worldmegan

Pace has written an incredible, incredible post about transitions—gender transitions, and entrepreneurship transitions. Her story is touching and amazing, and is a mind-blowing perspective on the kind of strength and determination it takes to make a life-altering change. Either of her topics are substantial, to say the very least. Her comparisons—from my point of view—are 100% spot-on, and the parallels are amazing.

Entrepreneurship and gender transition are crash courses in fear-facing. Your issues will come up. Your landmines will be stepped on. Your triggers will be triggered. Each of these disasters is an opportunity for growth. (”Another fucking opportunity for growth”, as my friend Reesa says.) If you can maintain a positive attitude even through the toughest challenges, if each time you fall down you learn a little more about how to get back up, then your self-work will eventually manifest in outward success.

I am grateful to have been reminded of so many overwhelmingly important things. This post really moved me. Please take a few minutes to read it.

Me: I have to download the Doctor Who theme now. So I can masturbate to it.
Marty: The awesome thing about you is you’re not kidding.
Me: I’m NOT kidding.
Marty: I know. That’s why you’re so awesome.

[Edit: Burning Flipside had singing Tesla coils that performed, among other things, the Doctor Who theme. There are vids of the Tesla coils (skip to 0:36) but none that I can find of the Doctor Who theme, which just blew me off my feet. Anyone who supplies such a video will be my Best Friend Forever.]

Awhile back Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno went to Sundance, and now it’s been released online. You are going to love these shorts. They are incredibly creative and engaging, and they catalogue the sexual practices of insects. In fact, Isabella performs the male role in several of them (with her brilliantly constructed, papercraft-esque co-stars) and I can’t insist enough, you’ve just got to take a look at these.

I haven’t the vaguest idea as to whether this is work safe. It’s science, people! It’s very hot. ;}

Green Porno, by Isabella Rossellini

We’ve only posted a few updates since getting to Aggiecon, and they’re both at Marty’s blog—a brief check-in after our first evening and a cryptic sketch addition.

Apparently the MSC —the building Aggiecon is held in—has been bugging Aggiecon for years to get rid of the nudity in the con art show. This year I guess they were extra insistent about it, because when we got there we found out we had to tape over exposed nipples. At a fantasy / SF art show, you can imagine how many nipples were floating around. A lot.

This is absurd for a whole string of reasons, but the short story is that we did it and felt bad for the art show staff, who were obviously stressed and flustered. We doubt there would have been censorship without that particular pressure from the MSC. We don’t blame the con staff, except that we think it’s better to stand up than sit down, especially in such a ridiculous situation. For this reason, Angel obtained a roll of the same blue tape used to censor most of the artwork, and proceeded to censor all willing nipples at con. Yesterday there were hordes of us walking around with blue tape X’s on our shirts, and more today. It’s more a joke than a protest, but there’s something to it. Todd was also supportive (as you can see), and Steve Brust was downright pissed. I can relate to that. If you take this sort of thing lying down too often, you get used to it. That’s not a cool thing to get used to.

In any case, we have our blue tape gang and our backstory. Steve sounds like he plans to write a letter. This con is turning out to be thoroughly weird and nifty. Anyway, I’m having a pretty good time. You can tell:

Update: By the way, Marty’s Iron Artist entry (or result?) touched on this particular issue—so if you enjoyed his pasties sketches, you’ll like the pictures of the competition. Well, with penguins.

I’m a great fan of Klimt. Many years ago a convention friend introduced me to his work and it’s always been something that particularly appealed to me, all those patterns, everything fitting together in impossible but perfect ways. My favorite painting was my friend’s favorite, too: Klimt’s Danae.

I keep a number of sexuality and art feeds in my newsreader, and this week something especially fabulous came up—a set called La esencia de Klimt, by a photographer named Moises González, basically a live recreation of many of Klimt’s works. They’re really gorgeous, and although they’re not quite accurate down to the tiniest detail, they’re beautiful in the same way and really, really enjoyable to look through. They do contain nudity (as you might surmise if you are familiar with Klimt’s paintings) but hopefully that won’t keep you from browsing. I think they’re just amazing.

Link: La esencia de Klimt, Moises González.

I don’t know why Monday is sex day; it just seems to work out that way. Maybe we all need a little titillation to get us through the first day back at work (although personally, my Mondays are already a fantastic kind of exciting, as you may know).

Google TechTalks on YouTube has a fantastic recording of Violet Blue’s talk about sex on the internet, the realities of porn, sexual privacy, and a myriad of other issues that are super important to understand—and talk about! It’s down-to-earth, entertaining to listen to (plus, her slides are awesome), safe for work if your employer isn’t offended by intelligent discussion of sexuality on the ‘net, and full of really interesting (and wonderful, and sometimes horrifying) information.

Also, cute bits like this: “The internet is growing new users every single day, and will continue,” she says, wielding one finger in feigned accusation, “until you all stop breeding.” (I think that’s at around 18:20 in—adorable!)

Link.

As you might suspect, I have sex on the brain. (If you didn’t suspect it, I don’t know how else I might have warned you. Sorry!) Having just read that part, you may also suspect that most of the links in this post might be less than work-safe, unless you work somewhere extra awesome. (If you suspect that, you’d be right.) Click carefully! ;}

Anyway, so many neat things have been happening. Far be it from me to keep them from you! I mean, you deserve to know. You must not be left in the dark! This is my sacred duty, dude. Or something. Where do I start??

Violet Blue has started a digital publishing company: the fabulous and appropriately named digita publications. Since launch, digitapub has released two awesome offerings: Pleasure Zone Basics (open source sex ed, in nine parts), and an ebook called How to Kiss. Both are completely DRM-free, and the ebook is available in several different incredibly useful formats. I haven’t been all the way through the audiobook yet, but I blew through How to Kiss in an afternoon. It’s gorgeously written and full of really excellent information. (Also? She talks about the Zombie Kiss, for which I can never truly repay her. SO very awesome.) If you are at all interested in accurate, enjoyable, easy-to-parse sex information, Violet is definitely your gal—and the prices she’s set are pretty thoroughly fabulous. Plus, since I started writing this post there’s another great halloween-specific release, and it looks fantastic. Go take a look!

In addition to all of that, I also had a great time reading her initial tinynibbles post about Digita Publications, because she has a lot to say about why she went in this direction after being traditionally published for many years, why she chose the anti-DRM route and how she hopped over some minor obstacles (cough, iTunes) along the way. Extremely excellent.

Yes, there’s more. Kiki started a new sexblog and it is awesome. She writes really well and if her first three are any indication of future posts, I am expecting super fun content. If you like sex-writing and related material, you might even enjoy it as much as I do!

So you can see how the sex-centered part of Megan’s brain is just doing backflips lately.

You also won’t be surprised to find out that my situation got worse (better!) when Apple posted this fantastic high-res tour of their new OS. Because, you know, me and sexy technology…

Two words: Time Machine. Whew!!

Update: I have been informed that any energy spent drooling over Time Machine is a result of the graphics, not the functionality. Apparently the functionality has been around for awhile—but dude, the combination is luscious!

And I almost forgot: In alarming proximity to the moment I started searching for sexy halloween movies to watch this week, Violet’s most recent SFGate article went live: Bring on the lesbian vampires. It just doesn’t get better than that. (And it’s a hell of a list!)

I’ll let Jerry speak for himself:

Link (via &).

I’m going to start this with a disclaimer: I adore the Colbert Report. I pretty much adore everything Stephen Colbert does, and on top of that, I eat his ice cream. (Read: I’m a fan.) But today I have some things to say about a segment he ran that touched a few nerves. That said, it’s only comedy, and I’m not offended by it. But I still wanted to say my piece. :}

Last night the Colbert Report ran a segment on an exotic dance studio in New Jersey. The focus was pole dancing. When the segment started, I got all excited. More neat pole dancing stuff! You see, I get all my pole dancing information from a net friend on the west coast. She started Seattle’s first ever pole dancing school, and I’ve really enjoyed hearing about it over the last few years—so my excitement was utterly justifiable!

As the segment played, I started to get a sour feeling in my stomach. Oh, I expected the clip to be laughy—we’re talking about Comedy Central, after all. But I don’t think I expected the angle to be so… dissatisfying. My exposure to my friend’s school is strictly text-based, and I’ve never taken a class, or even visited the school. But it’s funny how plain text can make such an impression.

Here’s the segment on Comedy Central’s site, if you want to take a look.

After watching the whole thing, I felt as if the Colbert Report had really managed to misrepresent pole dancing instruction, and the very quality of the concept. Hell, I don’t care that they did it. It’s fake news. But I’ll be damned if I’m not going to set the record straight, and give you a chance to see what’s really going on. I don’t know anything about Johnna Mink or her Jersey workshops—they may have been misrepresented too, for all I know. But I do know about this other thing, whether anything else comes up to its standards or not. And it’s really worth saying something about.

It’s called Pole for the Soul.

I haven’t known Krisha well or long, in the scheme of things, but she’s said a great deal about her business, over time, and why she started it. What I’ve learned from her particular perspective on pole dancing instruction has really been nothing short of inspiring. For Krisha, it seems there is breadth and depth to the way she makes her living. It’s something that feels missing from the workshops Colbert covered in Jersey. And I think it’s something that’s missing in a lot of people’s lives, all over, everywhere.

It doesn’t seem to me that what Krisha teaches is about putting on a show, or your partner getting a private treat, or even being able to nudge yourself into that shallow stripper stereotype that so many people seem to like so much… for so many of the wrong reasons. It’s not so much about getting to finally be the sex object. It doesn’t even have to be about sex.

It seems to me that Pole for the Soul might be about something really different. The impression I’ve gotten… is that it’s about you.

It’s about becoming powerful. It’s about building yourself into the person you want to be; it’s about shedding those old stereotypes and preconceptions. It’s about taking the layers and layers of buffering we have wrapped around us—what we constructed to pad and protect ourselves from the world that is often bad and scary—and peeling them off. I’m not making a stripping pun (amused as you may be); we all have those layers. We can be strong without them. Finding out who we really are underneath is an incredible thing. We are so often so different, when that happens.

You know what a warrior I am on issues like this. This is my bag.

And so even though it was disguised as a joke in the clip, the woman who said thoughtfully, “I would say my husband enjoys it… probably more than I do”—That makes me sad. And don’t even start me on the guy who likes to pretend he’s not a pig. I don’t think Pole for the Soul allows spectators at all; the only people present are the teacher and the students, which I think is awesome, and enforces the idea that it’s not about someone else. I have to remember, too, that the Daily Show and the Colbert Report really don’t have to work too hard for the shocking quotes they get. People give them willingly. Those people are out there, and they don’t seem to have thought about the wonderful things they can do for themselves.

This is why Pole for the Soul’s take is so refreshing, and revitalizing. It’s revitalizing to read—I can’t even imagine what it’s like to take one of her classes. And man, does she get good reviews.

The Colbert clip had some pretty weak comments about personal power—but now you know. It’s true. In fact, it’s way better than you thought. Self-discovery? Creative expression? Confidence and strength and personal power and awesomeness? It’s definitely out there. You just have to look in the right places. But this is the only teacher I’m willing to vouch for. ;}