of testing and surveying that goes on before launch, hopefully BioWare has set a precedent for continued feedback after launch.

So, in the hopes for this new future, I’ll take what I can get. I’ll love this new download for what it is and what I hope it’ll be: a game-changing (pun-intended) step toward a new dynamic between developer and gamer. I’ll appreciate that complaints were heard and an unprecedented attempt to change was made. I’ll love my fellow gamers for speaking up and taking a passionate stand about the level of quality we expect and deserve!

After all, if we can combine all organic and synthetic life, we can certainly find a way to get along.

*If you don’t want to take my word re the ME3 ending, take Hitlers:

[..]

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Jun 2012 27

by Steven Whitney

“One man, one vote” loosely incorporates the founding principles of our country and the exaltation of the individual. The democratic notion behind it is that every single voter is equal – no more, no less – to every other voter. Legally, it is the basis of “equal representation” over which the original Tea Party (“No Taxation Without Representation”) rebelled in 1773, a decisive shot across Britain’s bow that led to the Revolutionary War. In emerging nations and in those with similar revolutions, it has since become a slogan for universal suffrage.

Of course, from the beginning it was more fantasy than fact, more a rallying cry than a real policy. In our first national elections, only white male adult property-owners were allowed to vote. Slaves couldn’t vote. Women couldn’t vote. Native Americans couldn’t vote. New immigrants, white or not, were discouraged from voting by the strongest possible means.

In 1850, property and tax restrictions were removed so all white adult males were, by law, eligible to vote (although immigrants still found it hard to cast a ballot).

Twenty years later, the 15th Amendment paved the way for former slaves (and adult males of any race) to vote. This gave rise to Jim Crow literacy tests and poll tax requirements in many states that successfully targeted minorities.

It was only in 1920 that adult women got the vote. And in 1924, Native Americans – ironically, the original Americans – were also granted voting rights.

But despite the 15th Amendment, it wasn’t until the 1950 Civil Rights Act and 1965’s Voting Rights Act that all adult American citizens actually held the right to vote, free of any tests and/or taxes that might exclude them.

Does that mean “one man, one vote” finally became a reality?

In theory and law, yes. In local and state elections, we do have equanimity, even as certain states under Republican leadership, like Florida, try their damndest to suppress minority voters.

But because our founders created a Federalist Society more than a truly democratic ideal, there exists one remaining restraint to equal voting that has been with us from the beginning and never repealed – the Electoral College that decides each and every Presidential election.

The Electoral College is comprised of “electors” from states and the District of Columbia. The number of electors for each state is decided by the total population of individual states as determined every ten years by the Census (the same formula used in determining the number of Representatives in the House) plus 2 electors for each state (to match their seats in the Senate). California, our most populous state, receives 53 electors based on population plus 2 for their Senate representation; Wyoming, our least populated state, receives 1 elector based on population plus 2 for each Senator. That’s 538 electoral votes in all, with 270 needed to win.

A tie at 269 sends the deciding vote to the newly elected House, where each state casts 1 vote until a candidate receives a majority.

This system was instituted by our founding fathers to protect the interests of rural states and, at first glance, it appears fair. But it was initiated at a time when America was a small nation with only 16 states – Virginia and Pennsylvania the largest at just over 110,000 “free white male adults” each – pretty much evenly divided between urban and rural. In the first contested Presidential election in 1796 – Washington had previously run unopposed – the total number of popular votes was 66,841 for the entire country, fewer votes cast than in my own small Congressional district today.

In 2012, it is sorely outdated and the cause of much inequality. Take California, with a population of well over 37 million. Then group together the 20 states lowest in population – Alaska, Wyoming, Vermont, North and South Dakota, Delaware, Montana, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Arkansas, Kansas, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah – for a combined total population of just over 32 million. In a representative democracy, and by dint of population, California should have just one or perhaps two more electors than those 20 states combined.

But because each state gets a uniform 2 electors above and beyond their census-calculated electors, the 20 smallest states, with a combined population of 5½ million less than California, actually have 40 “extra” electors to the Golden State’s 2, a plurality of 38 additional electors from small rural states that are largely Republican strongholds.

How is it fair that 5½ million fewer people are granted 64% more electoral votes in determining the course of our future? Does that sound like equal representation – “one man, one vote?” Or is it just another example of a rigged game?

This grievous imbalance was fully taken into account when Republicans of the 1970s first devised their “Southern Strategy.” And without those “extra” votes, George Bush would have handily lost the 2000 election, even with Florida in his pocket…meaning no Bush Tax Cuts, no Iraq “Shock and Awe,” no renditions or torture, no national security state, and no Dick Cheney.

There are only two viable options to fix the system. The first, and most democratic, is to decide the Presidential race, like all others, by the majority of the popular vote. The second, less egalitarian but still fairer than the present system, is to eliminate the two “extra” votes for each state, bringing the electoral vote down to 436 (the same number as the House membership plus 1 for D.C.) with only 219 needed to win. Only by these two adjustments would one vote anywhere in the U.S. be equal to a vote anywhere else in the country.

Supporters of the electoral system say that it prevents urban-centric victories, but at the same time they cannot explain why a candidate winning with fewer popular votes is either democratic or fair. They also state that the Electoral College encourages stability through the 2-party system without understanding that many citizens feel the 2-party system is more stale than stable – and that, ironically enough, when the electoral system was devised, American was divided into many parties, not just two. Lastly, they argue that it maintains the federal character of our nation without apparently realizing that it was just this “federalist” notion under which only property-owning white male adults were allowed to vote.

Detractors often point to the fact that of 123 democracies in the world today, ours is the only nation still using this antiquated system, the only one in which the candidate receiving a majority of the popular vote can lose the election (a la Al Gore in 2000). And that instead of favoring the smallest states, a popular vote counts all votes equally…and, dare I say it, democratically.

A popular vote solves other problems as well. It allows the federal government to penalize states that attempt to disenfranchise voters. It would boost voter turnout and participation and give 3rd parties a more active, nationwide platform. And in one fell swoop, it would both eliminate the insane focus on so-called swing states and do away with all the red state / blue state crap forever, which in turn would return us to a United States of America.

There is, of course, no time to put changes into effect this year…especially since Republicans shudder at the mere mention of a nationwide referendum on any issue. But perhaps sometime in the not too distant future we can set for the course for a truly equal voting standard.

Until then, the next time you ask yourself why the vote of a racist, gun-totin’, meth-smokin’, homophobic cracker who fucks donkeys while screaming “Praise Jesus!” is worth more than yours, look no further than the electoral scam.

Related Posts:
Being Fair
Occupy Reality
Giving. . . And Taking Back
A Tale Of Two Grovers
A Last Pitch For Truth
America: Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.
Gotcha!

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Jun 2012 27

by Daniel Robert Epstein

“I like finding the areas where fiction and non-fiction overlap”
– Pola Rapaport

Pola Rapaport is the filmmaker behind the unique documentary Writer of O. Through interviews and dramatizations this documentary tells the story of Dominique Aury the woman who wrote the controversial and sexually provocative Story of O. Written in France in the mid-50’s, Story of O is about a beautiful Parisian fashion photographer who is in love with a man named Rene. As part of that intense love, she demands debasement and severe sexual and psychological tests.

Read our exclusive interview with Pola Rapaport on SuicideGirls.com.

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Jun 2012 27

Ellys Suicide in Zorba The Greek

  • INTO: Hard rock, heavy metal, poetry, alcohol, chocolate, knowledge, strange kinds of women, body mods.
  • NOT INTO: Corporate stuff, mathematics.
  • MAKES ME HAPPY: A good storyteller, a kind smiling stranger, to be sure that friendship does exist no matter what my friend does to me.
  • MAKES ME SAD: People with closed minds, sinking in their vices till they stupidly die, and animal suffering.
  • HOBBIES: Playing the hardest death metal guitars, reading a lot, writing good bedtime stories for suicide people, listening to good music.
  • 5 THINGS I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT: My guitar, amplifier (of course), my Voodoo doll, rock n’ roll (maybe not a ‘thing’ but I can’t live without it).
  • VICES: I really love to perform oral sex. I love reading crazy things, ugly and cruel jokes, and feeling ink burning my skin.
  • I SPEND MOST OF MY FREE TIME: Writing things that are trying without success to be as brilliant as Cortazar.

Get to know Ellys better over at SuicideGirls.com!


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Jun 2012 26

by Bob Suicide


[Bob Suicide in Bears Beets Battlestar Galactica]

E3 came and went with none of the real excitement that we’re used to. No new consoles, most of the major franchises were absent, nothing to really look forward to. Don’t get me wrong, there were several games that looked promising. But, with many of these announcements, looks can be deceiving…

I know I sound cynical and, to be honest, I really AM cynical. But it’s not my fault. I blame the marketing departments of every game I’ve ever been excited about but ultimately let down by when it fails to meet the advertised expectations. Now, I know that’s a pretty long list of people to shake my fist at, but stick with me, I promise this will make sense.

I’m tired of the bait-and-switch that occurs between the premiere teaser trailer announcement and the actual delivery of the game. I’m tried of getting excited about a game that looks awesome but which turns out to be a mindless button masher with terrible graphics or something that’s been rushed through to retail that has terrible development bugs.

For example, let’s look at Dead Island, which was developed by Techland and published by Deep Silver. It’s not to say it wasn’t a good game, but it retains little of what’s depicted in the teaser video short beyond the fact that there is an island and the people on it happen to be dead — and zombies. What Techland created was a great game open-world, action-rpg that answered gamers’ first-person prayers when Dead Rising couldn’t. But, Deep Silver’s Dead Island announcement trailer was moving, gritty, and harrowing; a vignette into the human drama of a no-win situation.

And, while Deep Silver said the trailer was supposed to capture the game’s “solemn tone and setting,” I definitely didn’t get any sense of the gravity of the situation that was evident in the trailer while playing the game. But, I’m sure everyone was feeling that deep solemnity when they found porno-zombie Nenja Samejon.

With Dead Island I basically got excited over a game that doesn’t exist. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the game they made, but I’m still waiting for a game I’ll never get.

While the Deep Silver trailer was a major marketing success – inspiring people to deconstruct, reconstruct, post and repost it, resulting in a large amount of media buzz –– it ultimately did just as much to alienate a core base of gamers like me who felt cheated. Some even went so far as to call it “false advertising.” And, at this point, I’m not inclined to disagree.

So, when I see an announcement like Beyond: Two Souls, I’m tentatively excited. I loved Quantic Dream’s earlier Heavy Rain. It was a wonderful new and innovative gaming experience. I yelled and raged for a sequel until my voice was hoarse. And, from the looks of the trailer, Beyond: Two Souls appears to be the kind of quality gaming experience that I’ve come to know, obsess about, and expect from the Parisian developers.

But, rather disappointingly, the announcement trailer didn’t show any real action on the part of the main character. It didn’t show any emotionally moving moments that were so important in Heavy Rain and in Deep Silver’s Dead Island trailer, and it didn’t show any important dialogue to properly showcase the actor’s abilities (unless you count the eff word).

Does this mean the more emotionally-charged aspects of the game are not worth displaying because they’re not on-par? ‘Cause it’s evident from the Deep Silver trailer that emotionally agonizing is marketing gold. Why wouldn’t Quantic Dream founder and Beyond: Two Souls creator David Cage use any of that in the E3 preview? He said the game was “about death…separation…[and] mourning.” Set it to melancholy music and you’ve got the Dead Island announcement trailer –– but with the gamplay to back it up!

So, is this another bait-and-switch? I don’t want to get my hopes up – I’ve been burned before.

[..]

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Jun 2012 26

by Blogbot

Every week we ask the ladies and gentlemen of the web to show us their finest ink in celebration of #TattooTuesday.

Our favorite submission from Twitter wins a free 3 month membership to SuicideGirls.com.

This week’s #TattooTuesday winner is @sstrongone, with an hourglass which was done in memory of his grandfather. “His initials are in the top of the hourglass,” @sstrongone tells us.

Enter this week’s competition by replying to this tweet with a pic of your fav tattoo and the #tattootuesday hashtag.

Good luck!

A few things to remember:

  • You have to be 18 to qualify.
  • The tattoo has to be yours…that means permanently etched on your body.
  • On Twitter we search for your entries by looking up the hashtag #TattooTuesday, so make sure you include it in your tweet!

Check out the Tattoo Tuesday winners of weeks past!