I brought my own press pass to the event, which I highly recommend to anyone wanting free wifi and uncomfortable, upskirt-cameraphone-shot-producing beanbag chairs. I’m listening to Robert Scoble talk about the ‘blogger suite’ at the Bellagio (for CES, I guess) while uploading… Must be nice! New photos start here, two new videos; this one shows how tired I am, this one is a funny domination story. This is the cocksock who called me a bitch last night and told me “I don’t like you” when I snapped his pic (click the pic for the full story). Otherwise I’m having a great time and am being recognized by listeners and fellow podcasters like crazy — it’s so cool meeting everyone, including the Libsyn guys and hanging out with the Blip.tv hotties. Mike from Blip asked me, Melissa and Casey to go speak with him onstage about videoblogging in five minutes, so I gotta go… but I think I’ll skip the awards ceremony later where Dawn and Drew will get an award for ‘best mature podcast’ and Sex is Fun gets one for ‘health and fitness’. I was surprised to discover that Sex is Fun had never heard of 2257… more thoughts on that later.

Update: okay, I’m sitting in the speaking area — Blip pulled me onstage out of the audience during the videoblogging presentation! People clapped and said yay and “awwww!” OMG!!! Then they asked me why people should videoblog and podcast; I answered basically because the media distribution channels are now open to anyone, *we should*. People clapped and said yay! Then later I talked a lot about GETV and what makes us successful in what we do. Now people want to take pictures with me but I’m ignoring them so I can blog… it’s sort of a reflex to all this attention I guess… That photo — the guy who wrote the book “Tricks for the Podcasting Masters” bookended and framed his whole sex chapter on me and asked me to sign it, wow! More here and here.

This is a dark video I shot in the pool tonight after midinght; we snuck in and I asked my lawyer (here’s her Flickr) to tell me about her craziest tricks as a sex worker. I really like how this video came out. We’re at a shitty hotel for the podcast media expo and we’re wondering whytf GETV can’t/isn’t vlogging at this lame con; follow my photos here:

http://tinynibbles.fotki.com/podcast-media-expo-pms/

Photo album RSS here: http://feeds.fotki.com/tinynibbles/album_srsqkgwdbsrgf.rss

My lawyer and I arrived by grace of Google (maps). Right now it’s 4:15am and we’re in codesignal.com’s room at the Marriott for the wifi, uploading…

This week’s column for the Chronicle over at SFGate is now live — and incredibly, they included one of my links. Who’s the lucky link-ee? San Francisco Sex Information! But wait — they linked to my site in my bio!!!!! Hey, it’s a good start, and I’m sure they’ll get all kinds of great, typo-riddled hatemail for it.

Being linked from the Gate is great for SFSI — and if you’re interested in taking classes at SFSI (and seeing me lecture about sexuality in person, along with many other great educators) now’s the time to sign up and apply for their Fall 2006 Sex Educator Training!

Read Open Source Sex: Beer with SFSI

Links I originally submitted with this column, but removed, are:

* Gold’s Gym in the Castro
* Piedmont Boutique
* Good Vibrations
* Kink.com
* Planned Parenthood

And wonderfully, as of yesterday afternoon my column now has a syndicated LiveJournal feed for it — thanks to Pirate. How sweet!!! It’s at:

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/violetbluesfg/

Hope you enjoy my 2am podcast, woo-hoo! My life is so chaotic this week, this has been the only time I’ve had to do this. In 8 hours I leave with my lawyer for the PME this weekend…

Snip from Open Source Sex 46: Female Anatomy for Pleasure:

Female anatomy for pleasure! This episoide is my lecture on female genital anatomy — not for reproduction, as in every other treatment of the topic, but instead *purely* for sexual pleasure. Learn more (and plenty of oral techniques) in my book Ultimate Guide to Cunnilingus, and enjoy this textcast by reading the transcript below, or on your iPod by clicking the center trackwheel three times.

Read the text and see the post here; download the MP3 directly here.

Note: this is not authorized use of the Boing Boing logo!

I’m thrilled to be in the latest Boing Boing podcast! It’s their second episode ever of Boing Boing Boing, a sort-of “best of” Boing Boing where the team chats about their favorite recent posts and then gangs up on a guest — someone they really like. And I’m beside myself with excitement they had me on the show!

It was one of my favorite podcasts I’ve ever been on, namely because they are all smart and funny and kinda see things sideways; but I loved being able to chat about signifigant BB posts with the people who posted them. This episode featured guns a lot, which I enjoyed highly, and intersex issues (covered in this NYT article; but please read this article I assigned to Thomas Roche years ago in the GV Magazine and ISNA for accurate information on the topic). But we also talked a lot about sexuality on the web — namely the kind of information disseminaiton I’ve been doing through various online media tools, and what we all think it means. Very cool stuff. I especially liked talking with them about their sexuality-related recent posts.

Thank you and big, big smooch to Boing Boing for including me in their excellent new series. Here’s their post on the podcast; here’s a direct link to the MP3; here’s their podcast RSS; here they are in iTunes.

I can’t sit still, ever, so I added a few cool new things to the Tiny Nibbles store! Check out the BLF-inspired NSFW zip front hoodies, all in pink or black — bold NSFW women’s; pocket (nsfw) women’s; pocket (nsfw) men’s. I also made little logo buttons (so cute), and added three left-handed coffee mugs — logo + URL; sexy geek; plain logo. I’m a righty but I wanted a lefty mug because then when I gak out on coffee and death-grip my cup, people can see what’s on my mug.

Jonno wrote me,

>> where are you, o Violet Blue?
>> i miss you for my love is true.

It’s good to be back. On sunday afternoon, right when I was wrapping up the podcast I did with Boing Boing (!), I noticed something weird happening in my inbox — and it was like a cascading black waterfall of spam down my screen. I realized I was under attack, or something. Then a minute later, I got an account auto-shutdown notice from my (now former) host. A quick call to a service number got a really rude guy who insisted *I was the spammer* and wouldn’t turn my account back on. Tiny Nibbles had been taken offline, and a quick check revealed that I was locked out of *all files* in my account. I couldn’t even get in, and my last backup was partial. It felt like a plastic bag had been pulled over my head.

The full story is after the jump — but I wouldn’t be back online if it wasn’t for my friend Scott Beale (who talked me off a ledge) and Laughing Squid (my new host with the most); Squishy, the beauty who spent a full day lovingly sweetly tenderly moving the *past 5 years of my life* to the new server (and talking me through the darkness, which finally ebbed today); and Jonathan Moore who provided hours of info and insight into what most likely happened during the attack (and took in a wayward panicked girl just before midnight on sunday with a Mac Mini stuffed in her motorcycle bag).

(more…)

A server attack sunday afternoon forced me to move to a new host. This post is a test to see if I broke my blog in the process.

(more…)

I didn’t write that nametag, and it was fun to wear at a party last night. The reaction to my roller-coaster-ride Chronicle column launch is astounding. First, they finally gave me an RSS feed for it. Hope this can help readers who don’t use adware blocks to avoid the annoyingly retro SFGate popups. The bus shelter ad pranks, I have discovered, are not limited to shelters but they actually plastered buses with them too! I got a very sweet smoochy email from the proprietor of Club Kiss about the column, so nice to know they liked it. There are two incredible posts about all of this chaos, and most especially spanking the Chron hard about pulling my links — read the congratulatory bitch-slap heard ’round the blogosphere (and a pic of the VBNSFW tagged MUNI bus) on Boing Boing in Violet Blue’s SF Chronicle column debut: “Open Source Sex.” Then, see what respected photographer Thomas Hawk has to say about how the Chron’s handling me in Does the San Francisco Chronicle Get Blogging?

Drunken girl home alone birthday update: NSFW spelled backwards is: WFSN = Who’s Fucking Safe Now?

Just sayin’.

I almost wrecked my motorcycle when I saw this — at the corner of Mission and Fifth, in direct sight of the Chronicle building! It’s telling people to read my column! I found out about it from someone at the Chron, who emailed me a few hours ago saying:

> There’s a muni billboard across the street from the paper with your mug
> 7 times life size

And a Chron/SFGate editor also emailed, asking who did it. I had no idea until I got close — and saw the fine print, reading billboardliberationfront.com!!!!!! It’s the wrong URL for them — but if it’s the BLF that did this, I have now received all the love from the universe I can handle — and it looks like SF’s underground arts culture approves (and gave the Chron a good public poke). These billboard-paste-sniffing ad hackers/pranksters are my heroes! I’m in a serious state of happy happy happy shock. Then on the way home I found the one people have been telling me is at Market and Castro and almost wrecked again! I screeched over and shot a few more pics — the whole album is here.

I love the placement of the one at the Chron building, that took some serious bravado to put that up, and it’s wonderfully in line of sight for Phil Bronstein’s office, and other Chron staff. Even better, I know that lots of Good Vibes staff have had to walk by it today; the place I quit because the marketing manager thought I was too ‘edgy’ to appeal to their target market. Ha! And wonderfully, it’s right in front of the Old San Francisco Mint; back when it was still in operation, I went on a 4th grade field trip to see pennies made. And on top of all this, it’s Folsom weekend and these will be seen by an influx of over 400,000 kinky tourists.

Eeeeep! My boobies are on Market street!!!!

::flop::

Someone really did put my pictures in bus shelters around San Francisco. Holy holy holy shit. Another, different friend sent this in. These images are from my website. I’ve been pranked in the most incredible way! Eeeeeek!

I’m hyperventilating. And afraid to go outside!

My Chron column is *now live* on SFGate, yayayayay!!!! It looks ultra-fabulous OMGWTFBBQ!!! This is amazing! Even if this is the only one ever, it is a huge step for sex-positivity, old and new media, San Francisco sex culture (and SF notoriety in general) and accurate sex information — not to mention that it feeds and fuels my lifelong goals to normalize sex and change the cultural conversation about sex within my generation. The fact that entities like the Chron are taking steps to be more inclusive with participatory media, like bringing bloggers like me on is a big deal. It’s really showing that bloggers (and vloggers) are now leading changes in media — now that the old media have lost their stranglehold on distribution channels (and therefore on dissemination of information) the playing field is becoming more level and information distribution is becoming democratized. Still can’t believe I’m doing this.

Of course, because it’s me (and it’s sex), it didn’t happen without issue. At the last minute, the publisher got freaked out about my links and so (for now, I think) my column will be running without links to any of the sites or topics I’m talking about. Yeah, it’s *weird* for an online column… And dude — they don’t even link to Tiny Nibbles from my column’s page. But the Chron and I are continuing to talk about it and the topic is by no means closed. My advocates there see the silliness in it too, so go ahead and make fun of them — and know that people who work there will agree with you. Why did they pull my links? I’m not sure. It’s obvious that whoever at the top spazzed about a sex column’s links are people making decisions who have no idea about how the internet works. I mean, who the fuck reads articles without links in them? And how much shit will I get for writing about someone and not linking to them, even though I’m not doing the HTML? But hey, old media is catching up and I’m excited to be part of it. That they allow someone like me — blogger, vlogger, pro-porn pundit, unconventional female, antagonistically sex-positive — in their pages is quite a coup, regardless. It’s just the beginning. I’ll just keep applying more lube to the Chron, and see if I can get to *second base*. Or at least teach the people in charge who wigged out how to spell “NSFW”. It’s *their* learning process.

In the meantime, I’ll post all the relevant links to my column here each time my column goes up.

So groove on my column for the Chronicle/SFGate, Violet Blue’s Open Source Sex: Club Kiss. Relevant links not included in my column are:

* The female Elvis impersonator works at Stockroom.com
* Viva Las Vegas
* Folsom Street Fair
* Eyes Wide Shut
* Club Kiss
* Foreign Cinema
* Club Kiss atmosphere
* the music at Club Kiss
* apply for membership at Club Kiss
* online testimonials for Club Kiss

Update: Ryanishungry interviewd me in my living room 1 hour before my column went live! It’s an incredible post. Watch it here.

Update: Scott Beale has the sweetest post up about my new column at Laughing Squid (he used one of my favorite SRL/Beale photos, too!) Thank you!!!!

Update: Whoah — check out the Chron’s press release.

Update: I’m getting lots of positive email and congratulations, thank you! But I also just got this gem via SFGate feedback email: “Violet Blue column puts you in the ranks of x rated rags, disgusting.”

Update: Werd — I guess they’re keeping me. I just got my RSS feed.

Supposedly from a bus shelter here in SF? A friend just sent it to me. Uh… anyone know about this, or its location?

I’ve been mulling over a whole bunch of changes to this site for a few days — actually I’ve been depressed, with a few high points, you know, it’s my birthday soon and birthdays have a way of being really great and sucking all at once. Like having my server go down for a while yesterday, and finding out that the impostor stupid racist porn performer who keeps using my name is at Exotic Erotic here in town this october — it’s not me, just someone trading on my name and making it look in local advertising like I’d do *anything* at that shitty event. And my stomach hurts. And I think I’ll be hanging with myself on my birthday, which is weird (Mark P is outta town, or I’d work on machines). So today I spent the day doing what Virgos like to do when we feel upset; organize, clean, spiff up and touch all the objects that constitute meaning in our environments. Actually, I got the bestest, truest Virgo birthday quote this week: I was at SRL monday and hung out a while with my SRL sibling Bob. It was early afternoon and he was drinking a beer — and I happened to be there on his birthday! I was all like, “me too! this friday!” And he replied, ‘yeaaaaah, Virgos!” We clinked, his beer to my special Mark Pauline soy latte with chocolate sprinkles. He continued, “yeah, Virgos fuckin’ rule. ‘I clean the house *and* I’ll fuck the shit out of you!’” I think I shot latte out my nose laughing…

So, updates: take a look around! My front age check page now has a cute new photo taken last weekend; and the really big change is that it now links directly to my blog. I made the old “main” page into a full-on page of my books. I added six new sex podcasts, bringing the total of my curated collection of sex podcasts up to an amazing 45. I re-did my links page and added lots — more incredible resources, more friends, more sex culture blogs. The couples page is much more involved and has more info, as does the erotica page. And a fun update is on the articles/HOWTO page, where I’ll be adding more howto’s as I write them. I also tweaked the porn page a bit, and rearranged my top and left-hand nav. I think everything flows a bit better. I really want to add sitewide search — that’s next.

A reader writes, “V,

Saw this in Second Life and thought you might find it interesting. Essentially, people volunteer to be remotely controlled sex dolls.”

Check it out while it lasts at this URL: “Real Slut: Three Hole Edition. A living, breathing sex doll.”

Anyone know more about this?

Update: Lots of responses to this! Two fun ones to post here… Starting with the owner of the Flickr photostream I linked to, who tells us, “I noticed you’ve got a picture up from my Flickr account showing The Real Sex Doll from Second Life. That’s actually a photo I posted that goes with a blog feature I just did on the SL resident who created that doll (as well as some other interesting products.) The Real Slut and The Real Sex Doll are two separate products, only one of which (The Real Slut) offers a degree of control over the user who becomes the ’slut.’ Everything is explained in detail in my post.” Read Becoming the Real Slut in Second Life.

Also Evil Signtist writes, “hey just read your post about 2nd life. did you happen to track back the flicker set? check out all the peni!”

This is one of those moments when I realize I live a truly charmed life — remember the movie that won Seattle’s amateur porn contest/fest, HUMP! 2, put on by The Stranger? I waxed at length about Cum On Love, Bo Logan is Waiting, how sweet and funny and heartwarming it was, which was surely why it won.. and guess what!?

BO LOGAN EMAILED ME!!!!!!! w00t! w00t! w00t! Throw your panties on the stage! Free mustache rides!

The world’s sexiest retired fake porn star, the man with the moves the ladies can’t resist — Bo Logan himself — emailed me today and said,

> i am/was the infamous bo logan in the
> HUMP entry CUM ON LUV! i just wanted
> to thank you for your shining review of our
> film.

Of course, like all proper whores, he has a MySpace page.

Also, it has come to my attention that local sex toy retailer Good Vibes is now attempting to create an amateur porn fest like HUMP!. Hmmmm.

I’ve been sick and overworked this week. I’m going out!

Update: So… about last night. Extra Action snuck me into a $125 per-person Friends of the Earth benefit at Broadway Studios in North Beach, and madness/inebriation ensued. I was calling it the “Friends of Ben Franklin benefit”, and it was packed with upper crusty San Francisco rich people. Like, you know how when you pick up a copy of San Francisco Magazine or 7×7 magazine and you see all these pictures of rich skinny white society people and you’re all like “who the *fuck* are these people? do they live in San Francisco?” Well, it was those people.

Actually, my SRL pal and EA trumpet player Greg Jones snuck me in — usually my ex boyfriend lets me tag along, but he had a *date* and didn’t want me to cockblock him, I guess, so he told me I couldn’t go with him. I was good and did not cockblock.

These gigs with the super square crowds are always my favorites; the crowd ‘takes a walk on the wild side” and the band has a lot of fun with them, even if it winds up looking like a bachelorette party sometimes. Everyone had to wear name tags; Shane and Serina had good ones, I got one so they couldn’t toss me out when I didn’t produce a horn or pom-pom at showtime. I took three great videos of the flag team; this is hot, this is sexy, this is fun. There was a hoity-toity silent auction, fancy free food, and cops. When I took this picture, Mark Leno kissed me and said in front of his crowd, “Violet, *you are a flirt*.” Flag team insanity ensued and then the ridiculousness continued outside. We were wasted, and the party almost came back to my house. I drunk dialed two of my current boyfriends after midnight and one ex; at least two of those three phone calls were little more than shrieks and giggles on my end before hanging up. I got asked out on dates by three different guys I actually want to go out with, and I made out with a hot boy for like two minutes in a North Beach parking lot.

Exactly what I needed. The entire album is here. Favorite pictures after the jump.

(more…)

Lots of podcasty goodness here… First, check out a fresh crop of sex podcasts over at Fleshbot in my new post (The Return Of!) Sexy Podcasts. Next, I’ve been busy with Open Source Sex this week. I added a new feed just for erotica — some of you have been wanting an erotica-only feed, and so combined with iTunes’ requests it made perfect sense — go ahead and fondle the RSS over at open source sex :: erotica. You’ll notice I nibbled and bit the template of my podcast blog a bit and it’s got a nicer new look. I also figured out how to podcast a .pdf, which I’ll do next. Multimedia sex ed, for reals.

And how did I resolve the iTunes erotica removal? I was hard-pressed to take the episodes out of my feed (half my episodes to date), so I migrated the erotica over to the new feed and then got super sad about losing the stats (they’re fun to look at) and the post comments from over the past year and a half. It was Libsyn to the rescue — they walked me through a sweet hack to block individual episodes from iTunes, so excellent.

And now the podcast! One of my favorite topics, bending over the boyfriends… yummy! Snip from Open Source Sex 45:

Prostate pleasure for couples! To celebrate my brand-new book The Adventurous Couple’s Guide to Sex Toys, listen to me smilingly talk you through an intro to male anal pleasure from the “bend over boyfriend” chapter. Here, you’ll find out about prostate pleasure, how couples can get started and have a lot of fun with male anal penetration, and a strap-on sex primer for couples. There’s a lot more detailed info about this *delightful* sex act in the book, and you can hear hot erotica about it in Open Source Sex episodes 8, 31 and 40.

This is a textcast; if you got this podcast in iTunes and want to read along (or refer back to the information later), click the center of your iPod’s trackwheel three times and scroll through the text at your leisure. You can also read it in iTunes on your computer.

Link to post; link to MP3. Link to Open Source Sex in iTunes, where you can get the textcast. Image of Aria Giovanni by Steve Diet Goedde, via Stockroom.

I just registered to attend the Podcast and Portable Media Expo at the end of the month. It looks like The Learning Annex Donald Trump Real Estate Wealth Expo, but for podcasting. But, like, omigawd, all my friends are going! Well, okay, all my friends I never met in person. And I am not ‘invited’ to go or anything like that. I just registered as — Occupation: ‘wetware hacker’; Kind of podcaster: ‘iTunes’ redheaded stepchild’; Reason to attend expo: ‘to crash it’; Heard about it from: ‘inebriated videobloggers’. And I just got my reg number — starting with 666. This is so perfect. I’m going to bring another troublemaker with me, and we’ll podcast/videoblog the whole thing. I will call this person my lawyer. I am also going to bring roofies to use on the Blip.tv guys, a very expensive and delicious inebriant, federally prohibited fuel injected lubricant, and a piece of toast that looks a little like Adam Curry. I mean, one look at the website and it’s definitely a bring-your-own-party party. Seriously. Learning. Annex.

My schedule at the PME:
* show up, huff Lemon Pledge from a thigh-high stocking, begin recording audio
* heckle Leo Laporte
* slap a Laughing Squid sticker on his back when he turns around in an angry huff
* meander aimlessly telling anyone who will listen that I have “7 Proven Strategies to Monetize Your Podcast in 30 Days or Less” in my pants
* find beercasters
* use knowledge gleaned from the ‘godcasters’ PME forum and find their meetup; begin the praise jesus barf bonanza from fuel attained in beercasters’ private coolers, videoblog entire scene from start to finish while explaining I bring the immortal gift of vomit to godcasting
* wander back to expo while vicodin kicks in; display buttocks to Microsoft/AMD Blogger Lounge and passing conference attendees while bragging about being a judge for the Vloggies
* find beers stashed earlier in the day
* heckle Andrew Michael Baron about quality of porn on Rocketboom; demand to hump his wooden leg
* wonder loudly where all the hot babes are
* ask if I can take a nap at the Libsyn booth; when denied, realize that by expo standards I am a “hobbyist”, weep openly
* commence after party

Update: I now have a lawyer who instructs me, “as your lawyer, i advise you to add some sort of rubber microphone protector to your arsenal. and look out for hitchhikers. with irivers. ok, i am now officially attending in order to ‘represent’ and i heard about this shindig from ‘wasted podshow staffers last year.’

it promised me ‘attendee tools.’ i believe we’ll have those in abundance.”

You know I got my copy early, but now it’s out! It’s here! People can buy it! A friend from Good Vibes called and told me it looks lovely on the shelves! Even more incredible, read what the esteemed Library Journal Review (!!!) says about it:

“Blue, Violet. The Adventurous Couple’s Guide to Sex Toys. Cleis. Oct. 2006. c.160p. illus. ISBN 1-57344-254-2 [ISBN 978-1-57344-254-1]. pap. $14.95.
PSYCH
Sex toys have been associated with masturbation and alternative sexual lifestyles-i.e., gay, lesbian, or otherwise gender-kinky. This how-to presents toys as safe and fun options for heterosexual couples. Blue, author of numerous excellent sex guides from Cleis Press, concisely covers all the usual suspects: vibrators, dildos, plugs, ‘toys for boys,’ BDSM (bondage & discipline/sadomasochism) gear, how to talk about toys with your partner, and how to use them. What’s new: sex machines, online sex for two, exotic and luxury toys (some mind-bending notions here), and ’sex furniture.’ It’s a short book, but she surveys the wide variety of products very well, with ample safe-sex and safety reminders. Small black-and-white drawings show toys only, perhaps an advantage for many libraries, although more numerous and colorful drawings of the toys, and the toys in use, could be quite attractive and helpful. A competent resource section gives where-to-buy web addresses, other web sites of interest, and books. Recommended for public libraries.”

I caught the Friday night 8pm showing of HUMP! 2, Seattle’s annual amateur porn festival and competition, and I may never be the same. The Stranger’s blog has the results and great comments on the videos; I wish I could have stayed for the afterparty. I would have totally humped Bo Logan’s third leg. (Did anyone get his phone number from the film’s credits?) I waited in line, and watched all the selections in a hot little packed art house theater filled with an excited, rambunctious crowd, and had the following thoughts, in order:

* omigawd that is hot.
* ug. this is lame.
* it is sad some people think copying mainstream porn is what constitutes porn. I am sad.
* I hope one of these films is about girls getting off. Soon.
* ohJEEZUSFUCK I never want to have sex again.
* holy shit, this film is incredible and cute and hot and hilarious and my face hurts from laughing.
* yay bend over boyfriend!
* oh, I *knew* Jack was a leatherfag.
* that gangbang is the most depressing thing I’ve ever seen. now I weep in the popcorn.
* wtf — this is a pro porn film. how lame. I shall fix my lipstick now.
* eeep, that thing is HUGE. the dick that ate Seattle.
* whoah, they are really doing this in public. I am not feeling very sex positive anymore.

More after the jump.

(more…)

It’s not as sexy as it sounds. I’m just sitting here up-and-downloading my podcast for iTunes today so I’m in a weird bandwidth suckhole (again, it only *sounds* hot in pixels) where I have to stay at the computer but can’t actually *do* anything. I have a big HUMP! and Seattle wrap in the works and all kinds of cool new sex books + links I’ve discovered, etc., but in the meantime… The Sex is Fun podcast interviewed me and now it’s live (MP3 link). Yay! My itsy-bitsy Seattle album is up. Yay! And since I’m stuck at the compooter for the next few days getting pressing work done, like (ahem) finishing a book that was due on the 1st, I plan on going out like a rabid dating and dancing animal every night this week if I can get enough done. So, being utterly stir crazy today, I made this ‘trouble’ iMix. I know, I know, it’s bitch-hop pop, so sue me…

Update! Eeeee! A big sloppy wet kiss on all my lips from Seattlest! Plus, they weigh in on my take on The Craigslist Experiment.

When I got home from Seattle, there was a present for me on my doorstep — Phillip sent me a copy of the new Make Magazine #7! Yay! It’s extra-special because in this issue they did a huge Maker Profile on the person closest to me in my life, Mark Pauline. It’s all good — “Mark Pauline’s Machine Mayhem” is an amazing piece written by David Pescovitz and is required reading for anyone who is a fan or even just curious about how Survival Research Labs got started, evolved and why we do all the dangerous and exciting things we do by redirecting tech, robotics, science, industrial equipment, and cultural iconography. What’s really great is that all the photos are by Scott Beale, our official unofficial photographer, member, and friend. I spent two full days combing the SRL photo archives for machine images to help with the piece, so the home delivery of the issue is a sweet, deeply appreciated gesture.

Oh yeah, I think there’s other cool stuff in the magazine too. And you can tell how much I like the cover! Thank you, Phillip.

Here’s a bonus cute photo I took of Mark at SRL yesterday.

Last Monday Seattle resident Jason Fortuny (and a friend) carried out a thought experiment into reality — one I think anyone who has surfed Craigslist sex ads has entertained. He took a hardcore Women Seeking Men ad from another city and reposted it to see how many replies he could get in 24 hours (the ad’s photo after the jump). Then he published every single response — photos, emails, IM info, phone numbers, names, everything, to a public wiki (Encyclopedia Dramatica — site is up and down, check back if down). Then they went public on Jason’s LiveJournal page calling it The Craigslist Experiment, inviting readers to identify the CL ad’s responders and add more info (”Your Goal: identify people you know IRL and point them out. We’ve already had great successes here.”) It has turned into quite a meme, getting posted all over the place.

(more…)

As I’ve described previously in this article, this podcast lecture and as it was all Boinged last March, mass-made sex toys contain toxins. But now someone’s doing something about it, read Sex Toys Contain Toxins. Snip:

“The Hague - Environmental group Greenpeace called on Friday on the European Union to ban the use of chemical plastic softeners in sex toys because they contained dangerous substances known as phthalates.

‘Adult sex toys contain the same toxic substances that EU banned from use in children’s toys,’ said Greenpeace. The environmental group said it was shocked to find that seven of the eight sex toys it had tested contained between 24% and 51% of phthalates.

‘It is unbelievable that such toxic substances can be used in adult toys.’”

More articles here; Greenpeace’s statement here.

When people think of Seattle I think they conjure… rain, Microsoft, coffee, bad movies like Singles and Sleepless in, bad TV sitcoms — also, the fierce WTO protests, the (now sadly defunct) Infernal Noise Brigade and a restless art scene. Coming to Seattle for HUMP! has had me really thinking about how much the sex-positive scene up here has changed the sexual landscape across the country, plus how much global online sex culture is influenced and fueled by Seattle sites and blogs. Working for Fleshbot I’ve become familiar with Seattle’s (ahem) finest, and I feel like not many people know about Seattle’s influence on my work, sex blogging worldwide, sex education, sex toys, sex machines and porn.

HUMP! is a great example of what I’m feeling right now about how Seattle is pushing ever forward with sex culture in America. Something as wildly popular as HUMP! takes porn out of the hands of small-minded southern California businesses and shows that “porn by the people, for the people” is viable, valid, thriving, healthy and fun. This film fest started small last year but exploded in its second round, with fourteen sold out shows starting tonight and hundreds of entries my friends at The Stranger told me are of incredibly high quality. Believe me — read the film reviews of the homemade hardcore films I’ll be seeing tonight (and know it’s a boiled-down sampling of the over 3 hours of under 8-minute films that were submitted for the fest). People did this!

So Seattle — thank you. Thank you for all of this and more:

* The Stranger: Dan Savage and infamous Savage Love, Mistress Matisse, Lippy Imp.
* Jane’s Guide — Jane Duvall’s site with a terrific Seattle sex events section.
* Lots of people make porn in Seattle.
* But there’s more porn made here, as in sex machines and teledildonics — The Thrillhammer is here.
* So is House of Gord.
* They make hot gay porn here, too — thank you Daddyoohhh! Productions.
* Sex bloggers that blow my mind: Figleaf, Mistress Matisse, Twisted Monk, and there are many more.
* A big sexual cornerstone on the web is here: Sexuality.org (Society for Human Sexuality).
* Seatle is the home of New Horizons, legendary swinger’s club.
* At the heart of the matter: the Wet Spot.
* Babeland started here.
* The Lusty Lady is here.
* I’m only skimming the surface of Seatle’s scene — check out this amazing Seattle sex guide.
* You can find buttloads of Tantra here — Body Electric is the most famous.
* There are bathouses for the gayboys (like this one), and at least one dyke bar.
* Holy shit, the Seattle Erotic Art Festival is famous, we post about it on Fleshbot every year.
* Must mention at least two great erotic artists from Seattle: Francisco Guererro and Krysztof Nemeth.

Oh and a mouthful of sex can be found at Cupcake Royale. Gahhhh… I had one for breakfast….

Okay, so now I’m a super nerd; I’m in a cute hipster bar that has wifi by myself (Chac: surrounded by cute guys + girls), sipping beer and blogging. It’s *that bad*. But hey, as you can see by the small selection of pics in this post I had a hell of a day. I got an incredible tour of Twisted Monk’s rope factory and then got a sort of rope 101 demo — I didn’t make it to the big winch, but after being tied into rope (fair trade, hand-treated, no chemical vegan rope) corsets, facial and hair bondage, and then being suspended from a water main on the second story, I was wiped out (and happy). I’m really, really enjoying Seattle — I know it’s my kind of town when I can wander around with my laptop and find cold beer, wifi and a table by the wall. Plus, everyone I’ve come in contact with is really, really nice.

Tomorrow I’ll do a bigger post and upload all the amazing photos from today, plus lots of cool ones from my wandering around Seattle. Great people, delicously strong coffee, cheap beer and great sushi — I really love this town. I haven’t connected with too many people face-to-face but am enjoying my time alone in such a cool city. Plus, there is so much sex culture here — sex positive awesomeness — that I’m overwhelmed enough to have to do a sexy Seattle wrapup… Later! Right now, the cute boys are avoiding the dork in the corner of the bar… :)

* One minute update: Now that I’m about to publish they are not avoiding me…

** Um, a little bit later update from the bar (barblogging!): under the influence video post here. Being chatted up by really cute guys from this.

(more…)

I’m in Seattle right now and it’s like 80 degrees — very different from cool SF. I am super excited about seeing the indy porn festival this weekend — HUMP! has completely sold out and they have had to extend the run to *fourteen* shows!

Meanwhile tomorrow I get a tour of the rope factory and get tied up! Seattle rocks.

As a postscript, this is a crazy experimental blog post. I am at this very minute blogging in Movable Type and about to post using my Blackberry 8700 phone. It’s scary but if it works I just might actually grab a bottle of Liquid Silk and make sweet love *to my phone*. At least until I get to a wifi hotspot, anyway…

Blackberry blogging is fierce, yes?

Today I woke up to an email from Apple, saying that they wanted to talk to me about keeping Open Source Sex — my podcast — in their iTunes directory. After a minute of phone tag, I had a half-hour conversation about sex podcasts, iTunes, their TOU and me. We made agreements to keep my podcast in their directory (and I got a lot of questions answered). In fact, I kind of grilled the director, in a friendly way. It’s all very intersting; read more after the jump.

(more…)

I mean, my local Planned Parenthood Golden Gate has a terrific tool-themed commercial — with a very sexy construction worker babe in the starring role and a *great* idea for how I should be storing my safer sex supplies and sex toys. Here’s a link to watch the .mov video and one to watch the .wmv video — too bad there’s no embed option for this. (I almost snagged and uploaded it so I could — uh — stuff it in my post). This ad is from April, but went under my radar — though hilariously, it came up loud and clear for the American Life League, who immediately sent out this press release with the headline “Planned Parenthood’s TV Commercial Raises the Bar for the Depths of Depravity.” American Life League elaborated saying, “The ad is beyond disgusting. The entire scenario is wrought with sexual innuendo regarding the connection between power tools and sexual performance.”

Wow, I never thought of that. That last line is, like, a huge turn-on. It may in fact be the summarized, unintentional script for my personal sex life. See you at Home Depot.