It’s October:

Who’s going to Octoberfest?

Via Boing Boing comes word that persistent hiccups (no laughing matter, some people have them for years, and can’t even swallow solid food because of it) can sometimes be stopped via “digital rectal massage”:

A 60-year-old man with acute pancreatitis developed persistent hiccups after insertion of a nasogastric tube. Removal of the latter did not terminate the hiccups which had also been treated with different drugs, and several manoeuvres were attempted, but with no success. Digital rectal massage was then performed resulting in abrupt cessation of the hiccups. Recurrence of the hiccups occurred several hours later, and again, they were terminated immediately with digital rectal massage. No other recurrences were observed.

One imagines that a finger is not the only appendage that would work, which immediately makes me think of a great approach for those of you whose main squeeze has painted on the stop sign. Next time they get the hiccups that won’t go away, forget the drink of water, the brown paper bag, the sudden scare. Instead, say “Honey, I know a sure cure…”

Although most of the sex commentators I like and respect appear to have climbed on the “Fortuny Is Evil” fleshpile in connection with The Great Craigslist Sex Personals Massacre Of 2006 (I include without limitation Violet Blue (who started out thoughtful but is now namecalling), Mistress Matisse, and Dan Savage), I’ve been disappointed that their united condemnation of Fortuny has been intensely personal, without really coming to grips with the interesting question of what, in a rigorous ethical sense, his great crimes seem to have been. OK, so he’s a “prick” and what he did was wrong” (Matisse), but what moral obligation did he violate? He “sucks” (Savage) and he’s a “creepy guy” and a “jerk” (Violet) — all of which may be true, I don’t know the guy, but what does it have to do with what he actually did?

The more I think about this, the more I come around to thinking that what he did to get the howling mob after him (and by howling mob, I refer more broadly to others who have weighed in on the controversy; the folks I’ve quoted here are the calm and thoughtful ones) was he violated outdated and unreasonable social expectations.

Savage talks about “privacy violations”, Violet about “basic privacy and communication rules of conduct”, but neither of them come to grips with my point, which is that it’s not inherently reasonable to expect random strangers to preserve your privacy. You don’t have any expectation of privacy in an email you send to a stranger; or, if you do, there’s something wrong in your thinking. At best, you’re relying on their social graces — I’ll go so far as to agree that it’s polite to protect the confidences of strangers — but how many random strangers exhibit the manners you’d prefer? Not enough, never enough, especially not when something important — like your privacy — is on the line.

I am heartened to see some understanding of my other point, which is that a lot of responders to sex ads are misbehaving in various ways, and thus are exposing themselves (heh) to more risk than they are comfortable accepting. These miscreants (and I refer specifically to the virtual flashers who slammed the comments on my last post with “the slut was asking for it” self-justifications) seem to be the most outraged, because (like virtually everyone else except me, it seems) they feel their misbehaviour ought to be cloaked by the privacy-protecting practices of their intended victims, and they aren’t happy to learn that their expectations of privacy aren’t as reasonable as they’d hoped.

To which I say, “Waah.”

Violet seems to get this part, writing:

Think of it like this: when you upload a porn photo to Flickr, you are in violation of their Terms of Use rules and they take it down. When you use your work email address to answer an explicit sex ad, you are essentially in violation of your employer’s TOU. If you cheat on your wife, you’re in violation of your marriage’s TOU. In his “experiment”, Jason Fortuny violated several ethical and social TOUs that many of us accept as basic privacy and communication rules of conduct.

But not everyone outed in The Craigslist Experiment was violating one of life’s TOUs — I’ll even argue that the majority of the people who had their personal info revealed didn’t care, or notice.

I don’t, obviously, agree that Fortuny violated any TOUs — if anything, he merely ignored one of those meaningless and overreaching shrinkwrap EULAs on boxed software, one that others are attempting but failing to impose on him, one that he never agreed with and which consequently has no moral or ethical juice. (There’s a huge difference between breaking a promise and failing to behave as expected. The ad in question did not say “All replies kept confidential.” If it had, this argument wouldn’t be happening. Then Fortuny’d be the obvious jerk everyone says he is.)

But I do agree with Violet that folks who were using Craigslist in an ethically appropriate way — which is to say, folks who were ethically free to be looking for rough kinky sex, and who weren’t simply using their response as a vessel for their virtual self-exposure kink “because the slut was obviously asking for it”, folks who weren’t violating any of life’s TOUs, folks with nothing to be ashamed of — these people couldn’t be hurt in the Massacre, and weren’t.

Leaving my sympathy for the remainder muted at best.

Why, exactly, is everyone in favor of a social privacy rule that primarily benefits adulturers, virtual flashers, and other people who engage in online sexual behavior that they can’t defend, proudly and publicly, in their own lives and communities? Why is it so hard to understand that all online behavior is public?

Dominatrix Isis Love, it seems, likes her men dirty:

Possibly it’s because she has so much fun washing them up:

What do you think, ladies? Does he clean up real good?

Pictures courtesy of Men In Pain.

Sometimes you gotta hope you’re reading a spoof, but this one doesn’t feel that way. Party Girl has found the winningest personal ad ever. After a long rant about the unmarriageability of American women, we find this prize-winning self-marketing material just a few sentences from the end:

Speaking English is an option, understanding English is important and wrestling experience is a plus. I finish what I start and I’m the type of man you could grow old with. I’m ardently set in my ways and my mantra has become “My way or the highway.” I’m not crazy – I’m realistic and contrary to popular belief I haven’t lost my marbels – I’ve lost my patience. Additionally, if you wouldn’t mind moving in with my parents that would be great (after marriage of course).

His phone is ringing off the hook…

I know our gracious host mentioned this illustrious artwork a while ago, and included a link to a version of it. But that version is just black and white. It’s so much prettier in full Disney-style color:

You say it’s too small for you to appreciate the depicted debauchery? Okay then, here’s the larger version a friend sent me.

Update: Bacchus here. Since I posted the earlier post to which Aphrodite refers, I’ve discovered that this artwork is available in a handsome poster format from the website of the artist original publisher himself, one Paul Krassner. As you can see on his page, Paul’s got a modern digital recoloring, in a lighter and (to my eye) prettier set of colors. I actually ordered several copies of the poster from Paul, and he was fast and friendly about getting them in the mail. ErosBlog recommended!

In the tired stereotype of the semi-satisfying suburban sex life, blowjobs often feature as a “special” activity if at all — birthday sex, or as a sexual “reward” for being a well-trained man, as in this old joke. As is obvious to any sex blog reader, that old stereotype is getting less and less apt these days, but it still rings true for a vast swathe of American manhood.

But not, it must be said, at Kaya’s house:

He likes to be serviced sexually while He’s busy doing something else. I suppose that could be labelled a fetish of sorts. He likes to have me working hard to suck His cock while He’s distracting Himself with… well, with anything. A book, the tv, the computer. It’s a challenge for my dick-sucking abilities to keep Him hard when He’s otherwise occupied. When He starts going soft I know I’m beginning to lack in effort. That’s about when He’ll start chastising me too. If it happens too often, if I’m really lacking in effort, He will get mad.

I know alot of people, women, would find that to be disrespectful or they’d flat out refuse to do it. I’ve read it, I’ve heard it. They want or need that attention, they’d see His focusing on something else as an insult of some sort. And I’ve experienced that too. I feel that at times and I get irritated and frustrated and have let it become personal. I’ve gone down the road of “He doesn’t like me, He doesn’t want me, I could be any whore down here, I’m not attractive to Him, blah blah blah.” Been there. But it’s not about that. Not really.

He is getting off on the humiliation that it causes me, of course. And it *is* humiliating. Mostly though, He’s getting off on the power and control. It’s a huge power trip for Him. He gets off on the effort I put into it. I’m *working* to please Him while He’s working to ignore it. While He lies/sits there, cool as a cucumber and seemingly uninterested, I’m sweating, I’m grunting, I’m generally in some degree of discomfort or pain and all I am getting out of it is a ‘good girl’ at the end. And I’ll only hear that if I’ve put enough effort into it to have impressed Him.

It’s a victory for me if I can make it good enough and catch His interest enough, that He stops everything else that He’s doing and focuses on me. Focuses on me in a good way that is, not because I’ve messed things up somehow. I was victorious on this night though.

The computer is just one of the things that He will be busy doing when He snaps and points at His crotch. The ol’ snap-n-point. Snap and point and I am on my knees searching for His cock. What a spoiled man He is.