This is true:

Baycon is a very costume-based convention (or “cosplay” as the young, wide-eyed screaming anime fans are calling it). This means that everyone looks like a freak. Especially people like me, who don’t dress up. We look like the weirdest freaks ever. Even the hotel staff look like fairly normal freaks by comparison, because they’re dressed up in waiter and maid’s outfits.

And some people, look like incredible, dressed-like-Lara-Croft-only-with-chains-on semi-naked babelicious freaks. Not that I stare. Or even look, or think about them, or anything ever. I only know about their existence because when these people walk into a room, all the straight boys nearby give out this universal telepathic deflatory pained sigh. It’s like the sound of a wolf-whistle, only backwards, sucked in. Ooohhhhhh.

The sigh has a meaning. All my life, it says, I have been told by my superego that dressing like a Marvel superhero will not get me laid. And, here, here and now in this temporary saturnalia, surrounded by other males who are – at best – my equals in the ugly league division table: here is my perfect woman. But the world knows that this mad girl’s flickering eyes craves just one thing. A man dressed as Galactus, Eater of Worlds. And not only have I left my Galactus costume at home. I never made it. Worse, I threw those biro drawings of me in the Galactus helmet away the moment I’d drawn them, ashamed to show them even to (say) Dave. And now I know: I’m not a virgin because I’m a geek. I’m a virgin because I have pursued geekdom with a less than pure, directed gaze. I have faltered, and now I’m just another guy at Baycon. And some other guy in front of me will be Galahad with the Holy Grail because he spent two weeks measuring out huge papier-mache clamps to fit on the side of his head. And I did nothing but stare at my Lara Croft pull-out poster, in the belief that she was not real and that I could not ever meet her.

Pursue your enthusiasms. Because if you’re doing them right, you know exactly where they end.

Bacchus once went to Baycon, many years ago. Bacchus was a virgin at the time. Bacchus made this very noise. Repeatedly. It hurts a little bit when you make it, too.

Thanks to Danny O’Brien’s Oblomovka (drat that missing Russian-English dictionary!) for the excellent advice and to Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing for finding it.

The news from Thailand:

SRISAKET (AFP): Five Thai women have agreed to pay compensation to a man they allegedly gang-raped on Songkhran Day, police said today.

Police said the women, aged between 20 and 40, admitted to plying the 47-year-old man from this northeastern Srisaket province with alcohol, tying him up and stripping him naked before taking turns having sex with him.

“All the women claimed that they were fed up by the man’s loud boasting about his sexual prowess,” said Pol Capt Gene Puangmala, of Khukhan district police station. “Some of the women were married,” he added.

He said the man complained to police of having a swollen and damaged organ after the incident, but after some negotiation agreed not to press charges in return for financial compensation. The agreed sum was 400 baht per woman.

A tooter who tooted a flute
tried to tutor two tooters to toot.
Said the two to the tooter,
“Is it harder to toot, or
to tutor two tooters to toot?”

This is such a cheap shot it’s almost not fair: The Colorado Style Artificial Vagina. Selling point: “Also has collection bottle and filter.” As the Cowgirl would say, “yum yum.”

And if you’ve got a dominatrix very high up on your gift list, she could probably have fun threatening her clients with the ElectroJack V from the same site.

The more vocal advocates for breast feeding argue that it’s an act that’s utterly without sexual significance, and that the sexual iconography of the exposed female breast is somehow destroyed by the proximity of a hungry infant. If they’re right, the following story has no place on a sex blog.

But who cares? This is just too deliciously kinky and European:

Woman who nursed puppies has no regrets

A young Norwegian mother who took a litter of puppies to her own breast when her dog died giving birth remains proud of her unusual move.

…

The drama began Friday November 8 when Skiaker’s Canarian Warren Hound, named Aida, started giving birth to a litter of 14 puppies. Suddenly the puppies stopped coming and the next stop was the vet’s office.

In the end, both Aida and three of the puppies died, while another three died later.

Those that survived were in desperate need of nourishment, and that’s when Skiaker impulsively took them to her breast. She fed them over that first weekend, until surrogate mother dogs could be found to take over.

Today, the eight surviving puppies (four males and four females) are back in the Skiaker’s home and in good health. So is baby Emil, now five months old and happy to play with his canine comrades in the Skiakers’ living room.

Deep in your heart you know that the video (if there were a video) of a blonde Norwegian lady breastfeeding puppies would sell for big bucks on Ebay.

Dave at Scripting News shares his extremely cool photograph from the red light district in Amsterdam. He calls it “Negotiating”.

There’s a story behind this image. It’s obviously a recreation of the famous “three wise monkeys” with their “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” advice. But what caused these three ladies on a couch to do this, and to smile so nicely while doing it?