The lovely and mysterious Babs explains a sure-fire strategy for a woman to get a man’s attention:

When Babs asked her friend why she was so sad, she told her that her boyfriend was doing beer bong hits and totally ignoring her. Babs didn’t have any sage advice at the time, so she summoned Trevor, one of her closest guy friends, for help. After talking with him for a few minutes, the depressed girlfriend started to grin and wandered off to find her brew-swillin’ dude.

Babs caught up with her friend in the bathroom about fifteen minutes later.

“You’re pretty happy. What happened?”

“Oh, Trevor just told me to go unzip my boyfriend’s pants. It worked. Now he has eyes only for me.”

Debra Hyde at Pursed Lips has an important discussion [link has unfortunately vanished] about the difficulty of discussing appalling abuses that have a sexual component. It’s a real problem for this blog.

Anyone who has a rich fantasy life can find an erotic component in almost any tale of sexual atrocity. And, since horror is often an unwelcome emotion, the temptation to eroticize horrific stories by translating them into more palatable fantasy terms can be overwhelming. The downside is that the story itself is often trivialized in the process — if one gets too busy picturing Uday Hussein’s pony girls in the mind’s eye, one could forget to empathize sufficiently with their terror, shame, and humiliation. Worse, one could forget to be outraged by Uday’s behavior.

For this reason, sexual atrocities are featured much less often on this blog than they might be. It’s unseemly, at best, to treat actual human suffering as mere fodder for an erotic fantasy — and almost any discussion of real world sexual suffering in the context of this blog is subject to that risk. And yet, having a category of stories about sex be off limits to a sex blog is, itself, rather perverse.

Debrah’s article suggests a path through the maze. She acknowledges, first, the impossibility of discussing such events without the discussion having a pornographic quality. But then she points out that pornography is not always erotic, having a long history as a protest and propaganda tool aimed at political change. And she suggests that we not shrink from such uses of pornography, but rather embrace its power to incite moral outrage. She’s a wise woman.

That’s a lot of preamble for a short block quote about a professional government rapist. Perhaps if Jonah Goldberg had read Debra’s blog, he would have managed a little less flippancy in this story:

There are some professions American colleges simply don’t prepare you for. Consider Aziz Salih Ahmed. He works for the Iraqi government. His technical specialty? He’s a “violator of women’s honor,” according to his Iraqi identity card. In other words, he rapes women. Presumably he likes it. But he does it on the government’s dime so whether he likes brutally raping women or not, he’s probably good at it or at least he’s good enough for government work.

First of all, apologies are in order. This blog has been nearly imageless, and/or monochrome, for far too long. In the nature of restitution, please accept this nice girl working on her personal hygiene.

Image “borrowed” from deep in the archives of the Sensual Liberation Army, which is herewith added to the sex blog roll. Thanks!

And now for the pathetic part. Folks, Bacchus is officially getting old. For, while gazing at this raven-haired and oh-so-damp callipygian beauty, what to his wandering mind should appear but the following unworthy thought:

“Nice shower tiles. I want a shower like that.”

Sigh.

P.S.: This photograph provides additional evidence that Anil was right.

Those cute and cuddly poo-eating bunnies over at Silflay Hraka started up with the mangled Christmas songs right after Thanksgiving, and, as the song goes, “it doesn’t show signs of stopping.” Now they’ve come along with a bastardized Christmas song about sex:

Noelle was an underclassman in my senior year, and as Christmas approached her life got worse and worse, from the dirty carols point of view.

The first Noelle, the angels did lay
Was with certain poor shepherds on rough bales of hay;
She was poor and she was cheap, and she had great big teats,
On a cold winter’s night she was better than sheep.
Noelle, Noelle, Noelle, Noelle,
At sexual congress she did excel!

These guys give doggerel a bad name. Go visit!

Amazon is selling the following fine publication:

How to Good-Bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way?

Bacchus suspects that, depending on how the depressed patient is wired, the answer to this question may well depend on what is in the anus while this therapy is conducted.

Jessica Parker over at BlogAnon has announced her intention to reclaim the number one Google search results spot for the phrase “sex blog” which she apparently had at some point back before Bacchus got into the sex blogging line.

Now, Jessica evidently has more web designing talent in her left nipple than Bacchus could ever hope to possess, plus she has some natural (and they do look deliciously natural) advantages, which she proffers up most fetchingly at the top of her blog as the “#1 Blog Boobies on the Web.” (Bacchus is way too much of a gentleman to argue, even if he was inclined to do so, which he is not, even though he has seem some other fine candidates that discretion and an avoidance of invidious comparisons prevents him from identifying with particularity.)

So anyways, BlogAnon is a damn fine read and goes on the linklist. But about that #1 Google spot for “sex blog”? Not gonna happen. As the dad says in Cheaper by the Dozen: “Over my dead body, and it will be quite a climb.” Bacchus fought and scratched for the magnificent twenty hits a day the number one spot delivers, and he’s not gonna give it up without a fight. Bring pitons and a helicopter for the photographers.

[2006 Update: Four years later, BlogAnon is long gone and the domain snapped up by a click farmer. In recent months Eros Blog has been swapping the number one spot with a defunct blog by one TwiddlyBits. BlogAnon never did rescale those heights.]

Jessica has a secret weapon, though, in the form of this fine sex blog song to the tune of Tom Jone’s Sex Bomb:

Sex blog, sex blog
you’re a sex blog,
showing us your boobies
there’s no way you can go wrong
sex blog, sex blog
you’re a sex blog,
and baby you can turn me on

(Better than what? Fair question. Better than living with Mother Palm and her five daughters, by all accounts. Bacchus avidly and sincerely doubts that companionable ladies have anything to fear from this form of competition.)

Now, is that a backwards and indirect way to start a sex blog entry, or what? Enough pussyfooting (if the expression may be forgiven) around and beating about the bush. (Hmm, forgiveness for inapt expressions probably getting to be an impossible dream by now. Stay tuned, it only gets worse from here.)

The web is awash with tales of The Fleshlight — a male masturbation toy that apparently doesn’t suck. (Literally or figuratively — can we just stop noticing the inapt turns of phrase for a while? If Bacchus was a competent writer, he’d be getting paid for all this.)

Anyway, this toy is all over the web, has been since about 1998 or so, but given the nature of things it’s tough to find a guy who will admit to having tried it. (Personal reviews in the comments are hereby solicited.) However, many of the reviews are positive. For instance:

About a week later it arrived. I was instantly worried when I felt how heavy it was, but that ended up being a plus. Once it was unwrapped, I ran a finger over the pink lips. The feeling was soft and malleable, “Real Feel Super Skin” is simply amazing. It’s light mild sent of vanilla was pleasant and not over powering. I followed the easy instructions and got to work. A few moments later I was moaning in ecstasy.

Is the “Fleshlight” better than the real thing? No. But if you had the real thing, you wouldn’t be reading this. Is it better then your hand? Oh yes! I couldn’t believe how good it felt, so close to the real thing, but no need to buy flowers.

The folks over at Clean Sheets were a little more reserved in their endorsement, but they still gave this item a thumb (or something) up:

Our reviewer’s first impressions of the product were “I GOTTA have this” and “very unusual feel.” Said one man; “The appearance was relatively life-like. The vanilla scent was oddly pleasing.” Indeed. Closing your eyes and touching the material is eerie; like touching the real thing. One man said “Closest thing to the real thing I ever felt.”

In use, they seem to cull all kinds of honors. “With the right lube, the feel is very nice.”

Overall, this product received very handsome commentary: “Not as good as the real thing but definitely better than your hand. I like using it while watching videos.” “This is tons of fun and feels great. It’s almost the perfect sex toy!”

Bacchus has not yet tried this device — it’s not exactly cheap, and there’s an “ick factor” (reported on by the folks at Nerve) that’s impossible to ignore. (However, even the Nerve reviewer appears to have enjoyed the Fleshlight once he, uhm, “screwed his courage to the sticking point” and got down to business.)

So: Any fans of this thing out there who want to tell us how it feels?