Here’s a quick digital snapshot of a portion of a Scotch whiskey ad from Forbes Magazine. Ignore the damned deer for a second. What’s your first impression? Pot stills? Or a vigorous butt-fucking?

There’s no way you can convince me the photographer didn’t frame this shot with lust in his heart.

From the Onion, a link forwarded by a dear friend:

National Endowment For The Arts And Crafts Criticised For Funding Giant Macrame Penis

KANSAS CITY, MO Republican lawmakers and conservative religious groups blasted the National Endowment For The Arts & Crafts Tuesday, claiming that the organization has allocated federal funds for “obscene crafts.”

Above: Kahle’s work hangs at the National Gallery Of Arts & Crafts.
The $15,000 grant in question was awarded last October to Detroit arts & craftsman Albert Kahle, 39, for a nine-foot macrame penis titled “Father (By Mother),” which is currently part of the Macramazement! exhibit at the prestigious National Gallery Of Arts and Crafts in Kansas City, MO.
…
The macrame-work phallus comprises three discrete elements: testicles, shaft, and head. The testicles are knotted in Double Alternating Lark’s Head style and decorated with black maple beads. The shaft of the penis, knotted of Tammy’s Hemp Cord in flesh tone, is embellished with subtle strands of Half-Knot sinnet cord in light blue and Amy’s Cord in pale lavender. The head, the most detailed portion of the work, is embellished with a spray of silver glitter.

“[2003 NEAC grant recipient] Terrence Colwell’s macaroni ‘Crown Of Thorns’ was bad enough,” DeLay said. “But an enormous phallus made out of colorful, child-safe materials that anyone could buy at the craft store? It’s way over the line.”

This is not the first time an NEAC grant has sparked controversy. Last year, a vocal group of citizens appeared before Congress to protest government funding of C.F. Littman’s “Piss-Soaked God’s Eye,” and in 2002, the NEAC received more than 10,000 letters of complaint over the grant it awarded Rachel Delancey for her shellacked driftwood clitoris “Found It… In The Sea.”

There’s more, but that’s as far as I got before I started howling with laughter.

Hey, isn’t it getting along toward springtime? With, like, flowers and stuff?

Yeah, I thought so.

If you look at very much porn, you’ll know there’s a sort of extreme genre out there these days that involves a lot of over-the-top aggression and degrading grossness, including in various mixes things like face-slapping, spitting, shoving girls’ heads in toilets while shoving other stuff up their orifices, and so forth. It’s mostly not for me. So I was entertained when Eden wrote:

I’ve been forced to gag by having a cock pushed down my throat during rough sex and BDSM scenes. It was unpleasant, but that was part of the mood of the moment, and as such it was incredibly exciting. But a whole site (and there are several now) devoted to fucking a woman’s mouth so hard and deep that she vomits around the cock… and he keeps going? I certainly won’t say it should be banned — to each his own — but I’d pay to see those women allowed to force cucumbers down the throats of the men who had just been using them.

So would I. “Max Hardcore Vegetable Revenge” anyone?

The other night The Nymph and I were watching an episode of Sex in The City (third season I believe) in which Samantha was stressing about menopause until, to her relieved delight, she began to bleed all over the sheets of her penis-of-the-week. The sheets, of course, were some sort of satin ten-thousand thread count jobs made from select hand-combed tufts of fur from angora rabbits fed on milk and honey by consecrated virgins. The owner of the sheets (and the penis) was accordingly quite pissy with Samantha, causing me to wisecrack that a gentleman never bitches about what a lady (or any other woman) might leave on his sheets.

Only apparently it wasn’t a wisecrack. Apparently there are actually men in the world who need to be told this.

Brad from Dirty Questions writes:

One night I was at a party and met a super sweet girl. We hit it off, left the party to go out for drinks, and ended up going back to my place. The next morning I took her to her car and as I was saying goodbye she decided to break some news to me.
…
“I thought I was done with my period last night. I wasn’t. I’m really sorry and I’ll buy you new sheets.”
…
It’s got to be really hard to tell someone you’ve only known for 12 hours that you bled all over their bedding. Of course, she neglected to tell me that not only did she bleed on my sheets, but my featherbed and the cover for it and the sweatpants she borrowed.
…
Should I have made her cough up the $214 for a replacement feather bed from Eddie Bauer (that’s where the original was from)? Or was buying me replacement sheets enough?

Enough? Enough? Arrgggg! This “super sweet girl” graces your bed, and you’re fussing about a $214 article of bedding?

The gracious thing to do would be to minimize the situation and reassure the poor girl. “The sheets? Pshaw! I have a dozen more just like them. Don’t mention it. Anyway, I have a laundryman who’s an absolute wizard. Besides, the exuberant pleasure of your company has made me entirely too happy this morning to worry about mere trifles like bedding. Now, what would you like for breakfast?”

I can no more imagine dunning a lover for the costs of ruined bedding than I can imagine sending her a bill for the wine she drank in my kitchen. Sorry old chap, it’s just not done, eh?

This is not just archaic or sexist courtesy. Gentlemen, this is strategic. Women, Zeus love ’em, emit at various times from their juicier parts an entertaining variety of fluids, smells, and flavors. And they tend to be freaked as hell about it, which means they are always washing, swabbing, denaturalizing, sterilizing, and fumigating themselves with soaps and perfumes strong enough kill an entire flock of peregrine falcons passing three city blocks away. If you like the scent or taste of any of a woman’s natural juices, you’ll be smart and shut the hell up about any you don’t like. “Blood? What blood? I didn’t see any blood.” The last thing you ever want to do is encourage, acknowledge, or reinforce a woman’s self-consciousness. In sticky situations, it’s your solemn duty to make her laugh and then change the subject real quick.

Finally got around to putting up a link to Suburban Sex Blog, which I’ve been meaning to do for awhile. Fair warning: it’s kind of a downer blog, written by one of these guys whose married sex life is unhappy and whose wife’s idea of talking about it is telling him to “get over it“.

This picture is going to have to speak for itself, because I’m nearly speechless:

At least she seems happy, too.