Reading along through the first part of this article, you get the idea that it was translated from Japanese. Then you read the midpoint and you think … uh-oh, does the translator know how these particular words and phrases impact Americans?

It’s a story about sexual services for middle-aged Japanese men trying to get fit, now that the government requires regular tests of fat percentage and blood pressure. And it shifts from informal news reporting:

The middle-aged spread, reports Asahi Geino (4/24), has given rise to a completely new type of sex business: the “Datsu-metabo fuuzoku” — sex shops with services designed to help pudgy, middle-aged men bang their way back to health and enjoy themselves in the bargain

to this:

As he issues pathetic moans, she cajoles his vas deferens into discharging a jet of jism that jumps past his pectorals and reaches all the way to his chin.

It’s hilarious. Read the whole gem here:

New sex services hold out a healthy helping hand to halt those mean metabolic blues

As one friend says: “I’ve reread it three times, and really want to never have known that people were that fucked up.”

I keep starting and then deleting lists of what’s wrong with this story, because it’s too much to type, and besides, you can see it for yourself. I find myself hoping against hope that it’s a hoax … but sometimes, reality is Ralph.

Was woman raped on telephone?

TUNIS, Tunisia, April 27 (UPI) — A Tunisian family alleges their daughter was raped during a telephone conversation with a man, a lawyer for the family said.

The 30-year-old man said he never touched the young woman. But he acknowledged he heard her scream while they were “totally into” an erotic telephone conversation — and that she reported bleeding, Al Arabiya reported.

Maha al-Metebaa, a lawyer representing the family, told the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Qabs the case needs careful investigation because of its unprecedented allegations. He said a medical examination had determined that the woman, 20, was no longer a virgin.

“The intercourse did take place with all its details but verbally only,” he said. “The sexual act did not really happen because the physical proximity factor is not there, yet it happened because there is a direct physical impact – the loss of virginity.”

Motherhood is beautiful and moms are sexy. (Mine’s a dead ringer for Sophia Loren!) And yet, this promotion associating MILF porn with Mother’s Day gives me the willies.

Read More »

Australia just approved an erection drug for daily use so that men can get hard-ons without planning ahead.

Daily sex pill to revive spontaneity

[snip]

Professor Doug Lording, an andrologist at Melbourne’s Cabrini Hospital, backs the drug saying continuous 24/7 coverage promotes a more “real” sexual experience.

“This is an important new option for men with ED because it separates the pill from the pillow, which can give them back a more natural sexual experience with flow-on benefits to their overall wellbeing,” Prof Lording said.

The consumer support group, Impotence Australia, welcomes the drug’s approval, with chief executive Brett McCann saying ED has a definite impact on Australians’ ability to enjoy spontaneous sex.

An industry-funded Galaxy poll of 800 Australians released at the launch found 74 per cent of men rated spontaneity an important part of sex.

Almost 90 per cent of Aussie women said they preferred spontaneous sex over planned intimacy - a good insight for men, as the survey showed that taking advantage of unscheduled opportunities increases their chances of having sex.

If you can’t afford the $190AU (about $180 US) per 24 pills, all is not lost. Read Scheduling Sex Is Sizzling Hot for another perspective.

It’s official! I’m going to be the Tuesday “Sex in the News” person on Playboy Radio’s Afternoon Advice with Tiffany Granath. I start this Tuesday, 4/29, and the segment runs from 11am to 11:30am Pacific time on Sirius Radio channel 198.

When I was little I always wanted to be the traffic reporter on the radio, and radio has always been a favorite medium of mine. Tiffany is an amazing host and she brings out the best in me. I’m so excited, I was afraid to blog it in case it popped the dream bubble and they changed their minds….

I don’t have all the details yet. My plan is to have my assistant (heh, I live in Los Angeles, I’m required by law to have an Assistant) take show notes to post here after the spot. And now I have a tax-deductible excuse to get satellite radio, including Playboy.

PSA

Meanwhile … this is the last week of Carly Milne’s campaign to raise funds for the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network crisis hotline to offer 24-hour support online to anyone affected by rape or incest. I think this is particularly important for us in the sex-tech space, given the numbers of us who turn to the internet to help us heal from such trauma. You can donate by credit card or PayPal, and all contributions are matched dollar-for-dollar in the month of April. Include “GBBMC:08″ in the “in honor of” field if you want your contribution to count for Carly’s campaign; I actually forgot to do that when I made my donation.

How to use particular toys, how to prepare your body for a blow job, how to perform that blow job he prepared for … find these tips and more at Freddy and Eddy’s Wonder How To collection for grown-ups.

I like that they’re focusing on specific toys as well as providing the usual basics. The Tuyo vibrating ball doesn’t work on me as a clitoral vibrator; it vibrates too high-frequency, I think, though it feels wonderful in the hand. But I hadn’t thought about rolling it around my neck and shoulders (how kinky is THAT, a vibrator on a sore muscle? crazy talk!) or about rolling it around inner thighs, backs of knees, inner elbows. I think the one time I used it with a partner we ended up tossing it aside and grabbing the Hitachi instead; now there’s a way to introduce a man to his first vibrator experience!

I like Freddy and Eddy’s approach to sex ed, and their focus on couples, too, since most of us do want to share sex with another person. One of these days someone needs to gather all the sex educator videos into one place - I mean the links - because I think all the major brands are doing it (Good Vibes, Babeland, etc) and I know a lot of indies are too.

I’m a guest on ‘Afternoon Advice’ with Tiffany Granath tomorrow around 11:40 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time. Playboy Radio is on Sirius channel 198.

Ostensibly, I’m there to talk about Sexier Sex (did I mention it’s on sale now, and only about $10 on Amazon?) but I’ve hung out in studio with Tiffany before and you never know where things are going to go. However, you can be sure they will be interesting, funny, and respectful no matter how tongue-in-cheek (or elsewhere) we get.

It’s a call-in show so if you’re around, we’d love to hear from you!

When I see a headline like Teen Creates Chemistry Trading Card Game and immediately think “Oh, that must be cards you hand out to people you feel attracted to,” I know it’s time to get my head out of the sex-tech beat and read some other content for a change.

Good thing I have a day job to reset my mind after Sex 2.0. Someone somewhere is creating a list of photos, liveblog coverage, retrospectives and so on, which I’ll post here when I find it. Microversion: Great space, great sessions, great format, and next year we better make it two days so we have a chance to get to talk to everyone and go to more discussions. Also, I rounded out the day with the exotic dance workshop and learned how to lean back in a folding chair and scissor my legs, then slowly come up while making eye contact and not giggling. HOT.

There was a time when I spent not just all my working hours but almost all of my social hours online. (Not that there was much difference. I have hardly ever socialized online without working, even if just a little bit, on some story in another window.)

Then, eventually, that changed. I — and many of my online buddies, who started socializing online about the same time I did — began to spend more time away from the computer. I’m sure if a technophobe checked on me during that time they’d have thought I was ‘addicted’ and in need of intervention. Especially since my socializing took place primarily in adult chat rooms, instant messaging and the occasional trivia game. (Yeah, I was a hardcore IRC trivia gamer. I’m horrible at trivia but it was still fun.)

My experiences and observations and interviews and research into ‘internet addiction’ do not add up to a bonafide study…
Read More »

Why do I never remember to blog my own column? Sheesh. I could have a FREE blog post every Friday if I alternated between new ones and archive ones — there are more than 200 columns hidden in the archives that many of you have never seen, I’ll betcha.

Talk Dirty, Descriptively in Porn for the Blind

Porn preview sites aren’t known for their usability. You’re familiar with the template, I’m sure. The standard design looks like someone spilled a box of dirty photos across a black laminate floor and then vandalized the result with several colors of primary paint. In all caps. With lots of misspellings and exclamation points!!!

It’s bad enough when you can see it. But what if you have a visual impairment? Your screen-reader software would probably spit out a few choice words and crash out of sheer spite.

Porn for the Blind, a nonprofit organization based in Cambridge, Mass., was established for the sole purpose of making the millions of free porn clips available online accessible to people with visual impairments.

Continued at Wired

Begin PSA
We’re at the end of the second week of the Rape and Incest National Network campaign, to help fund a 24 hour online crisis hotline. Have you donated yet?
End PSA

A few past columns chosen at random:

Hear, Hear for Audio Erotica (October 2005)

Makin’ Woohoo (October 2004)

Lifelong Effects of Cybersex (August 2006)

Thank FSM for qDot, eh?

Here’s his extensive breakdown of the new Interactive Fleshlight; now that Wired doesn’t want me to review sex gadgets in Sex Drive, I’m happy that qDot is keeping up with things. He’s also much funnier and techier than I am — silly me, I’d have talked about how it feels to masturbate with the thing. But he’s much more thorough than that. For example:

Too Much Information about Interactive Fleshlight
You see, the PIC16C745 has embedded USB 1.1 capabilities, which makes it great for an Human Interface Device, or HID, controller. To avoid a long, horrid discussion on USB, basically, the USB standard gives you a ton of ways to talk about human interface devices like mice and keyboards and joysticks and what not. Hundreds of types. It’s crazy. So, with all these types, you can have a bazillion axis controller and it should “just work” with any operating system, though you may have to write some drivers as to how those bazillion axes should work with a normal operating environment.

You could.

Or you could just make the OS think it’s a mouse.

The Interactive Fleshlight registers itself as a USB HID single axis mouse. Any system you hook it to that has an HID manager will believe this (people have done VERY evil things with this fact, too). So, hook up your brand spankin’ new computer aided luddite killing fucktube, and your mouse cursor starts moving up and down on the screen. This is a less than stellar situation for multiple reasons.

But, let’s play devil’s advocate first (in a very literal sense of the term since I’m about to talk about technological onanism, and if you don’t screw on the lid tight enough, some is probably gonna fall on the ground). This is a GREAT design for maximum simplicity. Just hook it in and it fucking /works/. Sure, it’s hard to mouse around with it (the sensor is incredibly sensitive), but the only programming mechanism you have to provide with any game to support it is “move cursor up and down over the screen”. You can’t possibly ask for a more open, cross platform interface. The fact that it fulfills so many of the things I bitch about in other toys makes me hurt.

If you’re me, though, this fucking SUCKS. Why? ’cause this thing has SO much potential! Hook it to a First Person Shooter and play the “This is my rifle This is my gun” sample from Full Metal Jacket!

Pictures, examples, and hilarity continue at Slashdong.

Right after I mentioned Kink.com in my last post, Thomas Roche sent me a press release announcing that Kink.com has redone all its photo galleries so you can view ‘em all fancy shmancy — full screen, pan, zoom, etc — with the PicLens plugin.

The PicLens plugin, which transforms photo browsing into a tactile, three-dimensional experience for users of Internet Explorer, FireFox and Safari, is available for free download at PicLens.com. Once installed, the utility allows users to view all Kink.com galleries in the new format. The PicLens galleries join an extensive library of streaming and downloadable videos as Kink.com’s premium adult content.

Rather than thumbnails in a traditional browser window, PicLens galleries are shown in cinematic glory as if they were virtual photos on a giant gallery wall in virtual space. As described by the PicLens website, “Our new interactive ‘3D Wall’ lets you effortlessly drag, click, and zoom your way around a wall of pictures for an extraordinary, full-screen viewing experience.”

I just installed it and restarted Firefox to see it in action (using only the PicLens SFW test gallery; I’m at the day job today and while of course I’m not billing for blogging time, I’m not going to visit Kink.com while VPNed into the client network, now, am I? In fact I’m being so Responsible I haven’t even uploaded a kinky picture to illustrate this post. Yay me!).

Interesting blip about a man in Vancouver who was denied a permit for a job because — somehow — the police know he is kinky.

Panel may rule if sex practices protected

[snip]

An appeals court rejected a bid by Vancouver police on Tuesday to block a hearing on whether Peter Hayes’ rights were violated when an officer refused to grant him the permit he needed to get a chauffeur’s job.

Hayes complained to British Columbia’s Human Rights Tribunal that he was discriminated against because he is a pagan who practices a “BDSM lifestyle” and deserves protection under the human rights code, based on sexual orientation.

[snip]

A B.C. Court of Appeal panel ruled unanimously that the police motion was premature since the tribunal’s hearing was to decide what, if any, sexual practices deserved legal protection, and even the tribunal’s chairwoman was unsure if the human rights code did that.

“How can the tribunal determine if BDSM falls within the meaning of ’sexual orientation’ if it does not have a full understanding of what BDSM means?” Justice Anne Rowles wrote for the three-judge panel.

I can’t figure out why this was even an issue. Especially in Canada. I can’t help but suspect that there’s something else going on here that Reuters doesn’t know or didn’t cover.

I wonder how the panel will learn about BDSM? Will they look at shock-porn? Start with hardcore at Kink.com? Or will they prepare first with books that go into the psychology, creativity and respect of it all, like those from authors like Dossie Easton and Jay Wiseman? I recommend they read Carrie’s Story, a novel I return to often.

I think if you’ve truly never felt desire to spank or be spanked, or to play power exchange, or any of the myriad longings that fall under BDSM, starting with video is going to put you off the topic forever. It will just look like people hurting each other and you won’t “get” what’s going on under the surface. Kink.com will scare you and if it turns you on it will just scare you even more.

I’m interested in learning whether everyone on that panel is completely vanilla in thought and desire and ignorant of any part of the realm of BDSM, or whether they have desires, or practices, that’s already given them a hint. And if the latter, will they say so, or will they come down harder on people like Hayes out of fear that they would be exposed? I think by now we all know that the more you tighten your grip, the more things slip through your fingers, and it’s better not to try to hide that which someone is certain to be digging into.

Here’s my tip: bury ‘em in content or data until it’s too much work to find the one nugget they’re after. Bwahahhaah.

Randy wrote a nice Q&A with Mary Roach, author of Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex.

Author Probes Sex-Obsessed Scientists in Bonk
In her new book Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Roach explores topics ranging from the sexual stimulation of Danish pigs and MRI scanner intercourse to bisexual bulls and the 19th century “penile pricking device” (don’t ask). What did Roach discover? She tells all in an interview with Wired.com.

Wired: You’ve written twice before about death and science. What made you decide to look at sex and science?

Mary Roach: I was lying in bed and reading Film Quarterly, which was lying around our house. There was a reference to [sex researchers] Masters and Johnson making films using a tiny camera and a light source inside a moving phallus — the artificial coition machine.

I remember thinking, Holy shit, they made this camera and that’s how they did their research — they brought subjects into the lab and documented their sexual response from the inside with a little tiny camera in a “penis.”

That’s when I said my next book was about sex research. I was despairing that I’d never have another idea, and there it was!
Continued at Wired

Nobilis and his wife Dee have just produced their first Podiobook, a due of erotic novellas authored by Ann Regentin. You can listen to the first episode here. Meanwhile, Rachel Kramer Bussel is doing a virtual book tour for her latest anthology, Dirty Girls: Erotica for Women. I haven’t been able to commit to a particular date to post a ‘reading’ like the other bloggers on her tour list so I’m just gonna fling caution to the winds and link to it here.

Graydancer’s hot rope erotic novel Nawashi came out on LuLu a little while back. It’s also available as a Podiobook.

I am sure that’s not everyone — feel free to post your latest projects in the comments!