Here’s something you’ve probably never seen before and which we’re glad to say we’re posting for the first time on any website. They’re…well we aren’t really sure. But we think they’re advertising posters for a Japanese strip club in the Asakusa district of Tokyo, circa 1970s. Asakusa is one of the city’s main centers of geisha culture, but you’ll notice the posters don’t feature geishas, but western women, called “kinpathu (kinpatu)” or “blonde” on one poster, and “gaitin (gaijin)” on another. We also see the kanji for “sale” and “skin house” and that’s as far into this as we need to go to draw conclusions. For Americans, going to strip clubs has an unshakeable aura of sin clinging to it, but apparently in Japan, it’s kind of like going to Disneyland. At least, that’s the fun-loving feeling we get from the posters. We’ll ride the spinning teacups while you give the gaijin a try, and later we’ll all meet in front of the Magic Castle, ’kay? 

Well, we’re glad to see somebody finally went and put together a website of Tijuana bibles. The site is called tijuanabibles.org. Above you see six covers from their collection, and below is the entirety of a raunchy and racially charged Esther Williams bible entitled Get a Li’l Like the Fishes Do. We had doubts about posting it, but whenever we self-censor we end up kicking ourselves later, so this time we decided screw it. We consider ourselves mainly a history site, and censoring history is always a bad idea. Consider that a content warning. Anyway, Esther Williams was of course a famous swimmer who used her skills in an acting career, so the underwater theme of her bible is a play on her many aquatic roles. It was probably printed in the late 1940s, a time during which its IR content would have gotten the hood and noose crowd pretty riled up. But they would have been clueless whom to blame, because, as we discussed before, these American-made books may have been called Tijuana bibles for the sole purpose of misdirecting crusading citizens and curious authorities. For more examples of these little treasures, pay tijuanabibles.org a visit.

It’s come to our attention that, in advance of the big Copenhagen summit on CO2, city officials placed tens of thousands of flyers in hotels, bars, and other establishments urging visitors to avoid a different type of emissions altogether—namely the sticky kind associated with patronizing the city’s many sex workers. We can just picture the bureaucrats patting each other on the backs after coming up with this idea. But the prostitutes are cunningly offering discounted rates to any customer who presents a flyer to them. Not only does this make the suits look like amateurs for being so easily outmaneuvered—in effect, it turns the flyers into coupons. We aren’t scientists, but that sounds like true sustainability at work. Now the question is: Can we somehow put the sex workers in charge of the summit? They’d put together an emissions deal that leaves everyone satisfied.     

For years the sex blog belledujour was one of the most scandalous and popular blogs in Britain. Funny, explicit, and well-written, its popularity led to a series of bestselling books and even a television series called Secret Diary of a Call Girl starring Billie Piper. But it was all driven by an anonymous mystery woman—until this weekend, when the pseudonymous Belle du Jour revealed her identity in an interview with London’s Sunday Times and followed that up with a posting on her blog. Turns out she’s Dr. Brooke Magnanti, a research scientist from Bristol, England.

Whatever her motivation for coming out of the closet, one of the questions she did answer was whether Belle du Jour was even real. Many of her critics thought not, and had also routinely blasted her for glamorizing her work. But Magnanti has said she stands by everything she wrote. Now, with her books certain to climb the charts again, and the television series ongoing, the only question left may be whether she plans to continue as a researcher, or be a full time celebrity.

We try to take a philosophical approach to these continuously leaked nudes of b-grade starlets. Which is to say, we know that they know that we know that they usually do it for the free publicity. And we’re happy to play our part because, as Yeats once wrote, how can we know the dancer from the dance? So for the second time in her brief career behold!—nude shots of Vanessa Hudgens. We think she looks great, but the girls of Pulp Intl. are tired of all these breasts and just started a rain dance for some celebrity schlong. Or maybe it’s a rain dance for any schlong. Could that be a sign we boys spend too much time on our website?     

Here’s a July 1962 issue of the tabloid Vice Squad, with several interesting items on the cover. Cadillac girls—self explanatory. Sexual cripples—ditto. Same with sex roulette, perversion unlimited, and the phobic feature on lesbians and homos. But, aha, the story on Farouk’s $400,000 libel suit is worth detailing. In brief, Ruth Barnes, a Miami madame who went by the nom de directeur Sherry, published an autobiography called Pleasure Was My Business. Her book named a raft of celebrity clients, including the ex-king of Egypt, Farouk I. Furthermore, she claimed he was not only a regular client, but that he once snuck into the U.S. via some helpful port authority folks and rented Madame Sherry’s entire house for a night of fun and games. When Farouk learned he'd been outed, he flipped and sued for libel, specifically claiming he was never in the U.S. at the time in question and he was outraged and infuriated and so forth. Long story short—he lost. So not only had he entered the U.S., he’d also entered Madame Sherry’s house, and followed that up by entering a few of her employees. The epilogue on this guy is so fascinating. Always a bit of a gourmand, he started life thin, and remained so through his heyday, but as middle age approached the eating caught up with him and by age forty he was tipping the scales at nearly three-hundred pounds. One night, after gorging himself as usual, he collapsed and died. He was 45. We’ve taken the lesson to heart here at Pulp Intl., and we’re cutting back on the fatty foods and getting more exercise. But we’re never, ever giving up the hookers so don’t even ask.     

In the U.S. this week, declassified FBI documents revealed that the U.S. government conducted a wide-ranging investigation into Gerard Damiano, director of the 1972 porn film Deep Throat. The heavily redacted documents showed that FBI agents across the nation were directed by top figures at the agency to conduct a campaign of harassment and intimidation against Deep Throat producers and distributors in a deliberate effort to stem the tide of sexual freedom that was sweeping the nation. Records show they seized prints of the film, and questioned everyone associated with its distribution, from delivery boys to theater managers.

Included in the stack of documents is an August 1973 letter stating that Damiano was being considered for prosecutorial immunity. The papers don’t say what crime exactly Damiano had committed, but at the time the film was thought to violate obscenity statutes and, because of an assumed link between porn and organized crime, various RICO charges might also have been considered. Ironically, the second-in-command at the FBI at that time was Mark Felt, who would soon play Deep Throat in real life when he became a secret source for Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward during their Watergate investigation into Republican Party corruption. He adopted the moniker Deep Throat as his code name, and his real identity remained a mystery until he came forward in 2005.

Despite the FBI’s efforts, the tides of cultural change were too strong. What had been universally offensive just a generation before was seen as entertaining in 1972, and Deep Throat became the most popular x-rated film ever released, eventually earning more than 300 million dollars after an initial investment of around $25,000. At the height of the Deep Throat craze, the film was booked into mainstream cinemas and moviegoers attended packed showings without an iota of shame. Since then American culture has changed again, and, though consumption of pornography is so widespread it generates untold billions of dollars in yearly revenue, it has lost its aura of respectability and is virtually always consumed in private.

As we’ve said before, there’s nothing more pulp than illicit celebrity nudes. In the old days starlets skinned down for money before they were famous, then spent months or years trying to wrest the old negatives from the photographers. These days trying to stop the spread of nude images is about as fruitful as trying to contain H1N1 flu. In the last week the nudes of three famous or semi-famous women leaked onto the internet. First was beauty pageant contestant Carrie Prejean, and we had to yawn, because after her assertions that she was a Biblically correct person you just knew a skeleton or two would come tumbling out of her closet. On Thursday, b-level soul singer Cassie, just above, saw her private parts aired out on the web, and yesterday Rihanna, at top, had her turn. Around Pulp Intl. it’s axiomatic that if the pictures aren’t fully frontal they’re a publicity stunt. In that regard we pronounce both Cassie’s and Rihanna’s nudes legit. For that reason, we won’t show the most revealing images, but they’re out there in the digital ether to be gotten if you’re curious. Both Cassie and Rihanna are reportedly angry about the leaks, but of course they’ll both survive with careers intact—that’s the beauty of living in our modern, jaded age. We wonder if they ever thought of keeping the shots on a flash drive locked in a safe? Not that we want to impede the flow of nudie pix from celebs, but it seems appropriate to point out that while the modern age presents its fair share of problems, it presents an equal share of solutions.