Good Vibrations honors me. Um, I really just wrote that. It’s Halloween. Is it also backwards day? Seriously, I can’t believe what they wrote about me. Someone must have put E in the office Halloween candy bowl and put the copywriter in front of a computer aimed at “blogs” with a vibrating mouse and lubed up the links.

Am going to go stick my head in a pumpkin now. Eeee!

I had a lot of fun with this one, my 50th podcast! Here’s the text as I wrote it sitting on the grass after reading the story and before uploading the podcast, all from the park:

Haloween erotica live from Dolores Park in San Francisco — on Halloween! Nestled between two hollowed-out trees at the top of the hill with my iBook, I have a great view of the city while I read Masquerade Ball by Xavier Action.

There’s a bit of wind, some barky dogs, and a MUNI goes by, but it’s a lot of fun to read live from the park — where I’m writing this and podcasting the file via wifi right now! In Masquerade Ball, the guests are required to wear masks at all times, making a surprise anonymous encounter even hotter.

Enjoy! Happy Halloween!!! Hooray for Open Source Sex #50!!!

link to post * link to MP3 file

Bonus: free sexy nude witch gallery — Eastern European model Darine avec pointy hat. Her tongue scares me.

Also, at Fleshbot:

* Sex Blog Roundup: Spooky Sex Edition
* Girls and Corpses: The Halloween Issue
* Living Dead Girls
* Blue Blood Graveyard Girls
* 2005 Sexy Coffins Calendar
* Zombie Pinups

Right before the San Jose show last August, we had planned on making a solid steel Mr. Satan head — a 3D scan of an old SRL machine prop from the 1980s, coordinates put into a CNC, and recreated in heavy, gorgeous silver metal. The CNC broke about 20 hours into the job and we had to put it off — I paid a visit to the shop last night to see the progress and Mr. Satan is almost done! The machine has put in over 70 hours shaping the face, and I can’t think of a better time for Mr. Satan to emerge from his slumber, and for Mark’s dream of making this happen (he’s wanted to do this since the 80s) to come true. Watch this video I took of the CNC in action smoothing out Mr. Satan’s sideburns — and keep in mind that the face is longer than my forearm.

These are awfully cute and sexy — free dirty Halloween cards from Hegre art. They’re all girls and it’s all vanilla (though one is quite explicit, yum); if anyone finds ones like this that are kinkier or feature hot boys, send them in and I’ll post ‘em here. Yay!

At Mistress Morgana’s party saturday night, there was a photo booth with Irena Solomon taking pictures of the undead parade through the dungeon — and her pics are now up! Here’s a link to the entire photo set on Solomon’s site; it’s amazing! * Here’s a link to the Hep Zombie album with my personal favorites, the ones she took of me and Mistress Morgana doing an unholy tongue-tango, spiced with my other corpse-tastic photo coupling of the night.

* Someone just emailed to tell me to hold off on the link to all the pics. Enjoy my selections for now, and I’ll update if and when I get the green light.

I spent the day yesterday off and on updating my Washington Post vs. Boing Boing post, and just sitting back and seeing how everyone reacted. I didn’t really post my personal thoughts on how Krebs (Washing Post), Singel (Wired), Norton (Wired) and Bonner (Metblogs) reacted, nor did I respond to any of them. That’s what this post is for.

What happened: I did this post about Washington Post writer Brian Krebs snagging a story (about an online boarding pass generator and the FBI fallout) from Boing Boing and not even giving a nod to the lengthy and detailed reporting already being done at BB. This happens *all the time* with Boing Boing and lots of other blogs — just read Gawker, as they call MSM Old Media Dirty Media out on it all the time. I was sick of it, and my point was to call attention to bloggers getting ripped off and having our work repurposed by dirty media.

Then: Krebs wrote me an email and I blogged it. I got lots of mail. Bonner blogged his angle, which was specifics about the story being snagged. Norton wrote me a terse email defending Krebs, then she wrote a blog post. Singel slammed bloggers on Wired and credited Bonner for my post and starting the discussion, ripped on Bonner and made it look like I was just following the boys. Bonner corrected him, Singel edited his post.

More after the jump.

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And the topic is rimming, hoo-ray! Two stories to get the week started right. First up is The Sun Don’t Shine by Elizabeth Colvin. In it, a girl wakes up with an uncontrollable urge to have her boyfriend for breakfast. Then, Anything I Want by Thomas Roche. When I lectured at SFSI on saturday I got great praise from a trainee about how hot this story was when I read it in my last podcast, so now the text is online if you’d prefer to read it. Thomas’ story is about what happens when a woman makes her ass ‘off limits’ and then in a moment of wanton weakness tells her new boyfriend he can have anything *he* wants… (Link to audio version.)

Last night was the unofficial Halloween in the Castro — lots of incredible costumes, flash mobs and parties galore. I had a last minute pre-party meetup at my house for bloodsports in my driveway, then a group including me, Annalee Newitz, Charlie Anders, Thomas Roche, Jonathan, Nina (both from SRL) and others went to Mistress Morgana’s house for a rockabilly zombie luau! That meant dressing as undead sexpots from the fifties, which I happen to have the right hair for already. At Morgana’s we were visited by a flash mob “The Birds” including not one but *three* Tippi Hedrens (see above photo), and Jackson West making a superlative cameo as none other than the king of subtle cameos, Alfred Hitchcock. Morgana and I got up to a little undead femme-on-femme action, and I’ll do another post when the photos we were posing for are online. Um — it was HOT despite the fact that our bodies were barely above room temperature…

The whole gallery starts here. Yay!

I lectured at UCSF’s annex this afternoon to SFSI trainees and had a blast. One of the instructors was wearing this shirt — how cool is that!? I talked about oral sex, and:

a) unintentionally wore socks that were pointed out to me looked just like kneepads
b) realized at one point I was in front of a group of people making fellatio motions at my own mouth to illustrate a point
c) turned beet red

I think I also said “yay cocksucking!” Oy, it’s amazing they ask me back.

So, I know many readers here also read Boing Boing, so most of you will be familiar with the big story that’s been breaking over there (and Wired) about the guy who created a fake boarding pass generator: the web page was taken offline, he was visited by the FBI, and then the FBI ransacked his place when he was gone (albeit with a warrant).

Story background is here; the follow up about the warrant is here.

Now take a close look at Xeni’s first post. Then look at how Brian Krebs at the Washington Post lifted this item, from her post graf for graf, element for element — in order of information delivery — a day later, zero credit. It’s kind of funny, especially since it’s such a watered-down version of the BB story. Also note how there’s no credit for story sources (like the OBVIOUS Boing Boing credit in this case), and the BB posts are dripping with credits, previous posts on the topic, and with links to everyone else covering the story. The very least WaPo could do is an “also seen @”, which we do at Fleshbot when an item is seen elsewhere at the same time. This is very instructive — this is how WE report stories in the blogosphere as opposed to old media, where stories come from thin air and then grow stale with no updates and no *active* community-generated information sharing and dissemination with its reporting. Watch this, I think there’s a lot to learn here.

That’s old media for ya — and they say bloggers don’t report real news, nor are we journalists.

We lead, they follow.

Yeah, don’t credit us old media, but don’t think we’re not watching you — *all* of us.

Update: Brian Krebs from the Washington Post responds to my post — after the jump.

Update 2 (10/29): Sean Bonner takes this and runs with it, roasting Krebs + MSM. You want to read this, snip:

“Krebs has now posted comments on the WaPo as well as on this post admitting that both BoingBoing broke the story and that he didn’t credit them for it.” (…)

“But more importantly - Why does any of this matter? It matters because people still assume blogs aren’t covering real issues. It matters because this is a perfect example of bloggers doing serious work, breaking stories and reporting on things that major media hasn’t even picked up on and other people piggy backing on that and taking all the credit. It matters because BoingBoing is not indexed by Google News, the WaPo is. With no mention of BB in the WaPo story Krebs gets all the credit and all the links. It matters because Google’s reason for not indexing BoingBoing is that they only cover stories other people are talking about. It matters because when bloggers make mistakes they actively work to correct them, yet when a reporter for the Washington Post neglects to mention who did the work to actually break a story he thinks all he has to do is leave a comment saying ‘A thousand pardons.’”

Read Sean’s entire dissection of WaPo/Krebs’ story-snagging in Washington Post totally rips off BoingBoing.

And, Metblogs DC is now covering this as a live story, discovering errors in Krebs’ reported timing (among other things) in WaPo Vs. BoingBoing?

Update 3: Quinn Norton defends Brian Krebs’ actions here. Fot the record, I don’t know Krebs and for me he could really be anyone in this situation. To me, it’s not about him. Meanwhile, I’m getting tons of mail about it, all in support except for the one from Quinn. A good example is this one:

Subject: Bravo on the WP ripoff
Hi there. Long-time, first-time.

Loved your smacking the Washington Post over Brian Krebs’ blantant thievery. The broader problem is that story-stealing from bloggers is considered perfectly OK at pretty much every level of the paper. (Ironic considering that they pioneered that Technorati bit.) This is nothing new for the Washinton Post.

(…) Here’s my post that the WP stole. At the top of my post is a link to the Post’s theft. I think it’s still active. Then a day or so later, here’s Fishbowl DC documenting it.

(…) One other thing: After reading the long timeline at MetblogsDC, BB, etc., I had one absurdly straightforward thought: NONE of this would have taken off if the (arrogant) WP had hat-tipped BB/Xeni in the first place. It would have been honest, it would have been simple — and it would have taken about five words.

Tyler Green
Editor, Modern Art Notes (at ArtsJournal)
“The most influential of all visual-arts blogs.” — Wall Street Journal”

Tyler brings up an excellent point. What *was* the right way to do this? In my opinion, just like this.

Also, check this email out:

Subject: Brian Krebs
Howdy,

John Gruber at Daring Fireball dissected Brian Krebs’ crappy reporting earlier this year, related to Krebs’ articles on the purported “MacBook Wi-Fi Exploit”. One of many posts, this one is specifically about Krebs.

Looks like Krebs is a mediocre journalist who is given extra leeway by his editors because he allegedly has more technical knowledge than most.

Just one example why 95% of my news comes from blogs unaffiliated with big media, generally more quickly and accurately. I’m constantly having people tell me about “breaking news” that I knew about hours, days or weeks before big media got around to covering it.

Happy setting-back-the-clocks day, Bryan

Aaaaand… Looks like one of Wired’s blogs picked this story up today — except Ryan Singel, in the act of defending Krebs, got the story wrong. He wrote “The sideshow all started when Metroblogs co-founder Sean Bonner accused Washington Post reporter Brian Krebs of plagiarizing Xeni Jardin’s work at BoingBoing in this story.” Wups! This whole thing started here, by me, with this post, and again, again, again — I never used the “p” word. Bonner tried to correct Singel in the comments. He still hasn’t corrected himself or commented on his own attribution error. Le sigh.

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Unless it’s Halloween, of course. Halloween officially began in San Francisco last night, so I’ll be celebrating it here on the blog through tuesday! Indulge in a cold, compelling slice of morbidity by checking out this dead porn star chart, which helpfully arranges the deaths of known porn stars by name, date, time, death method — and/or rumored death. My favorite death category is ‘unsure’.

It started with this email from my porn industry pal Gram:

Gram Ponante to me
Subject: Please
…tell me that it is you who are co-emceeing the Erotic Exotic Ball

> To: Gram Ponante
> Subject: Re: Please
> No, no it is not me.
> How awful.

Gram Ponante to me
Subject: Re: Re: Please
IS THE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN??
Yes. Yes, how awful.

Then I got another email from a journalist:

> Hi Violet,
> Just read your column about Behind Kink. We just shot there last night
> as part of the documentary we’re shooting of the Exotic Erotic Ball
> for Perry. I saw on the featured guest list that you will be there
> and we’d love to get an on-camera interview with you at the Ball or
> if you’re going to attend the Expo on Friday.

I wrote him and said, no, that’s not me but someone using my name. He wrote back and said:

> Damn! She had me fooled. If you’re even interested in attending the
> Ball I’d still like to get an on camera interview with you. I
> consider you a Bay Area celebrity since you write the column on SF Gate.
> So if you would like to attend, I can get you a VIP pass, call or
> email me.

Then, an email this morning from another journalist:

> See you tonight! (…)
>I’m going to the Expo tonight and I saw
your name on the flyer.

Curious about what’s going on here, and what I’m about to do about it? More after the jump.

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I’m about to leave for the Good Vibes amateur “erotic” film fest. When I went to the GV offices on monday for the screening it was the first time I’d been in that building since I literally threw my key at the marketing manager, tossed my desk belongings into a box, and walked out.

I’d emailed one of their other marketing people a week previous asking if there was a press screening for the film fest, and she’d said no. But another friend told me, yes, there is one, monday afternoon. So I went, uninvited. When I walked into the conference room, their publicity person leaned to another journalist in the room and said something along the lines of, “I’m sorry, I don’t know how she got invited.”

But I’m invited tonight. The one woman in my life who I consider my (adopted) mother is taking me. I’ll supposedly be arriving in a limo with mom Theresa Sparks, Mark Leno, Cecilia Chung, Angel, my date Jonathan Moore, and people I don’t know: Sydnee Steele, Kaylani Lei and Joy King, who supposedly launched Jenna Jameson’s career. (Trebuchet?)

It feels weird. I’d really rather be up to my neck in machine grease. I’ll update with photos and videos later.

Update: after the jump.

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This week’s Chronicle column is a doozy, on many fronts. In Porn: It’s Not Just for Breakfast I spend an average monday shadowing the Behind Kink documentary film crews at local BDSM/kinky porn online mega-empire Kink.com; then I visit Good Vibrations for some very weird vibrations about their fear of the word ‘porn’. I tie it all together as a fine context for understanding CNN’s current porn hysteria, Nerve.com testifying at the COPA trials this week — all while Morality in Media and the Bush administration’s “Protection from Porn Week” is set to begin this sunday. (Photo gallery from the day is here, though sorry, no boobies!)

Right after I filed the piece to the Chronicle, I saw new press hit Google News, Anti-Pornography Week Starts Sunday, where “Morality in Media is asking people to wear a White Ribbon Against Pornography for the week of Oct. 29 through Nov. 5.”

A white ribbon. Think Bush will wear one?

I read that and thought… white ribbon. Okay, red ribbon is AIDS. Pink ribbon is breast cancer. White for purity seems so… uh… southern. It *must* have another meaning. There’s got to be some kind of intelligent design sense behind all this, right? Clearly, my answers were in the one community that has literal translations for wearing colors symbolically. So, according to gay hanky codes, the white ribbon will mean different things depending on what shade of white, and what side you wear it on. Here’s a helpful guide to keep you stylish *and* sending the right message:

* A pure white ribbon worn on the left will mean “beat my meat (likes to be jacked off)”, while a white ribbon on the right signals “I’ll do us both (mutual masturbation)”
* A cream-colored ribbon affixed to the left says “comes in condoms” (so no barebacking with those twink congressional interns this week), and worn on the right proclaims the wearer to enjoy “sucking the come out of condoms”.
* White lace (a lovely choice for ladies) on the right is for morality fetishists who “like white bottoms”, and our gentle lace lovers who pin their ribbons on the left want us to know they prefer “white tops”.
* White velvet ribbons look great anywhere — in front of the abortion clinic, Crystal Cathedral or Oval Office — and on the right will say the wearer is a “voyeur: likes to watch”, and on the left gracefully states the wearer “will put on a show”.

Read the article and see how much fun (of the trouble-making kind) I’m having with/at the Chronicle. No, they were too scared of boobies (and maybe overlarge electrified butt plugs) to link to Kink.com or Behind Kink, but I’m not worried about people finding the sites. And will I wear a ribbon? Most certainly, but I’ll be using this hanky code guide to get what I want.

Referencing, of course, the movie about the cheerleader whose paranoid parents hold a gay intervention and send her to heterosexual reprogramming camp to overcome her gayness, when it was discovered she didn’t like her boyfriend. I’ve been spending much of the day solidifying my selections as a judge for The Vloggies — no easy process. It’s taken me a long time, but today I settled on who I think is the best in each category, phew. I am hoping for an intervention and subsequent reprogramming with many drinks at the event November 4. I’ll post who I voted for after the winners are announced.

I really enjoyed watching so many awesome indy vlogger videos! I wanted to share a couple highlights — and you may have already seen these — and I’m not saying I voted for these people or not. But this made me shriek (click “DON’T WATCH THIS FUCKING VIDEO! GO AWAY!”). It was answered with this (ending is so-so but all is hilare). And I couldn’t watch FCC’d Up* and not make you watch it; I loved the oral sex segment, hee!

* As a side note, I am loathing giving a link to Veoh right now, but the video is must-see. Veoh used to be the great place where over-18 content and all kinds of other videos mingled, but back in June Veoh decided to “clean up” its image and scour the site of grownup videos. Besides the fact that I don’t agree with this “keep users in nursery school” approach to running a content delivery site, last week I attempted to contact Veoh for a high-profile piece about video sharing sites and mature content policy enforcement (it publishes soon, I’ll announce here). Veoh ignored my requests for comments, a statement, or queries about their decision and position on mature content. They are teh lame.

Five-second update: Also, unrelated — I am moist with excitement that I updated my Firefox to the new version; it’s spell-checking my text as I write in Movable Type. Yeah!!!!!

I’m still on the Hegre affiliate email list — I joined when I wrote The Smart Girl’s Guide to Porn to see how different affiliates worked. They send me stuff, but I don’t always like it — truth be told, some of the Eastern European models are often too skinny or young-looking for my taste (and I hate “teen” marketing copy, it’s so tacky). But this week’s crop of free galleries is excellent. I loved Dasha on the stairs; the super-adorable set with models Lena, Olea and Olga (above), and the sexy pairing of Yulia and Polya. I thought Ivette’s set was simple and pretty, and Veroni isn’t my kind of girl, but she has really sexy, puffy pussy lips, which I think is yummy. Don’t buy anything, just soak up the free galleries I get access to!

Last night I got a sweet email from a reader who found me through my Chron column and wanted to know about sex and disability resources here in the SF Bay Area. When I worked at Good Vibes, I put together a number of shopping guides for different communities I felt were sexually underserved — the first one was a female-to-male trans shopping guide called “Gentlemen, Start Your Engines!” It almost got me fired because I did this without asking, on company time, with company resources. My bad. It wasn’t the first time someone there tried to fire me (I quit 7 years later), but there were lots of very happy FTM’s and their lovers who told me they got their gear using my guide, and *got it on*.

At the time I put together the sex and disability sex toy guide, there were few resources that didn’t lump sex with love/relationships — minimal resources just for sexual pleasure, only for “couples”. Plus, you really have to be careful to weed through the sex-negative (read: judgemental) attitudes about sex and disability, as it’s all too easy to find sex + disability resources that are hetero-normative, or even hostile toward kinky interests. Now there are a lot more, yay! And if someone with no sensation below the waist *deserves* a sexy spanking, I’ll most certainly tell you where to get a good deal on a paddle. So hey — mobility isn’t forever, and having a good wank is frustrating when you’re on meds or losing sensation, can’t reach or everything just won’t comply with your wishes. Also, getting off isn’t just about pussy and cock. Most of all, I truly believe we’re all temporarily able. So dig the seriously fucking awesome resources for disability and fucking:

* One of my favorite sex toy stores Come As You Are has an *outstanding* resource page — and it’s no surprise as my pal Cory Silverberg works there.
* I love Cory Siverberg and Fran Odette’s book, Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability.
* Nerve’s Sex and Disability issue was quite good; erotic entertainment at the very least.
* Susan’s Sex Support comes off (to me) initially as ‘too safe’ feeling in language and site design, but delivers the goods in her “links related to” sections. Check out the sex and disability forums, and this great LGBT resource page.
* Bent — The Gay Crip Magazine is very fun.
* Disability Now’s article archive are worth a browse, though offer little by way of practical sex information.
* Sexual surrogacy is controversial. Sex surrogates have sex with clients as part of therapy, negative comparisons are made to sex work, yet because of the nature of surrogacy, a surrogate is less judgemental toward disabled clients than sex workers. People with disabilities do not “need” surrogacy and it’s not an “answer”; it’s just another option on anyone’s menu. Similarly, surrogates do not exclusively serve disabled clientele. The International Professional Surrogates Association will refer you to a surrogate and offer other resources, such as how to train to become a sexual surrogate.
* When I founded the Good Vibrations Magazine I made sure there was a sex and disability section: looks like they’ve let it lapse, but the archives are full of great articles, like this one I assigned Thomas Roche on Sex and Depression.
* GimpGirl is a hawt sex-positive she-geek heroine; if you’re on LiveJournal, join the GimpGirl community.

Photos: ultrahot double-amputee Aimee Mullins.

Update: a reader writes me, “I just wanted to let you know that the photo of Aimee Mullins at the top of your post was taken by photographer, writer, rocker and all around great gal Ali Smith.”

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I promise not to turn into a crazy cat blogger lady, and I know this has nothing to do with sex, but these photos Xeni took of me and my kitten Alex are too cavity-inducing not to share!

We had fun in kink.com’s “jail set”. She snapped great cameraphone pics, seen here. The set from my camera is here, another couple favorites after the jump.

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Xeni Jardin, Jonathan Moore, Haight and Masonic this afternoon.

It looks like they’re plotting something — they are. I love this photo. Our conversation ranged from dating to cryptography, and far beyond. What a wonderful way to spend the afternoon. My other favorite photo is after the jump.

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Regular readers will remember that I just saw John Cameron Mitchell’s mainstream-release porn film Shortbus with dominatrix Mistress Morgana — it was a hell of an evening, and I wrote about the film, our thoughs about it and much more in this week’s Chron column Open Source Sex: Get on the Shortbus.

I’m really, really happy with this column; it’s a Shortbus review, Morgana and I have a lot to say on everything from the hardcore sex in the film and whip techniques to — Disneyland. It’s also about how there are many similarities to the very New York version of sex culture in Shortbus and sex culture in San Francisco; I explain why, and how we’re so very different here. I’m also extremely stoked that the Chron/Gate used *all* of my links, so I linked to all kinds of surprising things, yay!

I’m also giddy to see Teh Chronic didn’t edit out my references to autofellatio and other things I thought they’d pee their pants over. It’s getting to be more like a San Francisco publication all the time.

It’s true — they just made me a “Featured Favorite” on Technorati! Not only are they now tracking 55 million blogs, but they have just added me (!) to their roster of Featured Favorites, so I’m on a sidebar banner that clicks Technorati front page readers to a very selective list of my favorite blogs. In this, I join the ranks of Technorati Favorites like Eric Rice, Wil Wheaton, Arianna Huffington, David Sifry, Jonathan Schwartz and many more.

The irony, of course, is that right now Technorati is pasted to and fro with huge banner ads for CNN’s Porn: America’s Addiction series. Ha!

What’s great about that in its own way is that Technorati asked me to be a Featured Favorite based on a conversation about my back-and-forth with the SF Chronicle. I said it seemed like Teh Chronic didn’t know what to do with me, and wanted what I had to offer as a blogger and sex culture pundit, but that they were too nervous to even link to my own website — I said it seemed like they were afraid to own all it meant to associate with me. Technorati said — we’re not. We want to feature you. And now they are. I went to their very nice offices, met the staff (lotsa hotties, I’m just sayin’), they took photos of me for the feature button, and I hung out and picked a small, exclusive selection of my most-read and favorite blogs.

So check out my Technorati Featured Favorites list; I’ll be adding to it as time goes by. I *heart* Technorati right back!

Today counterculture/cyberculture icon RU Sirius writes me, “The new RU Sirius Show is up! Had a great time and hope you’ll really join us from time to time as guest host, co-host, hostess cupcake, holy ghost or special guest.” He said the magic word, CUPCAKE!!!!!

I just spilled Robitussin all over my laptop — OMG, look at the title they used (the BLF strikes again) –

Show #71 (Interview): Sex Writer Violet Blue: “My Boobies Were All Over Market Street”

It’s true, they were, ulp! But in the podcast I *also* talk about my books Smart Girl’s Guide to Porn and Adventurous Couple’s Guide to Sex Toys — the RU Show’s hosts had some pretty intersting/funny questions about porn and *anal sex*… Also, Thomas Roche emails me from Eros Zine to tell me a big fat excerpt from my book Fetish Sex is now live — read it and get a nice *free* taste of what’s in the book (warning: my boobies are here, too). Also, check out the introduction here.

* Incidentally, and speaking of cupcakes, I had a cupcake incident last night with Hacker Boy. So — I’m feeling better. Thank you for all the get-well emails!

Looks like CNN’s spokesdouche born-again Glenn Beck (the male Nancy Grace) is about to start waxing fetishistically about so-called ‘porn addiction’ in their cable TV Headline News program and online vlogs. Sure, it’s CNN’s retro “look - shiny” and get traffic tactic of 1995, but just in time to get the morality fetishists all excited about Morality in Media’s and Bush administraiton sponsored upcoming ‘Protection From Porn Week“. That holiday is like Christmas and Halloween and my birthday all rolled together — a whole week for porn, yay!

Well, anyway — get educated about online porn and sex addiction, and why this is another hurtful myth, not based on any legitimate studies, designed to shame everyone into thinking masturbation to explicit images is baaaad. Get educated, and they have less control over us, and everyone sees the obviousness at CNN’s pathetic cheap trick to ‘make you look’. Seriously, why can’t we ever get a realistic mainstream media ‘news’ series on porn that isn’t biased? Why not something for ‘Protection From Fundamentalists Week” or a foil to counter christian Beck (or some truth in advertising for the series, at least)?

* Le suppository: Glenn Beck is CNN’s new ‘talk host’ — meaning they thought hiring a shock jock to be a “reporter” (this should always be in quotes, like the word “straight”) and videoblogger was a *genius* idea. Beck is on the porn addiction campaign, but just a *few* years behind the curve; here’s the game plan for his anti-porn series for CNN. Here’s a link to the horrifying Porn: America’s Addiction homepage (via Jonno; great post).
* Porn addiction is associated with sex addiction: here are the behaviors associated with so-called sex addiction. Love how everything is grouped with molestation and rape.
* Annie Sprinkle on the legitimacy of the sex addiction test — read it, it’s very relevant here.
* Real info — Martin Downs has an interesting article about ‘porn addiction’ here (full disclosure, I’m quoted in it).
* Read all the myths from people who propogate things like ‘porn addiction’ and ‘protection from porn week’, like about porn making you rape and fuck children and how you only watch it if you can’t have a “real” relationship — and *exactly* why these are flat-out lies in my book The Smart Girl’s Guide to Porn. Read the Table of Contents here; listen to the podcast here.
* Tony Comstock, form the articulate porn-producing side of the argument, has these great thoughts on ‘porn addiction’ and you’ll never hear them on something like CNN. (yay blogosphere) Yes, the CNN series will have a mainstream porn talking head or two featured, but keep in mind that the AVN people always tow the line in the ‘all porn is good camp’ so it’s only a contribution to the mainstream black vs. white, good vs. bad argument about porn. I mean, most porn sucks, but that doesn’t mean it’s all good, or all bad. Love this quote from Tony’s post, snip:

“You know who’s addicted to porn?

The AP is addicted to porn. John Harmer is addicted to porn. [Reporter] David Crary is addicted to porn. They’re addicted to the money and attention and titilation they get by talking about porn, “researching” porn, “documenting” porn, and otherwise flitting around the edges and then wringing their hands over the growing porn crisis. They’re addicted the sloppy, slip-shot, or down right deceptive things that “tackling the important issue of porn” allows them. (Anyone notice this sounds an awful lot like what most pornographers like about working in porn?)

These people don’t want porn to go away. If it did, they’d have to report on real news. ”

So… if you have a film in the upcoming Good Vibes Amateur Erotic Film Competition and you want to out your URL (and get a pantload of traffic), email me: violet at tinynibbles dot com

Let’s have some fun with this, shall we? Your deadline is midnight tonight.

Ugh! I seem to have an upper respiratory issue — I did a test reading and struggled for breath between sentences. I called Carol and canceled my reading tonight at LitCrawl at Good Vibes and I am very sad, as I had a hilarious and dirty story to read. Tonight I’m staying home and snuggling into blankets and pajamas; Hacker Boy is fetching me lemons and honey and whiskey. Carol told me to use the ‘two hat remedy’ –

* Put a hat on the end of the bed.
* Drink Hot Toddies until you see two hats.
* Rest muchly.

My piece What the Fuck Is Wrong With the Japanese? Part One in a Series: Nose Abuse is now live. Not recommended for lunchtime reading; it’s the exasperated result of after-midnight blog cruising and unintentional discoveries via my vast sex bookmark link list. May you now have weird fetish sex dreams, too. Happy friday the 13th!

I wrote two articles today (I guess yesterday, thursday), phew — and I took a break to head downtown to see John Hodgman read from his new book The Areas of My Expertise at Cody’s Books — I took photos and video. The videos are as follows. Here is his introduction; this is his explanation of the hobo uprising after the Great Depression and Roosevelt’s hobocidal germ warfare (after Hodgman tagged the inside of Cody’s with his hobo *gang signs*); this is his recital of a hobo poem. It was hilarious, and Hodgman is whipsmart and adorable; musical accompaniment was provided by his partner. I had been invited to see and meet him in person after being discussed by Hodgman and a friend at a party last week (!), emails about my attendance were exchanged with the man, and I was sort of supposed to be a ‘plant’ of sorts in the audence to ask him a very specific question after his reading but it was an overflow crowd and there were tons of ‘legit’ questions. Still, how cool — very flattering, and mentions of SRL came up in reference to me as well. That he knows what SRL is means he is as cool as I’d hoped him to be.

But I actually ended up with three questions I wish Hodgman could have answered for me. They are:

* If Superman can leap tall buldings in a single bound, why does everyone think he’s gay?
* You play a PC on TV. Why did you read at the bookstore directly across the street from our holiest-of-holy Apple store?
* Once and for all: how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

I may never know the answers. More photos are in my Metblogs post. Now I have to go to sleep; tomorrow I tour a local dildo factory, then meet with Technorati, and then see an evening showing of Shortbus with Mistress Morgana!

They took my live link to my site (from my bio) off my Chron/SFgate column. I have to say, this is actually like writing for a cokehead. (Thank you, Lori.)