Going out now… More here.

Isn’t this a great screengrab? Here’s the URL to 67-year-old Spaniard gives birth to twins — dig the awesome text ad links. (Thanks, Sam!)

Yay, it’s New Years Eve! Smooches to everyone who made this a fabulous year on Tiny Nibbles, and in my life — which are pretty much one and the same. It’s been a crazy year for many people, and while the pain was, well, painful, the people I’ve become close to and the experiences I’ve had I wouldn’t trade for a year of happy days.

One of the most valuable relationships I have in the world is with you, dear readers (and emailers). Thank you for spending a little time with me. Sometimes your emails have brought me back from the edge; sometimes they’ve made me squeal and squirm in my office chair; sometimes they’ve even made me weep a bit in love for the world.

I’ll be going to a party later where there’s wi-fi and I’ll be bringing my camera and laptop — and will hopefully be uploading between cocktails to my Flickr stream. Hang out with me there, if you like.

Much love and peace to all. Next year is going to be ten times more sexy, fun, entertaining, just fucking weird and exciting. I have lots of blogging to do, I hope to find some kind of weird new writing/media job to add to the mix, I’ll have oodles of sex info-art-sites-news to tell you about — and more controversy to stir up. Um, because I’m so quiet, retiring and shy… I think I should get out of my shell a bit more as a resolution, don’t you think?

If you’ve been keeping up with this story, you’ll notice that it’s been hitting the blogs (like this good post over at Wired, Google’s Bad Hair Week) like crazy. At first glance it looked like Google fixed some kind of issue for the main blogs making all the noise (like mine and Tony’s), but the more I went back to doing my normal work, the more I noticed that it wasn’t just me that was having problems, but many of the sites I was link mining for.

Mind you, I’m a power-user when it comes to Google. I have the search-fu, and I have an uncanny knack for remembering what I read online, who wrote it and where I can find it. I have a few precise techniques I use to get the exact thing I’m looking for to come out on top in Google so my work is fast and easy when I’m compiling posts or articles. However, when I put together the Top Ten Sex Memes of 2006 post for Boing Boing, I almost lost my mind trying to find links that should have been a snap to call up. Most notably, I couldn’t for the life of me get specific Boing Boing posts to come up as a primary result — I could only get secondary content referring to the posts, which is frustrating beyond belief when you’re trying to get a URL. I spent a long time trying to get Boing Boing’s “Google: search this site” to work, to no avail. To get the URLs of posts I knew were there, I had to go into the archives, only a few months old. And yes, Boing Boing knows about it now; I’m sure they’ll get help from Google.

Sane thing happened when I was trying to find Mark Morford’s SFGate article about Google Trends. I typed in (no quotes) Mark Morford Google Trends and got secondary content. I did many variables, even adding sfgate (another technique of mine to get right to the URL) and got nothing. I wound up going into the SFGate archives and looking page by page to find the article.

Now when I type in Mark Morford Google Trends the article comes up at the top. But when I repeat my Boing Boing searches, still secondary reproductions of the content (or merely mentions on other blogs). And while “Violet Blue” was temporarily restored to the top spot, it’s slipped again to #3, and if you look for my Top Ten Sexiest Geeks of 2006 post, you can only find sites mentioning or mirroring reposts about my original post on other sites.

So it’s not just me, but I’m in a hell of a quandary, as a someone who wants to have their content found, and as a blogger/online columnist who uses Google as a tool — and needs it to function properly. It’s not.

I’ll concede that I need to clean up the code on my blog, but I’m just guessing (as we all are) as to why this suddenly *might* need to be done.

Nick Denton asked me if Google responded to me, and the answer is still no. But Google’s Matt Cutts responded to Tony Comstock, and then some. I do feel odd that I’m left out of any of the ongoing discussion that’s between the guys, namely Tony and Matt. Matt has been asking Tony a lot of questions about sex on the web, something I’ve been blogging about for years professionally, with some pretty stringent ethics in my link practices. I also wrote a book about porn, with a chapter (and more) on safe porn surfing (along with my highly trafficked and much reposted porn-and-sex-on-the-internet tutorial*).

* This page also no longer comes up in search as it had previously, nor its Boing Boing repost which I also can’t find right now to point you to, aaargh. Maybe that’s why Cutts didn’t think to include me in his queries about sex on the web, because he tried to search for information on Google and came up dry.

Perhaps the most informative and best article about this whole mess is Jason Miller’s Google Hates Indie Porn? Miller explains a possibility: Google’s supposedly new 30-rank penalty for violating its automated spam detection system. To me, this means two things. If this is part of the problem, then blogs and sites can fall off the map (as it were) at any minute, making any given Google search — a snapshot in web time — impossible to accept as ever being accurate. It also means that if the Google penalty is invoked by a sudden increase in link traffic, then people can be dropped at any time for being good at what they do.

Still frustrating in all this, is seeing blogs like Search Engine Land and Wired come up in Google News with this story, but not Boing Boing.

Ultimately what it all means to me is that I need to find a better tool for my work.

Update, from my brain: Um, seriously read Tony’s utterly fucking eye-opening post where he goes back and forth with the head of Google’s webspam team about Google trying to find out what sex and porn sites are “good” and “bad”. (And, I am extremely disturbed by this good vs. bad thing in reference to something so subjective and individuated, as human sexuality is, *and* I wonder what is going to happen with this information.) It’s clear by reading this post that Google absolutely does not have the tools — or current knowledge — to evaluate sex on the web. And possibly a lot of other things as well. This is how they do it? Really? They need a community liaison for each of the types of spam they’re expected to deal with, because it’s crystal clear they are in the dark. Okay, and the Google guy’s pick of True Porn Clerk Stories? Um, this was over in 2002, so I guess I can at least give him credit for admitting he’s out of date with the current online sex culture… *huge sad sigh*

Over at Boing Boing I have a guest post (w00t!), The Top Ten Sex Memes of 2006, snip:

“Memes snake around and wind up on everyone’s blogs, sites, get injected into inboxes and become just generally known by most without widespread recognition from a news or mainstream media site. They propagate, survive, spread and mutate, through a user-supported natural selection process. Typically — and especially with sex memes — they’re too scary or NSFW to get any official traffic. And yet everyone finds out about them, and are fascinated for at least one solid minute. But the best part of sex memes, besides the weirdness and snarky wrong ironic humor? The gap between perception and reality is often a goatse-like chasm…

10. Celebrity Cooch Flash-A-Palooza
I’m just relieved that leatherface Joan Rivers isn’t on the cooch-flashing bandwagon this year, but if trends continue through 2007, we’ll be seeing that (no doubt) surgical wonder in no time. Pretending to flash your pantyless pundenda was the new black for starlets 85 lbs. and above and they made the webrounds like a coke-encrusted credit card in the Marmont bathroom. On the list: Pam, Paris, Britney (don’t forget the “sex tape” — *yawn*), Lindsay… even D-list porn stars like Mary Carey gave it a try (and gets a double “D” for effort).” Link.

Read more — there are some really interesting/creepy/hilarious things on that list. Also of interest (general), BoingBoing’s most-trafficked posts of 2006 (and all time). And some fun new posts of mine over at Fleshbot (of note), the Google-spanking Femdomart, The Wiibrator.

(photo via Hot Octopus Love, in my Sex Meme list)

For this week’s column, I went over the past year in news and blogs relating to sex, and came up with The Top Ten Sex Stories of 2006. There are different than sex memes, in that they were news stories that were developed and told — though a few were underreported, and I wanted to shine a little light on them. What struck me was that these important and interesting stories came form a variety of sources, from Rolling Stone to Boing Boing to Time Magazine — and yet, still Boing Boing isn’t indexed by Google News, a news tool I use over a dozen times a day. Why?

Anyway, this is a very fun piece (OMG I got to say “hanky-flagging space sluts” in teh chronic) — it’s my snapshot of a year in sex stories — snip:

“If the year in major sex stories were to be written like a Craigslist personal ad, it would sound something like this:

‘Horny Einstein with HPV seeks a little Girls Gone Wild action in space. No sex toys, please, as they are toxic, but respond to this CL ad if you want to play Justice Department and get all up in my 2257, if domain names are your kink, and you love the Matrix but fantasize most about Neo’s secret lingerie drawer. No griefers.’

(…)

4. Sex in Space

In space, no one can hear you masturbate. At least that was the theory tossed (ahem) about the Internet and in print this year, especially when Laura S. Woodmansee came out with the well-researched (and highly amusing) book Sex in Space. Aside from jokes about getting fluids out of your hair, the choreography of connection and not leaving condoms on the console, MSNBC’s science writer Alan Boyle remarked that ‘new devices and data would be required to hit the zero-g g-spot,’ and zero-gravity veteran Xeni Jardin got a sex-positive microgravity post going on Boing Boing that garnered comments from pro-abstinence pseudo-Christians as well as hanky-flagging space sluts.” Link.

(snapshot pic by Scott Beale)

Update 12.28.06 12:56pm: Most of these sites are back to their original rankings, all the updates and my response to the situation, the new changes (and my response to a BB reader, the editor of Search Engine Land) are in this Boing Boing post. It’s such a relief to be back in my original spot in rankings, and it really made me reflect on just how fragile the emerging democratization of information is.

Update 12.28.06 2:06pm: Great update post by Jonno on Fleshbot, and reading the Digg comments is highly recommended if you want to pursue this issue (I do!)

Update 1.8.07: I posted again with Google still broken, and Google emailed me with an apology.

* * * * * * *

In recent weeks, Google has been changing its search algorithms and now many (though not all) sex websites have been dropped — including this one. It seems to have coincided with changes they made relating to their pay-for-play keyword ad program, AdSense. What’s disturbing to me (besides the harm it’s done to small businesses over the holidays) is that Google’s snafu seems to have dropped more sex-positive businesses (that focus on accurate sex ed) than big-gun, mainstream adult businesses (that sell unsafe sex toys and skanky product). To me, this also shows the huge problem with having a monoculture wherin a single business is depended on to provide a communication service. They screw one thing up, and an essential feature (like access to accurate search result information) disappears. For instance, I remember talking to Johannes at Monochrom a few weeks back in Vienna, and he was upset that Google had just totally dropped Monochrom.at from the search results, when it had been coming up first (now only the .com comes up).

It used to be that if you searched for Good Vibes, Comstock Films, Tiny Nibbles and Violet Blue, you’d get each of these sites in the top rankings or on the first page (SafeSearch off, natural results). No more. However, if you search for Adam and Eve or Vivid, you get the mainstream sex toy and porn sites on the first page.

So, as Tony Comstock explains eloquently in his post about how his indy film business has been seriously affected, if people read about any of these entities in a magazine and then go to search for them, searchers don’t find what they’re looking for. Unsafe sex toys and “interracial” porn from huge companies, no problem, but books and toys from women-owned sex-positive healthy sex businesses? No.

Tony actually pointed this out to me this morning; I actually don’t Google myself very often but Tiny Nibbles used to come out as the first result — especially important to me when a woman has been running around using my name *as her business*. But Babeland had put together this excellent post about how they’d been suddenly dropped before the holiday season, and I hadn’t had time to research it and do a post; now it seems to be corrected. Comstock Films and many others are realizing that they’re affected too. My page ranking is seriously FUBAR in a weird way that can only be a mistake; search for “HOWTO: give an erotic gift (for the holidays and beyond)” and you get Fleshbot, Viviane’s Sex Carnival… and then the actual post I did about ten days ago. Conversely, search for “great news for schizophrenics” (a post on Jamie Zawinski’s blog) and it’s the first Google entry result.

It seems to me that Google screwed something up — something, we will never know, because they are secretive and proprietary. And for people who depend on tools like Google Search to mine the internet for accurate links to news, people, articles, and everything else that makes media happen, well, we just have to keep in mind that Google isn’t as accurate as it used to be. It’s just lame the way the reshuffling has happened — we in the sex-positive communities have worked so hard to make a place for ourselves outside the huge, entrenched old-boys’ distribution network that companies like Adam and Eve and Vivid take for granted (and still exclude indies from). I truly believed that things like Google made the playing field a whole lot more even for those of us struggling against gender stereotypes, sex-negative portrayals of healthy sexuality and — yes, even abstinence education. Now we all have to work a lot harder.

Update: Add to the Google drop list popular sex blogs Eros Blog and Pretty Dumb Things.

Update 2: Valleywag writes, Chronicle writer disappears in porn clampdown.

Update 3: Boing Boing writes, Google “disappears” sex blogs? Something’s broken. Also, my post on Fleshbot, Google Spanks the Little Guys (image via).

And, I’m all for thinking that one should always first jump to the conclusion of stupidity (mistakes) and not malice, but one reader writes, “why would any company compromise its product (any search for ‘tiny nibbles’ should reasonably come up with the result ‘tinynibbles.com’) unless there was a reason? my guess: money. they didn’t get rid of *all* sex sites, so it’s not because the christian right forced a change. rather, they quietly changed their search algorithms so that the big companies would be prominent and the small independent businesses would be lost.”

It’s the holiday present I’ve been praying to the baby jeezus for: Irina Slutsky’s Boobs in a Box. I got a call from her about jumping in on the video action but I was too mopey this weekend to help — SO, even if you didn’t see the SNL video, do not miss the super-awesome vlogger nerdcore all-grrrl response to “Dick in a Box”! It’s hilarious!

Here’s the post on Boing Boing with more fun links, including (oh, she DID) “duck in a box”.

I wandered around Upper Haight yesterday watching shoppers and wondering what I was going to do for the evening… maybe a podcast, or work on my deadline. I walked around Buena Vista park, like I have since I was a kid — and just like when I lived on the streets. I’ve spent so many xmas eve’s walking around by myself. It was a cool, gray afternoon, and I walked past the same posh Victorians that I’ve dreamed about living in for so many years; the kind of San Francisco opulence that is unthinkable, really, but you know how you dream of these kind of things. Stopping in front of an incredibly beautiful classic Vic, I looked and wondered about their view, saw the piano in the window, and the christmas tree all lit up behind it — it was obviously a piano someone used, as it had well-worn music sheets on top. I imagined a warm house, with the smell of tree, and music filling it. I thought they probably had a fireplace, too.

I stood and took a photo. I was wearing boots and jeans, and my black hoodie with the hood up over my head to keep my ears warm, just like when I lived on the streets and did the same walk, and imagined the same things about people living in these beautiful houses.

I kept walking for a while through this neighborhood, the same neighborhood I used to try to find places to sleep in, thinking about the things that had changed since then, even if I didn’t feel so far away from it.

In Upper Haight, Hacker Boy messaged me asking where I was. I told him — I hadn’t seen him since last week — and he said, stay there I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Family obligations over, I felt like I’d thrown pennies at his window and convinced him to sneak out. Contrary to my expectations, I wasn’t going to be alone on xmas eve.

When we were back at my house, he started with the one on my ankle, and his eyes never left mine. A kiss, a number, a kiss, a number. Drowning by numbers. When he got to my wrist, a recount in reverse order. A different number; another recount as I giggled and squirmed. Here, I have no disguise. The undertow of his kisses was sweet, and made me forget about being alone.

People often tell me I’m prettier in person. I don’t know why.

Thirty-two cherry blossoms. He said, “A power of two. That’s good.”

(Image: self-portrait last night in Union Square at around midnight, San Francisco)

A reader sends me a little inspiration for my grinchy mood this holiday season. Snip from Whipping Up Enthusiasm (with whips):

“Russian scientists from the city of Novosibirsk, Siberia, made a sensational report at the international conference devoted to new methods of treatment and rehabilitation in narcology. The report was called ‘Methods of painful impact to treat addictive behavior.’ (…)

Russian scientists recommend the following course of the whipping therapy: 30 sessions of 60 whips on the buttocks in every procedure. A group of drug addicts volunteered to test the new method of treatment: the results can be described as good and excellent.

Doctor of Biological Sciences, Sergei Speransky, is a very well known figure in Novosibirsk. The doctor became one of the authors of the shocking whipping therapy. The professor used the self-flagellation method to cure his own depression; he also recovered from two heart attacks with the help of physical tortures too.

‘The whipping therapy becomes much more efficient when a patients receives the punishment from a person of the opposite sex. The effect is astounding: the patient starts seeing only bright colors in the surrounding world, the heartache disappears, although it will take a certain time for the buttocks to heal, of course,’ Sergei Speransky told the Izvestia newspaper.”

Sounds like christmas might be more fun in Russia! Image via.

I spent the afternoon wandering around the Castro, looking at people shopping and just kind of being around humans. Everything in the Castro is “holiday”. It is festive. Men in pink shirts bustled with gaily (note the spelling!) wrapped boxes, lesbians were seen in Walgreens. I bought Alex a delicious can of holiday dinner. I bought myself honey soap, caramel and marzipan candles, and band-aids. I should have rented some festive movies for myself, like Deliverance or Requiem for a Dream. When I got home I had a mailbox full of festive holiday bills and the best holiday card ever — a report card. This side reveals my grades; this side shows my report. Yikes! An “F” in “humility”!? But I’m so shy! Reticent! It’s the cupcakes! Not me! “Sexual acting out”!? It’s the cupkakke…. !

I feel like I should go out and find the five friends left in San Francisco right now who have been rejected by their families for being vegan, but I just can’t seem to make the effort. Damn this nauseatingly familial season. I bought little foil bows for no reason at all. I think I will stick them on my cat. And maybe my tits. And surf for more eye-searingly awful porn to post on Fleshbot. That’s fucking festive, isn’t it? Like my holiday dinner, salad. So joyous. In empathy, I drowned it in Italian dressing. Maybe if I find more eel porn it will put me out of my misery before tomorrow. Actually, I’m going to my friend Jessica’s party in a little bit, another party where I don’t know anyone. When Jessica’s out of earshot, I’m going to fabricate my employment description. I will be a livestock inseminator. Or a prison guard. Or a porn star whisperer.

No, the goal is to find a boy or girl all in black sitting morosely in the corner, with which to sip bitter drinks and convince to attempt euthanization of each other with our frightening knowledge of Morrisey and Cure lyrics, to help me count all these very sore cherry blossoms and maybe even get them kissed a little bit, and just generally lament that this season just stinks to high heaven. This is exactly the kind of scenario where I brood all night until I decide to make a death ray space laser with my copy of the Necronomicon and wake up the next morning after the experiment went horribly wrong, determined to destroy christmas but can’t decide if the winged monkeys or undead army will go with the fetish heels I’ve picked out for christmas eve, not sure if I have time to be an evil overlord of all mankind because I have to do some blogging and stuff, and maybe I can just do it part time with a supernatural avatar, except I’ve totally got the *perfect* little black dress for world domination *and* a burning desire to turn christmas carols into bloodcurdling screams of terror… bwahahahahah!

*cough*

/grinch

Off to the party now.

My office chair almost burst into flame! I squeezed my mouse until it squealed! My nose became a soy latte launching device! The elastic in my panties couldn’t take the heat!

OMFFGGG — Casey and Rudy (#3 and #3) made a video for me — VIDEO: SEXY — in response to the Top Ten Sexiest Geeks of 2006 list! It’s laugh-out-loud hilarious and mon dieu are they sexxay in it. You have to see it even if just to hear the lines about things like “the Rose of the Kevin.” When it’s dark later, I’m *so* going to hang a piece of mistletoe on my cinema display and search for Galaticast on Flickr… Thank you #3 and #3 for the best holiday gift, ever!

Watch the video! WATCH THE VIDEO!!!!!!

A reader sends me this very interesting writeup on reality blurred, anatomy of a (stolen) scoop (found via). I’ve been very confrontative about this issue for a while and I found Dehnart’s piece absolutely fascinating, not to be missed if you blog (or write for le dirty media).

I’m done filling in for Jonno at Fleshbot and I had a blast, even with the evils of holiday/Santa smut (which we’re all *totally* sick of at Fleshbot — another anorexic Eurochick in a Santa hat and I’m going to barf). I really, really love doing that kind of blogging and hope to do more of it in some fashion next year — and my favorite posts were The Enchanted Doll (for the beauty), Gallery 4D and Santa Claus Porn (Dot Com) and Naomi Campbell’s Nude “Livescan” (for the fun I had writing, more than the actual links), Explicite-Art Blog (for the yummy free hardcore Euro porn), and Scary Holiday Sex Toy Gift Suggestions (for the horror, the horror). More horror: I found what I think is home of the new goatse (click at your own risk, for reals).

Holidays suck — I’m alone and a little sad-feeling. But, after waiting for two long months for my appointment with Scott Sylvia, I got tattooed yesterday (see above photo — it’s really me), went to sleep in bandages, took this photo out of the shower, and then took this full-length nude shot of my new tattoos before getting dressed today. I was secretive and only told three friends about getting my tattoos, kind of because I wanted it to be *for me* and I did it by myself. They are the markers of a very intense year for me, one where I felt burnt down to the ground in many ways, and also more alive and open to beauty than ever. I’ve been by myself a lot lately (everyone is off with families for the week/end) and I’m just sort of rattling around the blogosphere. It’s the anniversary of the exalted and the detrimented. Funny bit: I paid for my tattoos with my first Hearst/Chronicle check — they paid for my ‘blogger’ tat. It’s the little things.

But you want some fun and dirty holiday erotica — yes? Me too! While I’m getting permissions and gearing up for a few holiday podcasts, check out the holiday erotica I have in the archives:

* Open Source Sex 24: Hot(ter) Holiday Smut (MP3) From The Merry XXXmas Book of Erotica by Alison Tyler — “Santa’s Favorite Elf” by Molly Laster, with spanked feminine behinds and spontaneous lesbian exhibitionism; “Trimming The Tree” by Alex Mendra, featuring handcuffs and forced blowjobs; and N.T. Morley’s “Christmas Morning”, including a very unusual sex toy as a prelude to intense anal sex. Happy holidays!

* Video slideshow option: sexy and fun photo slideshow by Siege (Daily Siege @ Nerve.com)! Download the video file to watch and listen, only 30MB: http://violetblue.libsyn.com/media/violetblue/open_source_sex_24.m4v

* Open Source Sex 22: Holiday Erotica (MP3) Cozy up with some hot holiday erotica! Reading from The Merry XXXmas Book of Erotica, I dish out two explicit gems starring, well… holiday erotica anti-heroes, if you will. In “Here Comes Santa”, a young woman escapes her crazy family and finds solace in a local sex toy store, buying herself a *big* holiday gift. In “‘Tis The Season”, an office worker with a very negative holiday attitude gets an attitude adjustment on his knees in the supply closet at the hands of a surprising blonde… Slightly snarky, hip, and fun stuff — just what the season calls for.

And, super older, with sketchy audio quality:

* Open Source Sex 3: Filthy Dirty Holiday Podcast (MP3) I was going to podcast the first three chapters of N.T. Morely’s The Castle, but I decided, hey, ’tis the season — I’ve got some really hot holiday erotica. Check out two dirty stories about couples that cook up some very naughty holiday surprises in stories by Ayre Riley and Xavier Acton.

Update/sidenote: this is the 900th post for Tiny Nibbles! w00t!
Update 2: Scott blogged my blogger tat on Laughing Squid, yaaaayyy1

After all the attention it got, I took the post I did on the newest Sex.com development (shooting of Mexican lawyer “The Toad”) and dug into the whole story, simply excited to get a chance to tell it featuring the bizarre details that I think make the saga so freakily fascinating. I was also thrilled to finally illustrate the kind of sleazy URL hustlers and startup sleazebags that are oh-so-common around these parts. Check out Sex.com: A URL — All Crime And No Sex for a lurid read. Snip:

“Like mobile-home scammers in Florida and billboard plastic surgeons in Los Angeles, URL grifters are part of the sleazy yet entertaining Bay Area tech-industry zoo. And so when a guy like Gary Kremen snags URLs like Match.com and Sex.com and dabbles in brokering far-reaching Web page patents and “Internet consulting” while (according to a 2005 CNN interview) working on a nice speed habit, he just sort of blends in with the rest of the money-grubbing, VC-chasing dot-com herd. Like most startup cowboys, Kremen sat on the Sex.com URL as an undeveloped property — until a con man named Stephen M. Cohen came along and swindled VeriSign/Network Solutions out of Sex.com with fast talk and forgeries.

High school could not have been a kind experience for Cohen. A fairly unremarkable-looking man (when last seen by authorities upon release from a Tijuana prison two weeks ago), he attended Van Nuys High, whose alumni include Paula Abdul and Robert Redford. Maybe that’s what gave him an unquenchable thirst for fame and fortune, the kind that makes one think that crime is a perfectly acceptable means to success.

As if he were spending his life getting ready for the dot-com boom, Cohen amassed a history of odd jobs, including operating an old-fashioned cord-board telephone answering service in the early 1980s and a stint posing as a bankruptcy lawyer that landed him two years in the federal clink. Cohen next found his calling in the heyday of the Bay Area’s mid-’90s Internet Wild West, grabbing Sex.com in 1995 after wearing down Network Solutions employees with a barrage of phone calls and one (delightfully retro) forged document.” Link.

I’m filling in for sweet Jonno thursday and friday — and I have some great posts — at Fleshbot, so please do come over and say hi! We’ve got comments, so definitely come bug/tease/flirt with me and/or complain about my posts at your leisure. Also, tips are welcome at tips @ fleshbot dot com. Meanwhile I’m having a late night flexing my interweb search-fu and finding all kinds of crazy fun stuff — and rifling the Fleshbot archives while I’m at it. A minute in my brain: nun porn! Fat celebrities! Pterodactlys (thanks to Jacob Appelbaum, sending me scary dino porn while in Vienna)!

You know, I’m just generally making an *extremely valuable* contribution to society and culture that will be cherished for generations to come. All in a day’s work, really.

They start out as the quiet ones — and they might even stay that way. But somehow, that hot, throbbing brain and unquenchable thirst to totally nerd out on their tech fetish transforms them into… the kind of hot geek that stops you in your tracks. You know that if you opened their skull, their brain would pop out like an airbag — and that those keyboard-weary fingers could stroke you to Nirvana and back all night long.

Sexy geeks, this is my tribute to you. I got lots and lots of nominations again this year (thank you!), but my list is still my own personal hand-picked list of GILFs (Geeks I’d Like to Fuck) — let’s play ‘hide the handheld’ indeed. As usual, celebrities are exempt because it’s almost impossible to know if they are doing their own tech or fabrication and real geeks seldom get celebrity recognition — because they’re so busy being their hot selves, of course. That said, there are a couple this year whose home/dir I wouldn’t mind groping, namely John Hodgman, Kari Byron and Kevin Pereira. Well-known GILFs, for sure, but ones who could seduce the panties off me while simply reading the ingredients list off my Liquid Silk bottle. Rrrow.

There were just too many hot GILF noms — runners-up include:
* Kurt Collins, Photobucket hottie
* Gina Trapani, sexpot Lifehacker
* Phillip Torrone, Make editor — sexy gadget hacker + vibrators = drool
* Matt Sanchez, Videoegg — “he can cook my eggs sunny side up”
* Leah Culver, etched Mac girl and Instructables hotness
* Charles Hope, yummy Blip.tv boy
* Janus Friis, Skype co-founder, now Venice Project, way too cute
* The Slackmistress, very lickable tech/sex/blog babe

10. The Ninja! (Southern California, exact location dangerously unknown)
Those eyes, those eyes! They haunt and seduce, and dear jeezuz slathered in wasabi and sitting on a bed of rice — what power lies beneath all that sexy black fabric!? He’s obviously got a brain, he’s got the ninja moves to make girls (and a few boys I know) shudder in fear and delight, and make us all wonder — are ninjas celibate? Or are they like Mormons and have like 20 wives? Or at least a few adoring ninja groupies? We can only hope he’ll be killing us softly sometime soon.

9. Anna Logue (in UR hard drive, hacking UR panties)
Earlier this year I wrote, “Sexy geeklet Anna Logue rubs our motherboards in all the right ways. Unlike many other ‘geek girl’ sites where topless coders are the exception rather than the rule, Anna gets down and dirty with everything from stylesheets to between-the-sheets (and beyond) exhibitionistic sex play. Plus, any self-described ‘dorky, nerdy, bisexual, polyamorous’ bookworm who fills out a pair of white cotton panties can hack our hard drives any day of the week.” Anna describes herself as “I am a voracious reader and when I’m not in class I like to while away my time doing crossword and sudoku puzzles, reading comic books, tinkering with new linux distros, and gaming. I’m really not all that different from you! ;) I’m a student pursuing a philosophy degree, so when I’m not hitting the books, I’m getting naked for all and sundry to see in my little corner of the web. (…) I designed and coded the site myself, and work on it a lot. I answer all my emails (members get same-day responses!) and do all the work. You won’t find any bureaucracy here - just me, naked and in the flesh, and I think that’s the way porn should be. I am a sex-positive, porn-positive feminist, and I love porn (I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t!), but I get tired of seeing the same 10 chicks with fake tits and bored looks, and I am determined to put a nerdy new face on porn and share it with you.” She *is* nerdpr0n!

8. girlz 0f destruction (Sweden, House of Chrome)
This all-female international gaming team live in a training facility in Sweden, they will most certainly kick your ass and reduce you to a grateful blubbering mess at their beautiful and nimble fingertips — heavy accent on the beautiful. Most of them are drop-dead gorgeous — but don’t confuse the sugar with the napalm, if you know what I mean — because they mean business. As in, taking regular prizes from Quakecons around the globe, from Singapore to Russia to… San Francisco. Check out hottie mchot Ana, whose bio states that her favorite “Person to own: The one that wants to fight me” and babe-a-licious MILF Liliana Vasquez.

7. Kevin Rose (San Francisco, California)
Wikipedia tells us he’s also “known as ‘the dark tipper’ for giving hacking advice, etc) is best known for founding the social-bookmarking site Digg and as former co-host of the TechTV show The Screen Savers (later Attack of the Show! on G4) until his departure from the network in May 2005. He attended UNLV for computer science, but dropped out to pursue the 90’s tech boom. After dropping out, he worked for the Department of Energy, where he was a technology advisor and held a Level L security clearance.” Um, whatever. The emo hair and cute smile slay, from Scott’s Laughing Squid photos of him to the Vloggies, where he actually participates in the local tech community — menaing, he’s cute *and* human. h4wt! (photo of Rose with Irina Slutsky by Laughing Squid)

6. Audacia Ray (Brooklyn, New York)
It’s a bit nepotistic because we both write for Fleshbot, but damn, the uber-sexy Waking Vixen is on fire this year — she’s currently working on Naked on the Internet, a nonfiction book about “female sexuality and the internet, including chapters on dating/hooking up; sex blogging; sex worker advertising and networking; wives and girlfriends of partners who indulge in sexual activities online; sexual health and online support communities; and technology that enables physical sexual encounters”. She’s self-described as “I am a New Yorker, writer, sex worker rights advocate, alternative model, safer sex educator and intrepid pervert. I’m an Executive Editor of $pread, a magazine exploring the sex industry from a workers’ perspective, winner of the 2005 Utne Independent Press Award for Best New Title. I recently directed my first adult feature, The Bi Apple, which will be released by Adam & Eve Pictures in early 2007.” (photo by Bob Coulter)

5. Mike Hudack (New York)
Founder and CEO of video sharing site Blip.tv, Hudack was nominated more than once (actual quote from an emailer: “serious unapologetic nyc video geek, hot as fuck”), for lots of good reasons. Cute and smart, with a wonderful baritone voice that I’ve heard more than once coming from behind a podium onstage excitedly exclaiming with pride about Blip’s community-conscious business model, or the many incredible videoblogs Blip stands behind, like Alive in Baghdad. He was a kewt teen hacker (and will kill me for posting that link, I’m sure) and now he’s running a video site that’s thinking so far ahead of sites like YouTube (koff) that it’s exciting to see where he and Blip will break new ground next. A sexy geek, indeed. (photo by Laughing Squid)

4. Micki Krimmel (Los Angeles, California)
Mikipedia is teh cuteness!!! She’s Director of Community at Revver, and claims to be into “online community, activism and social change, politics, film, art and media, open source everything, all night dance parties and boys.” Okay, so “girls” isn’t on the list, but she’s still my vlog-crush, especially because she’s a longtime writer for Worldchanging.com, where she waxes about “global film, new tools for production and distribution and the democratization of the filmmaking process.” She likes chocolate too, so I can maybe woo her with truffles at the next Vloggercon.

3. Casey McKinnon and Rudy Jachnan (Canada)
How can a couple be a “sexy geek”? While it’s in the realm of possibility that they have role-played being Siamese twins attached at **something naughty**, Casey and Rudy of award-winning vlog Galacticast fame are undoubtedly the hottest couple — geek couple, even — on Al Gore’s internet. And the other internet, too. They started out maiking the much-loved Ms. Kitka’s Kitkast, back in the days when video blogging was pretty much unheard of, and now have not just a major hit on their geeky hands, but keep the rest of us happy by coming up with some reason on each episode to get their clothes off. If this is the future of videoblogging, I need a custom drool cup for my keyboard.
Update: don’t miss Casey and Rudy’s hilarious tribute to this list (and their #3 spot on it, VIDEO: SEXY.

2. Ze Frank (Brooklyn, New York)
How could a thousand-mile nonblinking stare on a videoblogger be so sexy? It shouldn’t — it should be very, very creepy, especially when combined with the Billy Idol sneer — but instead it’s unsettlingly… hot. Especially when combined with his huge *wit* and irresistibly tight *editing*. Wikipedia tells us that Ze Frank graduated from Brown University in 1995 with a degree in neuroscience, may have a sister, is a dancer and a guitar player and that he has friends. It does not mention his duck fetish, so I think the Wikipedia entry is a fabrication. One thing’s for sure: he’s funny, smart, cute and totally understands what he’s doing, the context of his media, the bullshit that keeps “old media” (”dirty media”) in business and isn’t afraid to say something about it — something often painfully, truthfully funny. He makes Jon Stewart look like a dino.
(sexy open shirt photo by LeKriz)

1. Jennifer Granick (San Francisco, California)
Bust out the old floppies and start fanning yourself — Jennifer Granick, badazz cyberlawyer is the number one sexy geek of 2006. Wiki sez she’s, “Executive Director at the Center for Internet and Society [Stanford]. She is best known for her work with Intellectual Property law, free speech, privacy, and other things relating to computer security, and has represented several high profile hackers. She also writes a regular column for Wired News. (…) Granick has been a speaker at conferences such as Def Con and ShmooCon, and has also spoken at the National Security Agency as well as to other law enforcement officials.” Um, and Wiki forgot to mention that she’s fucking fierce, funny, and HOT. She was even involved with the extremely controversial Chris Soghoian’s Boarding Pass Generator.

Update: omg, I just got home and this list is on the front page of Digg, #3 in their top ten, to be precise. Wow! Eddie dugg it — and whoah, look at all the comments…
2342 Diggs and counting… more updates and links to this list: Valleywag HOTTIES: List of lists, Forbes Digital Download blog Geeks Are Hot, Galacticast VIDEO: SEXY, Supr.c.ilio.us: The Blog Top 10 Sexiest Greek Letters, Fleshbot Wet Spots.

At our local (San Francisco) Weinstein Gallery — his Timeless series, link via sexblo.gs. I’ve been idly returning to these paintings for a few days when procrastinating, not even realizing that this painter is a San Franciscan… so wonderful. His new paintings are inspired by San Francisco Ballet’s principal dancer, Yuan Yuan Tan. Snip from his bio:

“Through the Cold War and the Cultural Revolution, Guan continued to paint, whether his surroundings and possessions were, by current standards, lavish or incredibly spartan. His efforts produced some of the finest Social Realist artwork in China, artwork now being understood for its influence on the social and political course of the world’s most populous nation. His numerous portraits and murals of Mao Ze Dong, paintings and drawings of ethnic minorities, images exalting the glory of the Han Chinese, collections in the National Museum of China, significant works in the Museums of Nanchang and Henan Provinces, as well as numerous prestigious private collections, stand as important testaments to the times in which he has lived.”

I know this is a bit off-topic for this blog but… Reuters: Time magazine’s ‘Person of the Year’ is You. Snip, “You were named Time magazine ‘Person of the Year’ on Saturday for the explosive growth and influence of user-generated Internet content such as blogs, video-file sharing site YouTube and social network MySpace. (…) You beat out candidates including Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, China’s President Hu Jintao, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and James Baker, the former U.S. Secretary of State who led Washington’s bipartisan Iraq Study Group.”

YouTube and MySpace are actually the person of the year. Phew, that saves a lot of work figuring out who’s actually been making the groundbreaking media all year. Person of the year as a content delivery site? Next week in Time — MySpace Photo Shocker: Sock Monkey Avatars In Sunglasses Have 150,000 Friends — Who Pays the Price? And, in national news: YouTube — Does Size Matter: Videos of Really Fat Cats Trying to Jump on a Couch.

I’m so glad the entire staff of The Onion freelance at Time, otherwise that rag would *never* be funny.

(See also: “Dictator Slays Millions In Last-Minute Push To Be Time’s Man Of The Year“)

Update: Gawker’s post ‘Time’ Person of the Year: You Can’t Be Serious — and especially the comments — make it all worthwhile. Examples: “Doesn’t this just mean ‘the computer’ won again?” and “where the fuck is my gift basket?”

Someone just sent me these, awww:

Roses are #FF0000
Violets are #0000FF
All my base
Are belong to you

And:

Roses are #FF0000
Violets are #0000FF
01000001011011000110110000100000011011010111100-
10010000001100010011000010111001101100101
010000010111001001100101001000000110001001100101-
0110110001101111011011100110011100100000011101000110 111100100000011110010110111101110101

* It’s really easy to get lulled into thinking the 2257 harassment and shakedowns of pornographers is over since it’s not in the news these days — not so. Even though porn is not illegal in the US and 2257 is For the Children, the laundry list of legitimate businesses on the receiving end of raids grew by one entry last week. In addition to Pure Play Media, Evasive Angles, Darkside Entertainment, Legend, Sunshine Films, Robert Hill Releasing, Sebastian Sloane Productions and Diabolic — A team of FBI agents conducting 2257 records inspections visited the offices of K-Beech Inc. last thursday. (Xbiz)

* Viviane has a very (ahem) crafty kinky knitting roundup. Any more of this sexified crafting and I will have to knit myself a gimp hood, or an alpaca noose.

* The Jean Paul Gaultier Corset Umbrella (Le Corset) in red. I love the way this site sells cushions. Need I say more?

* Strange but true: facial corsetry with bioactive glass implants by artist Paddy Hartley and research scientist Dr. Ian Thompson.

* I just left Vienna, and now they’re about to get gender-equal road construction and exit signs! But I’m sad the cute ponytailed image didn’t make the cut: “a roadworks sign picturing a woman in a skirt digging into a pile of dirt and used on a campaign poster will not see the light of day because of traffic regulations.”

* Found on aptly-named Crazy Japan: the Tenga Deep Throat Cup. Best. Copy. Ever. “Special valves create a virtual vacuum inside the cup, to deliver an amazing sucking sensation. And, the unique pinched-in shape helps to achieve an unparalleled tightness. These advanced features combine with an arousing ’slurping’ sound and vibration to give you the feeling that you’re enjoying a real deep throat experience.” OMG — all your penis cups are belong to New Adult Concept!

The cutest book nerd blog ever!!! I just found Babes With Books on (friends) Touche Sexy — and while there’s not much by way of skin (a little bit), it’s full of cute, real girls of all shapes and sizes looking saucy with their reads!

Image via Hegre Xmas gallery.

This is the weekend for holiday shoppers to rampage! And I’ve noticed a funny trend in the sexblogosphere this year, where instead of gift guides some people are making *guides to* gift guides written on other websites. It’s like so meta — so I thought for a minute about doing a guide to the gift guide guides: for example, Fleshbot’s is snarkily sweet, Viviane’s is fastidiously complete. Both lead you to pages of suggestions which may or may not be helpful — I thought of this when I put mine together for the Chronicle.

So, how about something that will actually help you select the right erotic gift? Finding toys is easier all the time, but picking the right one, or getting the right accessories for your fantasy is what’s more challenging. So, literally taking a page from my Guide to Sex Toys book, I offer ideas and tips for giving naughty gifts any day of the year.

General advice:

Is this a surprise? Slow seductions and planned fantasies are among life’s exquisite pleasures, but giving your sweetie something you know they’re not expecting — but want — makes for an unforgettable sexual tryst. But if it’s too unexpected, you might be met with shock, or worse. Make sure he or she has some idea that something’s coming. Giving someone a sex toy when they’ve had a bad day, are exhausted, or wish they’d showered before seeing you might make them feel awkward, or pressured. Plan ahead for a successful surprise, and make sure you’ve had some indication that they’d like to get frisky with you and a surprise sex toy.

If you don’t talk about sex or haven’t even broached the topic, a sex toy might not be the right way to get the conversation started; in fact, if the idea of sex toys is totally new to your lover and you give them a bright pink buzzing bunny, it might startle them so much it closes a door in your relationship for some time to come. Make sure you know they’re even remotely interested in sexual play or experimentation beforehand by talking about it. You don’t need to give away your surprise or plans for seduction, just lightly check in with him or her about trying something new in bed, just the two of you — this way you can fish around for anything that might be potentially “off the list” so you don’t wind up being a “bad Santa.”

More explicit suggestions on erotic surprises, and sex act idea kits, after the jump.

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I got my bag back from Virgin Airlines — phew! Bunny slippers are home! But so is my Blackberry, and now I’m torn between my Blackberry and the sexy white Drift Helio sent me to make up for my phoneless state. To my surprise, the coverage is way better than Cingular and people sound much clearer than on the ‘berry — and the Drift is *fast* online, yikes. The GPS on the Drift is addictive and OMG how I love having a cameraphone — if I can get it to integrate with Flickr I’ll have to take it with me everywhere. I’m still learning the user interface but it’s pretty basic, and Hacker Boy has already installed a big-boobed, gyrating porny screensaver for me. Because I just don’t have enough porn in my life.

The only thing keeping the Drift from becoming my permanent accessory is the lack of QWERTY — I really rely on being able to type out an easy email and I can (and sometimes do) blog on-the-fly from the Blackberry. Think of how much fun I could have if I could do photo and video posts live from crazy parties, sex events, mitzvahs and prison breaks! Or maybe it’s more like, how many friends and lovers can I alienate with my gadget addiction when I should be social, and instead of partying I’m standing there *blogging*… Am I a dork if I carry two phones?

…And I’m taking video! Last night Hacker Boy was my sexy date and we went to the Chronicle newsroom party and then were VIP’d into the Good Vibes Holiday Ball, which was incredible — their best one yet. I wasn’t invited for a few years (heh) but I’m glad I’m back on the list. Plus, I got a gift bag with like five vibrators in it — one for each… uh… I’ll figure something out. I have batteries. I have two hands. And a flashlight.

I shot video at the Chron party (turns out I wasn’t invited to the SFGate party, hmmm), and managed to film Margaret Cho’s very risque fan dance right when we arrived at the GV Ball. Seriously, when I can get a new camera, the quality will be better, but the videos are fun, and embedded after the jump. Next week I’ve been invited to a gay porn holiday party in a suite downtown… yay! A couple more photos from the GV Ball (like the one above — she liked posing for me) are in my Flickr stream.

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A regular reader asks me a few personal questions, and since I’m wide awake at 2am and the holidays are at hand to remind me of family stuff, I felt like answering them. Q and A is after the jump.

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Image by Jacob Appelbaum.

The second Roboexotica 2006 GETV episode is up! In it, I interview more robot makers, Jonathan Moore is so not helpful explaining what his machine does (”It makes a drink, and you drink it”), I coin a new bukkake term, and I drink throughout the video. I’m guessing you could put together quite a sequence of me drinking from both videos; I suggest watching both videos and making a drinking game out of it!

Watch More Cocktail Robot Madness from Roboexotica 2006, it’s quite fun. Also, check out the funny Lunchmeet interview with Joahnnes, the festival director and the crazy, crazy man whose house I stayed at in Vienna with Eddie, Jonathan and Jake. (Werd — can’t Podtech afford a URL for Lunchmeet? Also, their home page seems to be suffering from the SFGate columnist syndrome; it’s hard to find Lunchmeet from the front page; a category link in the tag cloud would be nice. Bummer, it’s a great show.)

Update: Coolness! The cigarette launcher facial recognition bot has a website (and presumably, a posse)! I *loved* these guys — they basically made a Pitching Machine for cigarettes — check out werpbot: this bot can harm you.

At SRL for many months, us women in the shop have built up a frothy reservoir of angst toward Make Magazine for never putting forward women makers (as opposed to women crafters), and the whole overall “make is for boys, craft is for girls” vibe the empire exudes — don’t get me wrong, I’m friends with many of the Make people and love what they do and they’ve been very nice to SRL, but it’s just been irking us dirty-hands, hardware–robot-machine-hacking SRL grrrls for a while, and it’s even still a subject of discussion around the SRL shop and other environs.

So, that said, my new Chron column is up: Knitting for Adults Only. In it, I do snark on the girly-craft thing, but found my head totally turned by Nikol Lohr, the totally awesome author of Naughty Needles — and in my mini-interview, she likens the sexiness of knitting to the panty-wetting allure of someone who can rebuild a set of carburetors. My kind of girl, indeed — and I’m not kidding in the article when I say her new book totally goes on my porn shelf, it’s red-hot. Snip:

“Much to my surprise, San Francisco’s real sexual revolution seems to be happening neither on the streets of the Castro, nor in the sex-positive, women-owned sex shops, nor in Victorian apartments besieged by prolific feminist porn companies. Instead, it is happening in the last place I’d think to go shopping for a whip. At this very moment, the new discourse about reinventing intercourse (and many non-vanilla-flavored activities) is happening at the neighborhood yarn store.

(…) Two women wrestle in cavegirl bikinis. Pasties are modeled by a sexy lineup of women who could only belong in a San Francisco burlesque troupe. “Kinderwhore” is a knitting pattern for naughty schoolgirl socks shown on two mischievous adult schoolgirls. In one adorable photo, a demure model pouts amid a pile of sex toys and hand-crafted cozies for almost every sex toy that keeps Good Vibrations in business. Lest we forget that the ingredients for marital bliss can include love, a paddle and deft needles, one image shows a babe in latex playing cards on the back of a man made into a human table by way of the knitted blindfold and cuffs she’s administered.” Link (+ that’s Lohr in the sexy nurse uniform!)

Update: Boing Boing blogged me! Also, I had no idea Rachel and I were on the same meme trail — she also wrote about sexy knitting in her Voice column, and it’s (of course) a terrific piece! Mmmm, Rachel, yarn, cupcakes… ::sigh:: Don’t miss it.

Last year I posted my top ten sexiest geeks of 2005 list on the 18th, and I’m going to aim for the same date this year — so if you have any nominations or suggestions for me, send them in: violet at tinynibbles dot com Last year’s sex geeks are still lickable, but will have to sit this year out — check the list to avoid double noms.

Wired has their list up and a really nifty way to vote on their selections for the Wired sexy geek ‘o the year — check it out.

I’m happy to see that there’s isn’t anyone on their list that would be on mine — no overlap, and yay more sexy geeks — but then, my list is very much at my own discretion. For instance, I take suggestions, but already have a file I’ve been compiling all year. I mean, I’m talking, let’s find the h4wt GILF material for reals — from my criteria last year, “I’m focusing here on computer and tech geeks; while sexy geeks come in all tasty flavors, I wanted to stick with the geek types I know are not just hot, but pervy enough to give the fantasies a little more fire *while* coding a script to run your vibrator in twenty more different ways via the web. I’m not counting celebrity geeks, as they occupy a more privileged realm than most and if given half a brain can buy their way into at least *looking* like a geek.”

Whose vlog makes you leave lube on your mouse? Someone do a hack that made you sweat and shiver? See a hottie making waves on the interwebs whose panties just might be 2.0 buzzword compliant? Who has the most hackable ass? Were you once temped to molest a signifigant passed-out Google, Yahoo, Technorati, Digg, Apple, (koff) Microsoft employee? Come across anyone you wish would spank you with a PSP while whipping your ass with mad skillz in WoW? Whose glasses would you like to lick, pocket protector you’d find wicked new uses for, who’d you most like to play “hide the handheld” with?

You know the kind. Single or not — it’s all in fun. Tell me! Image via the Linux Sluts Gallery.