A word of caution: plow through this warren of thesaurus abuse and develop a severe migraine.

From www.bworldonline.com How much does a pound of flesh cost? This is a revealing indicator: the estimates are that the Sex Industry for video and DVD alone generates between $10 billion and $12 billion a year in income in the US and Canada alone. That shames Hollywood, which brought in a record $9.6 billion in the same regions for 2007, a feat not yet repeated. Flesh always sells better and quicker.

A home-made sex video allegedly performed by a famous cosmetic lady doctor’s so-called “boy toy” condemned Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine to sleepy theaters and left thin hopes for the bevy of young hunks in the latest Star Trek to titillate moviegoers’ imaginations long term. At a BIR revenue district office, examiners supposed to be “working” huddled in a cubicle (on office time!) watching the sex video while an angsty queue outside waited for the release of documents and clearances from the overloaded staff. On the video, a bikini-clad young woman gyrated to “Careless Whisper” on the DVD as a half-naked young man sang the lyrics and urged her to “Say Hi” to a camera somewhere. The dancing progressed to sweaty sex.

The controversial DVD must have been bought from the popular “underground DVD market” in the not-at-all underground DVD stalls in the tiangge nearby, for P90 only. What does the Movie and TV Regulatory Board (MTRCB) say about this? Something was blurted out on TV by one spokesman from said board to some hazy effect that they were concerned about piracy, and this sex video was (not pirated, but) a film between consenting adults. And one worries that “a pound of flesh” is becoming so cheap, amid the falling intersection of an economic supply and demand curve where prurient wants are too easily served by amoral merchandisers.

The beauty cult has been massaged by mass media into the consciousness of all. Print ads, television, billboards, and anything visual must sell only what is beautiful, it seems. Products are pushed with nuances of pleasure and satisfaction — and sex is the ultimate joyride promised in even the most asexual activities and experiences with the most inorganic and insentient things. The perfection of the human form in glossy magazines subliminally stimulates carnal standards to impractical application in the normal lives of sub-perfect individuals. But readers make those semi-porn mags rich — in exchange for a voyeuristic experience with perfection.

But drool no more, or cuss in hidden envy at those perfect specimens of sex-primed beautiful people on the highway billboards. Don’t you see those huge tarpaulins advertising cosmetic clinics, which can make you look like the beauty queen (or smooth-skinned king) of your choice? Technology has made beauty accessible to everyone who is reasonably financially capable, or at least credit-worthy. Women can now buy “pounds of flesh” to augment breasts and butts, or drain out pounds of fat in that magic procedure called liposuction. Many vain men and women now schedule Botox injections to plump out facial wrinkles every six months (that’s how long they say it lasts) and take metathione to achieve the cream-white skin desired by most brown-skinned Asians.

“Have it done in the Philippines,” a medical-tourism blog advertises. Surgeon’s fees, anaesthesiologist’s fees, and facility costs are much lower. “The average cost for liposuction (one area) in the United States is $2,500-$4,500. In the Philippines, the procedure can cost only $800 for the first area and $500 for succeeding areas. For breast augmentation, the average cost in the United States is $6,000-$8,000, while in the Philippines, the procedure can cost as little as $2,500 to $4,600.” A US source entices men to have pectoral implants for $7,500-$14,500 and buttock augmentation (with implants) for $9,000-$18,000. Nose jobs come cheap at $5,000 in the US, half that in the Philippines.

Cosmetic clinics, among other culprits like sex-oriented marketing, are feeding the beauty cult and may be probable accessory to the “crime” of a sexually oriented environment that allows transgressions on human rights and the complications from these. Such is the weird background story for this sex video scandal that has been embraced as an advocacy by some women’s rights groups, and some irate senators who are protective of the aggrieved and “embarrassed” women in the video. (One such young woman was allegedly recently centerfold in a bold men’s magazine.) But isn’t the young man a victim too? his lawyer asks confused Filipinos

The young man is a new doctor, not yet 30 years old, tall at 6’2″, very fair and his body is gym-sculptured to perfection. So is his face “sculptured to perfection,” they say, because his girlfriend of three years, the lady cosmetic doctor in her late 50s, is supposed to have worked on his face, as the bitchy blogs gossip. “I am better known as the boyfriend of Dr. So-and-so,” he readily offered, at ogling 40-year-old alumnae at a convent school homecoming, when he was guest speaker at a product launch for his girlfriend’s very successful cosmetic clinic. Soon after that event, he was kicked out by his girlfriend for being discovered to be “unfaithful” with a very sexy (breast-enhanced, they say) young movie actress. In a few months, the lady doctor forgave the young doctor and took him back. Then the video scandal broke out just last week.

“Live by the gun, die by the gun,” the cliché goes, and it can be paraphrased for the obsession with physical beauty that has brought the downfall of this young man, the mature doctor, and the “victims” who were old enough to know what they were doing in a sex video. Many say that there is no crime in consensual adult sex (specially if consensually taped), but the distribution of the tape is what constitutes pornography. The young doctor’s ongoing psychiatric treatment, reportedly for obsessive sex, may be his defense and many believe that the “case” will blow over like the many sex video scandals in the recent past. Some cynics are even saying the passing brouhaha is a diversionary tactic for the coming very critical 2010 national elections and the constitutional change allegedly to be manipulated by the present administration.

The current gleeful voyeurism of many over the video sex scandal forebodes the malignant misalignment of values in society. There seems to be no real concern on whether this young man will be exacted his “pound of flesh” or punishment for his perversions, if these are to be eventually judged so in spite of brilliant lawyers on his side. In fact, it seems almost sure he will get away, and will emerge an even sexier sex symbol, as the gushing and swooning conquered women and gays unabashedly admit on opinion blogs in the Internet.

“A pound of flesh” has become a pathetic disambiguation to the disproportionate preoccupation with physical and material pleasures. How now, the fight against prostitution, human trafficking, rape, child molestation, and other violations of human sexual rights that could perversely be watched like the sex video of the season?