HNT: Favorite – 2009

I don’t have many HNTs to pick from this year. General busy-ness, forgetfulness, family time, work projects, a broken camera, computer issues, and other assorted time wasters seemed to interfere with it, I guess.

But this week I simply get to pick my fave from the last year. I’m going back about 6 months to when Mrs. Edge was gone for a month. I had sent her a number of nice poses, but didn’t send anything too suggestive, sine she only had access to company internet, and didn’t know how to get around that kind of thing for more private communication.

This is from July of this year.

Yes, I do sleep in the nude. Why do people seem so surprised?

Wishing everybody a safe and happy 2010!

(Want to get into your own HNTs? Check out the guidelines at Osbasso’s place.)

Karma Sutra Test Drive

Yeah, around the holidays the Edge household always seems to have visitors, making my access to the naughtier better parts of the internet a bit more sketchy. I manage to get time to read a little here and there, but not enough time to think and write seriously. My work PC is still messed up, and despite a couple of trips to the office, I have to spend more time cleaning up the pile of papers that seems to amass over the year.

But I had an hour or two to myself this morning, and stumbled across one of those humorous internet time-wasters that end up blowing your entire free time. No, it’s not Farmville, or one of those other annoying Facebook games that your friends try to get you to play. No, it’s not the latest political parodies on Youtube. No, it’s not even the Best/Worst List of something-or-other for the month/year/decade.

It’s apparently a viral marketing ad for a British friend finder website, which has little 20 second “instructional videos” on various Kama Sutra positions. I’m not sure how accurate they are supposed to be; I don’t have my copy handy, but I’m pretty sure that the Sutras did not actually have a position called “The Prison Guard,” not that the name doesn’t conjure up some interesting fantasies.

Anyway, if you’re looking to waste some time for the next few hours, check out My Karma Sutra Buddy. It’s not exactly work safe, but the actors are dressed in bikinis, so there’s no wabbly bits to offend anyone.You can pair off the male and female models to demonstrate the various listed (16)  positions. That means there are 3 x 3  x 16 = 144 possible combinations.

That said, anyone looking to be offended will note that there are six actors, three men and three women. One pair is “normal”, i.e., young and athletic looking. However, to play it for laughs the other buddies are a huge man, a large woman, and a pair of dwarfs. Presumably, the humor comes from the odd pairings, and indeed, the actors themselves engage in some laughter when trying positions that simply are not going to work, or would likely result in injury.

I’m not going to rant about how it’s okay to poke fun at short or fat people, though. I mean, hell, as most of us know, sex is — should be — fun, but some things simply don’t work, no matter how energetic or inventive you are. The Kama Sutra itself cautions against certain parings:

Kind of Union

MAN is divided into three classes, viz. the hare man, the bull man, and the horse man, according to the size of his lingam.

Woman also, according to the depth of her yoni, is either a female deer, a mare, or a female elephant.

There are thus three equal unions between persons of corresponding dimensions, and there are six unequal unions, when the dimensions do not correspond, or nine in all, as the following table shows:

EQUAL		UNEQUAL
MEN	WOMEN	MEN	WOMEN
Hare	Deer	Hare	Mare
Bull	Mare	Hare	Elephant
Horse	Elephant	Bull	Deer
		Bull	Elephant
		Horse	Deer
		Horse	Mare

Now, it’s been a long snce since I’ve actually read the sutras (as opposed to simply looking at the pictrues), so it was with interest that I read the following notes on arousal and satisfaction:

Auddalika says, ‘Females do not emit as males do. The males simply remove their desire, while the females, from their consciousness of desire, feel a certain kind of pleasure, which gives them satisfaction, but it is impossible for them to tell you what kind of pleasure they feel. The fact from which this becomes evident is, that males, when engaged in coition, cease of themselves after emission, and are satisfied, but it is not so with females.’

This opinion is however objected to on the grounds that, if a male be a long-timed, the female loves him the more, but if he be short-timed, she is dissatisfied with him. And this circumstance, some say, would prove that the female emits also.

But this opinion does not hold good, for if it takes a long time to allay a woman’s desire, and during this time she is enjoying great pleasure, it is quite natural then that she should wish for its continuation. And on this subject there is a verse as follows:

‘By union with men the lust, desire, or passion of women is satisfied, and the pleasure derived from the consciousness of it is called their satisfaction.’

The followers of Babhravya, however, say that the semen of women continues to fall from the beginning of the sexual union to its end, and it is right that it should be so, for if they had no semen there would be no embryo.

To this there is an objection. In the beginning of coition the passion of the woman is middling, and she cannot bear the vigorous thrusts of her lover, but by degrees her passion increases until she ceases to think about her body, and then finally she wishes to stop from further coition.

This objection, however, does not hold good, for even in ordinary things that revolve with great force, such as a potter’s wheel, or a top, we find that the motion at first is slow, but by degrees it becomes very rapid. In the same way the passion of the woman having gradually increased, she has a desire to discontinue coition, when all the semen has fallen away. And there is a verse with regard to this as follows:

‘The fall of the semen of the man takes place only at the end of coition, while the semen of the woman falls continually, and after the semen of both has all fallen away then they wish for the discontinuance of coition.’ 2

It’s worth noting that despite the reputation as a sex guide, sexual positions are really a small part; the majority of the texts are actually writings and observations on seduction and courtship. I recommend it as a fun and interesting read for a wintry evening. You can find it on the Sacred Texts website.

Anyway, this was supposed to be a fun post.

And Happy New Year from the Edge of Vanilla Laboratories.

Chastity Therapy

Okay, can we stop now?

Really, before y’all even get started, let’s just take ten minutes to gather our senses before you start with the silly “I wonder if…” speculation.

Yes, you know who you are.

This month’s celebrity-who-got-caught is, of course, golf great Tiger Woods, who, despite being married to a hot looking woman, is now linked to a dozen or so mistresses, waitresses, porn actresses, and others. I will leave it to the media pundits to argue about whether Tiger is simply a good guy who got caught up in the celebrity life. I’m not even going to remark on the real sin of hypocrisy. (For those of you not following, golf is generally a game with few such scandals, and Tiger has been heralded as a good, clean-living young man, and a good role model in the sports world.) When I feel like offering my opinions on such matters that don’t concern me, I’ll start submitting articles to Gawker, Jezebel, or one of the other gossip blogs.

But I am going to beg you to please, please stop your idle chatter on the type of chastity belt that Tiger should wear. Or if he would have been a better husband if he had been wearing one. Or if his wife will make it part of the re-negotiated pre-nuptial agreement. Or if wearing one would screw up his swing.

I ask this of you because – as you’ve no doubt heard me say in the past – anyone who thinks a $200 hunk of plastic (or even a $2,000 hunk of stainless steel, for that matter) is going to cure their relationship problems would be much better off spending the money on some therapy.

Chastity devices are, ironically enough, sex toys.

There, I’ve said it.

I don’t care if it’s a ribbon around your cock, a CB3000, a Lori’s Tube, a Steelwerks custom job, or a solid stainless steel Latowski. They are, pure and simple, toys to enhance your sexual play.

Yes, you’ve heard me about modifying my devices to make them more comfortable or secure, but the simple fact is that with enough resources and inclination, any chastity device can be circumvented. It can be by brute force (by breaking or cutting sections) or by stealth means (lock picking, or practicing yoga to slip it off your body), but given enough resources (i.e., time and/or money) the wearer can get around any device. No, don’t even argue – just take that to the bank. Inescapable chastity devices are fantasy. Let’s no inject your fantasy onto the pain of somebody’s private life.

Mrs. Edge knows that I can Macguyver just about anything, which is why we went through some brainstorming before she left for a month in Bangalore this past summer. Our arrangement wasn’t fool-proof, but it did present some challenges that would have been time consuming for me, and if they failed, would have presented some relationship problems. I leave the idea of resources up to the individual. The more important factor is the inclination.

That’s why I cringe whenever I read about some dumb sop who tells his wife “Honey, you should make me wear a chastity device, so you won’t have to worry about me on business trips or when you’re not around.” Look bro — if she wasn’t worried about you cheating before you mentioned it, then she’s sure as hell going to be thinking about it afterward. That’s because your partner is smarter than you are. She’s not placing all of her trust in the technology, she’s placing her trust in the human resources. Know why? Because that’s how it works in a relationship. That’s part of the relating thing.

You say that your partner has an insecure streak and doesn’t trust you anyway. Chastity device? No, therapy is the better answer. Because as she realizes that you can have fantastic sex with your cock locked up, she’ll begin to wonder if you’re doing the same with your co-workers or cocktail waitresses on those business trips.

You say that you’ve already been caught shagging your neighbor, and you think that chastity will help your wife to trust you again? No, therapy is the better answer, of only to discover what is the problem in your marriage that makes you seek solace elsewhere, instead of trying to talk things out.

You say that your wife married you and now won’t put out, and is demanding that you wear a device, or else she’ll divorce you and ask for a bazillion dollars a month in alimony? Chastity, right? No, you need therapy to help you figure out why you seek attention by posting those ridiculous stories in every friggin’ web group.

But we’re getting away from the main point, which is that Tiger Woods does not need a chastity belt; he needs therapy, and he needs to understand how not to allow the fame go to his head. In other words, he needs to stop thinking with his putter. Just like the rest of you who are making those jokes, and thinking you’re so funny. Because, you know, it’s not like those same jokes haven’t been made a dozen times in the last year… and the year before, and the year before that.

So seriously, guys — have fun with your sex toys. And go ahead and fantasize a little bit. But please put the the idea out of your head that your toys will substitute for honest desire or some serious ethical considerations. This is real life, after all, and not a game.

Vanilla. But erotic.

Those of you who troll the net looking for oddities may have stumbled across this little gem that’s been circulating. Chances are that a friend of your forwarded this to be titillating, albeit in a squeamish, squickish way.

Yes, it’s meant to weird you out a bit. Marketing Magazine has their own take on it:

Science World hopes to raise a few eyebrows and possibly some squirming with the release of its latest viral YouTube ad that launched this week.

“Ice Creamy Goodness,” by Vancouver-based Rethink, shows several elderly women enjoying ice cream cones, including one memorable shot of grandma in the hospital licking ice cream from her finger. The ad ends with the copy: “Vanilla is the most erotic scent to older men” and the tag line “We can explain.”

Interestingly, despite my own advanced years (I’m 51), I looked at this and said “Holy shit – those people are old!”

I’m enheartened (is that a real word?)) to see that the usual Youtube denizens haven’t yet spewed the usual “Ugh, that’s disgusting” comments at the several videos available.

Coincidentally, this comes out just as I was looking at an article in the AARP magazine about “sexting” and related phone shenanigans among the retired (i.e., over 60) crowd. I’m still disappointed at the comments I’ve read implying that younger people think that sex stops at 45 – or when your body puts on an extra 20 pounds. I’m hoping, though, that playful, light-hearted ads like this will inspire in people some degree of acceptance that older people (i.e., people older than me) have their own needs and desires that shouldn’t be discounted.

HNT: Show some He-vage

While it’s not likely that the readers of this blog are overly concerned with the popular vis-a-vis what they simply enjoy, it’s worth noting that after two decades of smooth-shaven male models (anyone remember the Calvin Klein Obsession ads from the mid 80s?), it’s now officially okay to display chest hair.

Seriously.

From the pop culture blog Gawker:

Sexy Men Are Happy to Show Their Sexy Chests

Men do not have breasts. But our chests are beautiful creatures in their own right, which is probably why the man-cleavage, or heavage, is taking America by storm. We are apparently in a new “golden age of male chest hair.”

Referencing an article from no less than The Wall Street Journal:

“We wanted to go back to a more natural body, a more ’70s body with the models, getting away from the super skinny,” says [New York fashion designer]Mr. Bastian.

But what about those of us with a more hirsute nature?

The latest resurrection of man cleavage does raise a not-so insignificant issue: to wax or not? For a number of years, any male chest hair was considered a fashion don’t, but very recently a thin thatch has become quite acceptable. The low-cut look “is better if you have a little chest hair,” says Tyler Thoreson, a New York-based men’s style consultant. “It’s not about showing off chest hair, it’s about it peeking out a little bit.”

Robert Caponi, a 32-year-old musician in Greensboro, N.C., isn’t taking any chances. In order to get the hair-to-skin ratio just right, he shaves his chest every two weeks or so — a regimen that helps him to feel comfortable in one of the six deep V-neck shirts he owns. Not all styles fit the bill. After purchasing a wide scoop neck recently, he declared it simply too revealing. “I looked in the mirror and I was disgusted,” he says.

Some women share the sentiment. Posting on her blog earlier this year, Ketty Colom, a 22-year-old college student in Orlando, Fla., vented about the burst of men sporting heavage. “Leave it to the bedroom,” she said. “I don’t want to see your chest.”

Well, Ms. Colom – and you, too, Mr. Caponi – now would be a good time to click over to some other website. Those of us who kept our chest hair, letting it insulate our manly pecs, are tired of being in the closet.