You, Coming and Going

Attention Orgasm Fans! Now there's a site that allows you to see the faces of others in their petite morts and even to upload your own.

Beautiful Agony is a rather brilliantly conceived site that offers a voyeuristic as well as an exhibitionistic opportunity for those interested in either. Capitalizing on both is also a clever way to make money, but then again, that's what the sex on the Internet is all about, I guess!

Upload your own video or watch those recorded by others. You'll see a wide range of facial expressions, sounds, and sexual attitudes -- it is indeed a novel concept. What I especially like about this site, though, is that the focus is on the face. No nudity allowed. It makes the watching more personal, somehow, not to have the distraction of bodies. It also makes the experience more intense because you have nowhere to look but the person's face.

And no, you won't be seeing my face up there, despite my exhibitionist tendencies! Special thanks to Leo for alerting me to this very unique site.

Glamour Magazine wants your fantasies

Glamour magazine is looking for submissions of sex
fantasies from women age 20-40. They want a desciption
of a fantasy, plus an explanation of why you think you
have the fantasy.

For the article, an expert will "decode" the fantasy.
If your selection is chosen, Glamour will run the
fantasy along with your first name and age. They
particularly need fantasies that fit the following
scenarios:

* about being watched
* involving characters on TV
* about someone they hate/is unattractive
* about her and another woman
* about a stranger
* about dressing up/Sex toys/role playing
* about her focusing completely on, and pleasing him

Keep your submission to two paragraphs, tops. Deadline
is December 29.

Send your fantasy, your phone number, and your
email address (for fact checking only) to Natasha at
natashachilingerian@gmail.com.

Buzzin' at MySpace

Jebus, I hate MySpace.

Yes, I do have a damn MySpace account , mostly because a year or so ago, writers everywhere got the word that they just had to have one to help promote their book(s). And so now we're all over there, yelling and screaming and jumping up and down like spoiled children, with not a genuine desire for true friends among us -- all everybody seems to want is eyeballs on their books. It's the nature of our world today that we must grasp at every available outlet to get any attention whatsoever for our creative efforts. But that doesn't make it any less sad.

But I'm not here to rant. Quite the contrary today! Every few days, I check my MySpace account to see if anybody wants to be my "friend." They are always requests from one of the following:

- writers who want to promote their books or writing in general
- musicians who see I've put Keane in my list and think I'll like their band, too
- sellers of sex-related items
- general lunatics who like to pontificate and desperately need an audience for their daily diatribes

I approve almost everyone. Maybe I feel like someday I can use them like they're using me. Bad karma all around, eh?

Anyway, today I got a "friend" request from the manufacturer of a product that I think is pretty damn cool. It's called iBuzz Two. It plugs into an iPod -- so it immediately has my attention! -- and is a music-activated sex toy. Music and sex. In the same toy. Wow. And its for couples as well as singles.

Now this is a momentous occasion because it marks the first time anybody has contacted me via MySpace with anything I give a shit about. And look what's happened -- I'm now spreading the word about this item.

So maybe there's something to this MySpace business, after all. I guess the trick is to hawk something interesting instead of "you should read my book because my friends say it's fantastic and why would they lie?" or "Look at me! I won an award given by an unknown group for a really lame reason!"

Reading -- Not So Fundamental After All

Hey, so remember that auction I was touting? The one that would benefit the charity Reading is Fundamental? The one that had lots of sexy but inoffensive goodies in one gift basket?

Maybe you can guess what happened.

If you guessed that we made a bijillion dollars and subsequently allowed every child to get the reading help he or she needed, you would, alas, be incorrect. If you guessed that Reading is Fundamental felt a strange tingling in their genitals at the mere thought of sexually related merchandise associated with their name, you'd be on the right track. So objectionable did they find our auction -- where the bidding had gotten up to more than $140 -- that they asked eBay to cancel it.

I ran on at length about this on my podcast, Four Minutes, Once a Week, so I'm a bit out of steam, but because I'm committed to recording all these sorts of rejections from the morally upright, uptight segments of society, I'm putting the details here for posterity.

With just three days left to go of its 10-day run, the auction was abruptly terminated by eBay because Reading is Fundamental didn't want its name associated with it. That's their right, of course, but this rejection is particularly galling because I have hosted auctions before and given the proceeds to Reading is Fundamental. Why was this one different? Did the 10-day run just give them more time to actually look at the auction details? Or was the addition of other vendors a sore point for them on this one? (My previous auctions have just been for Quickies from Custom Erotica Source. This one offered a Quickie, artisan chocolate, The Sex LIves of Wives by Holly Hollenbeck, a kit of sensual goodies from Babeland, and erotic stories on CD from Sounds Erotic.)

What kind of world do we live in where a charity can be so independent, so caught up in its image, that it can pick and choose where its donations come from?

You can bet I'll not be sending any more money in Reading is Fundamental's direction. They didn't even have the courtesy to reply to my message when I questioned them about ending the auction. Not only is my money dirty, they don't feel I'm worthy of a courteous response.

If any of you know of organizations who do what Reading is Fundamental does to further the cause of teaching kids to read, please let me know, because that's where I'll funnel auction proceeds in the future.

Glad to be excluded

The annual Bad Sex in Fiction Awards are in full swing, so check them out if you want to feel better about your own writing.

They seem to pick mostly from mainstream or literary fiction for these, so I'm safe from their scathing gaze. But watch out -- when more than a handful of people actually read my books, who knows? I could end up on this list!

Sex + Politics = Damn Funny Stuff

This video is pretty damn inspired. See if you don't chuckle.