x-rated and otherwise
-pxj
(The image is one of several Solstice e-cards available at JPC Artworks)
Friday, December 21, 2007
Solstice Wishes
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Does that condom come in decaf?
Happy holidays—celebrate safely!
It occurs to me that I haven’t done a condom posting in, oh, weeks! So here are some relatively recent condom links and images, carefully selected for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!
*VivaGel is coming! This microbicide has been approved in Australia as a condom coating, and the manufacturing agreement’s official. The product is “designed to prevent transmission of STIs” including herpes and HIV! It was announced for US testing in Nov. 2006...
*Musical condom ad. No, that’s not “ad for a musical condom” (how last year!); it’s a six-minute musical film promoting condom use. Catchy song, too!
*No lead in these, I hope? (Sorry, couldn’t resist!) The perception of condoms in China is undergoing a profound shift. In a country where possession was once considered de facto evidence of “illegal prostitution,” new laws require condoms to be provided in hotel rooms by the end of next year.
and condom ads on TV in that region, too.
(But, sadly, the aphrodisiac ant extract won’t be coming to store shelves any time soon.)
*Safe eggs and other Asian condom ads. Some great images!
...And, finally, news from Ethiopia, fabled Home of Coffee: coffee-flavored condoms.
Yes, really.
Upon their release, in one week approximately 300,000 of these coffee-flavored condoms were sold to the masses. Each pack contains three condoms and costs about one Ethiopian birr or eleven cents, less expensive than other condoms being marketed in Ethiopia.
These coffee condoms not only smell the part, they also look the part with their deep brown color. DKT-Ethiopia was meticulous in their research, even creating the new condoms to taste like the Ethiopian coffee of choice: the macchiato. The macchiato preferred in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, is usually made with a shot of espresso and liberal amounts of sugar and milk. DKT initiated this campaign as a response to condom-user complaints that the latex scent of regular condoms was overpowering. This spurred the launch of these coffee condoms in Ethiopia as well as other regional-specific flavors in other parts of the world.
Man, some days I think the Universe really does love me. How else, in the midst of the HoliDaze, would it arrange such a beautiful distraction for me? Standing in line for a hour to hand over money I can’t afford on things I’ll then have to carry across the country? No problem! Because while I wait, I can wonder:
What “regional flavors” might be deemed appropriate here in the Lone Star State? Chewing tobacco? Chuck-wagon chili? Beer?
As you chase around town tossing your tinsel, ask yourself what weird flavors might be popular in your neck of the woods? Or, um, not neck, exactly...
As always,
peace and x-rated joy!
-pxj
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Friday, December 14, 2007
Friday Flash: Regional Were
Well, the first version of this post was on Friday! (Ah, the holidays—when one can spend so much time running around like the proverbial decapitated fowl that one completely forgets the celebratory aspects of the season.) After the jump, one wholly unedited excerpt of a story that just bloomed beneath my fingers yesterday. As yet unfinished, sigh. Did I need this? Apparently part of me thinks so.
Drinks are properly someone else’s territory, but I try never to ignore the breath of the muse. Hand that chica a breath mint and be prepared for long silence! Besides, drinks and raccoons are a natural match; that dipping behavior, don’t ya know.
“Ah. Wondered where you’d got to.” The bartender’s smile said more than his words, full of mischief again with a hint of—what? Sorrow?—something she couldn’t name. “Friend of mine wants to buy you a drink.” He pushed a martini glass across the bar.
Whatever that drink was, it was certainly no martini. Red and white, cocoa or something around the rim, with a tiny dried pepper floating on the top... Lacey blinked, looked again. Still there. “What in the name of Santa’s smallest reindeer is that?”
“Seasonal.”
“The drink or the curse?”
He only shrugged, but the tilt of his head suggested she look toward a certain table. For whomever had suggested that perversion of decent alcohol, no doubt. She didn’t, too appalled to move so much as her head. “Do I want to meet someone who would buy one of those?”
“Yes. Well, you want to meet this guy, at least. I think.”
She wasn’t so sure, but he’d turned away to serve someone else anyway. Sighing, she reached for the glass, holding it near the base of the stem lest it contaminate her. The smell of spice and chocolate rose as she moved.
The bar’s lighting could have won awards, a marvel of shadow and illumination, grace and mystery. Lacey stepped through pools of gold and silver, grey and night-black, feeling rather like she’d walked all inadvertent into a movie. Something definitely cross-genre, she mused, noir-ish atmosphere welded onto a Western setting and a perfect horror of a concoction in her hand.
As she neared the table the bartender had indicated, she added grunge to her list. There were two men at the table, both scruffy. The one seemed huddled within his oversized top and sloppy pants, and his hair hadn’t seen a barber’s shears in far too long.
The other, though, the one with his back to her...he wore his battered clothing like high style, his jeans torn beneath leather fetish straps, his shirt pure silk. The set of his narrow shoulders told her he knew she was coming. She had to laugh; was he so sure she wouldn’t dump the drink over his head? Not that he’d done anything to deserve it except have execrable taste, but that might be enough. Chocolate liqueur and hot peppers? And whipped cream?
He turned, and she trembled, caught.
No. No, no, no. Eyes so rimmed in kohl he looked like he was wearing a mask. Absolutely not.
...except...
Spirits of the season! He was so completely wrong it might actually be right. Fun, that was what she’d been looking for, right? Not a date for the company Christmas party, just...fun. This so-confident man might well be that, with his sharp-toothed grin and his self-assurance like a cloak. He hadn’t pushed, had waited for her. That said something, surely.
His table-mate rose and departed, murmuring something Lacey didn’t bother to hear. She looked, really looked at the man, trying to see beneath the leather and eye-liner. A small dun man who could have been almost any age, any race. Dark eyes rimmed in black like a Goth, but without that self-consciously dire attitude. Black-outlined lips curved in a welcoming grin, and his sharp nose twitched with humor. A diamond stud earring twinkled in the shadow of his thick hair, that wasn’t no-color, Lacey saw now, but rather several shades, black and brown and tan and grey. His eyes were dark, brown or black or simply accommodating the bar’s dim light. His skin was a creamy brown thanks either to his parentage or the sun’s kiss, hands and rope-muscled forearms darker than his face.
What shade might it be in those places the sun never touched? If there were any.
Lacey choked on a laugh. Hadn’t so much as said hello to the man, and here she was undressing him in her mind. Did it matter that she was clothing him again? Well, yes: she’d skipped over the fun part! He would be fun, she was as sure of that as she’d ever been of anything. Any man who could grin like that!
She was staring, she realized. As was he, but he, at least, was smiling; she was just standing there, mouth open like some drunken idiot. “I’m sorry,” she managed, “the bartender didn’t tell me your name?”
“Call me Rocky.”
His widening smile made the words a dare, and she spoke exactly what was in her mind. “Not while I live. And that’s two.”
“The drink being the first? Hardly fair, you haven’t tried it. You pass, by the way.”
“I wasn’t worried.” She admired his quick grace as he rose, held out a chair for her. When he resettled himself across from her, a clattering caught her attention. His nails were long, slightly curved, and painted black. Oh, boy. Sudden flash of them against her skin, teasing; sudden image of him, just as he was, at some business function as her date. She couldn’t decide whether to sigh or sob or giggle.
“Try the drink.” His musical tenor wove between, among, her thoughts, suggestion, not command, and she was so torn between reactions she actually did it, lifted the glass to her lips, felt the soft thick burn or spirits seeping slowly as she sipped.
Wherefore the Werewolf?
Why are wolves the most common weres? Shifter stories are common across cultures and feature all sorts of alter-forms—bats, birds, bears, cats, foxes, even—stretching a point—cockroaches! But werewolves are far and away the most popular.
When was the last time you saw a real, live wolf? Sure, the romantic image of those noble wild creatures roaming free is, well, romantic. But the original stories were so popular in large part for their plausibility. That howling outside the ring of fire or the safety of walls could have been a predator on four feet...or on two...or maybe something other, some vanished friend or rumored ally, someone who chose not to bind him- or herself to society, someone who briefly slipped the community chains but might return...
With the explosion of daring choices made possible by e-, there are now more were-critters than ever before. (Ahem. Ferrets? You know who you are!) But wolves still outnumber the rest*.
Locally, I’d have a better chance of running into an armadillo, bat, coyote, deer... Whole alphabets of animals, but no wolves. Not in the city. There’s a rescue facility pretty close for those poor mad half-wolf things, but that’s certainly not running free! Just beyond our lights are hosts of creatures, worlds of mystery... Why aren’t more of us enchanted by the nearer shadows and what they might hold?
Okay, it’d be pretty hard to make an armadillo a figure of mystery and romance. (Particularly erotic romance! A wrinkly armored possum-kin-looking thing is just naturally made for comedy.) But surely there are some intriguing other choices available, given the vastness of the animal kingdom! And animals that wouldn’t seem out of place in a given area would tend to offer more scope than the modern wolf-skulking-in-shadows tale where the poor creatures are so indistinguishable from vampires the territories often overlap.
Nancy Collins had a really good idea with those coyotes, native to the territory as they are. But, again, they’re not the only native creature out there. Hmm. Anyone interested in some fresh-made regional weres?
pxj
*No, I haven’t counted. Feel free to, should statistics gladden your heart. I’d love to see the results!
Friday, December 7, 2007
Friday Flash: Home for Christmas
Early for Christmas, but appropriate for the date--this excerpt is from one of my very few military pieces. "Home for Christmas" is an erotic short with para elements, about 3,000 words all told. It first appeared in my "not-a-newsletter" infrequent mailing, with a contest: the story contains lyrics from several Christmas carols, and I gave a gift certificate to the first person who correctly identified them all.
And, yes, I will be sending another Message from the e-Garret this Solstice or thereabouts. In case you were wondering. -g-
pxj
Midnight, and quiet all through the house.
Jaci tiptoed into the living room, intending to dispose of Santa's snack, and to slip a few last surprises into the stockings. But what to her wondering eyes should appear—
Jill's playing tricks. Charlie's stocking had joined the others, displacing the angel. Jaci frowned. She'd chosen not to hang it, deciding it would just remind her that her love had to be away at Christmastime. Not that she could forget. But there it was, with a suspiciously shaped bulge in the foot that made her hope the kids wouldn't look too closely. The milk they'd poured so solemnly had been replaced with eggnog, complete with a dusting of spice, and there were fewer cookies than there had been on the plate. One even had a bite out of it, as though someone had heard her coming and just this instant slipped away.
She sniffled. The scene wasn't her sister's style. It was Charlie's. But he couldn't be with her this year. Damn it, I promised myself I wasn't going to cry. She ate a cookie instead. And then another, washing it down with a swig from the glass. The eggnog was well and truly spiked.
A little tipsy on sugar and sentiment and southern mash, Jaci toasted the star on top of the tree, and spoke. "Dear Santa, what I want this year..."
She inhaled to speak her wish, and choked. For the past few days, the house had smelled like evergreen and candlewax and cooking, with a little hint of dog.
Charlie'd been gone long enough that there was no hint of his scent anymore. Except there was. Her imagination, or just suggestion.
And then the touch of fur on her cheek. "Have you been good this year?"
"No. I've been very, very bad." Jaci opened her eyes to see Charlie in a Santa suit. Only Santa had never looked this good. No bowl full of jelly here! Ermine-trimmed red velvet did not hide the hard swell of biceps, nor the even ridges of muscle on his abdomen. The tunic ended mid-thigh, but there were leggings beneath, descending into black boots; the double layer of fabric did a slightly better job of concealing than only one, but not by much.
"You like?" Charlie smiled and struck a pose, and Jaci came out of her chair in a leap to hug him. Laughing, he pulled her to the doorway, tilted her chin up so she could see the mistletoe, and then bent to claim her lips in a kiss as tender as their very first, as long and passionate as any they had ever shared.
"Check the stocking," he husked when the need for air had grown too great. "I'll wait." He turned her and pushed her gently toward the mantel. She reached for her stocking, but, "No. Look in mine," he said, and, looking at the shape she was sure she recognized, she did.
He stole her laughter, and her breath, with another heated kiss, and pulled her down to lie before the tree.
"Unwrap me?" she whispered.
He took his time, using his teeth to undo the belt of her robe. Her unromantic flannel pajamas might have been precious silk, from the care he took, might have been tissue by the way she felt, his hands strong and hot through the material.
As he bared each inch of skin, he covered it in kisses.
"Charlie..."
"Aren't you going to model my gift?"
She had a bit of trouble finding it at first, the floor covered in discarded clothing as it was. But then her hand closed around a cool resilient column, and she smiled. Not looking away from Charlie, who had found his Santa hat and placed it—she giggled. "Damn, love, you're not that big!"
Charlie looked down, frowned, and scrunched the fur-trimmed hat up a bit, until it was obvious that he, did, in fact, reach the end. "I checked. Twice." He flexed his hips, and the bobble on the end of the hat bounced and jiggled. "You wouldn't believe how much trouble I had trying to find one that fit in all dimensions. Not something you can tell the elves you're looking for, you know."
She could almost imagine the conversation, and laughed until she spluttered, nearly choking before she gave up on trying to speak. He struck one pose after another, each funnier than the last, and though he made no sound, laughter shook his abdomen.
Her humor ran its course at last, and she sat up, reaching for him as he bent to her, the last few giggles still echoing as her lips claimed his.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Have a Safe World Day!
I call December 1st World Condom Day, though it’s actually World AIDS Day today.
The connection isn’t exactly obscure, is it? Besides, the real World Condom Day doesn’t get nearly enough press—in fact, I’m not entirely sure when World Condom Day officially is! Some areas celebrate in late September, others in early November (Nov 3rd and 4th this year, though presumably not both), and then there are the folks who don’t differentiate between AIDS Day and the Day of the Condom at all...
Take your pick, one or all.
Though this year there doesn’t seem to be all that much observing going on. Locally, I saw a lot more Green protect the environment! news than Red Ribbon protect your health coverage today. And more about the holiday shopping outlook than either, everything from “protecting your credit during the Christmas season” to reminders that shoppers should hide packages and lock their car doors to the inevitable Safe Toys for Tots.
It seems safety is still the slogan, but sex is a secret once again. So here’s a recommendation that should satisfy:
Shop online (save the environment: don’t drive all around town to browse) using approved merchant sites (protect your credit) for novelty Christmas condoms! Slip a few sheaths into your lover’s holiday stocking. And celebrate the season safely.
Okay, seriously. Condom humor, anyone?
Q: What do you do with a green condom?
A: Leave it on the vine until it’s ripe.
Q: When should you wear a condom?
A: On every conceivable occasion.
(sorry, folks—couldn’t resist)
Q: Why does the cowboy buy condoms by the half dozen?
A: For his six-shooter, naturally.
For those of you who like your condom humor on the visual side, check out Shutterbugg
You all know I’m a fan of Miss Cellania (if you didn’t before, you do now
As always,
wishing you peace and (safe) x-rated joy,
pxj
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