Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"The reason the Daleks are still the most sinister thing in the universe is because they do not make things like porn." -- Tim Hancock, director of the estate of Dalek creator Terry Nation, quoted in a Sun article about Abducted By The Daleks, a porn DVD that featuring the Dr. Who baddies, which the BBC apparently disapproves of.

[I wanna see this.]

I've spent the last few days at anniemal's, mostly not feeling very well. I feel better today than I did yesterday or the day before, which is a good sign. Today's curious (and migraine-suggesting) symptom is hearing echoes -- more "reverb" than "delay" -- where I'm pretty sure there aren't any. At least I don't think the acoustics of this house have changed radically in the last eighteen hours. ( more state-of-d'Glenn -- short version: I'm sick of being sick )

But enough of that. On to fun stuff.

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Recently there have been reminders of something I did some time ago in different places. One friend posted a link to the Tuning Fork Dildo (just what it sounds like) and another pointed to the Audi-Oh (a "bullet" vibrator that takes an audio signal as input). So in both cases I was moved to recount ( fun things I've done, which I'm putting behind a cut-tag just in case any of you didn't want to know, not that <em>I</em> think it's shocking... )

... And the psychological effect of knowing that the top spanking them was just that silly. (Yeah, a teaser for folks who were thinking about skipping over the cut. :-P )

And there's a third thing floating around my friends list: a Yahoo copy of a Reuters story about a study showing that "professional artists and poets have about twice as many [sexual] partners as other people." To which my reaction was, "What, you ignored musicians? Or was that just too easy to bother with?" The article suggests that artistic success leads to having more partners, not the other way 'round or linking both to some third cause, but it's hard to tell whether the researchers had looked into causality yet or not. (I'm not the only one who wishes mainstream news articles that report on "a study" or "a report" would provide a link to the study or report in question, right?) The gist:

"Although creative people have long been associated with active sex lives, the researchers believe their study is the first to back it up with research. They found that professional artists and poets had between 4 and 10 sexual partners, while less creative people had an average of three. 'We found it in both the men and women which was quite a surprise to us,' said Nettle, who reported the finding in the journal 'The Proceedings of the Royal Society (B).'"

... to which I can only say that I find their surprise surprising.

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And the talk of vibrators, coupled with yet another link ganked from my friendspage, reminds me of a vibrator I used to own ...

I used to drive a big ol' 1978 Pontiac Catalina (think: Bonneville with less chrome -- and note that for its day it was considered a mid-size, even though many of my friends insisted it was "huge" -- Pbbbbt!), and I used to give friends rides quite a lot of the time. And the car had a largeish trunk, so a lot of things that I hadn't gotten around to finding proper places to store, lived in the trunk for various lengths of time (including the big green canvas tent I use at Pennsic, which stayed in the car for about three years, I think). So one summer folks noticed that there was an ominous *Thump!* from the trunk sometimes when I went around corners, and would ask, "What was that?"

"Oh, that's my vibrator," I would reply. Which led to any of several variations on the "No, really, what is it?" theme. "Really, it's a vibrator. A big vibrator."

"That thump sounded awfully big. How big a vibrator is it?"

"A quarter horsepower," I would reply, honestly and with a straight face. Which usually resulted in some combination of shock, horror, and conviction that I was yanking their chain. "Really, it's a one-fourth horsepower vibrator."

"How ... big ... is that?"

"About three feet."

"I don't believe you."

"Want to see it? I'll pull over and open the trunk and you can have a look."

In all but two or three cases, the response to that was "No, thanks!". But what was the most fun was when one of the people brave enough to have looked on a previous trip (reaction: "Yup, that's a vibrator. Yup, that's about three feet long. You weren't kidding.") was in the car to interject, "It really is. I've seen it." This usually made the curious passenger extremely worried, for some reason.

I'm not sure how many actually believed me, but it really was a three-foot, quarter horsepower vibrator in the trunk of my car, making those thumping sounds as it shifted when I went around corners. Alas, my little brother decided to take it apart one day and was unable to put it back together. I'd had plans for that puppy.

Anyhow, this link reminded me of that. (Favourite line: "[...] now's your chance to freak out your local sex shop by asking them to recommend the best dildo for cognitive neuroscience experiments.") Actually, the first paragraph of the LJ entry where I saw the link was what reminded me, which will make the whole tale of the vibrator in the trunk make a lot more sense.

Of course, there were also the 30mm and 70mm shells that occasionally rolled out from under the front seat, and a practice hand grenade, to make passengers ask questions they weren't certain they wanted to hear the answers to, but that's another story. So is the frightened passenger saying, "No, really, I mean it. They're glowing!"