Our neighbors to the north are apparently tired of seeing frolicsome foreigners (that would be us Americans) in adult movies. So some patriotic entrepreneurs are banking on local talent to tantalize adult consumers.
New porn channel lets Canadians strut their stuff
Canadians who may have become tired of being passed over as porn stars will have a new, home-grown outlet to showcase their erotic talents.
Federal regulators have granted Alberta-based Real Productions approval to launch a new digital pornography channel, which promises to serve up at least 50 percent domestic content.
The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) approved the Category 2 pay-television service on Wednesday, allowing Northern Peaks to become "Canada's first adult video channel offering significant Canadian adult content."
"I think as Canadians there is a bit of a tiredness in seeing all American stuff," Shaun Donnelly, president of Real Productions...."There is always that thrill for something that is local and you get the sense that these are people you can meet at the supermarket."
Personally, I'd be scared to see some of the people at my local supermarket in the buff, but I wish them best of luck.
If you didn't make it to Florida for this event, the Tampa Bay Times photo gallery has got you covered. Lots of great shots of lovely young women having fun with their fetishes.
It's amazing how many people have been reminding me about and sending greetings for my upcoming birthday. Guess it's the price of a myspace account, which informs everyone on your friends list of the date.
I was sort of planning on pretending it wasn't happening -- even making the executive decision to take off the week *before* so I'd be sure to be busy the week *of*. To say that I'm in complete fucking shock over how fucking old I am right now is an understatement. I don't know if the problem is I never expected to live this long, or that I just don't FEEL any different (apart from the afore-mentioned state of near-perpetual shock). I was raised in a family that dreaded aging (and all types of change, really) with a morbid passion and never spoke of it. Old people were a different species. And since I never had (or, more precisely, never knew) grandparents, the random elderly aunt or uncle I did know seemed to belong to another genetic mutation of humanity. People who were, possibly, born old.
So here I am, now firmly ensconced in my 50s, and feeling pretty much the same feelings about most everything, although all the feelings have gone through so many filters, they have all become refined, defined. and, finally, accommodated. Instead of suffering over my flaws, I've looked for ways to integrate them into a mostly happy life.
For example: I was an exuberant child but also painfully shy and introspective. At school, other kids, mistaking that exuberance for sociability, glommed onto me, which stressed me out. I didn't know what to make of their overtures. I certainly didn't feel popular. I defined myself by all the people who wouldn't have anything to do with me. Their opinions carried more weight. When I went to summer camp, where I got lost in the jumble of other children and felt depressed, the number of people who wouldn't have anything to do with me magnified in my mind to almost all of them, and I was constantly vanishing, hiding somewhere behind cabins or under trees. Gradually, I've built a life where I almost never have to face any of the above awkwardnesses. I avoid people in general, which suits my shy nature; I live in the woods, where you vanish into the landscape the minute you step outdoors; my life and my work are devoted to thinking about things and putting those thoughts into words, whether through writing or giving people advice. I live with the world's most loving dogs and cats, and with two people who have proven their love for me in countless ways: Will for almost 20 years now, Ketzl for nearly 8. There are bad moments sometimes, but overall, it's a life which makes room for who I really am and allows me to live in peace.
I was thinking these comforting thoughts today while contemplating the new fish tank. For now it is a still landscape of water plants and a beautifully prepared chunk of sandstone, drilled with two trilobal holes (that look like hearts to me) and heat-treated to enhance the striations. Will has kindly volunteered one of the amazingly strange bubble quartz rocks he dug out of his mother's garden in Missouri, when he went home some months ago for her funeral. It will go in later today, and will be beautiful and loved by little fish, but also a warm reminder of his mom. With a substrate of natural gravel and five plant varieties, it's so charming in there, I could imagine swimming through it myself. There are places to hide and places to feed and most of all, room simply to be.
Adulthood, I think, is about making worlds for yourself. Worlds that satisfy. Not perfect worlds -- nothing's perfect. But good enough to make you glad you're alive. My home is one world I've world. My garden is another. In both, I experience a life-affirming balance of intense emotions and tranquil pleasures.
For me, growing up is not about changing and becoming someone else, some old person; it's about building worlds that give me the room to be who I really am.
Thanks to Bertram who replied to my post of some gorgeous astrological body art, I found out it was done by an Australian body artist. I took Bertram's advice and googled Rudi Everts to see his interpretations of my birthday signs.
I'm a little mixed about Leo. Those 3-D paws and the long hair...I don't know. Plus I never really went for the whole eye-tits thing.
Fortunately, according to people who believe in star signs, I'm on the cusp of Virgo. Ah, that's more like it.
Category: Sex and Arts
Posted on 8/18/2008 8:22:10 PM by Gloria Brame
Easing back into the straitjacket, with elan
Yes, those delightful, delicious days of vacation, those halcyon mornings of waking late and sipping coffee on the back deck, watching birds and squirrels racing through their little lives, are just about over. Ah me.
Tonight's the last night I can stay up until dawn, and tomorrow's my last day of living frivolously. Silly joyous things I did this past week: gave myself a pedicure, facials, rejuvenating mask, and experimented with new cosmetics. Wrote some poetry and played a complicated new wordgame. Watched so many movies, all the plots and characters have merged into one endless and surreal dream. I played with the dogs a couple of hours every day and basked in the companionship of my housemates and life partners. Also basked in some personal time with the remote to Ketzl's buzzy pants. (It's better than TiVo!) Celebrated Will's birthday (Ketzl baked a great cake!). The highlight was today, when Ketzl got me the birthday present I so wanted -- a second aquarium -- and Will helped me set it up. Meaning, he set it up and I paced around in excitement, babbling about how I wished I could be more useful. I did finally get to do something: decorate it with plantings and rocks. It looks like a little enchanted garden. Now we wait for two weeks to let the water cycle, and then we'll add a bunch of new fish. I'm totally psyched, but sense that Will's already glumly preparing for the possibility that increasing numbers of cold-blooded creatures will begin staring back at him from glass tanks everywhere.
Anyway, I'm back to work on Tuesday. Kind of looking forward to it too. I can't believe how much I missed talking to my clients.
EMPTY CONDOM PACKET & A PHOTO OF 'THE TART'S' KNICKERS
UP FOR AUCTION ARE
ONE EMPTY ANSELL CONDOM PACKET (SIZE small)
AND A PHOTO OF THE PAIR OF
'THE TART'S' BLACK LACEY KNICKERS (SIZE HUMONGOUS)
IT SEEMS I HAD VIOLATED EBAY'S SECONDHAND CLOTHES POLICY BY OFFERING 'THE TART'S' (HER NAME'S KYLIE i HAVE SINCE FOUND OUT) ACTUAL KNICKERS UP FOR AUCTION PREVIOUSLY
I CAN ONLY NOW OFFER A PHOTO OF THE SAID KNICKERS AND HAVE ADJUSTED THE STARTING PRICE ACCORDINGLY........ PERSONALLY, I DID THINK .99c WAS A BIT AMBITIOUS BUT, AS THEY ARE SO HUGE, I THOUGHT THEY MAY MAKE SOMEONE A NICE SHAWL OR EVEN BETTER, SOMETHING FOR HALLOWEEN PERHAPS.......
SO HERE'S THE STORY SO FAR.........
Once upon a time there was a women who, after 22 years of marriage, found evidence that the soon to be ex-husband, had had 'The Tart' in their marital bed this very afternoon. This low life deceitful son-of-a-person ( I'm all for political correctness) blatently denied that this event took place even though the evidence is irrefutable and is now up for auction on e-bay.
Not sure what this Japanese fashion designer was trying to say here....
...but methinks more than a few pervs are now wishing they could touch their lips to hers....
Category: Sexual Strangeness
Posted on 8/14/2008 2:35:05 PM by Gloria Brame
Swingers and racoons shut down
Interesting story about a kinky swing couple compelled to shut down their party house in a residential neighborhood because the noise, traffic, and traffic generated by their big parties were driving neighbors crazy. Pity, because the parties sound pretty awesome, and the set-up amazing. Here's a picture of the loving couple in their beautiful backyard.
...The parties catered to "big beautiful women" and "big handsome men," and to the BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadomasochism) scene, they said.
Guests had to be at least a friend of a friend to gain entry, Elliston said. Regulars helped maintain the grounds and clean up after parties....
Elliston counted police officers, nurses and lawyers among her guests, she said. Members were as young as 22 and as old as 80.
The couple hosted a naked rally for presidential candidate Barack Obama and naked karaoke nights. A friend's "mobile sex dungeon" — created in a small cargo truck — was parked alongside the house....
Swingers shut down Des Moines sex club after neighbors complain, city intervenes
Their closest neighbor seems like a sympathetic sort, but his nerves were understandably frayed by the noise, traffic, and garbage the events generated.
John Rosenstiel, who lives next door, estimated he has asked partygoers to move cars out of his driveway 15 times since January.
Rosenstiel is groundskeeper for the Hardwood Cabin and three adjacent properties, including his rental. Often he'd grab dinner at the Hardwood Cabin potlucks before the real partying began, he said. But Rosenstiel also found himself picking up condoms and hundreds of cigarette butts in a vacant property behind his home, he said....
But what really made this story for me was Rosentiel's vivid description of the thrilling sounds of BDSM:
Many nights, Rosenstiel said, he left his TV on as he went to sleep to block out moaning and slapping noises.
"Once in a while it sounds like a raccoon dying," Rosenstiel said.
Benny says that real geek BDSM lovers use real plastic power cables to do their thing. It may be my inner feminine side, but I prefer a gentler touch, so I would go with this 1.8m long, 9.5mm wide knitted power cord, made of a very soft cotton and acrylic blend. KnitKnit shop says it works great as a decorative skinny scarf or a belt. Sure, whatever. I'm too busy thinking about alternative uses.
Knitted Cord Powers Up Your Soft Bondage Fantasies
Something to ponder: given how many athletes these days are secretly doping, will steroid-induced sex-changes become an increasingly common phenomenon in the future? Pretty sobering story from Germany. Click the link to watch video of Heidi as he is today.
Heidi Krieger proved herself one of the world's top athletes in the 1980s, winning medal after medal in the shot put for East Germany.
Now, the former sports star looks disdainfully at the awards, dismissing them as "doping medals" and honors that turned a woman into a man.
The good ol' Internet: always coming up with new solutions to old problems. Modern man suspects wife is up to something. Modern man installs PC Pandora, a spyware application that records keystrokes, takes surreptitious screen shots, and monitors chat sessions—all for the low, low price of $49.95. Success! Modern man writes a congratulatory note to the company, which it posts on its "testimonials" page:
My wife of 25 years came out of the blue after Christmas this past year and requested a divorce without much explanation. I was devastated, so I purchased your product. It only took two days to find out she has been living a dark secret life for several years as a submissive love slave to a dominant male partner in the BDSM world meeting him at least once a month. She was blown out of the water when I told her everything I knew about her lifestyle even down to the name and email address of the person she is involved with. Answered all my questions. She has no clue and thinks I spent $$$$$$ on a private investigator.
Despite modern man's feelings of triumph, it's hard to see any winners there. It's easier than ever to spy on our spouses, co-workers, boyfriends, and roommates. But does this make us happier and wiser or just more neurotic and creepy?
Spying on other people's computers. - By Michael Agger - Slate Magazine
Category: Sex On-Line
Posted on 8/13/2008 6:23:20 PM by Gloria Brame
Things you can do while I'm on vacation
Become a porn star
Watch eggs hatch
Figure out if Batman's gay
Savor some sadomasochistic mints:
Category: Sex On-Line
Posted on 8/13/2008 6:22:23 PM by Gloria Brame
Vivivacation
You might not have noticed, but I'm on vacation from this blog.
I've been realizing something since Saturday (my last official day of work). It's like this. I'm pretty good at a few things. I have a knack at rehabilitating pitiful dogs and a decidely green thumb. I can analyze a poem, play a concerto, speak French fluently, and drive a submissive to frenzy. But I really suck at vacation.
I only heard this news recently, and am sad to share it with those of you who have not heard that SM author Larry Townsend passed away on July 29th.
I only got to meet him once (at Thunder in the Mountains last year), but have known him (as a reader) since the mid-1980s for his tremendous contributions to BDSM literature, most especially his still-valuable tome, The Leather Man's Handbook, first published in 1972.
Background: Fortuny posted a rather raunchy ad, posing as a submissive heterosexual woman seeking a dominant heterosexual male for a little BDSM play. Over 170 men responded, many of them from their personal and work email accounts (as opposed to a dummy account started with fake personal info that everyone in his or her right mind should have for some very good, nonsexual reasons). The men sent pictures (some nude, some not), promised to do all kinds of sexual things to Fortuny's pseodonymous fem/sub, and requested meetings. Fortuny posted everything he received on his blog.
Two years later, one of the respondents is looking for some payback
Goodness me: details of the sex lives of famous writers are burbling up all over this place. A new book about 18th century Brit lit icon Samuel Johnson sticks a scholarly hand down his stuffy old pants.
Those first biographers saw things that even Johnson may have wanted to keep hidden. Nor were they averse to pulling the curtain for a discreet peek at his dark side. Mrs Thrale, for example, disclosed to posterity a 'secret far dearer to him than his life': namely Johnson's attachment to 'fetters and handcuffs'.
from: Say it again, Sam
And from the Amazon:
Famed for his dictionary, Rambler essays and The Lives of the English Poets, Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) remains one of the most-quoted and carefully observed authors who ever lived. On the occasion of Johnson's tercentenary, Martin (A Life of James Boswell) searches out the psychological elements covered up by Boswell and others: the immense insecurities, bouts of deep depression, corrosive self-doubt and, in his last days, despair for his very soul. He grew up the illness-wracked, nearly blind son of a backwater bookseller. Martin shows how Johnson's distant relationships with his family came to haunt him on the death of each member. Likewise, Johnson's strange mannerisms and disfigurement, marriage to a woman twice his age and poverty early in his career further shaped his psyche. Through all this, Martin says, Johnson was also a bit of a ladies' man, and notes in Johnson's journal references to the practice or condition of M., which, Martin speculates, stands for masturbation or defecation.
from a book synopsis on Amazon
Now why oh why didn't my professors teach me about these pieces of Johnson's life when I was taking 18th century Brit Lit classes in the day? I'm sure I would've paid more attention!
From a Times (UK) review of a Kafka biography coming out in the UK soon under the title Excavating Kafka:
A stash of explicit pornography to which Franz Kafka subscribed has emerged for the first time after being studiously ignored by scholars anxious to preserve the iconic writer's saintly image....
"These are not naughty postcards from the beach. They are undoubtedly porn, pure and simple. Some of it is quite dark, with animals committing fellatio and girl-on-girl action... It's quite unpleasant."
Franz Kafka’s porn brought out of the closet
From what I can tell, Amazon stocks the US version of the book (published under a very different title), and much if not most of the book deals challenges various myths and legends about the great writer. I'm guessing it's more for Kafka fans and scholars, and less for those seeking out the prurient details of his masturbatory habits.
But for you completists: check out the US version on Amazon
Category: Sex and Culture
Posted on 8/11/2008 4:53:11 AM by Gloria Brame
Mosley's victory is our victory
In the "better late than never" department (should've gotten this up 2 weeks ago, argh), fantastic news that Walter Mosley won his privacy case against News of the World. He was awarded about U.S. $120K in damages. I think it's fucking fantastic, and an awesome legal precedent for everyone who believes that what consenting adults do in private is no one's damn business but their own.
Mosley's now planning to go back to court and sue for libel. Hope he wins this one too. YEAH!
Also of interest, an interview with Mosley's attorney, Dominic Crossley.
Meanwhile, in the "a day late and a dollar short" department, the sleazy idiot who started this whole mess has apologized.
In an interview with Sky News, she said there had been no Nazi element and was sorry for the trouble it had caused Mosley, president of Formula One's governing body.
"It was never talked about that it was going to be a Nazi scene, we just had confirmation to say that it was going to be a German prison scenario," the self-confessed dominatrix said.
Category: Sex Laws and Crimes
Posted on 8/10/2008 8:07:39 AM by Gloria Brame
Sanctioned SM v. unsanctioned SM
Cool thought piece from the UK about the Double standards that damn S&M enthusiastst, which poses the poignant question, Why can you kick a man on the rugby field, but not whip him in the bedroom? (A point we raised over 15 years ago, in Different Loving.)