Blogs for sex toy retailers

I promised at ANE that I would list some blogs and writers that adult retailers might want to follow. Naturally this has proven more difficult than I realized, because it’s hard to round up all the good ones — there are soo many! These are some that come immediately to mind, though.

And most of these sites list “friends” or “links” to other good resources. Read what you have time for, subscribe to the RSS feeds, and soon you can narrow down to the ones that most suit your needs.

This is a short list. Feel free to add your suggestions in the comments.

World Sex News — daily digest of sex stories
Orgasm Army — sex toy reviews
from consumers
Eros Blog –smart sex blog
Sugarbank — more about porn than novelties, but funny and smart nonetheless

Violet Blue — bestselling sex-book author blogs from the heart of SF; her podcast is the most popular sex podcast in the universe, I think
Jamye Waxman — Sex educator, columnist for Playgirl and others.
Playgirl Magazine — often addresses hot topics around women and sex, including toys/novelties. Has a two-page spread every month rounding up sexy products for playgirls, from t-shirts to books to orgasms
Fleshbot - Mostly porn, but also novelties; funny/insightful commentary with a great blend of adult content and pop culture
Topix: Sex - another daily digest
About Sexuality, Cory Silverberg’s blog
Gizmodo sometimes has sex stuff, particularly from independents who wouldn’t know how to get into avn novelty magazine or who don’t have distributors/catalogs yet
Sex in Games blog — More going on in this space than people realize; this helps you keep up
Gram Ponante

The dogs went nuts at 12:05am — I was reading in the dark — and when I got up this morning, the note I’d left for the pizza guy was gone. I should have left him a dollar, too — not his fault he made a trip for nothing. Oh well. LOL

But 12:05, when they said 11:22, and I submitted my order at 9:01?

Normally, I don’t eat at chain restaurants. And I prefer to order pizza from mom-and-pop shops too.

Tonight I tried something else. I placed an online order through Pizza Hut. I’m working very intensely and thought this might be an efficient way to stave off starvation.

I submitted my order at 9pm. Imagine my chagrin when the confirmation page said “Thanks! Your pizza will be there at 11:22pm.”

Eleven? Twenty-two? I don’t want to be awake at 11:22, much less eating dinner.

I look for a Cancel Order button. No such luck. So I call the store.

Only the store number doesn’t go to the store, it goes to a central order intake office. They can only take orders, they cannot cancel them. They transfer me to “the store” to cancel the order. Except the store doesn’t answer, so after 15 minutes on hold, I call the central office again.

As of this sentence, I’ve been on hold for 27 minutes and 20 seconds. About 10 minutes ago I called [[from the land line, while cell remains on hold]] the Customer Service number listed on the website and talked to a nice but useless rep who said the best he can do is take my information and try to get my credit card credited for the pizza. I am so frustrated at this point that when he doesn’t start putting that into motion, I just tell him to screw it and have a good night.

I wish now that I’d made this a cash order, so I could just lock up and put a sign out saying to take the pizza back, order refused. But nooooo, it’s a work dinner, so I put it on the work credit card, for ease of counting it as a tax deduction later. I’m going to be charged no matter what.

Do I stay up until 11:22pm to take the pizza and put it in the fridge?

Is this my punishment for straying from my healthy eating plan? Although I did order thin crust, light on the cheese, and vegetarian toppings, and I wasn’t going to eat the whole thing (I don’t think).

The whole point was to have something quick, that would “cook” while I was working, so I could stop work around, oh, 9:45 and have two slices of pizza and then transition to bed. Instead, I’ve been on hold — 30:05, now — for longer than it would take for Dominos to deliver a pizza, if only they had more (any! ha!) vegetables. I mean if I’m going to order crap pizza, what’s the difference between Pizza Hut and Dominos anyway? Other than 2 hours. Ba dum pum pum.

I guess I’ll go make oatmeal and eat it with fruit, even though I of course now have my taste buds all primed for ‘za. Or I could order a second pizza from a 30-minute place and eat at 10:15pm instead of 11:30. HA.

But one thing is for sure. I should have trusted my instincts not to order from Pizza Hut — the deciding factor was the “easy online ordering” that made me feel all Sandra Bullock (”The Net”) — and I certainly will never do so again.

Bah, humbug!

Have you ever met a pessimist who didn’t claim to be a realist? As if having a positive outlook is somehow unreal. Harrumph.

Thanks everyone for attending the panel yesterday! Naturally I haven’t had time yet to compile all the links I said I would, so bear with me and check back in a week or so.

Hope you’re all enjoying the show!

How do avocados have sex?

I suppose this isn’t entirely technical, although it is science. But I thought it was an interesting article. I’ll never look at avocados again without thinking about their reproductive habits.

Until I can post to my Wired blog again, I’ll be posting here …

Posting here until the technical difficulties with my wired blog can be fixed and I can post it there

WSJ.com - He, Once a She, Offers Own View On Science Spat

A transgendered scientist speaks out about his experiences in science as a woman and as a man, and why fewer women go into science than men.

It might surprise you know that I was a top math student in my K-12. But in 11th grade at th estart of the term, I got pneumonia and was out of school for a month. My trigonometry teacher was the only one who refused to send homework home or to help me catch up upon my return. (This is the same man, football coach, who said that girls shouldn’t do math. He said this out loud and I didn’t kill him. I must have been feeling tired that day.) Because he did his best to promote the boys and block the girls, I dropped at the semester and took honors choir instead.

My mom is a math genius and changed careers a few years ago to become a math and science teacher. She could have taught me trig, and did, enough to pass the class until I could drop it.

I regret sometimes that I didn’t fight harder, but you know what? It would have been for the principle, not the passion. I sing almost every day; my first after-college purchase with My Own Money was a soon-to-be-antique piano. I get such joy from music, and my career has not suffered without trig and calculus. At the same time, I’d always half-planned on going into science (comparative planetary science, actually; like geology but with other planets too), so being cast aside in high school would have put me behind my university peers had I gone that way.

I’m happy and I do not lack confidence when it comes to math/science. I figure if I don’t know how I can learn how — it’s just that I don’t have the passion for it anymore, and therefore it’s not high on my priorities when I set up my schedule. But sometimes, talking with friend T who is an atmospheric physicist working on some amazing things, I get wistful. It’s not that I miss working crazy hours for little pay and being kicked around for years as a Ph.D. student and post-doc and publishing papers that my professor took credit for. But the discovery aspect, the research, the learning … the Being a Scientist (and I swear, I’d wear a white lab coat, even if I didn’t have to) … that would have been cool.

I had lunch with a scientist today, in fact, and she got totally animated when talking about her work. She’s in cloning and has a background in botanicals.

Just to show you how dedicated I have been to work lately … I didn’t even know Lyle Lovett was at the Greek last night until too late.

But he’ll be in San Antonio on Sept 2 … Hrm … wonder if that’s sold out?

New Column:What You Don’t Know Can Kill
One of the classic rules of fiction analysis is not to confuse the author with the narrator or the characters in her story.

At 19, I took my first college-level fiction writing workshop. If you’ve ever attended a college writing class, you know what most of the students produce. Angsty, weird-for-the-sake-of-weirdness, depressing stories about unlikable people doing unlikely things.

Continued….

I always want to be That Girl. You know, the one who can spontaneously join you for concerts, dinners, lectures, whatever. The one who doesn’t have to work late. The one who gets her errands done when she says she will, rather than two days later, so that she is free to flit off to fun as it arises.

Last night, I got to be her. I had work to do but you know what? I always have work to do. A friend called around 3pm to say that his date for the Hollywood Bowl that night was terribly ill, and yet he had this ticket and he didn’t want to go by himself.

We’ve had an arrangement in the past to be each other’s back-up date, so I thought about my evening plans — Farmer’s Market, Trader Joe’s, grilling vegetables for dinner on the new BBQ. And even as I considered that, plus the fact that I’ve been eating rice all week because I really needed to do the shopping on Monday and haven’t taken the time, my mouth said “Sure! Meet you at 7?”

I’m so glad I did. I get into a rhythm — a rut, really — of scouring the internet for sex-tech tidbits. Stories to blog, products and stories that spark columns, interesting people to interview in the future. Forums, email lists, blogs, websites, newspapers, magazines. It’s constant. I am also gathering material for another book. And of course I also have my “day job” which is part time, flexible, freelance, but still, it’s another set of deliverables each week. All of this means I get stuck in the computer. I’m not productive the whole time I’m here, for sure. But I stay here out of … anxiety? That I might miss something if I stop?

It’s a problem. I’ve actually set alarms to make myself leave the computer, because I know that when I do, I not only get my exercise (gasp!), I work more productively when I return. And my tendons and my brain both need the time AFK, that’s for sure.

So last night, not knowing anything about the entertainment, I shook it all off. Showered. Dressed in jeans, jockey tank top, sparkly silver flip-flops. Mascara and lipstick, because I wanted to feel fancy. And I caught the Pasadena shuttle into Hollywood — our driver hadn’t done the route before and took a few wrong turns, but we directed her after that — and met him at the entrance a few minutes after 7.

The Shins opened, and Belle and Sebastian then conquered the night with the help of the L.A. Philharmonic behind them. Both bands were fantastic, although B&S is more to my taste. And having the phil behind them, well, just, WOW.

And we had box seats. Not the bleachers. Not even the middle-area seats I’ve splurged on before. These were the box seats with the little tables — we were in box 173, about, oh, 25 meters from the stage? Distances are deceiving but I am thinking we were a little more than the short way across an Olympic pool, and closer than the long way across. Say 30-35 meters. And center. CENTER! Two of our boxmates — our box had six chairs, and we met two friends and a couple — two of our boxmates arrived late and I moved so they could sit together, and then the guy - Arthur - bought us a bottle of wine as a thank-you. His girlfriend Laura had the coolest glasses. Roger and Steven were there together in much the same way I was there with T. Steven bought the tickets hoping to come with a girl, but that didn’t work out, so he asked his good friend Steven.

Beautiful night, not too hot, not too chill. Great company. Excellent entertainment.

And you know what? I’ll get my work done today and still have time to get to Trader Joe’s.

Meanwhile, we have tix for POTC:DMC tonight. Yummy.

I shouldn’t blog when I’m tired.

… I just realized I have the perfect excuse not to record my podcast tonight.

As I sit here trying to craft a column while my L.A. neighborhood goes up in sparks and booms — much to the dogs’ distress — I realize that no matter how much I try, annually, to relax and enjoy my neighbors’ enjoyment of the noise and pretty lights, I just can’t. I can’t stifle my awareness that we live in the desert and that for all our green-ish lawns and shrubbery, it’s only going to take a spark on the high school’s soccer field or in the dead lawn in my back yard to start a fire.

I’m not making this up — a friend who lives just blocks away had a fire in her backyard over the weekend thanks to some kids and their bottle rockets.

My neighbors make the run to Tijuana by early June and start practicing for July 4th a couple of weeks in advance, but even so, tonight is quite spectacular in noise and lights. The kids across the street have just lit one that went several stories high.

And aside from the fire dangers, gangs activity and shootings that blend into the fireworks, my overriding feelings are of sorrow.

To me, these “fun” fireworks sound like bombs and bullets, and I think of people in war zones past and present, and how these same sounds were not the least bit jolly for them. It is hard for me to feel celebratory around fireworks just lit off willy nilly.

This is not tribute, it is not recognition of deeper meaning and death and pain and sacrifice. It’s just a bunch of families enjoying fire and noise in a way they can only get away with this time of year. And I try to let it be, because I don’t like to feel like a killjoy.

Yet I can’t help but wish everyone would just go to the official fireworks exhibitions — and maybe there should be more of those, to make it easier and safer for people to attend — instead of blowing things up in the streets. This is not a dirt road in the country, it’s a densely populated urban area, and what’s appropriate in another context is insane here.

Last year, the boys next door were lighting rockets from the attic exhaust fan on their roof, and I did go out and ask them to aim for their own house, not mine, after the still-aflame remains of one landed in my driveway just inches from my summer-dead grass.

I wish I didn’t imbue everything with Deep Meaning and that I could instead just get over it enjoy the noise and sparks like everyone else, but I can’t. It feels so shallow and devoid of understanding — it feels like an insult to real soldiers and real civilians who have had to live, and sometimes hurt and die, with these same noises, day after day.

Sigh. I’m really a weirdo, aren’t I?

That said … here’s a beautiful essay that pretty much sums up how I feel about California and, by extention, America:

Jon Caroll’s Column