If a picture is worth a thousand words, we’re not sure exactly how many posts we’ve missed our following glogroll makes up for, but we’re going to put it in the ball park of a lot. Here are just a few of the wonders the digital age has foisted upon us (some of these sites are just simply NSFW):

The amazing Tumblog sex is not the enemy features sexual imagery paired with potent quotes from blogs and icons about sexuality and the politics of pornography.

French duo Exterface combine their powers to make startling, pop-savvy homoerotic images.

And because we love burlesque performance and the Windy City Burlesque Festival is coming up April 15-17, we thought we’d show you a little bit from co-sponsors Vaudezilla, who will be joining Belmont Burlesque to provide you some wicked entertainment. It’s always good to do a little glogging in person, anyway.

by Kevin Sparrow

Traveling from the cold reaches of Ann Arbor to the (only just) more temperate New York City, Gina Pensiero has taken her love of music from the Midwest to the East Coast. Pensiero has spent the last eight years as a working musician in hometown bands The Dumb and Ugly Club and solo project Umberto to helping found record label i am janet! Currently, Pensiero is singer-songwriter for Palmyra (their recently release full-length, Mis-en-Scene, can be bought here) and approximately a year ago, she started her blog One Sweet Song with an ear tuned to spreading good music to more people. Cul de sac Magazine talked with the feisty chanteuse about blogging, music and making a mixtape for the masses.

CM: How did One Sweet Song first come to be? Had you been planning it out for a while or just dive in?

GP: I hadn’t really been planning to do the blog. The idea crossed my mind and I thought it could be a nice format for a music blog, especially since I was finding a lot of the music blogs I was reading to be overwhelming. I think more and more that the internet, and culture as a whole, is starting to be about short content. The world has been going this way for a while, as cinematic TV series become as popular or more popular than feature films, icons replace words and Twitter replaces the blog. Songs are the perfect self-contained form of short content, which is part of the reason why the mixtape idea is so successful. Here’s this thing that’s short, small, standalone and easy to consume in a sitting, but can still trigger all this emotional response, critical thought and personal connection. It’s manageable, but meaningful. I thought about this for a few days, and then just ran with it.

CM: As a musician, do you see it as your responsibility to promote good music?

GP: As a musician and a music lover, I think it would be blasphemy to put bad music out into the world, especially when so much exceptional music already exists, not to mention the fact that there is so much excellent music being made daily that it’s impossible to keep up with.

by Kevin Sparrow

Editor’s Note: Before we tackle this week’s Mere Images, I think it would be a disservice not to acknowledge the elections that took place Tuesday night. While it was a proud day for Barack Obama and his supporters, for many around the country, a chill has settled in. Those who fought for change in the form of marriage equality in California, Arizona and Florida hit a wall when support for propositions defining marriage as between one man and one woman passed by slim margins. This fight has seen bright points—the decisions in California and Connecticut to begin honoring gay marriages—but these three steps backward only highlight a troubling theme. Many Americans are reaching out for hope, but some have just had our hands smacked away. An encouraging candidate alone will not suffice. As queer members of society, we are the only reliable source for momentum to rectify injustices done against us. We have to be willing to keep fighting for marriage rights without discouragement from these decisions. We have to go beyond asking or hoping these rights will be granted; these rights should unequivocally be granted to anyone regardless or orientation. The American framework has not yet seen this beyond a civil rights issue; it is a human rights issue. It is a deeply saddening occasion when a piece of legislature rends away a right everyone should have from birth, regardless of whom he or she loves later in life.

The internet is flooded with blogs about food, about gossip, even about cats with speech impediments. Political blogs are no exception to this trend, but Poplicks, written by Junichi Semitsu and Oliver Wang, stands out for its self-assured humor, relevance and insight. And for LGBT readers, the blog’s immeasurable support for marriage equality has opened up an avenue for discourse on the subject. Straight allies are a major component of ensuring marriage equality, and Poplicks’ November 5 post “On the Appalling Passage of Proposition 8” encourages this notion. Semitsu clarifies, “there is no viable legal argument that Prop. 8 conflicts with the U.S. Constitution or any federal law. Sadly, not one federal court has interpreted the Equal Protection Clause to require marriage equality for gays and lesbians.” An informed voice helps reveal those allies whose concerns over these propositions are equal to those of our own.

Wang delivers this sobering statistic: “the single-most community that came out for Prop 8 were African Americans – at 70%! – and the Latino community was also largely in favor of it too (~55-57%).” Any divisiveness shown by these numbers should not be used to generate a schism between ethnic communities and our own. Obviously, many LGBT individuals come from an ethnic minority background and have had a large role in the movement for our rights. Even recently, a healthy gathering of those against Proposition 8 was led by African-American preachers in California to counteract rallies by Yes on 8 proponents. As we fight, we need to be vigilant about creating allies rather than enemies. Semitsu provides encouragement by stating, “I remain optimistic… that we will eventually see full equality again in California. This will require a new smartly-worded initiative, a better-organized movement, more money, and only an incremental shift in public opinion.” The more support we as Americans offer between our various minority groups, the more real progress can be made toward breathing life into a declaration written so long ago but still waiting to be fully realized.