Bauhaus dildos and Tolkein in Vegas: Recent smut and sex toy reviews

Supersexsling_2
Venuspyrexdildo_2
Stainlessladies_2
Hotenglishpunishment_2
Dreamquest_2

It’s been a couple of months since I updated you on my Adult Friend Finder reviews. Since then, I’ve written about sex slings, Bauhaus dildos, gynecologically dirty photos, English punishment videos, and cheesy Tolkein-wanna-be porn.

A quick note for those of you just joining us: I’ve been writing an every-other-week column for the Adult Friend Finder magazine for about a year, reviewing porn and sex toys and stuff. (Adult Friend Finder is sort of like Friendster, but for sex.) It’s a good gig, and I’m doing some fun, interesting work for them.

Anyway, here’s an index of reviews I’ve written for them since the last time I posted an index. FYI, you don’t have to be an AFF member to click these links (although you do have to join if you want to surf around and visit the rest of the magazine). Enjoy!

Slinger’s Party:
Sex Sling and Super Sex Sling (Mar. 24, 2006)
“With the help of this contraption, I’m finally free from the tyranny of my leg muscles.”

I’m Your Venus:
Venus Pyrex Dildo (Feb. 24, 2006)
“As the Bauhaus architects used to say, sometimes less is more. The Bauhaus architects probably didn’t know that they were talking about dildos, but trust me — they were.”

Open Wide:
Stainless Ladies (Feb. 10, 2006)
“For all its stylish black-and-white artiness, it ultimately has no pretense of being anything other than a direct beeline to the crudest and hungriest part of the libido.”

Bored With the U.S.A.:
Hot English Punishment (Jan. 30, 2006)
“It could very easily be that these filmmakers have just happened to hit on a porn formula that I happen to like.”

Cheese Factory:
Dream Quest (Jan. 14, 2006)
“See, in the midst of all the zany Tolkein-in-Vegas costumes and sets and makeup jobs, someone forgot to come up with the zany sex.”

Enjoy the reviews, and drop me a line here to let me know what you think!

Bauhaus dildos and Tolkein in Vegas: Recent smut and sex toy reviews
{advertisement}

A Confusing Bill Once a Year

Irslogo_1
We did our taxes yesterday, so this excerpt from today’s Onion (“New Poll Finds 86 Percent Of Americans Don’t Want To Have A Country Anymore”) is seeming both extra-hilarious and extra-relevant, and I just had to share:

“I already belong to a health club, a church, and the Kiwanis Club,” Tammy Golden of Los Angeles wrote. “I’m a member of the Von’s Grocery Super Savers, which gets me a discount on certain groceries. These are all well-managed organizations with real benefits. None of them send me a confusing bill once a year and make me work it out myself, then throw me in jail if I get it wrong.”

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/46227

And speaking of which: The good news from tax land — or rather, the news that I’m trying to force myself to see as good — is that in 2006, I’ll be making enough money as a writer that not only will I owe taxes instead of getting a refund, I’ll have to pay quarterly estimated taxes four times a year instead of just filing in April. This is exciting. Really. Woo fucking hoo.

A Confusing Bill Once a Year

Dream diary, 3/14/06: Buffy vs. Voldemort

Harry_potter
Buffy1
I dreamed that Voldemort was preparing his final attack to take over the world, but instead of being fought by Harry Potter and company, he was being fought by Buffy and her gang (a gang which included me and a few of my friends). Voldemort’s attack was going to be launched from Central Park in New York, down near the museums, so the Buffy gang gathered on a street corner at around 75th and Central Park West to prepare for battle.

There were about a dozen of us, and we started to discuss tactics, but Voldemort’s followers began pouring into Central Park — there were thousands of them, marching naked in a zombie-like trance along the park’s trails and converging into the center of the park — and we realized that we hadn’t actually made a battle plan, and had no idea how to fight an army of this size with this degree of organization. We all sort of shrugged and said, “Oh, well, I’m sure we’ll win, we always do,” and barged into the park, but were captured almost immediately and imprisoned in a little shack behind the Metropolitan Museum.

We could see Voldemort’s army prepare for battle through the shack’s windows — they had now split into two groups, half still naked and half with skin-tight black body armor, and they were pairing off and morphing together into these weird mutant battle-horses. The Buffy gang was starting to get worried, but mostly we were standing around the shack pretty casually, going, “Well, I’m sure we’ll think of something.”

I think this dream is about George W. Bush and the Democrats. But I’m not sure how the Metropolitan Museum and the mutant battle-horses fit in.

Dream diary, 3/14/06: Buffy vs. Voldemort

The South Dakota Thing

I’ve been thinking about this whole terrifying fucked-up South Dakota anti-abortion law, which completely outlaws abortion in the state, without even the usual exceptions for rape or incest. And I’ve been thinking about the pro-choice response to it… much of which has been to focus on the horror of rape, and why rape survivors should be allowed to get abortions.

I may get drummed out of the club for saying this. So I want to say first: I am absolutely 100% pro-choice, and 100% against this God-awful law.

But I’ve always thought that the “rape/incest” exception idea is bullshit. If you believe that a six-week-old embryo is a human being, what possible difference could it make how that human being was conceived? If you’re deciding whether it should be legal to terminate its life, why would that question be relevant? After all, you wouldn’t say it was okay to kill a two-year-old child (or a twenty-year-old adult) because he/she was conceived by rape or incest. If it’s a person, it’s a person.

The “rape/incest” exception that most anti-abortion activists make has always struck me as unimpeachable proof that anti-abortionists are actually not concerned about “life.” They’re concerned about sex. They think women who have sex outside marriage should be “punished” by having to have babies. (What a great life for that baby, huh?) That’s the only reason for a rape/incest exception — that rape/incest survivors didn’t have sex on purpose, and therefore shouldn’t be punished for it. (Other unimpeachable proof of this includes the fact that most anti-abortionists are also against easily accessible birth control and sex education.)

Anyway. My point is this: I actually think that refusing to make an exception for rape/incest is a more morally consistent position on abortion. As enormously as I disagree with it, if people really believe a
fertilized embryo is a human being with full civil rights, there’s no reason they should make a distinction between embryos conceived by women who wanted sex and women who didn’t.

The best and most consistent piece of anti-abortion writing I ever read (not a wide field, to be sure) was from a priest/minister (I forget which), who believed abortion was immoral… but also believed it should be legal. He said that if people wanted to stop abortion, they should be fighting to make birth control cheap and easily accessible to anyone who wanted it, including teenagers; to get good, realistic sex education in the schools; to make day care cheap and widely available; to improve funding for public schools; to make family leave a legal requirement; to make national health care a reality; etc. etc. etc. In other words, his position was that the best way to stop abortion was to make it unnecessary — to make sure that nobody got pregnant who didn’t want to, and to make sure that anybody who wanted a child could have one without it ruining their life.

And I don’t entirely disagree with him. I absolutely don’t agree that abortion is immoral — but I do think it’s usually sad. And I sure agree with his vision for a world in which it didn’t have to happen very often.

I actually feel some understanding for the more thoughtful, rational anti-abortion people (again, not a wide field). I sometimes think the pro-choice movement gives short shrift to the real ethical question at the heart of the abortion debate: namely, at what point does a fertilized embryo become a human being? I don’t actually think that’s an easy question to answer. In fact, the foundation of my pro-choice position is that it’s a damn near impossible question to answer — and that it therefore should be up to each woman to answer it for herself. But if I didn’t believe that — if I believed that an embryo was a human being — I’d be appalled by abortion too, and trying like hell to stop it.

But once again, for all their “baby-killing” rhetoric, I don’t think that’s really the issue for most anti-abortionists. I think the issue is that they hate the idea of women having sex without consequences.

The South Dakota Thing