I love checking out Google Labs. They’re always up to something. But the thing they’ve got cooking in there right now that I’m most excited about is Google Trends. Mark Morford has already had his firm-yet-supple hands all over it (popup warning), and my pal Viviane had to give it a few squeezes and spanks as well. I spent hours playing with it while in the Baltimore airport (occasionally looking up to watch security guards whiz by on Segways). It’s a pretty powerful feature, utilizing Google’s data to return location-based results on search data. You can search worldwide results, or narrow it down to region. It’s not entirely precise, but it’s still a great way of taking a search term snapshot.

So, naturally, the thing to do is search for sex. But that’s a reflex, like how when you see someone yawn, you have to yawn really bad too. But I didn’t really care who searched for sex where — sex as a search term isn’t specific enough to show me something new; sex also has many meanings. I wanted to know specifics, so I tested the water plugging in “anal sex” and discovered that the top city in the world searching for anal sex is Ankara, Turkey and the top region is Saudi Arabia, and the top language it’s searched for in is Arabic. Now technically Turkey doesn’t have any statutes, penalties or restrictions on sodomy, but most of the population is Muslim, a religion that prohibits sodomy and considers it a deviant act; extremists only differ in their opinion on the preferred method for killing homosexuals and those who engage in this “deviant behavior”. In Saudi Arabia, the penalty for sodomy is death. They just fucking kill you.

Next I plugged in “fetish” to see what would come up, and I wasn’t shocked to see that the United Kingdom had the top city and top region — after all, the UK is the epicenter for fetish culture and fashion in many ways, and they’ve long had a reputation for ponygirls and rubber-enclosure-suit-in-the-countryside frolics. No one knows why, it’s just a fact, like how Bill O’Reilly is a douchebag and no one knows why but it just is, and everyone just goes about their business. What surprised me with the fetish search was that the next country/language on the list was Italy/Italian. What’s up, Germany? Yo, Japan. Y’all are slipping. Maybe it’s pope related; catholics are all into ritual and robes and fetish is very ritualistic.

I had to search “oral sex“. And at the top was… Romania? OMG — vampires! Hott. This all makes Romania look like my next vacation destination. Next on the list was India, where 80% of the population is Hindu. Kama Sutra, indeed.

But I couldn’t just be satisfied with straight-up seraches; Google Trends lets you compare searches to see what comes up the most and where. So I did all three (as an example, I actually did dozens). It’s really fun, but now I have an idea that I have no clue how I’d make it happen, but I want to do a mashup of Google Trends and Google Maps, to trendmap the world. I’d love to see the Trends data on my sex searches (and even more specific ones) mapped. I think it would look really cool and be absolutely fascinating, especially because the map data would change a bit every time, breathing, as it were. I also had a fantasy of somewhat reverse-engineering the Trends searches, so I could see what the most popular sex searches are on a map so I could see popular searches on a map without plugging in my own (possibly restrictive) search terms.

Cool stuff.

Update: Viviane had more fun with Google Trends and specific sex searches — check it out.

This looks like it’s going to be amazing — this weekend in Leipzig 20,000 goths “will gather from as far afield as Japan, Australia and the US for the Wave-Gotik-Treffen festival from 2 to 5 June.” Wow! Read the article here. (Thanks, Mark!)

Update: My ever-squeezable friend Minnie sends me news of more fun World Cup activities in Germany — German brothel welcomes World Cup.

For once, I can announce a show before it happens. It’s official, it’s going to be *huge*, and there will most certainly be surprises. I’m so happy I think my head might explode. Buy your tickets *now* — they’re discounted right now, capacity is limited to 2000, and it’ll help us move. We were supposed to be out in April but are staying through this show (and have had our rent signifigantly raised on a building we repair and maintain), and will move after August. Hopefully. Details:

SRL show
August 11, 10 or 10:30 pm
At the ZeroOne Festival, San Jose, California
Buy tickets here for $20; price will go up to $25

For friends: don’t know if we get comps or not — likely not because it’s a full crew and lots of machines. Buy tickets if you really want to go.

Image: I’m running The Inchworm, about to pick up a flaming prop, Los Angeles 2005.

Update: Fire permits are still yet to be issued. Welcome to the world of making SRL shows happen. Keep your fingers crossed for us that all goes well.

Did you know I have a PVC Batwoman costume, complete with cape and utility belt? Some night I want to ride my motorcycle in it, maybe this Halloween. Check out this article at BBC News: “Comic book heroine Batwoman is to make a comeback as a ‘lipstick lesbian’ who moonlights as a crime fighter, a DC Comics spokesman has confirmed.” Link: Batwoman hero returns as lesbian.

Every monday, a core group of San Francisco Sex Information training staff get together at a local dive bar and drink beer. Many of us happen to live in the same neighborhood, and I hadn’t joined them in a while, so it seemed like a perfect break from a harrowing weekend. You might wonder what a bunch of hard-drinking, frighteningly dedicated sex educators talk about over beer — I can tell you it’s not PC, it’s highly inappropriate, and my sides hurt from laughing. I did cry laughing once even.

I started with the early crowd: Polly (the sperm bank teller), A (not his real initial) who works at Second Life, and Polly’s boyfriend who I have nicknamed “Brokeback Boyfriend” because he wears a cowboy hat and talks to no one in the group and sits at the bar reading a book until he decides to chime in on your conversation and give you his Advice About Life, which he did to me at least once last night.

But I digress. We started with a fairly serious conversation about necrophilia fetish — one of the lectures I do for them is a fetish rap, often putting me on a panel of fetish experts. So I’ve seen a lot of necrophilia lectures, most done by Thomas, who is excellent at it in a humorous yet creepy way. But while it seems like a hard lecture to fuck up (definition, legalities, consent issues, example cases, why people do it, answering anonymous questions about it, conclusion), I have seen it handled badly. It’s complicated in one particular way: it’s a fantasy that is incedibly rare, but people seeking information on it tend to get tossed into two categories — criminal, or dismissed as fakers.

* Image via my post today at Fleshbot on Realdoll Sidore-Chan.

(more…)

Snip:

“Dude. Robot. Motherfucking. Condoms.
I mean, let’s go over this. We have:

* Robots
* With Lasers
* And Guns
* AND ENGRISH
* On a CONDOM Package”

Link: Battling Seizure Robot Condoms

Found at sexblo.gs. See the whole set here. Can anyone tell me what this is about? It’s an incredible set. I really like this one and this one a lot, too.

It ran last week, but if you’re following the whole ICANN and .xxx domain craziness, you’ve got to read The Onion’s treatment on it: American Voices on .xxx Rejected.

At the surgeon’s office yesterday afternoon, I was on an accumulated 2 hours of sleep. I ended up having to wake almost every hour to administer one of the four medications the emergency hospital gave me; plus, the thorn was still *in* my cat’s eye as they were afraid to remove it, so I had to hold him from struggling all night while he incessantly pawed and clawed at his face and the cone on his neck, despite the impressive amount of painkillers he was on. I handed him over to the surgical team of two and warned them, “He’s squirmy. He can get away from anyone, so watch out.” Oh, he’s okay, they said and next I heard, “Oh, that’s a good boy. Okay Alex, hold on. Alex — Al — Frank! Frank come in here! Frank!” The male tech ran past the doorway. I could envision the scene. But then again, if strangers were coming for my eye with pointy things, I’d put up a hell of a fight, too.

I got him back in the equivalent of a kitty straightjacket. It was totally not fetish or sexy, nor was it in rubber or leather or black. They were amazing specialists — the whole thing was over in five minutes, tops. I saw the thorn — it had been embedded in exactly the center of his cornea — and it looked like bougainvillea. I have scars all over from a tussle with that particular plant and a wall I had to climb once.

So the warning sticker is to warn the people around him. He’s depressed, on only two meds now, and can’t eat, drink or use the litter box on his own right now. I feed him (he eats but I have to hold it), I force a dropper of water into him (he has no interest in water but I have to keep him hydrated), and when he tries to use the box he bumps into the walls and comes to find me. He comes to me, I set him in the box, he goes, and all is well. Only a few hours ago did he try getting out by himself, and he made it. I think it’s because he can’t see out of one eye, has the bukkake cone on his head, and might be kind of high from whatever they shot him with yesterday. At any rate, I got him his favorite food for the interim (at right); sadly, Best In Show was out of the Turducken he likes so much.

I’m not sure what will happen with the sight in his eye; I take him back in on friday and I think they’ll make him read a little kitty eye chart with little fish and fluffy birds on it or something. I *so* need a massage. So sweet — when I got home Jonno had made me dinner. He’s too busy with his young Apple Genius boy-toy for a shoulder rub, but it’s the world to me. Caretakers need care, too. Thanks to everyone who wrote me worried about Alex — my inbox is a disaster zone and I’ll try to write back soon.

In the Mercury News, a victory for bloggers, the EFF and First Amendment protections. Snip:

“In a 69-page ruling, the San Jose-based 6th District Court of Appeal broke new ground by concluding that bloggers and Web masters enjoy the same protections against divulging confidential sources as established media organizations. Civil liberties groups and journalism organizations have argued that online journalists need to protect the confidentiality of sources just as much as traditional media, such as the New York Times and CNN.”

At about 6:30 I noticed something with my kitty’s eye — I spent the entire evening and tonight in the emergency hospital. Tomorrow we have surgery. I don’t know if he’ll keep the sight in his eye; 11 months old and he has a thorn stuck in his eye. I have been told that he is in a lot of pain, and they gave me four kinds of meds on various schedules — one for pain that I wasn’t supposed to have, in a syringe — to make it to tomorrow, on a schedule that has me administering drops and salve every 3 hours. I just keep holding him. I’m so glad I’m not alone this weekend. My heart hurts.

In a rare moment, I answered my phone:

he: “What are you doing?”
me: “I just got out of the shower.”
he: “Are you naked?”
me: “Pretty much.”
he: “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
me: “Eeeek!”

It’s not what you think — or maybe it is. Within 20 minutes Jonno was in my kitchen molesting my coffeemaker (”Can I drink out of the Hustler mug?!”) and on my couch needing blankets and pillows and wifi and publishing Fleshbot and playing horrible bad rock music set to a “support our troops gangbang” sent to us via tips@fleshbot (”America, fuck yeah! Terrorists can lick my balls! America, fuck yeah!”). My house is now Fleshbot ground zero for the weekend. Send help!

I just sent out 191 rejection letters for submissions to Best Women’s Erotica 2007. I still have more to send. For some fucked up reason I decided to use Yahoo as my mail client for book subs. From the first reply to the last, I was stopped mid-send by Yahoo’s spam guard and required to decode a 4-6 number and (uppercase/lowercase) letter character combination. It was *so* not fair. All but 13 of the replies (done by hand, not in a batch) stopped me and made me solve an obfuscated string of characters. I got two wrong.

It reminded me of being a kid; I started reading really really early — I remember starting school a year ahead of everyone and then being pulled out of kindergarten to be put in a 4th grade reading class. I could read the books no problem, but fell asleep because reading class was during my naptime. At that time in my life, my mom took me on a lot of long trips to Stanford to sit and do tests and solve puzzles just like the Yahoo ones (my mom was a Stanford engineering graduate, maybe that’s why she took me there when I scared her by being able to read so soon).

Anyway, yay I got all the fucking puzzles right. I’m a mutant. I’m never, ever using Yahoo again; it’s a terrible mail service. I have a friend who works at Yahoo, and guess what? She doesn’t use Yahoo Mail.

On another note, isn’t that a pretty cover? I think the book *just* showed up on Amazon, because I saw the cover a while ago and was asked to hold off on blogging about it. What’s cool is that the model emailed me to say how excited she is to be on the cover — with her girlfriend going down on her, wow. I don’t think you can tell, though, so Barnes and Noble won’t get their panties in too much of a bunch. No more than usual, anyway. Yay for sexy covers!

Bored tonight? Check out Perversion for Profit. Better yet, watch the amazing Wonder Woman video on my pal Chriso’s blog! I’m going to go spin around in circles in my living room now.

So at BEA, Lucky Lana and I are walking around through all the white, washed, dockered masses with our black clothes and goth attitudes and tattoos blazing, and we see someone waving frantically at us down the aisle. It’s a girl — a cute girl! “Hey, Hey! I want you to have one of these! You need this!” She shoves a copy of Rick Dakan’s G33K MAFIA into my hands. A glow spreads over me, replacing the acrid taste of jesus and Midwest Mom Mullets in my mouth. “Yes.” I smile. “I need this.”

I’ve only read a little bit, so I can’t vouch for a lot, but it’s awfully cute. Here’s an excerpt:

“Sitting at the bar in Senor Goldstein’s Mexican restaurant in San Jose, California, Paul’s own artwork engaged him for the first time in months, maybe years. Under other circumstances, that would have made him happy. But today’s circumstances allowed only two emotions: despair and rage. Not wanting to succumb to the former, and not quite wanting to buy a gun and go back to the office, he decided to draw.

“Paul turned to a fresh page and had begun to sketch his most elaborate revenge scheme yet whan a woman walked into his line of vision. There were four of five other women in the resaurant already (most of them employees), but this one stood out. This one would’ve stood out anywhere. Her hair, cut short and spiky, was dyed a magenta so bright it seemed to glow. She wore a tight, violet t-shirt, baggy olive drab shorts that hung on shapely hips, and heavy black boots with two inch thick soles. She had a faded leather messenger bag slung across her chest, the strap pressing between her breasts. If Paul had to guess, she wasn’t wearing a bra. She definitely wasn’t your average Silicon Valley techie on an early lunch break, and certainly not a restaurant employee.”

Yup, he’s a wronged game designer and she’s in the g33k mafia, and I even skimmed ahead to find some bend-over-boyfriend dialogue, lots of revenge, hacking, gunplay and annoying right-wingers who are doing it “for the children”. This book just might have it all. Well anyway, I carried it all around BEA like a badge. Just so people would know. You know?

Sometimes I wake up and my inbox is full of surprises — but this has to be one of the top five for sure. I’ve long, long been a fan of comic writer Alan Moore, who many of you will recognize from writing/creating Watchmen, From Hell, V for Vendetta, and the first two sets of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (among others; though my cult faves of his are The Killing Joke and Brought to Light). So it’s with great, excited sleepless joy that I get to show you exclusive samples from his upcoming work Lost Girls (with Melinda Gebbie), featuring explicit sex — portrayed in a compelling, highly pleasurable way. Like the setting of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Lost Girls has Moore revisiting characters from Victorian fiction, where the main female characters from Neverland, Wonderland and Oz meet as adults in a strange hotel in 1913 to set out on a sexual adventure together.

Why did they ask *me*? Because they thought I would present the work in an honest and respectful way, which seems difficult to come by these days when it comes to sex (especially for the sake of pleasure). In an interview about the book, sent to me in the email, Alan Moore said:

“It presents this material in a way which is every bit as sensual and beautiful and at times, startling, as the actual sexual act itself can be. I think that was probably why we did it. The sexual imagination, which is the biggest part of sexuality, is not well served in our culture, and I really don’t understand why that should be. The only way that we can talk about or refer to sex — we have two choices: we can either do it in grubby works of pornography that will be read by people who are desperately ashamed of what they are reading, or we can discuss sex in the clinical manner of sex manuals or The Joy of Sex. Neither of these things have got anything that I, or probably most other normal people actually associate with our sexuality. I doubt that many of us are clinical about our sexuality, or wish to be sleazy about our sexuality either, but these seem to be the only two options where this material can even be discussed — where the sexual imagination can even be talked about. That startling omission in culture was probably the biggest impetus behind Lost Girls — we felt that there ought to be something like that.”

Read the first half of the interview with Alan Moore on Lost Girls here.

Not that I’m *not* a fan of sleaze or grubby porn, but he’s hit on it. Our culture gives us either/or messages all the time about sex. And we’re all *so over* it. As if to prove it, if you want to get your hands on a copy of Lost Girls, you’re going to have to pre-order it, either via the publisher Top Shelf’s site, Amazon or a comic shop. Borders is not touching it, and I was also told no comic shop will be ordering many, if any shelf copies, save Comic Relief in Berkley and the like…

Enjoy the art I was so graciously allowed to post, after the jump. Thanks, Matt!

(more…)

It’s four minutes of pure beauty — I just stumbled across this mesmerizing scene from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis on YouTube. It’s the sexiest scene in the whole movie, where the mad scientist tramsmutes the human female into a humanistic android in a visually cacauphonous art deco scene. I find it totally soothing and sexually compelling. Watch and relax. Can anyone identify the music?

My friend Scott is a huge Second Life fan. At his New Year’s party we spent a tipsy few minutes in the kitchen where he explained why I should be interested in it, and about its various controversies — which interested me more. I went home and signed up, downloaded it, and spent the next several hours trying to walk in a straight line. I knew I’d never get laid if I couldn’t stop plummeting down ravines or unintentionally “flying” into the side of buildings.

If you’re reading this wondering what the hell I’m talking about, Second Life is an online multiplayer “game” where people log on, create animated avatars and interact in various ways. Most of what goes on in SL is sex, and I was impressed that they were so open about the sexual elements (even providing porn to watch and featuring a billion places to hook up), and had a refreshing all-gender, all-orientations-are-welcome attitude on every level of the interface. Nothing was candy-coated “for women” or sexist, and they totally seemed to understand that the users wanted to enjoy and immerse themselves comepletely into fantasy genders, shapes and fetishistic expressions of whatever really turned them on.

The problem is that I don’t have the time to play things like this, I’m on a Mac Mini so it doesn’t look right, and I don’t really need to find anyone to hook up with. Plus, you can’t really kill anyone, so as a game it doesn’t attract me. (You *knew* I was that kind of girl.) But I was really surprised and happy to find out that someone I’ve known for a long time works at SL — he’s been on training staff over the years at San Francisco Sex Information when I’ve lectured there. That at least in part explains the nonjudgemental attitude about sex, who has it, and how that permeates the landscape at SL. Like me, SL is a San Francisco native.

Computer-based fucking has been around since computers landed in consumers’ hands, and the hot and dirty hookup has been happening online since humans have been online. That’s the first thing I wanted to do on the web — see some sex, get off. So its no wonder multiplayer things like Second Life are emerging and becoming popular; there are new ones springing up faster than I can burn through two double-A batteries with a Japanese vibrator. Just check out qDot’s MMOrgy to get a sense of what’s going on here. It’s huge.

(more…)

Before moving onward, I know that quite a few writers read this blog so it only makes sense that I do a BEA wrapup. Fortunately for me, my “handler” Lucky Lana beat me to the bloggy punch by writing her own excellent summary of our experiences there. I also had a second to respond to an email asking me how DC was — and my off the cuff answer, and why I didn’t get my award (yet) is all after the jump.

(more…)

I’m offline all day in meetings and appointments and stuff, but in the meantime check out the wee meme hitting my inbox from a variety of unrelated sources: the upcoming film Psychopathia Sexualis. Tony Comstock blogged about it then got to talk to the film’s director Brett Wood. Viviane blogged it (meta link); but you can also see more on the Kino Films page (sound alert), learn more on the director’s blog, and I guess it’ll be playing here in SF at the Roxie but their site is too frustrating for me right now to find a direct link or info. Huh.

Allow me to interrupt this sex blog with an incredible video: in response to Wal-Mart’s new campaign to trademark the smiley face (this is true), Make: Blog has fired a seriously awesome and highly symbolic missive over the bow of the behemoth, at least in video form. It looks like they used the same Logitech Quickcam Orbit MP, with the smily face avatar. Snip from text:

“Wal-Mart is embroiled in a legal dispute over the smiley face image which it wants to trademark in the US. For the first time, the smiley face speaks!”

Watch The Great Dictator - “read” by the Wal-Mart smiley face on YouTube, or see the embedded video after the jump. Here’s the text if you want to follow along at home.

Update: I’m getting a lot of email from people who are trying to find this video on the Make Blog to no avail — I didn’t see it there, either. Someone sent me this as a tip; it’s only on YouTube as far as I can tell. My guess is that it’s not on their blog because it’s not about making anything. Except controversy, that is.

(more…)

BEA was huge. Gigantic. And there are oodles of christian publishers — so many, I couldn’t just pick one to harass. I was one of the (3?) sex authors in the roughly five football fields of book publishers represented at BEA. It’s astounding; sex publishing makes up a really signifigant part of the market but the rest of the book world is super sex-negative — and religious. It was quite a coup to be signing Fetish Sex *literally* in the middle of jesusland; there were over a hundred christian book publishers around the area where I signed. I thought no one would make it through all the god stuff to check out a dirty (sex-positive!) book.

I was wrong. I had long lines of people waiting to see me. Me! People took turns getting their picture taken with me; people exclaimed excitedly about my podcast. They were from Chicago, Utah, Alabama, Tennesee, Maryland, New York, all over. My French publisher came to see me and sign Fetish Sex for a French translation and it’s not even out for three more weeks. They knew who I was in the DC comics booth (and asked me to consider writing for them). I am completely, totally blown away. I spoke with publishers who were freaked out by sexual content and afraid to label their books “erotica”; and I can tell you by my experience today that they are wrong, wrong, wrong. People want their sex. They love sex. They want to be happy and enjoy sex. And no amount of religious pressure will stop them from enjoying it. They made the trek through booths hawking “The Bible Diet” to come see me — and I signed for the smiliest, most excited lines of people I’ve ever seen.

Wow.

I saw Rachel and Jamye and got totally spoiled by Feral House who hugged me and gave me tons of books and hugged again by Disinfo. I got snagged by the Last Gasp crew and babied by SCB Distributors and totally taken care of by Lucky Lana and given beer instead of food. Fuck it, I’ll eat when I get home. After the jump, see my photos and watch a video I took when I got back to the suite tonight @ 2am.

(more…)

Before I run off to BEA, I should let you know about the new podcast I uploaded before I left SF — it’s one of my all-time favorite interviews to date. If you want to laugh, listen in! Text:

In the ongoing interview series I’m doing at NPR, this has to be one of my very favorite interviews *ever*. Just listen to me talk to Pink and White Productions‘ Shine Louise Houston and see if you can’t resist laughing — Shine is the producer, director and creator behind what is one of the hottest, most authentic lesbian porn companies around, and it’s all DIY, indy porn. Listen and see what I mean; Shine talks about why fluffy-haired long-fingernailed “lesbians” in regular porn just don’t seem to reflect how girls are having sex with each other (really?), amazing behind the scenes tales of fisting and female ejaculation on the set of her cult hit porn film The Crash Pad, what’s in her future and all about that crazy party I went to a week ago… She invited me to a party, things got out of hand with fists and lesbian porn stars and bread products and I took pictures… So much fun. Look at all the images I shot at that wild party in these two galleries: Pink and White Party; More Pink and White Party. But really, listen to the podcast and see how we crack ourselves up so bad about stuffing loaves where bread has never been before that we make actual snorting noises.

MP3 not enough for you? Watch and listen with the video slideshow version of this podcast at:

http://media.libsyn.com/media/violetblue/open_source_sex_38.m4v

Please note: there is an extra 6-7 minutes of music on the end of this podcast from the local 30-piece Extra Action Marching Band. I left it on there for a little something different; skip it if you hate it.

Also: NPR is a community not-for-profit volunteer organization and they’re hosting my filthy dirty interviews for free. They’re having a hard time coming up with rent for one month this summer — it’s $800 — so if you can spare ten bucks, please donate it to NPR!

* * * * * *

My podcast defiles whole-wheat baguettes at Libsyn.com

I saw the Capitol building today for the first time (I think that’s where they keep the Senatards) and the Washington Monument, all on the way from the airport to the hotel. The conversation with the cab driver went like this:

he: “First time in DC?”
me: “Yes.”
he: “Welcome. (pause) This is a bad part.”
me: “Are there a lot of bad parts?”
he: “It’s DC.”

Travel went well, until I got to the hotel — to find out that a rookie employee gave away my reservation and they oversold the hotel. Tired, my filters were off. I said, “It’s your fault.” I never talk to people behind counters like that (it’s been *me* behind that counter too many times), but I was actually right and quite put out. They said they’d have to put me in a special room and I was nonplussed — until I got to the room. They put me in a suite! I have two giant bay windows (kitchen, living room, dining table) with a sweeping view of the DC monuments, capitol and the Pentagon, which is like two blocks from here. I have to be careful not to get any on me when I go to BEA tomorrow. Look out — you almost stepped in some Pentagon.

They also sent up courtesy drinks and snacks to my room. I really wish I had more friends here, or especially a lover — it would be so cool to have sex in front of that view.

Anyway, I’m tired and landed, and wanted to post an update for people who want to come see me tomorrow. So if you want, I’ll be in the “signing area” at BEA from 4:30-5:30 tomorrow (saturday) looking like a sitting duck with really nice hair. Prior to that, I have my video camera and plan on seeking out christian or anti-porn book peddlers for interviews — I’m looking for advice on my porn addicition. It’s just not working. No matter how much I try, I just can’t get a habit going. I hope they can help me. Plus, christians seem to know all about worshipping a guy — I occasionally worship men but it’s on a case-by-case basis, and I could use their advice on finding “the one” like they have. I also want to know about the whole “blood of christ” thing; I want to know if when they drink his blood if they’re thirsty for more afterward. You know, stuff like that.

Like the room I’m in right now, most everything meaningful and fun has happened to me by mistake, accident or chance. It’s not an easy way to live, but at least it’s interesting. Wish me luck. I feel like I’m doing all this without a map. Right now it feels a little lonely. But I’m pretty tired, too.

Image: over the south bay from the plane this morning.

I’m sitting here in Houston, I mean George Bush Intercontinental/Houston Airport, waiting for my connecting flight. This airport is like the biggest dirty buttcrack I’ve ever seen. In addition, I just realized that I forgot to pack a single sex toy. That means I’m going to have to do everything with my HANDS. So retro.

Could be worse; I could be stuck at home watching The Da Vinci Load. Oh wait — I actually want to see that.

Everyone is staring at the sticker on my laptop.

It’s 3am and I can’t sleep — but I just spent an hour in a mosh pit and got kicked out of a leather bar with about 30 musicians and dancers, so it’s no wonder. Extra Action, and seeing all my friends in it, is the most perfect way to leave home I can think of. So since I’m up, here are a few photos I took tonight — gives you an idea about how much alcohol was spilled on me and why my clothes are soaked through with sweat from dancing. Allen and Daphne came too and brought me a present, yay! I’ll have to open it when I get back, it’s a huge box. I danced my ass off and got lots of hugs, which was just what I needed.

Photos are after the jump.

(more…)

Reader Z has alerted me to Azimuth Design’s cast resin replica Violet Vixen, obviously named and modeled after me. I can tell by looking at the comic book that comes with her that she’s a cyborg of some kind — a femmebot! — and has an itchy trigger finger. Oh, and mighty nipples. That’s how I know it’s totally me. I especially liked the instructions for “de-finning” Violet, and I have to say that it’s tempting to get one of these for myself and paint it in the right colors (black hair, green eyes). Very nice. Thanks Z!

A London reader sent me this URL to a New York Times link generator, which allows a blogger to plug in the URL to a NYT article and not have it expire when NYT archives it. This way people who read the post through archives and search engines can read the article in the future. It’s a neat trick, especially for bloggers like me who sometimes link to crusty old journalism sites. Thanks, U!

I’m packed. It took 20 minutes. Viviane wrote to tell me, “You think that Wired Rave party was straight? Boy, DC will have your skin crawling in a few hours. By all means, wear extra garters.”

Must-see geek TV! This is my favoritest video that I’ve ever been in, ever! I attended Nerd Salon and spontaneously became my Geek Entertainment TV correspondent self to interview Annalee Newitz, Jennifer Granick and Phillip Torrone. We’re all having way, way too much fun. Watch and enjoy! Text:

“How can anyone say no to cockfighting Roombas? That’s right, it’s simply not possible. GETV Roving RoboReporter Violet Blue goes deep with Nerd Salon’s high priestesses Annalee Newitz and Jennifer Granick to discover geek polination games, fighting robots and other stickiness that brings out the nerdy geek. Violet then talks to Phil Torrone, master Roomba warrior from the land of MAKE, who describes the impossible mission that got the Roombas fighting.”

Nerd Salon and Roomba Cockfights (geekentertainment.tv)

Update: video embed after the jump!

(more…)

I spent the entire day offline yesterday — almost. It was the pause that refreshed. Actually, I had breakfast with my friend Geoff Cordner and his beautiful, whipsmart partner Eden — they were visiting from LA because Geoff had a film in the Docfest. After breakfast I took Mark some lunch and gave my visitors a short tour of the SRL shop. Next I rushed over to the Haight to meet Mark Morford for coffee and some much-needed catching up and pep talking; I’m leaving friday morning to visit DC to sign books at Book Expo America and and get my award for best erotica book of 2006. So basically, I’ve been in a state of freaked-out unhingedness all week; Mark M has helped keep me sane by emailing me things like “Do you bring an assortment of wigs? Corsets? With what do you terrify the authors of ‘Ten Easy Steps to Crocheting Yourself to Jesus’?” Our conversation was pretty much along those lines; not to mention a wonderfully heated discussion about whether porn marketed as “interracial” is racist or not. I’ll post thoughts on this soon.

I cam home, put on pajamas (at 5pm!) and made the big plan to paint toenails, blog, paint fingernails, video podcast, repeat. But I checked my mail and saw a surprise — snarky poo-poo pants “I invented gangsigns on the internets” Sean Bonner was in town for almost 24 hours! I called him, and he had scored passes to the Wired Rave Awards and wanted me to be their plus-one. I asked what to wear and he said, “I dunno. We’re not really invited.” Metblogs party crash — cool! Except I had to be there in 45 minutes; like my World Horrorcon party crash, I threw on the black dress, sock garters, fake eyelashes and clop-clopped out the door…

Really great photo of me and Sean by Jason DeFillippo. See more photos from the party at this Metblogs post; skip the rest of this post if you don’t care for my personal digressions.

(more…)