Gloria's Oversexed Mind

Gay marriage makes sense for Maine: innkeepers

I love this political action. It's an astute move to argue for legalization of gay marriage based on financial facts which prove that gay marriage is good for the economy. I hope the idea spreads to business owners in other states.

Innkeepers and others who make their livings in Maine’s tourism and wedding industries headed to the Statehouse today to ask legislators to support a bill that would allow same-sex couples to marry in Maine.

They are expected to take part in a 10:30 a.m. press conference sponsored by the Maine Freedom to Marry Coalition, which is supporting the bill.

Jim Davitt, the owner of Nonesuch Farm Bed and Breakfast in Bangor, will be one of them. He and others will present lawmakers with a report estimating that same-sex marriage would boost the state’s economy by $60 million over three years.

Innkeepers lobby for same-sex marriage

February 27th in the garden

Things are stirring all over, as the garden takes its ritual steps towards bloom. Splashes of color rising up from dead leaves and tinges of green everywhere. It's time at last to rake away all the dead leaves, a job I started yesterday but which today's heavy rains have thwarted. Happily I shot these yesterday, when the skies were soft and still.

A view through the middle of the garden.

The early daffs are already fading, but waves of later varieties will take their place.

A second wave of daffodils, promising many more to come.

Until the dogwood blooms out, its branches are comforted by dog ornaments.

Bushes that cheer us all winter, the evergreen Euonymous and aucuba. Can't quite see it yet, but the Euonymous is beginning to push forth new growth that will create a breathtaking crown of gold soon.

Oh Joy! The blueberries are budding.

Though its blooms are so small as to qualify as "insignificant," a honeysuckle is lightly scenting the garden now.

Creeping through dead leaves and ivy and strawberry begonia, the tinest and palest blue crocus in the garden.

My first spring here, I threw down a bunch of yarrow seeds. And nothing happened. Not a damn thing. But a year later, I saw one or two yarrows volunteering yards away from where I'd sown those seeds. Hmmm. I transplanted them to a better position. And now? Let's put it this way: does anyone want some yarrow? I can't believe the plants are already starting to come in. This will be a dense bush by June.

Pansies don't die here in winter but they don't flower much either. Here's one brave little soul rising to meet spring.

Not Safe for Vegans

(via Wendy Blackheart)

Castronova

In case you missed this (originally published last September), Mike just helpfully sent me a link to a story about Fidel Castro's revoluationary appetites. I always took Castro for a fucker, I just never meant it literally before.

Cuban dictator Fidel Castro has bedded approximately 35,000 women in his 82 years of life, according to an upcoming documentary.

A special security team would scout out Havana beaches each day recruiting hotties for El Presidente’s pleasure.

“He slept with at least two women a day for more than four decades - one for lunch and one for supper. Sometimes he even ordered one for breakfast,” an ex-Castro official, identified as “Ramon,” tells filmmaker Ian Halperin. “I don’t think he would have stayed on as long as he did if not for all the incredible women he had access to as president.”

Fidel Castro Sex 35,000 Women

More women coming out in later life

Thanks to Leigh for pointing me to this very fine article about women embracing their lesbian identities in mid-life. If you or someone you love is dealing with coming out, the piece is a must-read. The article (and especially the interviews) will resonate strongly with kinky adults grappling with issues of personal happiness and sexual fulfillment.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that more women are coming out after age 40 than ever before -- a reflection, most likely, of changing times and attitudes.

Among women in their 50s who were living with another woman, more than half had left straight, married life behind; that percentage jumps to a whopping 75 percent for those age 60 or older. Finally, 42 percent of the respondents in a recent MORE.com poll reported knowing one or more women who came out as gay or bisexual at age 40-plus. And nearly a third of our respondents, gay or straight, found themselves attracted to another woman for the first time at midlife.

Over 40 and Over Men

Sucker for a car wash

There's just no excuse for this kind of behavior.

Unless he was planning to share the video with us on Youtube, I mean.

A man has pleaded no contest to indecent exposure after police said he was arrested for performing a sex act with a car wash vacuum.

Mich. Man Pleads No Contest in Vacuum Sex Act Case

What kind of a restaurant is this?!

via Banned In Hollywood

(OK, not in a restaurant -- seen in sex-worker bathrooms in the Netherlands...)

That's Dildo for 14 points

Sharing a handful of funny things found on funny blogs last night -- including this (actual, not Photoshopped) screenshot for Scrabble fans who missed this "word of the day."

via Geekologie

The Lion Tickler

via Blog of Hilarity

Christians talking about sex

It's odd to me that people assume that all Christians are anti-sex but such is the factional political climate in America. Right wingers and fanatics are only one segment of the wider Christian world. True, it's been the segment which makes the most noise and aggressively advances poisonously hateful anti-sex rhetoric. Still, they are one squeaky wheel in a large and complex machine. Some of the other, less vocal wheels no doubt wish that squeaky one would shut up and go away. Kind of the way I used to feel about the JDL.

I've known plenty of good Christians who are kinky or otherwise adventurous in bed. So the "good golly, Christians are talking about sex! OMG LOL" type of attitude in the piece below is a bit off-putting, if not actually insulting to those who are centrist, liberal and sometimes libertarian about sexual freedom.

This author also put a little too much emphasis on the theological restraints sexually liberal Christians impose on adventurous sex (for example, viewing heterosexual marriage as the ideal). Yah. So? Unless you expect everyone to believe in One Perfect Sexual Attitude to possess, isn't it kind of normal for individual groups or religions to have their own unique takes on morality and their own ways of rationalizing what they do? Is the author really surprised that the Christian evangelists she looks at fail her super-cool feminist sex test? More pertinently, does she believe that people have to abandon their religious beliefs to have great sex?

What's more interesting and important from my POV, is that these counselors and websites are trying to minister to their followers' sexual needs instead of pretending (as has been their past history) to ignore them. They're opening up to the notion that sex between two people who love each other can be nearly anything those people want it to be -- and not just what most pastors once taught (missionary position, man on top only).

That said, this is a worthwhile article, if only to find out more about the new wave in sexual candor in some Christian circles.

(Thanks to Phil for suggesting the link.)

'Sex-Crazed' Evangelicals Talk Spanking and Anal Sex.

We all know that the growing evangelical movement is one (with a few left-leaning pockets exempted) obsessed with sex. Controlling it. Punishing it. Using it to control women. Stomping out most versions of it completely. Shaming people who enjoy it. And now, believe it or not, promoting it as an important part of healthy marriages. Wait, come again? Sex-positive evangelicals? Well, sort of. While they're not bringing in enough numbers to drown out the dominant attitude of shaming, there does seem to be a trend in the evangelical community of promoting more and better sex within marriage -- for the good of the marriages. There are now Christian sex shops, Christian sex advice columns, and Christian sex blogs.

Graphic Insexual Documentary

If you were a fan of the former hardcore SM site, Insex, here's a movie you'll want to catch: a documentary on the people and points of view that made Insex one of the most successful, and sexually outrageous, BDSM porn sites on the Net.  The film will be featured at Cinekink and possible a filmfest near you too (read review below for details)

Started in 1997, Insex.com was a way for Brent Scott, aka Pd, to further his erotic bondage art after leaving a teaching job at Carnegie Mellon. His art showed vivid paintings of women in various BDSM positions—and wasn’t well-received among the community. Bondage had long been an obsession for Scott from the time he was tortuously tickled into his first orgasm as a child. He began to think of his fetishes as wrong because they weren’t socially acceptable, but through art, he found a way to live them.The workings behind the website can now be seen in a new documentary, Graphic Sexual Horror, which premiered as the highest rated film in Utah’s Slamdance Film Festival in mid-January and is included in the Cinekink film fest this week. Two women direct the film: novelist Barbara Bell and photographer Anna Lorentzon.

Read the full article, Whip Smart.

FOUND: Queef Art. Now say it fast.

Going where few Western cartoonists travel, this Shunga explores the windy mounds of flatus vaginalis. (That's "pussy farts" to you plebians.)

Vintage Lust Pictures Blog

Thanks to the good people at Femina Potens for suggesting the link.

De Kock has balls

Seriously. I just don't know if I'd have the chutzpah to be a sex researcher if my name was De Pussy.

Threat of world Aids pandemic among heterosexuals is over, report admits

A quarter of a century after the outbreak of Aids, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has accepted that the threat of a global heterosexual pandemic has disappeared.

In the first official admission that the universal prevention strategy promoted by the major Aids organisations may have been misdirected, Kevin de Cock, the head of the WHO's department of HIV/Aids said there will be no generalised epidemic of Aids in the heterosexual population outside Africa.

(Thanks to Mike for finding this.)

FOUND: Sadist by the Sea

Thanks to Evan for spotting this (and snapping it) on Fisherman's Wharf.

Full transparency

Scientists have just figured out that this fish (the barreleye or spookfish) can roll its eyes up to stare out the top of its see-through head.

Strange Fish Has See-Through Head

As someone who's often wished she could look inside a sub's head to figure out wtf is going on in there, this whole transparent-head thing delights me.

Woman: the fashion designer's clown

Yeah, I know that high fashion adores light-hearted absurdity and silly whimsy, and I don't mean to harsh anyone's fun fashion buzz, but if there was ever a reason to question the darker psychological motives of clothing designers, it's this "bag hat" from by Isaac Mizrahi's new line.

He needs to work on his misogyny issues in a doctor's office, not on a runway.

Isaac Mizrahi…Bag Hats?!

FOUND: Couple of Klaws

Attributed to legendary bondage photo Irving Klaw (and pretty unmistakably his style), these two cool vintage bondage images might stimulate some, uh, memories for older readers.

This one intrigues me: is that a leather mermaid-style dress? A semi-mummification or bondage dress?  I've never seen one quite like it but the leather looks awfully soft and supple. YUM.

FOUND: 1950s Mystery bondage

Mr. Mystery must have been an interesting fellow, judging by this blatant bondage cover, dated March 1952. Check out the creepy painting. Makes for a damn scary non-consensual headgame. Woooooo.

Anyone ever hear of this series before?

FOUND: 1885 Hottie

Another delicious vintage find, this one with a bit of a fetish-y edge.  Love the little boots.

FOUND: Vintage nude frolics

Proving yet again that girls just wanna have fun -- even circa 1900.

Truth is stranger than diaper fiction

A Toledo man accused of kidnapping, handcuffing and holding captive in an adult diaper a 22-year-old woman he picked up off the streets in Detroit said he was trying to "save her," according to authorities.

Troy Brisport, 34, also read the Bible to Shykea Boykin, the Detroit woman who told investigators Brisport handcuffed her by the wrists and ankles in his west Toledo apartment. He also took off her clothes, dressed her in an adult diaper and gave her no food and little to drink, she told investigators.

Saturday, three days after she said she was abducted, Boykin sneaked out of the apartment, still handcuffed by the wrists, in a diaper and a T-shirt, banging on neighboring apartment doors. She was in the parking lot when police arrived, according to reports.

Police said they're somewhat baffled.

"It's kind of a mixed bag," said Capt. Ray Carroll. "He takes her to his house, holds her captive, handcuffs her. We don't know what the diapers are about. And then he's reading the Bible to her. I don't know. Maybe it was a saving-her kind of thing," he said.

Bible, handcuffs, diaper in abduction baffle Toledo police

Or maybe it was a non-consensual SM kind of thing. Bet you they won't prosecute it the same way if they think it's motivated by Christian beliefs instead of his diaper fetish. Once you wave that Christian Bible around, there's bound to someone on the jury who says "I can't put a Godly man in prison for this. I'm sure he meant well."

FOUND: 19th c. dolphin sex

Found this erotic bronze sculpture on eBay, where the vendor said it's an original 19th c. piece depicting a woman all sexually wound up with a dolphin. Easy to find human/sea-creature sex comics these days, especially from Japan, but not common to see similar situations of this vintage. Further proof that there's really nothing new under the pervy sun.

FOUND: Kitschelicious bondage

Lovely lingerie and light bondage on this old men's magazine. Would love to know more about "orgies by appointment." Isn't that kind of, um, oxymoronical? Like "scheduled spontaneous sex"?

Lasting SM love

Ironically, my computer problems timed well with my personal life.  We celebrated two anniversaries here this week and the forced absence from the Net helped me savor those events. It's been exactly 20 years since Will and I signed our marriage contract and 8 years since we officially collared our beloved Ketzl. Maybe my laptop just burst from the happiness of it all. For those of you who think SM relationships can't last, all I can say is they can, they do, and, in fact, they get better with time. There's a level of friendship and honesty, mutual support and loyalty, in SM unlike any other. So if you've been looking and looking, well, keep on looking. I was 33 when I married Will, after a long and rocky history of romantic failures.  But I never gave up on my vision of finding a kinky partner to love and support me through thick and thin and, to my amazement, I have been blessed with two.  At 53, I'm happier than I've ever been in my life.   If I can do it, you can too. 

FOUND: Hello Kitty does leather

Steve Diet Goedde just posted this cool birthday gift he received.

LINK

February 19th in the garden

(Since I couldn't get on-line yesterday, it was a perfect time to take some garden pix....)

Things are starting to pick up in the garden as we barrel towards spring in Georgia.

Purple crocus is springing up.

Early-blooming dwarf iris is beginning to come in.

The forsythia's about half-way to full bloom

Venus is feeling better and back to exploring the garden with her youngest sibling, Leaflet.

Caught in the act: Venus supplementing her diet with a light lunch of fresh-dug worms. Euw.

Off-Line for a couple

When I was a young woman, I used to wear out vibrators. Now that I am not so young, I wear out laptops. Ah so sad and yet so damn true. My laptop went all blue screen on me yesterday (five times in a row, no less), so I'm anticipating a total crash any hour now. Got a new motherboard coming sometime on Friday (I hope), but until then I'm playing it safe and limiting my time on-line, not downloading anything new etc.. So no blog posts, no twitter, no Facebook until I'm out of the woods -- and probably not much email either. Sorry to all, but you'll see me in a few.

G.

FOUND: signed Lennon Litho for sale

Selling on eBay, for $7.5k, a signed limited edition litho for John Lennon fans and erotic art collectors.

JOHN LENNON LITHO FROM THE EROTICA SERIES HAND SIGNED

FOUND: 1930s caged nude

Not sure what exactly is going on here and wondering if this was part of a series. Amazingly hot and fresh, considering it's over 80 years old.

Dancing wingmen

More intriguingly strange animal mating rituals. Click over to the site to watch the awesome little video of the bird boys trying to leapfrog their way into a lady bird's affections.

It is the ultimate "gentleman's agreement". Rather than compete for females, male long-tailed manakins co-operate with their friends.

The tropical birds pair up to perform a courtship song and dance, but the alpha male gets the girl every time.

Meanwhile his "wingman" spends five years playing second fiddle. But he eventually inherits the mating site.

The dance, dubbed "backwards leapfrog", was filmed in Costa Rica by zoologists from the University of Wyoming.

At first glance, it appears like a competitive "dance-off".

But in fact it is a co-operative pact between buddies, says Dr David McDonald, of Wyoming University.

"As far as I know it is the only example of male-male [mating] co-operation in the animal kingdom," he told delegates at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Chicago.

"The male birds' partnership lasts up to five years. During that time, the beta male does not copulate.

"He has to wait until alpha male dies - he doesn't kick him out. So he may be waiting until he's 10, 15 or even older."

Dance duet helps male birds mate

So next time you travel in the manakin's magical kingdom and see tiny little blue balls poking between the leaves, please remember, they are not berries....