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The Sex Blog Of Record
Monday, February 28th, 2022 -- by Bacchus
This very good boy jumps in the river, finds sticks, and brings them back for treats. Today he found the most excellent stick:
The amazing thing about this photo is that it’s from a rather long thread on Twitter where many different people show photos of their dogs playing with sex toys found in the great out-of-doors. Is there some fetish subculture that involves buying sex toys and leaving them under the hedge at the park?
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Sunday, February 20th, 2022 -- by Bacchus
Apropos the previous post on the perils of online sex toy shopping, one way around the problem is of course to order a lot of toys in hopes of finding that one perfect size. Of course, this is a problem if your romantic partner is a completist collector who insists on watching you use all of them:
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Friday, February 18th, 2022 -- by Bacchus
It is really easy to mess up and not understand the dimensions of a sex toy one buys online, especially when just a few millimeters can make a major difference to the experience of the toy:
Artist is illcarryyou.
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Thursday, November 4th, 2021 -- by Bacchus
Your finger, your tongue, your dick if that’s how you dangle — I’m sure they are all very fine. You deploy them with cleverness and skill. You have, proverbially, not had any complaints.
But you should be honest with yourself. Female sexual pleasure can be a tricky business. Orgasms can be elusive for anybody. And they are not all created equal. There’s a spectrum from quick convulsion to wracking full-body exaltation. In extreme cases, she squirts so much she requires urgent rehydration. And that’s where the honesty comes in: how many of the most extreme orgasms you’ve witnessed had a sex toy involved somewhere in the process of production? I think, when you tally your sums, you’ll acknowledge that the right sex toy is your orgasmic ally and not, as a few of the most foolish men believe, some sort of plastic competitor.
I’m a big believer in the idea that men should buy, have, and deploy sex toys, for the maximization of their own and their partners’ pleasure. It’s not exactly an ordeal; online shopping is a thing these days, and you’ve got a huge choice of sex toy offerings at sites like Mega Pleasure. I mean, why would you not?
In the many years I’ve been sex blogging, squirting orgasms (female ejaculation, if you’re stuffy) has been mentioned, discussed, and analyzed from a number of different perspectives. From various anecdotes, it has become clear that the question “how much stimulation is too much?” is usually answered from a gendered perspective. Men — we lazy beasts — have often spoken up with the opinion that powerful vibrating toys are like comedian Tim Allen’s legendary power tools — no matter how good they are, they’d be better with a little more power. Women are more likely to view this attitude as sadistic — which to be fair it sometimes literally is.
“If a little bit’s good, a whole lot’s better” is all fun and games until it’s your tender membranes getting wildly vibrated. At that point, like all good sex, it becomes highly situational. Variations in anatomy, mood, preference, and for all I know, barometric pressure? All these variables make it impossible to generalize. But at the end of the day, I am a man. I’ve possessed and enjoyed the use of many sex toys that seemed underpowered to me, and no small few powerful ones too. Given the choice, I’m convinced more genuinely is better.
Image credits from top to bottom: The face-down ass-up rabbit-vibe squirting orgasm is from the adult game Jikage Rising by Smiling Dog. The lesbian squirt session featuring fingers and a strap-on dildo is by Mavoly. The post-orgasmic bullet vibe user lying exhaustedly in a pool of her own squirt is by Diamond_Arrow. The notably-flexible blonde who is eagerly watching herself squirt is by Daz-Da-Way. The woman screaming through a vibrator-forced orgasm is by Kaiota. And the woman pleasuring herself with a powerful vibrator is by Momono Mushroom.
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Tuesday, October 6th, 2020 -- by Bacchus
Look, folks. Sometimes “just because we can” is not a good enough reason to hook your sex toys to the internet. Sometimes, the old analog ways of doing things are better. Especially if what you’re doing is locking up your penis:
But wait! Wouldn’t if be fun if we didn’t need a key? We could Bluetooth it! And have an app! And then my virtual keyholder could lock or unlock the cock from anywhere in the world! What could possibly go wrong?
What could go wrong, you ask? Here’s your answer: The Qiui internet-connected penis chastity lock. Zack Whittaker at Tech Crunch has the story: Security flaw left ‘smart’ chastity sex toy users at risk of permanent lock-in
This could have been bad.
U.K.-based security firm Pen Test Partners said the flaw in the Qiui Cellmate internet-connected chastity lock, billed as the “world’s first app controlled chastity device,” could have allowed anyone to remotely and permanently lock in the user’s penis.
The Cellmate chastity lock works by allowing a trusted partner to remotely lock and unlock the chamber over Bluetooth using a mobile app. That app communicates with the lock using an API. But that API was left open and without a password, allowing anyone to take complete control of any user’s device.
Because the chamber was designed to lock with a metal ring underneath the user’s penis, the researchers said it may require the intervention of a heavy-duty bolt cutter or an angle grinder to free the user.
I’m no expert on penis cages or lockable male chastity devises, but I gather some users enjoy having other parties in control of when and how they can free their dick long enough to have a satisfying sexual experience.
You might trust your lover with the keys to that experience. But once you connect your cock lock to the internet, suddenly there’s a third party in your triangle of lust and frustration: A basement crew of unresponsive Chinese developers, along with everybody in the world smart enough to hack their weak-ass software. How’s that going to end? Not well!
Qiui chief executive Jake Guo told TechCrunch that a fix would arrive in August, but that deadline came and went. “We are a basement team,” he said…
It’s not known if anyone maliciously exploited the vulnerable API. Several user reviews of the app complained that the app had bugs that would cause the device to stay locked.
Image credits, top to bottom: Kami Tora, Froaden, KD Pierre.
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Sunday, September 20th, 2020 -- by Bacchus
Do your LEG0 mini figures have enough sex toys? This guy’s do!
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Tuesday, June 16th, 2020 -- by Bacchus
I am somewhat notorious for doom-and-glooming that the pornocalypse comes for us all. The aphorism is shorthand for my observation that companies and social media platforms evolve through a life cycle in which porn, adult sites, and persons interested in these are initially welcome while a platform or internet business builds out its internet presence, and then — slowly or rapidly — these outfits purge all the porn from their platforms in response to various pressures. Often, there’s a hypocritical element, especially when the company or platform retains a business model that’s porn-adjacent. In such cases, the porn purge looks like greasily disingenuous posturing: “What we do here is a matter of healthy pleasure. We’re not pornographic, oh no! And to prove it, we’ll exclude all those stinky pornographers — yes, the very ones that we courted for their traffic and money when we were younger, newer, and more desperate for traffic.”
The #pornocalypse comes for us all. I’ve detailed dozens of examples since 2013 and — without the catchphrase — going all the way back to 2004 when LiveJournal started cracking down on the sex bloggers who helped make it great. I’ve been on this beat a long time.
You want to know who has been on their beat even longer than I’ve been on mine? The legendary sex toy sellers Adam & Eve, who these days style themselves the “#1 Adult Toy Superstore.” They’ve been at it for fifty fucking years — an entire half-century. They got their start selling condoms and lube in brick-and-mortar stores, then branched out by starting a highly-successful condoms-by-mail business at a time when this was still technically illegal because of the Comstock Act. At some point they added sex toys and began franchising their brand to more than sixty sex shops nationwide. Prior to 1996, they put up a website they called “a collection of the finest erotic catalogs on the Internet.” Yeah, they’ve been at this game for a minute or two.
Now, let me tell you the story of how Adam & Eve the sex toy selling mega-chain first came to overlap with my little operation here at ErosBlog. Cast your mind back sixteen years, to 2004. There I was, blogging happily along, when I got a lovely email from Libby. “Libby from Adam & Eve” was a genuinely nice person who later became a sex blogger in her own right. In 2004, she greeted me with kind words complimenting ErosBlog for being “chock full of wickedness” and being “one of the most popular sex blogs in the world.” (That last was the best kind of flattery, since it was, at the time, essentially true.) Here’s Libby’s entire email. (Yes, I still have it.) You’ll need to click to make it big enough to read:
The essence of Libby’s pitch: Adam & Eve wanted to “start a brand new e-lationship” with ErosBlog. (Aren’t you glad that neologism didn’t catch on?) Our new “e-lationship”, boiled down, was intended to be a sort of primitive affiliate deal:
Wasn’t that nice?
In truth, it wasn’t. In those halcyon days, most affiliate schemes offered more than a 20% revshare. And although sex toy affiliate programs have always been notorious for not offering useful stats that an affiliate can use to track sales, Adam & Eve basically had no stats at all; it was my impression that their program was a “trust us” deal where they periodically paid out revenue without any visibility at all into the number of sales, the referring links, or anything else that affiliates need to verify that we are getting fairly paid.
So I wrote back, and, long story short, pitched them to buy a banner ad instead. Which they did, maintaining it on and off for the next year or two. My stinky-porn sex blog traffic was worth paying for, and pay they did:
Note the content the Adam & Eve banner ad is running next to in this screenshot: it’s a brutal spanking photo from this post, featuring an interview with a spanking model about the experience of modeling for one of the most severe/BDSM spanking porn producers of her day. In 2004 and 2005, Adam & Eve was happy to advertise against this raunchy porn content.
But, you know: the pornocalypse comes for us all.
Fast forward to 2020. I am, for various reasons, currently in the market for a good sex toy affiliate program. I went to Adam & Eve to see what their offering might be these days. And it instantly became clear that they have succumbed to the pornocalypse. Their affiliate program these days has two layers of content screening for potential affiliates. A potential affiliate has to satisfy not only Adam & Eve, but also their third-party affiliate program operator, a company called Ascend.
Adam & Eve, who used to be totally fine running their banner against painful spanking content, now say they won’t allow their affiliate links to appear on any website that publishes bondage, pain, or urination content:
Well, fuck. ErosBlog sometimes offers pissing stuff. bondage, BDSM, and pain content, too. After all these years, I still have zero fucking clue how a photo of a bondage scene is supposed to “depict” the “consent of the participants” — is the model supposed to hold an “I consent” cardboard sign, or what? Indeed, I’ve blogged at length about the actual ways to confirm consent in the BDSM porn we enjoy. Ironically, one of the first posts in which I did so was the brutal-spanking post that appears next to Adam & Eve’s banner in the 2005 screenshot above.
But that’s not all. Adam & Eve have some sort of working agreement with an affiliate program operator called Ascend. To become an Adam & Eve affiliate in 2020, you’ve also got to satisfy the content requirements that Ascend imposes:
That’s right, folks. To sell sex toys for Adam & Eve, you’ve got to do it from a website that doesn’t have any “pornographic, obscene, sexually explicit, or related content.” I dunno how you’d do that, but them’s the rules. I didn’t make ’em.
I call terms of service like this “porn-hostile TOS”. It’s my policy not to do business with anybody that has porn-hostile TOS. But, sometimes, the porn-hostile TOS are just for show. Sometimes, they are intended to cover butts and look good, but they aren’t enforced. By the time I got this deep into reading the rules, I had become curious whether Adam & Eve (and Ascend) could actually be 100% serious about all this porn-hostile nonsense. From a sex toy retailer! So I went ahead and filled out an affiliate application, just for the pleasure of seeing my inevitable rejection letter.
I was not disappointed. Here it is:
That makes it all nice and offical! My website does not meet their quality standards. It contains “inappropriate content”. Sixteen years ago, they pitched me to join their affiliate program, and when I said no, they bought advertising. Now? The pornocalypse comes for us all. Nowadays, you can’t sell sex toys for Adam & Eve if your website has “pornographic” or “sexually explicit” content. How the fuck does that even work? Sex toys are sexually explicit by fucking definition. Putting the Adam & Eve link on your website makes your website sexually explicit! What the actual fuck? It doesn’t make any sense.
The pornocalypse comes for us all. It fucking ate Adam & Eve.
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Saturday, January 12th, 2019 -- by Bacchus
There is a device marketed as an “oral sex toy for women” that consists of a bunch of soft mechanical tongues on a rotating wheel. The one shown here is a cheap Chinese knockoff, so I figure it’s only fair I stole their image from AliExpress:
My favorite sex toy retailer does not carry even the reputable brand of these things, which is a worrying hint — if we needed one — that the concept is dubious. But I’m not precisely equipped to evaluate the device properly myself. I did get offered review product once, but The Nymph, who would have been the product tester, made it clear that there was only one very hard way that mechanical tongues were getting near her erogenous zones:
Mind you, I didn’t necessarily consider this a deal breaker. But when I explored that line of conversation, it turns out that she was speaking entirely rhetorically. So in the end, we did not pursue the “oral sex toy for women” review opportunity.
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Sunday, June 17th, 2018 -- by Bacchus
I used to have a favorite online sex toy store, and one of the reasons it was my favorite was that they had a proactive affiliate manager who would send me stuff. But she doesn’t work there any more, and in the couple of years since she left, I’ve clearly fallen out of touch with developments in the dick-oriented sex toys world. In fact, the briefest of looks at the front page of MensToysHub.com makes it more than plain that there has been an enormous growth (heh) in the selection and assortment of toys designed for penis pleasure. Moreover, these toys have a lot more creativity and technology designed into them than last time I looked, too.
Let me be honest right up front: on that page there is a bit of sales copy some ErosBlog readers may find troubling. If, like me, you are somewhat behind the curve about developments in the penis-pleasuring category of toys, you’ll find plenty to interest you. But the sex toy discussions also include jokey comparisons that are disrespectful of women and sex workers. It seems to be a marketing strategy; perhaps one day I’ll get really drunk and do a post about the implications of that.
Moving rapidly along: but ooh, the sex toys!
The nineteen toys on the front page at MensToysHub are a varied bunch, but I was struck by how many of them have some sort of wireless connectivity (four or five) and/or integration with various combinations of interactive, online, virtual reality (VR), and/or point-of-view (POV) porn. (Two in particular: the Fleshlight Launch and the Kiiroo Onyx.) There are at least three “hands-free” masturbators; these upgrade that classic “pocket pussy” concept with mechanical systems that do the work for you. There are three or four more that, while not hands-free, combine vibrator technology (and, sometimes, remote communications for input from a partner who is across the room or on the other side of the country) with the traditional stimulus of the fleshlike hole for inserting your penis into.
Even in the “traditional” category of unpowered male masturbaters with no wires, motors, batteries, vibrations, or Bluetooth communications chips, the seven toys on the list are remarkably diverse and (to my old-fashioned eye at least) surprisingly modern. The most old-fashioned fleshy pocket on the list (one of the several Fleshlights, take your pick) would have been a category leader top-of-market toy last time I was seriously paying attention to this kind of toys; the only toy that resembles the downmarket jelly “pocket pussies” back then now looks like something that came out of an alien growth tank that makes brightly-colored bioengineered hand grenades.
Really, gentlemen, we’ve come a long way when it comes to new ways to spend money on ways to come!
Saturday, March 18th, 2017 -- by Bacchus
Back in 2013 I spent a bit of time and effort razzing the Thingiverse people for their adult-hostile terms of service, which at the time (I haven’t checked back in with them subsequently) contained the usual butt-covering boilerplate tending to suggest they’d probably forbid sex toys if anybody could figure out how to to print some body-safe ones (said not to be possible with the 3D printers and feedstocks then available). There’s not much sign that anything has changed at Thingiverse or with the technology of 3D printing, but one entertaining “not a sex toy, just a joke” design has popped up on Thingiverse that may amuse this readership. Behold the GoPro Body Mount by Peterthinks:
Peterthink’s official summary and post-print instructions read:
This started as a joke… it still is really. Print at your own risk, use at your own risk. Any day I don’t make the internet a little weirder is a waste of a day.
Print it, attach camera, insert, film event.
Evidently the bodysafe issue still looms large with 3D printables, however; because when a couple of commenters begin discussing potential practical solutions including acetone washes and silicone dips, Peterthink comes back with a more emphatic disclaimer:
This will never be safe to use. It’s just a joke. Print it, give it as a gift and get a laugh.
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Sunday, August 2nd, 2015 -- by Bacchus
This is pretty awesome:
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Tuesday, February 3rd, 2015 -- by Bacchus
Today is my day for blogging about the best bargains in the Valentines Day sex toy sales. What’s good this year? My eye falls first on that perennial favorite, the Neon Wand, with discounted accessories too.
I really like the Neon Wand as a sex toy gift because it’s said to be much less intense than its much larger and more expensive Violet Wand spiritual predecessor. Certainly the Neon Wand can be used in BDSM if you’re so inclined, but it’s first and foremost a sensation toy, with just enough snappy electrics to be edgy and exciting as well as pleasurable (should you choose to use it that way).
If you’re not into the kinky stuff so much, but your partner is fifty shades of curious because of that new movie coming out, this might also be an excellent time to buy the Bondage 101 kit:
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Friday, December 12th, 2014 -- by Bacchus
This is the weekend you want to place your online sex toy orders; if you don’t order soon, you’ll need an express delivery option for Christmas goodies to arrive on time. But, even with hefty seasonal sale discounts, it’s too easy to spend a ton of money on sex toy gifts and BDSM goodies! Thus you may wonder what good all of this is to you if you’re trying to navigate the holiday shopping season on a sharply limited budget, as so many Americans must.
Being somewhat limited myself in the Christmas budget department this year, my eyes were drawn this year to an array of inexpensive offerings. I found a mix of small toys that are never too spendy, plus some sale items that are great bargains in the under-$25 price range. The result, I think, is a good resource for filling sexy stockings and putting small-but-hot presents under your tree.
The first duty of any would-be Santa Clause is to make sure that sufficiently naughty persons receive in their stockings some modern analogue of the traditional admonitory switches and lumps of coal. Authentic switches cut from a hardwood tree are free, to be sure, but if your budget stretches to small luxuries, you’ll both have a lot more fun with the more-luxurious short wide black leather riding crop or the festive-but-cruel red fiberglass cane:
But perhaps you’re in more of a candy-and-flowers mode in your current relationship? Winter is a tough time to buy fresh flowers, but these feather roses are just as pretty while much longer-lasting. Plus, you can tickle people with them!
Candy is not usually a sex toy, but there is this one sweet treat that qualifies. Here’s the very nicest possible way to tell someone that the time has come for them to please shut the fuck up: a hard-candy gag!
If stuffing more than a stocking is on your Christmas agenda, then how about some inexpensive insertables? You’ve got a choice of big dildos, anal plugs of all sizes, and cute-but-tiny “Pocket Toyfriends” vibrators:
Or, maybe candles? Candlelight is sexy, candles smell very nice, and if they are specially designed to melt at a warm but not-too-hot temperature, you have a wax play candle that’s more massage than masochism. Perfect for cold winter nights, right?
If there’s a penis in particular that’s on your shopping list this Christmas, you can’t go far wrong by pleasuring, constraining, or adorning it. Various goodies suitable to these tasks include the Tenga Deep Throat Masturbator, the legendary 7 Gates Of Hell, or the stylish and inexpensive Falcon cock rings made of Borosilicate glass:
I could go on like this at even greater length. Why, we haven’t even gotten to the bondage goodies, like the rope or the thumbcuffs or the blindfold or the red ball gag. (Santa says “Homph Homph Homph!”) I haven’t mentioned the famous fetish sex book Violet Blue wrote, or the pegging DVD that Tristan Taormino made. But that’s all right, because by now, you either get the idea, or you’re never gonna get it. Click, look, place your order, boom! That’s your sexy Christmas shopping sorted.
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Tuesday, September 30th, 2014 -- by Bacchus
These are details from a notional sex toy collection advertising flyer that appeared as part of Goomi’s Unspeakable Vault of Doom, a Lovecraftian web comic by artist Francois Launet:
I actually think I’ve seen serious reviews for The Purple Tongue (not shown here) by some of our fearless community of sex toy review bloggers. Or anyway the description (“It will make you howl in the dark! Variable speed and occult functions”) sounds awfully familiar…
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Monday, June 16th, 2014 -- by Bacchus
There’s an interesting interview and profile in Business Insider about Brian Sloan, a former lawyer turned sex toy manufacturer, who direct-sells sex toys for men. He makes a sort of blowjob machine called the Autoblow, an early version of which I blogged about obliquely and skeptically here. (Not this kind.) First Sloan got hooked by the easy money buying and selling antiques during those first golden years of the eBay boom, and then he got into the sex toy business because antiques don’t scale:
I began importing latex fetishwear from China during my time as an eBay seller. The reason was simple: going to auctions took a lot of time and effort and was not scalable. I needed high profit margin items I could buy from China, in quantity, to properly grow the business. I used Alibaba.com and connected with a latex factory in south China. I grew the business significantly by making custom sized rubber suits for larger people, and figuring out sub-niches of the latex fetish culture.
The key factor in the success of that business was clear: willingness to do whatever it took to grow the business, and not caring what other people thought of it. Once, I even had my mother videotape me and a friend walking through a shopping mall in Skokie, IL, wearing giant inflatable rubber suits!
At a certain point, the latex business also wasn’t scalable enough for me so I moved onto toys. I thought about a few other businesses and got close to launching brands of a few products, including anti-snoring devices and a teeth whitening system. I decided to stay in the adult industry as I had gained so much knowledge about it during my time selling latex.
The adult industry was particularly ripe to “disrupt” because of the combination of unusually high profit margins combined with industry-wide poor e-commerce knowledge. Only one brand of male toys and a few adult mega-stores had a high level of Internet marketing or online selling technology knowledge.
Ninety percent of adult toy brands only focused on high-volume manufacturing/sales solely to distributors. The breakdown of retail price allotted to manufactures in the adult industry is not pretty. I figured with what I learned about internet marketing from the latex business, and my location near factories in China, I could create internet-only brands and sell them for very competitive prices by cutting out the middlemen – distributors and retailers.
The most surprising people open up to him on airplanes about sex toy use:
Doing this kind of work, strangers sometimes feel its appropriate to open up to me on sexual topics that they would otherwise keep private. Once I was on a flight from Chicago to Qatar and met an oil executive who was working in the Middle East. The first part of our conversation centered around his role in his church in Oklahoma and some stories about his children who were Christian missionaries in Asia. To my surprise, when I told him what I did for a living, he told me that after his kids all left home and him and his wife had a lot of time on their hands — they bought their first sex toys!
And what is it like, actually trying to ramrod the manufacture of a complex mechanical sex toy in China?
I worked with a company in Taiwan whose normal business was manufacturing Wi-Fi whiteboards and commercial-grade air conditioning controllers. I thought that because they understood how to manufacture complex electronic devices, they could also manufacture my Autoblow 2. I was wrong. Their team lacked knowledge of ergonomics, had no experience working with TPE, the material that now comprises the interchangeable sleeves.
After working with them for 1.5 years, they managed to create a product that essentially collapsed upon itself when one tried to use it. It was a huge disappointment.
Basically you need a designer or two, a sourcing team to source the different components, and a few factories to work closely with to produce the main parts. Picking the right factory partners, and making sure that your main factory picks the right sub-factory partners is probably the most important aspect of the entire process. If one supplier factory is producing a sub-par component and your main factory doesn’t catch it, the whole project can fail.
It’s frankly not a very sexy process and involves talking with engineers, sometimes via a translator when things get technical, about things that make everyone in the room blush.
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Friday, April 18th, 2014 -- by Bacchus
I was not the first to speculate about the future promise of 3D-printed sex toys. But I was a little bit surprised to find some printed sex toys actually being offered for sale, like this Mechanical Animal from Frisky Beast:
Sadly, there’s nothing on their site (that I could find in a fast search) about the material they are printing these toys with. If you’re fussy about what you stuff inside yourself and others (which you probably should be) you might want to ask them about it before placing an order.
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Wednesday, March 19th, 2014 -- by Bacchus
I’ve long been a fan of decorative and functional glass sex toys. Glass is a great material for sex toys because it has fun thermal properties and is easy to clean. The Rotator nubbed glass dildo has a fun shape for couples play, too:
The nubbed, clear glass Rotator is sure to turn your partner’s head. (Pun!) Short and sweet, the nubbed shaft flares suddenly but manageably into a strawberry shaped head with vertical grooves. Around the inner rim more nubs are placed, ready to rest on you or your partner’s labia or outstretched anus. Moving still lower, the offset handle gives the Rotator it’s name as a swirl of the wrist rotates the dildo / plug inside your partner with multiple sensations courtesy of the varying textures. Perfect for temperature play, the Rotator is made of borosilicate, a glass that resists thermal shock.
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Sunday, February 23rd, 2014 -- by Bacchus
I think this is “Buzz” and “Woody” from that toy movie franchise, re-imagined by some feelthy Japanese perverts as freshly-used sex toys:
Thursday, January 23rd, 2014 -- by Bacchus
As y’all know, I’m a big fan of seasonal sex toy sales, because it gives me an excuse to look for attractive items that couples can use to have fun together. Let’s get started, shall we?
First of all, what is the greatest romantic holiday of the year without roses? But real roses are expensive and (if you source them the traditional flower-shop way) something of an environmental nightmare. And then, a few days later, they’re trash (or at best, compost). Feather roses are more fun (tickle party time!) and last much longer:
Another great couples gift is a sexy craft project that you can make together and use together. The Clone-A-Willy kit for making a dildo in his precise likeness has gotten a lot of press for this reason; you can have fun making it together and then play with it together or separately. Is she the type to steal your old sports shirts to sleep in when you’re not there? Perhaps she’ll enjoy a more personal memento!
For many of us, though, this is a holiday about chocolate. Don’t worry, we’ve got that covered! Indeed, why not get the make-it-out-of-chocolate version of the Clone-A-Willy kit?
But this is 2014, and what used to be sauce exclusively for the gander is now also available as sauce for the goose. Get those replica willies out of your mind for a moment. Did you know there was a Clone-A-Pussy Molding kit now available? (Sadly, apparently not in chocolate.)
This could be fun to use, but you’ll need to take care that you don’t give off any sort of creepy trophy-hunter vibe when it’s time to persuade the proprietor of your favorite pussy to participate in your proposed craft project. I can’t say I’m sanguine that the sales copy totally avoids that pitfall:
This fun and easy do-it-yourself kit includes everything you’ll need to make an incredibly detailed, life-size rubber copy of the outer portion of any vagina from your own home. Use the mold over and over again and create your own treasured collection of life-like vaginas. Please note: Your new pussy replica is a shallow likeness, without a hole, and not designed for …ahem…. insertion. Think of it as a naughty homage, as opposed to a working masturbation device.
Moving rapidly onward, as perhaps we ought, there’s a very real chance that a person might much prefer to explore his or her favorite pussy in the most exquisite detail, rather than making a non-functional partial copy out of rubber. If you suspect your lover of feeling that way about your own pussy, perhaps you might surprise them with a handy inspection tool in festive holiday pink?
For the more timorous among you, it’s worth pointing out that sexual how-to books and DVDs are among the safest, most non-threatening sexy gifts you can give. Your partner can process the gift on his or her own time, a sex book or video can be the topic of later open-ended discussion, and in the end, it can be a great way to bring new sexual material into your relationship. There are several awesome titles in this year’s sale that you may want to consider:
Enjoy!
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Saturday, December 14th, 2013 -- by Bacchus
Don’t worry; your sex toys probably haven’t been pwned… yet. But the future is coming to smack us in the face like a deer in the fast lane on a dark night.
Science fiction author Charlie Stross posted an unsettling blog post about the increasing ease with which tiny wifi-enabled computers can be invisibly embedded into your common household devices, stealing whatever info about you they can observe (or performing commercially valuable calculations using your “free” electricity) and phoning the plunder home without your knowledge over your own wifi network. (Not so long ago there was an unconfirmed story out of Russia — Charlie has the links — about electric kettles being manufactured and sold in this pwned condition to unsuspecting Europeans.)
I was reading along and taking all this in, parsing it (the way I tend to do) as just another pebble on the dystopian-tech-future beach, when I came upon this comment by troutwaxer that extended the futuristic speculation into a realm of interest more directly relevant to the ErosBlog readership:
Why be afraid of the kettle? That only tells people that you’ve had a spot of tea.
Your vibrator, on the other hand, knows all the really nasty secrets! If someone really wanted to spend money on learning about your sex life, you vibrator would know if you are male or female, how many lovers you have, and whether you do anal – and that’s just for starters. You could probably build a camera into any electrically powered sex toy, and a really expensive vibrator could probably sample DNA, or perhaps cancel it’s own noise and record sound…
What makes this much more interesting is that I’ve recently spent time in a chain of sex toy stores as an outside vendor. (They use a technology company I sometimes work for.) The high-end vibrators there can cost up to two hundred dollars and some of them have very fancy controllers (which I suspect aren’t analog.) I used to wonder why those high-end vibrators, which I suspect are bought by high-end people, were so expensive.
Now I know.
From now on any sex toys that get used in my house will be made of wood. I will carve them from a tree I planted myself.
I love a good wooden sex toy as well as the next historical reenactor, but that doesn’t make troutwaxer wrong: there’s quite a trend toward expensive fancy vibrators with a lot of sealed-unit unknown electronics inside. The day will come — sooner than you think — when you’ll want to be able to conduct a security audit on your own sex toys. Or, I suppose, there’s the alternative model, where you get sent an expensive sex toy for “free” that comes with terms of use allowing it to track and report on your sexual habits so that appropriate commercial offers can be more narrowly targeted at you. Gives LOVEINT and SEXINT new meaning!
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Monday, November 11th, 2013 -- by Bacchus
I’m not quite old enough to be a Baby Boomer, but I’m old enough to contemplate this problem seriously:
Disposing of sex paraphernalia – actually all those embarrassing items you have stashed around the house – is something every boomer should be concerned about. The days are dwindling down to a precious few and some of you have a nasty cough. Do you want the people clearing out your house, particularly your children, to find those feathery, metallic, rubbery, polymer blend items you ordered one drunken night a few months after you’d been forced to take early retirement? Do you want them to know their big, tough construction worker dad liked to dress up in heels and a boa and sing “La La La” from “No Strings,” one of Richard Rodgers’s weaker efforts?
You may be thinking, “What do I care what my friends or children find in the house? I will be beyond embarrassment, I will be dead.” But you are wrong. Doctors now know that the human sense of embarrassment can last up to two weeks after the heart stops beating…
I’ve actually been fortunate to be able to help someone with this problem from the other direction. A gentleman of some years was in possession of many boxes of highly personal effects from a deceased relative. Some boxes the relative had stored with him before marrying late in life, and others (mostly more respectable books) had been given over by the relative’s widow. Valuing books himself, knowing that books predominated in the collection, and knowing of my interest in erotic books, the donor handed over entire collection to me in closed and unexamined boxes. Unstated was the donor’s desire to spare his own heirs from having to deal with it. I promised to give or find the books a good home, while disposing of any other personal effects respectfully and discretely; and that was that. No money changed hands. I spent a day driving, I got some interesting vintage sex books, and I was able to remove a literally weighty problem from my donor’s garage (and thus relieve his mind).
It was an unexpectedly personal transaction throughout. Even after I had the boxes safely home and began to sort them, the sorting process was surprisingly personal; there was an entire long lifetime of sexual confusion and pain and discovery recorded in the progression through decades of various kinds of porn, toys, and clippings from writings on human psychology and sexuality. By separating these materials and disposing of the clippings and age-deteriorated sex toys, a respectable library of porn and sex books was not only saved from likely destruction, but laundered of its power to illuminate (or tarnish) the memory of its creator.
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Thursday, September 5th, 2013 -- by Bacchus
An outfit called Aslan Leather posted this picture on Twitter:
Scrawled upon the (I am presuming) returned package: “Return To Sender: Sex toys cannot be ship!!”
It’s the two exclamation points that make this perfect.
Nobody escapes the pornocalypse, I tell you!
Friday, August 30th, 2013 -- by Bacchus
If the discomforts of sex in the shower register in your sexual wiring as a feature rather than a bug, perhaps you need some sexy shower-sex cuffs (waterproof with “industrial-strength” suction cups) so that you or your favorite submissive can be detained in the wet for just a little bit longer?
And for an extra clean-but-kinky weekend, maybe you also need the Classic Clyster Enema Syringe? Enjoy!
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Tuesday, July 2nd, 2013 -- by Bacchus
Have you ever wondered about the legally-ridiculous disclaimers that you see on the packaging of most sex toys? You know the ones: “sold as an adult novelty”, “not a medical device”, “for external use only”, and so on. Why are they there? What good are they?
Well, Dangerous Lilly has expended an astonishing amount of investigative effort in putting together a pair of blog posts in which she attempted to answer that question by contacting numerous sex toy companies and asking them (along with anybody else in industry) what they were hoping to accomplish. She got a lot of silence and inadequate answers, a lot of hand-waving about old habits and “everybody’s always done this” thinking, and a few solid speculations relating to the avoidance of regulations and tariffs that might apply to a thing that that was labeled as a toy or misidentified by some bureaucrat as a medical device. It’s interesting reading if you’re interested in sex and business:
“For Novelty Use Only” Part 1
“For Novelty Use Only” Part 2
The anecdote that most engaged my dark sense of humor, though, involved a catastrophic sex toy injury from early in the industry’s history, involving a brand name (Doc Johnson) that’s always been synonymous (at least in my mind) with shoddy materials, pedestrian designs, and garish packaging. Lilly got this anecdote from Metis Black of Tantus:
When the industry was a baby Ted Marche made toys in his garage and he sold them very prolifically. This was the first US large manufacturer. He made a toy that had a wire inside the soft latex which rotated, much like the modern rabbits do. On one toy the interior wire was not capped, the edge of the wire as it was being used inside a man’s rectum chewed through the toy and did severe internal damage to his body. I think this was the mid 70’s. He (Marche) was sued and lost. The judge gave the victim a $14 mil settlement- which of course Mr. Marche couldn’t pay. That is how Ruben Sturman, and later Ron Braverman, got Doc Johnson. He took it off Mr. Marche’s hands.
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Tuesday, June 18th, 2013 -- by Bacchus
You apparently have to read between the lines just a little bit, but apparently there’s an ancient poem about ladies shopping for shoes that’s actually about shopping for dildos:
The most memorable account of an ancient shopping expedition is found in some comic verses by the third-century BC poet Herodas, who lived in Alexandria, by far the smartest city in the Western world at the time. In his poem a woman called Metro and a couple of her friends visit a shoe shop owned by one Kerdon (‘Mr Profiteer’). As soon as they arrive, slaves bring a bench for the ladies to sit on, while Kerdon tries to interest them in his wares with a pushy sales pitch that mixes extravagant claims for the styles, workmanship and glorious colours of the shoes, with what sounds like a well practised hard-luck story lamenting his life of unremitting toil and all the mouths he has to feed. Eventually every variety of shoe in the shop is brought out — Sikyonians, slippers, boots, Argive sandals, scarlets, flats — before the ladies start haggling about prices and thinking about the footwear they are going to need for an upcoming festival.
…
It does not take a reader long to spot that the same female character, Metro, features in the poem that comes immediately before the one about the shopping trip in Herodas’ collection; in it she admires a friend’s scarlet dildo and is told that it was made and sold by a man called Kerdon. Most critics have assumed, given the matching names, that the story of the shoe shop should be read as a sequel to the banter about dildoes, and all kinds of sexual double entendre have been unearthed in the encounter with the shopkeeper to suggest that these ladies were interested in something rather more risqué than shoes (Sikyonians, for example, were a sort of Greek footwear, but also a famous variety of cucumber and so a comic term for a phallus, and the ‘scarlets’ are a suspicious match for the scarlet dildo).
The poems themselves may be found in English translation here. I like this snippet from the first one:
It was Kerdo who made it. He works at his house and sells secretly – Every door is afraid of the tax-collectors! – But the things he makes, all of them, are worthy of Athena; you would believe you saw her hand, instead of Kerdo’s. He came here with two, Metro! When I saw them, my eyes nearly burst out with desire. The men certainly have no rams like those! – we are alone – that is sure! And this is not all: their smoothness – a dream; and the stitches – of down, not of thread! Hunt as you might, you could not find another cobbler so kindly disposed toward women.
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Sunday, May 12th, 2013 -- by Bacchus
A Very Ticklish and Horny Girl posted this picture of her sex toy collection on Tumblr, along with the provocative caption “Any ideas what i should do with it?”
Which served to remind me (I’m sure you can follow my breadcrumbs of logic) that May is Masturbation Month, in honor of which several online sex toy emporia are having Masturbation Month sales!
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Tuesday, February 5th, 2013 -- by Bacchus
This is web journalism headlining at its worst: the breathless headline trumpeting link-bait-y news that is, it turns out when you read the article, 100% not true:
Cheap 3D printers fuel home-printed sex toy “phenomenon”
Yeah. Only, not. It turns out that home-grade 3D printers don’t fuel anything of the kind — not yet — because none of the materials available for home 3D printing are sex-toy safe. From the article:
Nardone…says the rapidly falling cost of 3D printers is driving fetishists to experiment with the technology. “When printers dropped to $2,000, I bought one,” he says, although he adds that “surface finish and materials” are the major drawbacks of current technology.
“The issue is that consumer grade 3D printers can’t print in body-safe materials yet,” agrees Chelsea Downs of New York Toy Collective. “People can design their own toys and share the digital files online, but you still need someone to be able to take the printed prototype and turn it into a toy in a body-safe texture and material.”
Even Dongiverse warns on its blog that home-printed items are not safe to use in the bedroom. “The prints are not water-tight,” it advises, adding: “it’s damn near impossible to clean them.” Instead, it recommends that printouts are used as moulds to cast toys in appropriate materials.
So. Home-printed sex toys are not (yet) a phenomenon. But it seems self-evident they will be, one day, and the article offers a nice roundup of some entrepreneurs who are trying to get situated in the space so that they’ll be there when it becomes a thing.
So, why am I blogging about this? Because, buried in the story I found the unsurprising (but disappointing) news that the 800-lb-gorilla of online sites for sharing 3D design files is hostile to the sharing of sex toy designs. If it’s true — and it’s possible to imagine reasons why an account by someone with business ambition in this space might not turn out to be — it’s rather a disappointment, like the Steve Jobs Memorial Walled Garden Of Pleasurelessness:
Nardone set up [his] site after his attempts to upload his designs to popular 3D filesharing site Thingiverse were rebuffed. “I had a conversation with their attorney,” Nardone says. “He said ‘we want to be open-source but we have to draw the line. You can’t post that stuff here’.”
Thingiverse, remember, purports to be
a community of people who create and share designs freely, so that all can benefit from them.
There’s nothing in their TOS specifically against sex toys, but they don’t allow the posting of anything “pornographic” or “obscene”, nor do they allow uploading of user content that is “vulgar”, “pornographic”, “sexually explicit”, “obscene”, or “harmful to minors”. I suspect many of my readers would agree with me that a CAD file for a dildo is none of those things, yet that constellation of adjectives makes it pretty clear, I think, that such a file would indeed probably be unwelcome. I always hate it when entrepreneurs in a cool and economically-important space turn out to be sex-negative or sex-cowardly, but surprised? Never.
If you’ve read this far, you probably don’t need an explanation of precisely why home 3D printing is going to be important with respect to sex toys. Indeed, you may already have an idea for a sex toy that you’d like to print yourself, because nobody else in the world makes just what you want in the precise dimensions that you want. For me, it all became clear when I saw online a toy for men called the Trailer Hitch:
It’s a butt plug hooked to a cock ring, and it’s clear at a glance that, at least in theory, it’s more than the sum of its parts. If you’re a man and you put something up your butt, you’ve got to hold onto it if you want to move it, and you’ll want to move it if you’re after prostate stimulation. If you’re a man and you wear a cock ring (which can just feel good, or it can help maintain an unreliable erection) it can slide off your cock (if you wear it in front of the balls) or it can shove your balls forward with painful results (if you wear it behind the balls). So the concept of this toy is doubly brilliant; the anal plug hooks to the cock ring and holds it back against your body, while your normal fucking or wanking motion gives you a little bit of prostate stimulation.
But for it to work… just look at all the things that have to be sized properly! The ring has to be absolutely as small as it can be while still allowing you to put it on, the curved arm that attaches to the ring has to curve correctly and be the right length for your body size, the straight probe that goes into your butt has to be the proper length to reach your prostate, and then the ball on the end has to be a size large enough to do the stimulation job yet small enough you’re comfortable inserting it.
If you order one of these off the internet, you’ve got to pick (intelligently — but none of the things you need to measure are easy to measure with precision) from quite a lot of different options representing different combinations of these variables. You might get it wrong. Your expensive sex toy is non-returnable (for obvious reasons). If you’re rich and/or highly motivated, you might try again. How many people who get it wrong a second time are ever going to try a third time?
And yet, the idea seems good. We’re probably a long way from home printers that print in lovely solid stainless steel, but the Trailer Hitch would be fine in any sufficiently strong, smooth, non-porous plastic. With cheap enough feedstock, you could vary the design millimeter by millimeter, making iterative attempts until you had the perfect hitch for your trailer.
That’s the promise of home 3D sex toy printing. Infinite customization and personalization in perfect privacy. It’s not here yet. But it’s coming.
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Friday, September 21st, 2012 -- by Bacchus
It’s always an eye-opener to discover (through the medium of sex toys) a whole field of sex stimulus and/or fetish play you never knew existed. Last year when my discovery of the Giant Penis Plug clued me into to the existence of a universe of rings, plugs, and probing devices designed to grab the penis and place/hold metal parts inside the urethra in various painful/pleasurable/controlling ways, my principle reaction was (metaphorically speaking) to clutch at myself and run away. I should have known (but did not immediately discover, due to aforementioned metaphorical fleeing) that whenever men buy toys for themselves that are machined out of steel, models with options, doohickeys, and adjustments quickly begin to flood the market. For instance, how is it possible not to offer something in this line that needs to be adjusted with a wrench?
Turns out, it’s not. Behold the Deep Driller With Cock Ring:
Here’s the sales copy; note the wrenching specs, AKA porn for the mechanically-inclined:
The Deep Driller is a stainless steel, dual action penis plug and cock ring that has an adjustable length urethral insert that prevents ejaculation, with a sturdy round cock ring to hold it in place. This hardcore piece of hardware is a very clever way to penetrate the urethra while trapping the cock in place.
A handy hex key (or Allen wrench) is included to adjust the plug length (up to 3 inches). Cock torture and chastity enthusiasts will enjoy this device immensely. It’s great for BDSM partners, slaves, Masters or Mistresses… and for solo masochists to play with themselves as well.
Dual action! Adjustable insert! I wonder if I can get that with tritium ghost ring sights and computerized injectors? {FapFapFap} Awshit, now I need a hanky.
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Wednesday, August 29th, 2012 -- by Bacchus
Sex toy reviewing here at ErosBlog has followed a curious arc. In the early days of the blog, when traffic was bigger and sex blogs were more rare (this was before Fleshbot, mostly) I got a lot of unsolicited sex toys in the mail. I typically reviewed only the favorites, and I was always clear with folks that stuff would have to impress me a lot (code for “be expensive, nifty, and useful”) in order for me to stir my lazy ass enough to write a review.
Then sex blogging took off and got commercial. Potential places to get reviews became numerous. And sex toy sellers figured out that guaranteed reviews from smaller blogs were more valuable than potential reviews at ErosBlog that might or might not happen. The no-strings-attached stuff in the mail trickled off, but the offers with strings exploded. I don’t play those games; I’m not going to promise a review, return your toys after review (yuck), promise your preferred anchor text in my review links, none of it. Mostly I ignore those emails as spam; sometimes, if the offer is about a toy I’d actually like to see, I’ll respond with my “send it if you want, no promises” disclaimer. Sometimes this leads to amusing exchanges with huffy and offended sex toy purveyors who think I should be drooling to get free toys; less often, it leads to stuff in the mail. A surprising number of times it results in promises to send stuff that never arrives; apparently, too many sex toy companies have drop shippers that can’t handle shipping to post office boxes or discrete packaging and labeling. What with one thing and another, it’s been years since ErosBlog got stuff in the mail that was nifty enough to try out and quality enough to actually review. That’s just how it goes.
However, reviewers for more prominent outlets apparently got (still get?) a lot more, and more amazing, stuff. Here’s Gram Ponante:
I would review sex toys, often securing the assistance of willing female friends to give their honest impressions of non-organic objects I would scientifically insert into their bodies.
“Don’t worry, Baby,” I would say. “It’s for a blog.”
Each month I’d get boxes and boxes of dildos and vibrators — some of them heavy and elegant pieces of practical art — that would disappear into the purses and vaginas of various friends. And that’s great because I didn’t need them back.
But then came the male-oriented sex toys: the masturbation sleeves, the disembodied molded vaginas and anuses of people like Carmen Luvana, Joanna Angel, Jada Fire, and others, made of phthalate-rich rubbery material with names like “Cyberskin” and “TrueFlesh.” It was very difficult to give this stuff away. When April Flores’ “Realistic Pussy & Ass” arrived, we had great fun just slapping it around the office; it did feel like the ass of a delighted BBW vixen, but I couldn’t find anyone to fuck it, ditto the rubberized moneymakers of any of the other porn stars.
What’s more, when I would place April Flores’ Realistic Pussy & Ass on a co-worker’s chair as a joke, I was mortified to find it left residue. Were April Flores herself to sit her naked pussy and ass on an office chair, the next tenant would only sense that something wonderful had happened there, not be unnerved by some pinkish chemical ooze.
Just so, just so. That chair, you could probably sell on eBay. Meanwhile, I’m pleased to report nobody ever tried to mail me any disembodied phthalate-oozing pussies or asses.
The rest of Gram’s article is worth reading for his take on male-oriented sex toys (mostly not worth the added complexity “unless the toy is for a part of your person you just can’t get at, like the prostate”) and for good lines like this: “The lapsed Catholic in me was fine with spilling my seed non-procreatively, but not on the ground; it had to be on a living face.”
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Tuesday, April 10th, 2012 -- by Bacchus
There’s a reason why cheesecake nudie magazines are fond of putting their models in demure kneeling postures like this one:
Actually, I’m sure there are many reasons. But one of them is that there’s a substantial percentage of men out there who can’t see a pose like that without thinking of improving it with a few accessories:
And speaking of accessories, can we please pan the camera back a little bit, please?
Oh yes, Anikka Albright and her dom look like they have all the toys needed for a fun evening!
From Sex and Submission. The shoot is here.
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Saturday, March 3rd, 2012 -- by Bacchus
Well, this announcement is a little bit awkward for a man who doesn’t believe in sluts.
Via the Electrosex Blog we find out that Kink.com’s newest site is an electrosex/electroplay site called Electrosluts. Here we see electroslut Mallory Malone wired up and about to be played like an electric organ. Or maybe like a theremin? Something noisy, anyway:
From this photoshoot.
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Thursday, January 5th, 2012 -- by Bacchus
Do you remember my post about The Ultimate Asslock, which is nothing more nor less than a legendary torture tool of the Spanish Inquisition that’s been updated and repurposed as 21st-century BDSM toy and anal chastity control device?
Well, I noticed that the online sales copy for this terrifying and expensive assemblage of stainless steel had been updated to include the following mysterious-but-intriguing notation:
As seen in American Horror Story on the FX Network!
Oh really, now? I immediately determined that this was something I had to investigate further.
There followed a tedious (and yet somehow not) procedure involving repeated references to Google, my Direct TV channel guide, more Google, a torrent tracker website, and resort to some quality person-to-person file sharing software. Cursing (and secular prayer) were also indulged in. Still, eventually, I was able to track down the most relevant frame of video.
Sadly but not surprisingly, in its television debut the Ultimate Ass Lock was shown on display in a locked glass case in a sex toy store:
The voice-over of the salesman was entertaining, however. In an Australian or perhaps British accent:
Mike’s Spikes makes this stainless steel ball stretcher; the spikes are fully adjustable. Then there’s the Ultimate Ass Lock, also known as the apple of anguish. Is, ahh… any of this working for you?”
There follows a long and awkward scene in which Our Hero, a character named Chad, seems to stutter a lot.
It’s not a TV show I would normally watch — horror in general doesn’t work for me, and the deliberately cryptic narratives for which American Horror Story is infamous on the fan sites are not something I enjoy. But the acting seems strong, and I really enjoyed the stirring speech that got Chad into the sex shop in the first place. It turns out Chad had snooped on his boyfriend’s computer and discovered the guy was having an online BDSM relationship with “some online S&M freak who calls himself JungleJim4322”. So he’s complaining about this over lunch with a lady friend, and she says to him:
Look, Pat’s obviously got some interests that he doesn’t feel free sharing with you. Now, if you don’t wanna end up sharing him, then you need to make a preemptive strike! You have to fight! Pat’s a great guy, Chad, worth fighting for. And if that means you have to fight with a cat-o-nine-tails and some titty clamps, well then brother, you better fuckin’ gear up!
Truer words were never spoken…
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Monday, September 14th, 2009 -- by Bacchus
An alert reader, who remembered this post about vintage sex toys, found the following image on the most amazingly horrendous Russian hijacking-pop-ups image-sharing site you can imagine:
(A beautiful large version is also available.) The artwork looks Japanese to me, but if the lettering proves me wrong, I’ve got no way of knowing it.
One feature in common with the photos previously blogged is the rigid shaft-stiffening-cage thingy shown in this detail:
Sadly, I don’t have any idea how old this artwork is, although it certainly doesn’t appear to be at all recent.
Sunday, June 14th, 2009 -- by Dr. Faustus
I suppose if I am going to post on crazy-ass movies like Robotrix I would be remiss if I didn’t also briefly review a non-crazy book like David Levy’s Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships. From the cover art:
Only fitting. Other little boys seemed to want to grow up to be Batman or G.I. Joe, but I wanted to be Victor Frankenstein.
Levy’s is a good book, though not as exciting as I might have hoped. Levy divides his book neatly into sections on Love and Sex. Love comes across as somewhat ploddingly earnest, an exposition of the almost-obvious. People get attached to objects, don’t they? They very much love their non-human pets, don’t they? They already get attached to robot pets like Tamagotchi and the Sony AIBO. So we can probably expect that when there are humanoid robots that act at least sort-of human, the attachments will get all the deeper.
Yes, I can see that. Even as of 2001, some robots were already looking pretty human:
In the second part, Sex, things do perk up a bit. There’s a lot of good history and exposition here of devices and potential technological precursors to full-fledged sexbots: virtual reality, sex dolls, vibrators and other sex machines are all covered. There’s even an eye-opening account of the teledildonic pleasuring of Net Michelle by Violet Blue at the New York Museum of Sex in 2005 (see p. 267). There are also extended discussions of why men and, perhaps more interestingly, women pay others for sex.
Levy, himself an expert in artificial intelligence, thinks that robots sufficiently appealing to humans to be not just exotic sex toys but something like real partners will likely be in production by about 2050, which might be right — it’s in any event less optimistic than “singularity is near” estimates put out by the likes of Ray Kurzweil. And Levy also thinks that prevailing social trends will make robot sex and possibly even human-robot marriages much more acceptable.
(You mean we have to wait another four decades before you can buy your own robot Selena off of Amazon.com?)
(Life is not fair.)
I’ll offer a technical quibble, which is that the kind of artificial intelligence necessary to make a robot good enough to want to marry would be such a formidable technological breakthrough that we really would be living in an entirely different technological universe, possibly a post-human one in which it would become unclear how or even whether a distinctively human concept like “marriage” would apply. Another possibility, one which Levy himself does not discuss, is that we might be able to make human-like robots whose intelligence rests on modified human whole-brain emulations rather than on hand-coded artificial intelligence. This possibility is one which I’ve written about on ErosBlog before and which is the fictional premise behind the ripping-good science fiction novel Saturn’s Children (by Charlie Stross), which is the book you ought to be reading if you really just want to have fun with this topic.
Though the mention of Saturn’s Children brings up an additional, cautionary thought. In Stross’s novel, ordinary biological human beings die out completely, probably in large measure because robots are more fun to be with than people. Depending on your point of view, you might find that rather sad.
Friday, October 24th, 2008 -- by Bacchus
If you’re a regular sex blog reader or writer, you’re probably aware of EdenFantasys.com (Eden Fantasys). They’re one of the many companies competing for your internet sex toy dollar, and they are more prominent than many because they spread a fair amount of money (and sex toys) around the blogging community in exchange for reviews and attention. They never impressed me much — despite advertising briefly on ErosBlog — because their store front and inventory always seemed hopelessly “more of the same” to me, with nothing to distinguish the brand. But, probably, that’s just me.
One of the smart things they did was to hire AAG (formerly “Always Aroused Girl”), whose sex blogger credentials and contacts were (and are) very good, to do PR and outreach for them. And she did it well.
The not smart thing? When their business relationship with her went sour, they refused, she says, to pay her for work performed. Apparently they forgot the first rule of business, which is that your PR professional remains a PR professional even after she stops being your PR professional.
My own many years of doing business over the internet have taught me something that serious businessmen already knew — namely, that business is all about trust, and especially about character. I’ve quoted J.P. Morgan before: “A man I do not trust could not get money from me on all the bonds in Christendom.” Thus, in my opinion, a person, or a company, that fails to resolve its business disputes on the labor side, is also the sort of outfit that can’t be trusted to fairly resolve its disputes on the customer side. Whatever the details of AAG’s dispute with EdenFantasys.com, I know her well enough to know that she’s not unreasonable. If they failed to resolve their dispute with her, I personally don’t trust them to resolve their dispute with you, if you should be unhappy with your results after playing the big internet gambling game that is forking over your credit card and ordering merchandise from Hera-only-knows-where.
Hence, this warning.
There are plenty of sex toy stores on the internet. You don’t need to take a risk on an outfit that treats its contract employees unfairly.
One final note: Eden Fantasys is currently sending out spammy form letters to sex bloggers, seeking to arrange link exchanges, toy reviews, and the like. If you get (or have gotten) any of these, you might consider responding with a suggestion that they resolve their dispute with AAG. I’m sure she would appreciate the support.
Saturday, October 11th, 2008 -- by Bacchus
I don’t do very many pure “go buy some shit” blog posts, because it’s very easy for sex blogs to go overboard that way. But sometimes I see something that’s just too deliciously bizarre not to point out.
Anyway, last night I went surfing to see what was new in sex toys, and what I discovered instead was new sexy stuff in the masks and BDSM hoods areas.
What caught my eyes in particular were these expensive, spectacular, and surreal leather bunny hoods, in black or white:
(Sadly the carrot dildo is not included.)
Continuing in the animal vein, check out this scary-but-very-handsome zippered dog-face hood:
You may or may not find these sexy, but you’ve got to admit they catch the eye!
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 -- by Bacchus
Remember this antique set of penis sheaths?
While, here’s another slightly different set, including cock rings and maybe even one-half of a set of ben-wa balls:
I’m not sure if these are made of carved horn, ivory, or Bakelite, but it’s obvious that they were carefully crafted and expensive sex toy sets.
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Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 -- by Bacchus
The Christmas Shopping Season is upon us, and I’ve begun to realize it’s time and past time to make my online shopping orders. The Nymph having an automatic “it’s pink? squeeee!” reaction that impairs her saving throws against my evil plans, I surfed over to The Twisted Monk to see if the long-awaited pink bondage rope ever made it into his permanent inventory. (Answer: yes. My evil plan is complete, muah ha ha!)
However much fun we might have with the Monk’s custom ropes (and you’ve got to love a bondage rope merchant who includes a free pair of emergency shears with every order) I have to admit that a shortage of bondage ropes (or any other sex toy goodies, for that matter) is not the biggest problem at Casa Bacchus. No, the biggest problem is that sex toys come rattling out from under the couch when a guest sits down on it, or there’s a leather paddle that came in the review mail sitting on the coffee table when somebody’s aunt shows up unannounced. In a word, I can never have enough discrete toyboxes, toy bags, and the like. Plus, I love wooden boxes, and old-fashioned containers of all kinds. (Sometimes I’m tempted to start a distillery, just so I can have all those lovely oak barrels.) So, naturally enough, the Twisted Monk 2007 Holiday Gift Box caught my eye. It’s a pine box with a lid (semi-discreet, in that it’s branded with the Twisted Monk bondage logo) that comes with a rope kit and a DVD of Monk’s instructional bondage videos. Monk calls them “boxes of potential orgasms”, especially after his customers started writing in and ordering other merchandise (bondage books, naughty undies) to be included in the gift boxes before shipping.
What, you think that sounds like good service? That’s nothing, nothing I tell you! You should read about the customer who wanted the Twisted Monk Boyshorts, but only if Monk would “maybe step on the panties” with his “sexy boots”. Result: one sexy (because the customer is always right) boot print:
And to think, I was just looking for a pretty bit of rope!
Wednesday, July 11th, 2007 -- by Bacchus
Hey, don’t give me that skeptical look, I’m just passing along fun accounts I found on the internets.
Found Always Aroused Girl, to be precise:
In twenty-one hours, my friend came eight times. Yes, eight times. And he’s a decade-plus older than your humble narrator.
I came some very large multiple of eight times, although I could not tell you whether it was closer to 48 times or 968 times. I’m very very hoarse, extremely sore, and decidedly shaky. And for once, I do not feel even the slightest desire for more sex.
This account came complete with a logistical plan:
Want to organize such a day for yourselves? Follow the below rules and perhaps you’ll have great results too.
1. Choose a low-end hotel. Fancy is nice, but all you really need is a largish bed (or two) and a working bathroom. Anything else would be a distraction.
2. Don’t bother packing much. The clothes you wear upon arrival can also be worn for departure, as you won’t be wearing them while you are there. Furthermore, books, laptops, magazines, makeup and other assorted sundries will not be useful. Sex toys and condoms, however, will be needed in large quantities. Pack accordingly.
3. Ask for extra towels immediately upon check-in. Do your best to keep your eyes from going all shifty-like when you tell the clerk that you are “very sweatyâ€? and will be taking “extra showersâ€? overnight.
4. Discard clothing immediately upon entering the room. Waste no time on clothed polite chit-chat. Naked polite chit-chat is far nicer.
The rules continue through #20.
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Thursday, May 24th, 2007 -- by Bacchus
Has anybody stopped to marvel, lately, at what a wonderful world it has become for folks with numerically minor fetishes? There’s the internet for finding and meeting (and fucking) kindred souls, there’s a growing “whatever floats your boat” sentiment among civilized people, and there’s a robust world economy for sex toys of every description.
And boy, when I say every description, I’m not kidding. The latest sex miracle in silicone is … well, let’s go to the visual, or you won’t believe me.
Behold!
Ladies and gentlemen, you are looking at the SiFeet Pussy Foot. [2012 update: Sadly the Pussy Foot is no longer sold. But be ye not forlorn! There’s always the Cyberskin Foot Job Stroker or the Belladonna Foot Soldiers.]
The marketing text is like a syllabus for aspiring foot fetish marketers, fascinating therefore in its own right:
The SiFeet Pussy Foot is the ultimate fantasy sex toy for foot fetishists. This size 6, 100% silicone foot is cast in pure silicone from a real life actual, beautiful female foot. In the sole of this lovely foot is a fully functional and totally fuckable silicone vagina.
This pure silicone foot is soft, smooth, and incredibly sexy. The toes are decorated with acrylic toenails painted glossy pink, making the Pussy Foot seem even more real.
From the toes to the heel and ankle, great time and effort has been taken to insure that the Pussy Foot seems real.
The feature that makes the Pussy Foot even better than an actual foot is the pussy located on the sole of the foot. You can passionately fuck the foot in a way you’ve never been able to before. It is the perfect combination of foot and vagina.
From the toe to heel the pussy foot is 9″ long. The ankle has a 2½” diameter. The distance from the entrance in the vagina to the exit-hole at the top of the ankle is 6½”.
Anyone who appreciates beautifully sexy feet should love the Pussy Foot. This silicone foot is terrific for massaging and erotic rubbing as well as for having hot sex with it.
This silicone sex toy is also a convenient practice tool for preparing to get hot and kinky with actual feet. You are sure to have your technique down to a science when you train with the Pussy Foot.
The silicone SiFeet Pussy Foot cleans easily with soap and warm water or After Glow Toy Wipes.
The SiFeet Pussy Foot is available in a left or a right, sold separately.
If you were looking for “the perfect combination of foot and vagina”, well, now you’ve found it. But it’s the last line, in bold text, that gets me. Left foot or right? Or do you want to collect the whole set?
Let the implications of that photo sink in for a moment.
I’m not going to pussyfoot around, here. (Face it, you knew you weren’t getting out of this blog post until I’d made that pun.) The pussy foot comes in left foot and right foot? Why in all the Stygian depths would someone care whether they are boning a silicone vagina in a left foot, instead of a right one? “No, no, it has to be a left foot, or it’s no good!”
But, in the end, that’s the point. It doesn’t matter why. With fetishes, there usually isn’t a good why. What matters is, if you’ve got a thing for slipping it to a pretty left foot, we live in a world where you can get one, with just a little help from your buddy Benjamin. Don’t let anybody tell you that’s not an excellent world to be living in.
Monday, May 21st, 2007 -- by Bacchus
Susie Bright has created an Amazon list of must-have sex stuff, and in explaining the list, she’s dashed off several valuable mini essays on vibrators (wall current rules, battery-operated sucks, The Rabbit isn’t all that), lube, and the history of the sex toy industry. The lube portion I particularly like, because she simplifies down to the essentials:
Sex educators are famous for a particular cliche: “communication and lubrication” are what make people happy in bed. But truer words were never spoken.
So, given that essential fact, what lube do you get? My Amazon list is a little truncated because of what I could list on their site.
Vegetable oil is fantastic. Pre-AIDS, it was my lube of choice. If you’re aren’t using condoms, get your favorite oil– almond is really nice, maybe add a little coconut to make it creamy– and go at it. Or just grab the olive oil off the kitchen counter if time is of the essence. It feels great, it won’t hurt you, it’s sexy…. who could ask for more?
For water-soluble lubes, I always liked Probe because it has no taste! The biggest hassle with commercial lubes is that they usually taste AWFUL and make oral sex completely undesirable.
Are there other taste and scent-free lubes? Yes, Probe is my old tried-and-true. Works great with condoms, doesn’t make you ill, doesn’t cause cancer… what a treasure!
However, sometimes you need a lube that goes BEYOND. Sometimes the drugs you’re on, or menopause, can turn you into a prune. How do you get that high-flying crazy slippery feeling that goes on and on and on?
Silicone lube.
That’s why I recommended Liquid Silk for my desert island. It also is the first lube that makes hot tub and shower sex possible and even fun. It’s not water soluble– you’ll have that slippery feeling in your vagina or ass for several hours. But the slickness is so intoxicating. Just don’t use it with other silicone products or they gum each other up! Get that spatula out of your hot tub!
I do, however, find an important omission in Susie’s discussion of power sources for vibrators. She writes:
1) Electricity is essential. I don’t care what sex toy retailers say about battery-operated vibes– the main reason they push them is because they are dirt cheap, (wholesale), and they are lightweight to ship and transport (without the batts, of course!). A Hitachi magic wand is only marked up double its cost to the retailer… so if it’s $40, maybe they paid $20.
But a battery vibe might be a dollar to them and they’ll sell it for $10 or $20.
This reasoning has nothing to do with how it feels, or if women can get off on it. And the “sound” of batteries vibrating against plastic doesn’t mean it’s powerful. They can make an awful racket and not deliver any appreciable sensation.
Can women get off on battery-vibes? YES, some can, some are their mother’s darlings– I’m not on a crusade to get rid of them. But the reason they are hyped the way they are is because of money, not because of universal sexual satisfaction.
The vibrators that are produced by the mainstream appliance manufacturers like Hitachi and Wahl, were originally introduced as “massagers.” They’re quality appliances that will last years and years. I still have the first ones I ever bought in 1981. They have warranties. They have a following that’s been going for decades, based on technology that’s over a century old now.
I always hated selling a woman a battery-operated model for her first vibrator because there was a 50% chance she’d find the whole thing a hoax. However, if I sold her a motor-driven or coil-operated electric model, she’d come out of the ‘try-out’ room with this amazed look on her face, and say, ‘OH! I GET IT NOW!”
I agree wholeheartedly about the puny vibrations you can get from a couple of “C” or even “AA” batteries. When I’ve got a vibrator in one hand and a lady’s labia and clitoral hood in the other, I want some serious jiggle and buzz. “Can you feel it now?” is not the game I am here to play. I have pink bits to vibrate and I want them V*i*B*R*a*T*e*D, not tickled. (For tickling, I have feathers.)
On the other hand, as any roofer can tell you, there isn’t an electrical outlet handy under every current bush, and dragging a power cord behind you is a pain in the ass. The same technology that lets a guy with a tool belt and a hairy ass crack drive sheet metal screws for forty minutes at the top of a sixteen foot ladder (rechargeable ni-cad or lithium-ion batteries, ta-dah!) makes a perfectly acceptable power source for a vibrator. I’ve raved before about the Phantasy Sinnflut, which is a tool-grade rechargeable vibrator that any man could be proud to dock on its charging base in the garage next to his DeWalt drill and his Makita reciprocal saw. It’s nobody’s budget option, but it’s handier than anything with a cord, safer in the shower, and functionally far beyond anything with a disposable dry cell in it.
Friday, April 20th, 2007 -- by Bacchus
From Journey Into Submission, a conversation on what happens when you attempt to economize on sex toys:
Somehow the conversation veered way off track.
“Butt plug and ball gag?” someone asked, echoing the last person’s statement.
“How about a butt plug ball gag?” another person asked.
“Ewwww! That’s gross!” a third chimed in.
I tried to hide my face in my hand and ignore the flush rising to my cheeks. Mr Stern looked down at me kneeling at his feet, taking in the banter.
“A butt plug ball gag. Hmmm…” he said, tapping my forehead with his finger. I knew exactly what he was thinking.
Two nights before I had been laying naked on his bed, tied wrists to thighs, with Rachel on one side and Mr Stern on the other…
“Did I tell you what I did to her a few weeks ago?” Mr Stern asked Rachel. I had my eyes closed so I didn’t see but I assume she shook her head.
“I sent her to the grocery store with a butt plug in her cunt,” he said. Rachel laughed.
“Did she keep it in the whole time or did it fall out at the store?” she asked.
“Tell her, slut. Open your eyes, look at Rachel, and tell her if it stayed in the whole time,” he ordered, pulling my hair to force my head back. I swallowed hard, tried to focus and suppressed a giggle that suddenly threatened to bubble up.
“It stayed in the whole time,” I said, meeting her eyes. She nodded wisely. I’m sure I was blushing fiercely at the crudeness of the conversation.
“Which one was it, slut? Was it this one?” Mr Stern asked after a minute, climbing back onto the bed. I shifted my gaze back to him and saw the black butt plug in his hand.
“Yes, Mr Stern, that’s it,” I said. He reached over and pressed it against my lips. I instinctively opened my mouth and he slid it in. Since I had been the one to clean it, I was as sure as I could be that it was clean. Besides, Mr Stern is a self proclaimed germophobe, he was not liable to do anything that actually exposed me to yickiness.
“Have you been practicing deep throating your dildos so you can take my whole cock in?” he asked as the toy went past my tongue.
I shook my head no, unable to speak with the butt plug deep in my throat. It was just small enough to fit in my mouth but there was no room to talk.
“Slut, you need to practice. Let’s see what you can do with this. I’m going to fuck your face with it,” he said, forcing it to the back of my throat. I tilted my head back to allow deeper access. The flared end of the plug rested against my lips and Mr Stern held it with his fingertips. I moaned as he shoved it in and out.
“Does that turn you on, you fucking slut?” he asked. He loomed over me, watching my reaction.
I nodded as well as I could considering my position.
“I bet she’s imagining it’s my cock. That gets her wetter than anything else,” Mr Stern told Rachel. “Is that what you’re doing, slut?”
I nodded again. It was that very idea – of his cock in my mouth – that was turning me on. I wanted to deep throat his cock the way I was letting the plug slide all the way in. I stuck my tongue out a little further, wrapping it around the widest part of the plug.
Mr Stern started telling Rachel how much he enjoys it when I suck his cock, about how I do something with my tongue that is just perfect, and how I was showing off now in hopes of enticing him into putting his cock in my mouth. I concentrated on not gagging and making my display look good, for exactly the reason he had guessed.
Monday, January 29th, 2007 -- by Bacchus
A sensationalist blog title, to be sure. But Violet Blue, who does a lot of sex writing, has discovered that Microsoft Word is squeamish about suggesting sex-related words when she mis-types them, even though those words evidently are in its database:
I’ve noticed that Word is reluctant to suggest some sex words as spelling alternatives when it doesn’t recognize what I wrote. For instance, if I write “Windoze” and spell-check it, the program will suggest “Windows” and a few other alternate words. If I insist on my spelling and click “ignore” it tells me I picked a word not in the dictionary, and am I sure I want to continue?
But with some sex words, it behaves differently. Here’s an example I’m running into repeatedly tonight: in my draft, I typed dildo as “didlo” a couple of times. Word’s spell-check caught it as a mistake and suggested the following words: dido, idol, dodo and dado. But when I corrected the spelling to “dildo” it unhighlighted (what it does with correct spellings), and when I clicked “ignore” it didn’t tell me I was using a word outside the dictionary or if I was sure I wanted to continue.
So, it knows how to spell “dildo”. Why won’t it offer me the correct suggestion in the list?
I have two reactions to this. The first is a sort of mild humorous derision, which Microsoft earns and shares broadly with the entire sex-phobic corporate world.
More seriously, though, it seems worrisome in a minor way that a company with so much influence over the “means of production” of written English has the ability to disfavor and deprecate entire vocabularies. Words are what people use to think with. Influence — even subtle influence — over the inventory of available words is real power.
Tuesday, December 19th, 2006 -- by Bacchus
For me, a Christmas stocking just isn’t a proper Christmas stocking if it doesn’t have some kind of sexy toy in it. Not even if it’s vinyl and has a heel:
So anyway, I had high hopes of doing a substantial and official ErosBlog sex toy Christmas Guide this year. But, sadly for my grand plan, I found myself responsible for some unanticipated family care-giving this December, and the big sex toy blogging plans have suffered. Suddenly I discover it’s December 19, I haven’t done any Christmas shopping at all, and the ship-in-time-for-Christmas dates have passed at almost all of my favorite online sex toy emporia. Drat!
However, all is not lost. My favorite online purveyor of sex toys ships so fast that there’s still plenty of time, if you don’t dawdle. Better yet, every year they have a “SeXmas” sale. It’s always got good discounts, too.
You can (of course) go kinky if you want to — how about a satin blindfold in Santa Claus Red?
But kinky is not required. They have every imaginable sex toy to tickle your fancy (or hers, or his).
Kinky not required, I said. But if it’s kinky you want, this place is the undisputed king of kinky. Forget crops and whips and leather cuffs. Did you ever imagine what you’d get if you took one of those paper Chinese finger trap toys and re-engineered it, using stainless steel wire, as a device for imprisoning penises?
Of course you did. Or maybe not. They think of these things so you won’t have to.
Anyway, behold! The Wire Cock Trap:
That’s not something everybody with a penis to play with is gonna want, no. But it would fit nicely in a stocking. And think of the the fun when he pulls it out and holds it up, all puzzled, and says “What’s this thing, and what’s it for?”
“Hold still, dear, and I’ll show you.”
Fair warning: you might wind up late for Christmas dinner at dear old Grandma’s house. And aren’t happy delays like that the best Christmas present of all?
Wednesday, July 26th, 2006 -- by Bacchus
I clicked past the recent micro-rash of speculation about sex in space — it struck me as being more of the usual tired empty mealy-mouthed nonsense, devoid of any new insight or sex-positive suggestions. It never even crossed my mind that there was anything to blog about in it. “The moisture associated with sexual congress could pool as floating droplets…” Bah! Who needs it?
But hark! Violet Blue has the straight dope on zero gravity sex:
Sex in zero (or reduced) gravity is going to change the way we fuck for many reasons — primarily because while floating in zero G you need to use stationary objects to move, period. Getting cock into pussy, into mouth, into ass — getting pussy into face, or getting the strap-on into his ass — is all going to be a coordinated effort, Your partner’s body will wander no matter how hard they try to keep still. And you better bet you’ll need to tether that bottle of lube (and its cap). In fact, all your sex toys will need wrist straps.
Ahh, that’s much better.
Sunday, May 14th, 2006 -- by Bacchus
Like a lot of men, I’m fascinated by finely-machined steel objects that can be assembled, disassembled, and tinkered with. I can’t not visit the Snap-On Tools van when it comes to my neighborhood, it’s got too many nifty chrome-steel toys in it. And the plumbing section of the hardware store is evil; I’m always in there screwing pipe fittings together and building little sculptures. Metal stuff makes the best toys, and even though I lost my Erector Set decades ago, I’ve never forgotten how much fun it was.
So, accordingly, I’m in awe of this new toy:
It’s called the Ballz Master and the marketing copy goes like this:
The Ballz Master Set is a tinker-toy lover’s dream collection, allowing you to assemble a huge range of different stainless steel dildos. You get two different end balls and one each of four middle balls. A total of eleven body segments in three different lengths provide lots of options for the finished length of your toys. You get a hefty base and handle, of course, and a sharp-looking padded aluminum case with foam insert to safely store and transport your Ballz!
I’m not sure how practical this toy set would be, but it sure would be fun to tinker with!
Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 -- by Bacchus
Oh, my. I was checking out a favorite place to shop for sex toys when I noticed they sell fitted leather sheets. King sized ones, even, if you’ve got the simoleans for it:
Leather freakin’ sheets. Just the feel would be sensuous enough. But as you and yours get all hot and sweaty and those sheets start to moisten and warm up, the room would fill with that lovely leather smell, and it would get all over the both of you, too. You’d be buried in the scent of leather.
Can you imagine? Breathe…. Mmmmmm.
Not cheap, no indeedy not. But I think I might just have to get me some.
Similar Sex Blogging:
Friday, March 24th, 2006 -- by Bacchus
Steph broke out the manifesto pen the other day, and I like the results:
I have sex as often as I’m able, within the constraints of my own sense of morality. I’ve given blow jobs. I’ve taken it backwards and forwards. I’ve used birth control of more than one variety. I’ve had sex in public places. I own sex toys. I’ve watched porn. I’ve tried to become better and better at sex every time I have it. I own bondage gear.
And I am not yet on a first-name basis with Satan. Shocking, I know, but true. I, in fact, (gasp) have gone to church in the last six months. I donate to charity. I do not have a criminal record. I do housework. I pay my taxes — honestly. I don’t lie on my resume. I call my parents regularly. I’m always punctual. I’m a model employee. I treat people with respect. I ride a cute scooter and obey the laws of the road.
Nonetheless, right now, I’d like to get fucked silly and sideways, and if that makes me amoral, then sign me up, baby.
Saturday, March 18th, 2006 -- by Bacchus
Sometimes I have to link to an article (like this one on playing with anal toys) as much for the post title as for the content. How can you not read an article entitled A Spy In The House Of Ass?
My girl’s eyes grow wide as I remove the fatter butt plug from its packaging and brandish it before her. “You wanna put that in me?”
“C’mon, it’s not that big. I had mine in for like half an hour.”
She relents. I watch, fascinated, as her little asshole expands to accommodate the plug at its widest cross-section and then collapses around the narrow neck above the base, locking the toy into position. Leslie sighs. I pull her to the edge of the mattress, push her legs against her chest and plunge into her cunt. “Now you have both holes filled, you little slut!”
And when she comes the butt plug shoots out of her, bouncing off the wooden floor like a rubber ball. We both giggle. I switch holes — if the butt plug won’t keep her rear-end occupied I will — and it’s not long before I burst inside her, my knees threatening to buckle.
Wednesday, January 11th, 2006 -- by Aphrodite
You read it here first! Evil Science Chick is increasing her science empire by doing sex toy reviews. Last time she just teased us with a mention of the toy. This time she went all Consumer Reports for us, dishing it out on the Top-Tough rabbit vibrator.
amusing aside: the woman who rung up the toy informed me that this was a very good jackrabbit toy for “beginners.” Apparently, only EXPERIENCED jackrabbit users should utilize the purple colored ones with the plasta-chromed bottom that cost $10 more. Remember that, folks. Stick to sex toys APPROPRIATE for your skill level.
Find out how she rated it yourself, and be amused by images of little crockpots for lube in the process! ESC also asks for information, so leave a comment about your rabbit experiences. It’s for science, people! :hehe:
Wednesday, December 21st, 2005 -- by Bacchus
You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody come right out and argue for the merits of online porn memberships as Christmas presents before. Sex toys? Sure, every major web publication seems to have a sex toy buying guide. But sex toys are way last week in the gifting universe; getting hard goods in your hands (…um) at this late date is gonna be a neat trick. As Spanking Blog points out, porn memberships are virtual goods that are perfect for last-minute shopping:
All it takes is a credit card and two minutes, and you can write the password and userID on a nice hand-made certificate and put it in a stocking. Instant delivery, no hassle, no muss, no fuss. What’s not to like?
…
What’s more, giving the gift of porn makes a strong statement to your mate that you love them, that you feel secure in their affections, and that you want their erotic fancies to be tickled to the fullest. Of course, giving the gift of spanking porn (especially to a spanker) may also be hazardous to the smoothness of your unspoiled derriere. But what’s life without a little delicious risk?
One more benefit: when choosing a porn site to give as a gift, you get to conduct “research” behind a closed door, and when your spousal equivalent asks what’s going on, you can say in all truthfulness “Just some last minute online Christmas shopping, Honey, give me a minute to hide my windows before you come in here, OK?”
Friday, December 2nd, 2005 -- by Aphrodite
Oh my god, if I had sex toys like these I would want to keep them on display in my bedroom! So many lovelies, so many yummy designs…..
I could convince my mom this is an art glass mushroom if she saw it in my apartment.
Since this one’s even bigger (I’m squirming in my seat as I imagine it filling me!), it would be even easier to convince somebody it isn’t what they think. Wouldn’t it be fun to be scolding them for their dirty minds while laughing inside!
How many people would look at this and automatically think ‘dildo’? I probably wouldn’t…..but think of how good those raised swirls would feel!
Oh my…..things are getting mighty damp now. Nice and thick, interesting curve, and look at those nubbies. Whew!
I saved my favorite for last. It doesn’t have the pretty colors (or the expense of dichroic glass!) or patterns that the others here have, but the Victorian-era looks of this toy, and thinking how fiendishly it could be used, have me trembling.
Uh, s’cuse me for a bit…..I need to go take care of something!
Wednesday, September 21st, 2005 -- by Bacchus
I’ve always wondered what the deal was with those clear plastic penis pumps — they are advertised as a penis enlargement tool, but what good is a huge penis that’s inside a hard plastic vacuum chamber? Here’s someone who set out to find out:
So last week Juicy Wife and I ordered some sex toys (one of which was a penis pump). Saturday evening, while Wife was out on the town, I got a chance to play around with said pump. The sole reason I got it was pure novelty — what would it be like to have a massive circus schlong for all of 8 seconds?
At first, it was quite enjoyable. I slipped the chamber over my (non-erect) self and began pumping away. With this model of penis pump, your cock rests inside this little sleeve at the base and as your dick expands, it gets slowly pulled upward through the sleeve — which was actually kind of pleasureable. (If you lube up first. Must use lube with this thing.) My favorite part was when the head finally popped through the sleeve and up into the chamber; it had grown fucking ENORMOUS. I kept pumping away, drawing my cock further north and swelling it to even larger proportions. I got this weird thrill, like I was a mad scientist bringing Frankenstein to life. IT’S ALIIIIVE!!
After that, things went downhill. The little sleeve is very, very tight and doesn’t actually expand along with your growing penis. So you’re left with one half of your cock looking gigantic and swollen, and the other half compressed within the tiny restrictive sleeve. This also makes it nearly impossible to remove … you literally have to fight your own penis to get it off. After wrestling with it for 3 minutes, I had nearly lost all my sex drive.
So I wouldn’t recommend the cock pump. Unless you have a very narrow penis that can rest comfortably in that sleeve.
He went there so you don’t have to.
Friday, March 11th, 2005 -- by Bacchus
It’s a truism in the internet age that sex drives the development of technology. Perhaps this photo gallery of bronze sex toys from ancient China underscores the point, with an example from the days when metallurgy was the cutting edge of high tech:
Monday, October 18th, 2004 -- by Aphrodite
After finishing the database project, I thought I’d have plenty of time to do some juicy writing this weekend. But no …. between spending some time with Contender #1 (nice time, no sex yet) and helping a friend with computer problems (don’t get me started), it slipped away.
In addition, the thought of writing out this fantasy leaves me hornier than ever … so, I guess I’m gonna do it. That’s right, I’ve been browsing sex toy sites. I like Sex Toys because they have reviews.
So, at the risk of getting overloaded with TMI, I’m inviting feedback. What products do you like best, and what ones aren’t worth the money? You can leave feedback here, via comments, or (preferably) send me an email. Warning: I can receive email fine, but there’s a glitch in sending, so I won’t be able to reply through email. If you don’t want your email shared here, please say so when you write.
Maybe I should give this quest a catchy slogan …
How about “Help the Pathetic Sex Goddess Buy Her First Toy”? Nah ….
“Lubes for Nubes”? Nope …
“Get the Goddess Off!” Has possibilities. :blush:
Monday, September 27th, 2004 -- by Aphrodite
I thought that someone would call me on my poorly-phrased comment in a recent post:
As someone who’s never had a need for sex toys (but that day is getting closer) …
Sure enough, TwiddlyBits gently did it, stating, “‘Need’ is such a relative word….” So now I’ve a good reason to elaborate.
I don’t have anything against sex toys. In fact, I’d love to have some nipple jewelry (no piercings for me, for weird health reasons). But I will confess to being somewhat bemused by the fondness some individuals seem to have for vibrators and such. It is a hard stretch (pun intended) for me to see how they can be better than sex with a person. I know, I know — they never get tired (or if they do, you can just pop fresh batteries in), they can do things humans can’t, and you don’t have to talk to them to try to get them to do exactly what you want — you just flip the switch or turn the dial, or whatever, and presto, the desired setting automagically takes one into orgasmic ecstasy.
I said I’ve never had a need for sex toys (meaning vibrators and dildos, specifically) because until now, I’ve never been without a willing sex partner for a significant period of time. Now that I am, and it seems likely to be that way for a long time, maybe some of you would be willing to educate me as to what I’m missing, on this subject.
Friday, September 24th, 2004 -- by Aphrodite
Okay, so this an entirely predictable post. I’ve been waiting seven days to see what Gina Lynn would write on in her first Wired Magazine “Sex Drive” column. So after I gulped down enough coffee for my eyes and fingers to work moderately well, I fired up the ol’ browser and mosied over, to read about a new remote-controlled dildo that is seriously remotely controlled:
In other words, a man can be thrusting in Cleveland while a woman is penetrated in Seattle, and the cybersex experience gets one step closer to the holodeck.
Here’s a link to the entire interesting column. As someone who’s never had a need for sex toys (but that day is getting closer), this whole idea is weirdly kinky-cool.
Monday, July 19th, 2004 -- by Bacchus
Remember Joanne Web, the woman who was arrested and prosecuted earlier this year for selling sex toys in Texas? Well, after keeping her under a prosecutorial cloud for months, the county attorney dropped the charges “to prevent wasting county resources.” Gee, you think?
Thanks to Freedom News for the link.
Sunday, February 29th, 2004 -- by Bacchus
Speaking of vibration, the fine folks at Eros Boutique sent along a box the other day with a couple of vibrators. (Yes, Virginia, Bacchus is always happy to accept free sex toys in exchange for a review.) Although they have a lot of excellent goodies for sale, The Nymph and I were disappointed in these two items.
First: Spice Incognito Nail Polish Vibe. Powered by included watch batteries, this vibe looks like a bottle of nail polish and is very discrete. So discrete, in fact, that at first I couldn’t figure out how to turn it on. I finally figured out that I had turned it on, but the vibration was so faint I had to stand completely still and concentrate in order to detect it humming in my hand. Nifty if that’s what you like, but as a guy I’m in the “more power” camp and the Nymph doesn’t appear to disagree. When they sell a vibrator with a built-in cold-fusion reactor so the neighborhood lights don’t dim when it starts up, I’ll probably want one.
Second: I Kit – The Pocket Rocket Complete Kit. No complaints about the base vibrating unit on this model; it buzzes quite vigorously and made The Nymph happy. However, the attachments don’t stay attached very well; even the slightest sideways pressure and they pop off. Since the attachments are small, this raises the spectre of one disappearing into an orifice – which is never sexy unless you have a medical fetish. Also, the attachments are apparently supposed to be flavored (the box advertises availability in “three blissful flavors” including strawberry, blueberry, and grape) but in fact they have a very strong odor and flavor of PVC plasticisers — you know, that vinyl air-mattress smell. You can tell (sort of) that there’s a hint of fruit smell blended into the mix, but it’s overwhelmed by the vinyl smell. Great for folks with a vinyl fetish!
Thursday, October 9th, 2003 -- by Bacchus
Two responses so far to the question below. One correspondent assures me that cuffs (and paddles) are not like sex toys — as long as they are clean, she avers, a guy is safe to keep them and use them serially.
Another lady writes in with the sensible proposal that toys kept should be only those which were and are to be used on or in the person doing the keeping. If a guy had a buttplug that his last girlfriend used on him, and wanted her to carry on the tradtion, she wouldn’t freak; but if he had a vibrator that…well, I’ll let her speak for herself:
“But if he produced a vibrator that he’d used to insert into his previous girlfriend, would I want to have it inserted into me? Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! No thank you!!!!!!!! I don’t care
how many times you’ve washed it! Icky baggage!”
Just so. Unfortunately, this lady isn’t much help on the cuffs question and other toys where the distinction between his-n-hers is less clear. As she puts it: “Don’t ask me what to do with the sex sling. :-)”
Wednesday, October 8th, 2003 -- by Bacchus
Tara and Jeff (more horny Canadians!) at Naughty Secrets have asked an interesting question:
When you buy sex toys in a relationship and then break up, who gets the toys?
They go on to say “Obviously the woman” (which I’m not so sure about, depending on the toys) and then ask more questions:
Should she keep the toys? Should she bring them to the next relationship? Do toys have baggage?
From time to time I’ve pondered that very question. See, I happen to be possessed of a quality set of Velcro-fastened fuzzy-lined wrist and ankle cuffs with handy D-rings for attaching to things. She bought them for me as a gift – and of course the real gift was her wearing them for me. We had some fun with them, too. (It’s good that I don’t have any photos of her wearing them, or the blogging reflex to link one to “we had some fun” would be overwhelming.) And then of course we split up and I kept the cuffs — after all, they were mine.
However, every time I’ve moved them or seen them since, it’s caused me to wonder: “Why am I keeping these?” Seriously, if I met another lady who wanted to play that way, wouldn’t it freak her out to be tied up with lightly used cuffs? Lightly used, that is, by the ex girlfriend? They’re clean and they don’t smell, but still. I am not wise in the ways of women, but my spidey sense is giving me hell over the idea. Possibly not the smartest move, Lothario.
I hate to say it, because it means I should throw away that perfectly good set of cuffs: But yeah, I’d say toys have baggage.
Thursday, July 10th, 2003 -- by Bacchus
No commentary, no context, no Ebay auction, all I have is a picture:
Thursday, July 3rd, 2003 -- by Bacchus
Do you spend too much time hanging out in sex toy stores? Here’s a chance to test your mad brand identification skillz:
Name That Sex Toy
Alas, every now and then the pictures have lame and inconsistent censoring on them. What kind of weak sister writes a sex toy quiz but doesn’t have the strength of conviction to show pictures…15% of the time? Sorry if this sounds harsh, but censoring pictures of sex toys strikes me as actively bad, like censoring safe sex information so that sexual newbies can’t see exactly where the condom goes. What are we doing, protecting sensitive eyes from pictures of…plastic? Pegs my Lame-O-Meter.
Oh yeah…I missed two.
Thursday, May 8th, 2003 -- by Bacchus
Here’s an excerpt from Tiny Nibbles, a nifty blog written by a woman who (among other interesting things) writes for the very cool people at Good Vibrations. This bit illustrates the perils of sending rude emails to someone with access to all the sex toys plus the complete perv resources of the Greater Bay Area:
But what I really want to tell her is that she needs to be oiled up with a delicious aphrodisiac oil by six nubile and adoring male and female nymphs who blindfold her and drizzle warm maple syrup all over her sensitive parts and lick it all off while drinking some ancient bottle of sweet liqueur that makes them all hallucinate and writhe like a bunch of orgiastic snakes, all culminating with her much-needed introduction to a Hitachi Magic Wand Super Silicone G-Spotter Kit, the Tiny Buzzers nipple clamps, a Little Flirt butt plug and the iSurge, all at once. Then a sound spanking from the super-hot and very scrumptious Mistress Morgana. And a complete training on wifeliness by the dedicated wives of Whap! Magazine.
Bacchus can think of a couple of ladies (not to mention a guy or two) who would benefit from that treatment.
Monday, April 14th, 2003 -- by Bacchus
Eugene Volokh has posted a provocative inquiry about vibrators. In a nutshell, he wants to know why progressive modern individuals are quite hunky-dory with the concept of a girl spending quality time with her vibrator, but they get all squicked out and squeamish about a guy using what he (Volokh) delicately calls a “vagina-shaped vibrator.” Several theories are aired.
First of all, a more descriptive, if no more erotic, phrase might be “male masturbator”, since these come in many varieties, only some of which vibrate.
Second, it seems likely that Eugene’s primary theory has merit: A woman who uses a vibrator is assumed to be substituting it for “actual” sex, and society is quick to approve of her many and varied sound reasons for abstaining in that fashion. Whereas, in contrast, a guy who uses a “male masturbator” or a “fake vagina” is assumed to have no alternative; he’s a pathetic dude who can’t “get any.” Given the very real sexual power imbalance, as old as the invention of outlawry for rape, between men who propose and women who dispose, it seems not at all implausible that a woman with her vibrator is assumed to be choosing it over an array of available sexual partners, while a man with his toy is assumed to be a loser with no better offers.
Striking in its absence from the Volokh list of theories, however, is a simpler hygienic theory. Male masturbation results in an emission which is, Bacchus would think, broadly viewed by men and women alike as more “yucky” than typical feminine lubricities, or even than that rarest of nectars, outright female ejaculate. Worse yet, a vagina substitute’s inherent concavity makes careful cleaning a more problematic task than the quick wipedown of a briskly convex vibrator.
Mind you, in objective terms the hygienic concern is arrant nonsense. Men have mastered cleaning tasks of a far more intricate nature, and will even voluntarily indulge when the object of their cleaning affections is, say, a much-beloved rifle. Nor is it implausible that a truly decent technology for assisted orgasm would command every bit as much gadgeteering enthusiasm as gun guys lavish on the contents of their gun safes. But still, at the end of the day the squeamish objection to concave male sex toys may well boil down to an “Ew, but it’s gonna be icky to clean out when he’s done with it…”
Similar Sex Blogging:
Monday, April 14th, 2003 -- by Bacchus
Uncle Melon is at it again with his handy guide to used sex toys. Excerpt from the part on repairing broken love dolls:
An aside on patches: Inflatable women are easily patched with store-bought patch kits. Your “date” may not be able to maintain the same level of air pressure and therefore should be handled with care. Most of these patch kits will not adhere well when the puncture is on or around the artificial “genitalia” or anus.
Thanks to Uffish Thoughts for the link.
Saturday, January 4th, 2003 -- by Bacchus
…and the world will beat a path away from your door.
Being perhaps readers of other blogs than this one, it’s likely that you my loyal readers have heard of the “Jackhammer Jesus” dildo, the “Baby Jesus” butt plug, and other similar religious-themed sex toys from Divine Interventions.
But this article from the San Francisco Bay Guardian profiles the inventor and promoter of this line, and follows him as he roams sex-positive San Francisco getting the cold shoulder from sex toy buyers.
Picking his way through the brightly lit displays of adult videos, cock rings, and calendars emblazoned with oiled and rippling pectorals, he greeted the bespectacled sales assistant, hoisted a large sports bag onto the counter, rummaged through the contents, and selected an item. When the guy behind the counter saw what the man, whom I shall call Nigel R., was pulling out of the bag, he gave a nervous little laugh and said one word: “Sacrilegious.”
As the home of storefront live-sex Halloween performances, magnificent transvestites, and guys with no qualms about showing off their ass cheeks in leather chaps, the Castro District has traditionally enjoyed a healthy disregard for the status quo. Yet when Nigel R. whipped out a seven-and-a-half-inch marble-white silicone Jackhammer Jesus dildo in the shape of Christ on the cross, the Castro Gulch sales assistant blanched.
Ironic to see that as cutting-edge a paper as the SFBG is still so stuck in the past that even when it prints a URL, it can’t (or won’t) make it an active link in the online edition. Old media, bah.
Similar Sex Blogging:
Saturday, December 28th, 2002 -- by Bacchus
Here’s a spiffy little educational article on “How to Give a Blowjob”, complete with illustrations by Phoebe Gloeckner that manage to be cute and sexy at the same time:
One suspects that nothing taught in high school sex education classes is anything like as useful.
Sunday, November 3rd, 2002 -- by Bacchus
Cornell University may soon take to selling vibrators in the student infirmary, according to the Cornell Daily Sun. Apparently they will come with some suggested uses students might not have thought of without help:
As with anything else they sell, the dispensary will give out educational materials explaining how to properly clean a vibrator that two women are going to share and what exactly vibrators can be used for.
Bacchus would not have thought that your typical horny college girl would need such suggestions, but apparently Cornell girls are a little slow — so much so that they don’t even know how to order stuff over the Internet:
I’m sure there are people who are dying to find vibrators and they don’t know where to go, so Gannett, go ahead,” Keith Hermanstyne ’04 said.
Others took a more practical approach.
“I think one of the most important things is for women to be able to get themselves off. It’s better than going to the sketchy shop downtown where they have to check the batteries for you,” Sara Jacobs ’05 said.
Thanks Instapundit for the story.
Monday, October 28th, 2002 -- by Bacchus
This story is a few months old, but it’s about something that’s been buried for a couple of thousand years, so what’s the hurry? It seems that a trove of ancient Chinese bronze dildos was discovered. Speculation as to their use seems, ah, imaginative:
Archaeologists in China have uncovered seven ancient bronze dildos in a Han Dynasty tomb.
This is the first time so many have been unearthed from that era (206 BC – AD 25).
The dildos were cast from a mould, suggesting they were made by a specialist artisan.
Archaeologists say the dildos uncovered in Xian could have been used by eunuchs.
They also say palace maids may have used them on sexually-deprived imperial concubines.
They expect to find more dildoes in the city in north-western Shaanxi province.
If China today is anything like as sexually repressed as European communist countries typically were, I guess this sort of fevered speculation is as close as the archaeologists can get to actual porn. I wonder if psuedointellectual cheap little treatises like “Some Suppositions on the Usages of Bronze Dildos During the Han Dynasty, with 17 Fully Engraved Plates” are sold as pornography in China, the way “Medical Sex Manuals” were sold in the US and Britain back when porn was still a felony?
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