Tuesday Tasting: XXXmas, In-Flight Porn, And Global Orgasm Gadgets
As the last installment on SuicideGirls, Tuesday Tasting will be moving to Shake Well Before Use in 2008.
Each week, Ariel Waldman serves a tasting of the latest in sex and tech.
Santa Brought Us Slutty Stocking Stuffers
Fleshbot posts ten XXXmas videos aimed to get you hotter than a Macbook on bare thighs. Naughty, video-loving vixens are decked out in reindeer hats and ready to ride your sleigh (at least on screen).
Yes, it's been well established that "Christmas porn" pretty much just means "babes in Santa hats," but it can also mean so much more. For example, sometimes the dudes are wearing the hats! Also, sometimes there's a tree in the background!
From "Three Tight XXXMas chicks share Santa" to "Hardcore Christmas party", the videos are definitely NSFW, but that shouldn't be a problem today.
Flying Home For The Holidays Will Still Suck
The friendly skies want to make sure they remain just that: friendly, but not of the fuck-buddy variety. Airlines are starting to open up to in-flight wi-fi and mobile phone service. Unfortunately, the possibility of porn is making many planes hesitant to allow unrestricted Internet access.
And there are going to be a ton of questions to answer. Will it be free? Ad-supported? Will there be a subscription charge? What if the guy in the seat next to you is looking at porn? Even worse, what if he plugs in a Skype headset and starts yakking away?
Personally, we'd much prefer an accidental glance at Britney's latest crotch shot on an adjacent laptop, than listen to someone ask what groceries are left in the fridge on our flight home.
362 Days Left To Stock Up On Gadgets For Global Orgasm Day 2008
Missed Global Orgasm Day last week, only to go directly to a thinly-walled, relative's home for the holidays? Thankfully, Gizmodo listed the top 10 gadgets you need for Global Orgasm Day, most of which you can order or make through the quiet convenience of a few clicks. If pink Japanese blowjob machines and Call Me Panties aren't your thing, then we can only hope your fingers and a fast internet connection help satiate next year's winter solstice.
And now it is time for this sexy geek to bid you adieu...
Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen: Hand Me a Frickin' Pillow, Dammit!
Did I tell you I got a MySpace page? Well I do. I resisted it for a long time. But its actually kind of fun.
Anyway, heres a question I got from one of the people who reads my stuff there:
What do you do when you treat others in a caring, giving, compassionate way...always thinking of others, But it is never appreciated and you are treated really shitty?
Compassion is a big buzzword among Buddhists in America. Everybodys all like, Compassion, compassion, compassion
. Its so fucking annoying I just want to slap them. Be compassionate to me and shut the fuck up about compassion, why dont you? Why doesnt anybody ask me about fun stuff like that mummified dinosaur they just found? I shoulda become a paleontologist like I wanted to when I was six instead of a fucking Buddhist monk.
Sorry. Where was I? Oh. Compassion. OK. Compassion is funny stuff. Its very important to be compassionate. But at the same time you cant try to be compassionate. Cuz when you try to be compassionate you just screw everything up. Real compassion doesnt have anything at all to do with your attempts to be compassionate.
Dogen said that compassion is like a hand reaching back to adjust a pillow in the night. That is an example of perfectly selfless and compassionate action. A problem arises and you fix it without ever even being aware of having done anything at all. It doesnt matter that the person who performs the action and the person who receives its benefit are the same.
The problem for my MySpace friend was that she was trying real hard to be compassionate and that she expected some kind of reward as a result. Its not necessary to worry too much about the results of what you do. And don't worry too much about deliberately trying to be caring, giving and compassionate. Sometimes when you try too hard at that, you end up doing more than what's actually necessary. Sometimes it's OK to let people suffer a bit. Sometimes it's what they need to go thru and if you interfere with that you're not really helping.
When you see someone suffering its sometimes really hard to accept that the best thing to do is nothing at all. Of course Im not talking here about a situation like if youre driving through the desert and you come across a Volkswagen bug on its back on fire with twelve screaming orphans inside. You dont just drive by that and go, I guess they need to suffer.
The problem is when you react to every problem you come across the way youd react to seeing twelve screaming orphans in a burning VW bug. You feel like, Oh my God! I need to go fix that NOW! And you end up just being an interfering busybody and making everybody resent you for it.
I see people who are into Buddhism getting into this kind of stuff all the time. They hear that the Bodhisattva vow says, Beings are numberless, I vow to save them all. And they think they gotta run around pretending to be Wonder Woman or something just saving everybody from everything. It doesnt work like that. Wonder Woman is a cartoon character. You arent.
So how do you know when what youre feeling is real compassion and when its just the desire to meddle in things that dont need your meddling in them? The only way is to cultivate the same state of mind you have when youre reaching back to adjust a pillow in the night. You have to be very, very quiet and listen to your intuition.
Real compassion is never emotional. Its not the kind of messy, fuzzy wuzzy feeling like you get from watching this video:
God that kitty cat is so fucking cute and precious I wanna go to Japan and just crush the life out of him with my bare hands!!!
Sorry. Where was I again?
Oh yeah. True compassion is never that heated feeling of I gotta fix that! Its very spontaneous and clear. Sometimes its not what you think of as being nice either. Sometimes real compassionate action looks like just the opposite.
This time of year were all spending way too much time with our families. Often the most difficult relationships we have are the ones that are closest. Its sometimes nigh on impossible to know how to be truly compassionate towards your no-good alcoholic dad or your conniving manipulative mom or your slutty sister or your bonehead brother. We all get into these family get-together situations and think were the only sane person in the room. Its sobering to remember that every single person there is thinking the same thing about him or herself too.
With families the problems are compounded because everyone seems to be needing, expecting, even demanding that you act in whatever way they expect a compassionate and caring person to act. This is especially true if they know youre a Buddhist and theyve seen Richard Gere or Lisa Simpson or somebody say something about Buddhism on TV once and figure they therefore know all there is to know about how Buddhists are supposed to behave. But most times theyre dead wrong. Most people dont have the slightest clue what real compassion is.
The best thing to do is to act carefully without too much haste or urgency and without any expectation of reward or even recognition. It doesnt make a whole lot of sense to me intellectually, but Ive noticed that the Universe has a way of working things out. Even if your mom is too bombed on prescription painkillers to notice all the things you did to keep her house from going to hell the week you were there, someone, somewhere, someday will notice and things will balance themselves. It takes a bit of faith to be able to let go and fall backwards into this. But if you do it just seems to work out. Its useless to speculate why.
Real compassion isnt about trying to be compassionate. Real caring isnt about attempting to measure up to some phony image of what a caring person is supposed to look like. Real giving isnt about handing over everything you have just so everyone knows how giving you can be. Just be very, very quiet and see what needs doing then do it and be finished with it.
And the next time you see me, dont ask me about compassion. Ask me about the new KISS DVD instead. Thats true compassion.
Brad Warner is the author of Hardcore Zen and Sit Down and Shut Up!. He maintains a blog about Buddhist stuff. If you're in Southern California and you want to try some Zazen for yourself, he has a group that meets every Saturday in Santa Monica.
Wil Wheaton's Geek In Review: A Holiday Gift Guide for Geeks
There are just seventeen shopping days left until Christmas, and the holidays are now officially up in our shit like a drunken co-worker at the office Christmas party. Shopping at this time of year can be difficult at best, and shopping for geeks can be downright miserable. We speak a language not a lot of people understand, enjoy things that seem weird to most normal people, and the places you'd go to shop for us can be a little . . . scary.
So, as a public service, I present Wil's First Annual Holiday Gift Guide for Geeks, featuring things you can buy from the comfort and saftey of your own home, right off the Internet.
Toys for Boys (or, uh, girls.)
Electronic project kits and Chemistry sets ($50 - $150) are time-tested, always fun, and perfect for younger geeks, but the Antworks Ant Farm ($30) takes the classic Uncle Milton's toy we all grew up with, and moves it into the 21st century. Instead of sand, your ants dig tunnels through a translucent, edible gel, leaving incredibly cool three dimensional tunnels to look at. Think Geek sells theirs with a blue LED array attached to the bottom, so the whole thing lights up with a soft blue glow that makes your room look like a scene from The Abyss.
Remember when Star Wars LEGOs were all the rage, and then the new movies came out and your geek melted them all into a ball of betrayal that he mailed to George Lucas? This year, you could give him Batman LEGOs and let him build his own Arkham Asylum, Batcave, or Batmobile. (Prices vary, average is around $80.) Of course, if your geek is seriously hardcore, you can earn major points with some Mindstorms ($250). Just don't be surprised when a freaky little robot wakes up and wanders around the bathroom while you're trying to put on your make-up.
If you're looking for something that could be practical at work, how about a working trebuchet model ($34.95) or a binary LED clock ($24.95)? They should both keep nosy co-workers away when you have a case of the Mondays, though for different reasons.
Gifts for Gamers
Lots of parents will try to buy their kids' love with the Wii, the PS3 and the Xbox 360 this season, but how about digging a little deeper for your geek, and getting them some classic 80s video games? Atari geeks can play with the Flashback 2 ($19.99), or the impractical but oh-so-cool Atari joystick and paddle controller keychains ($9.99-$14.99.) If you're shopping for an arcade nerd, and you have an Xbox or PS2, one of the classic collections from Midway or Namco could be in order ($20-$50), but if you really want to recreate that classic gaming experience, and you have $3000 sitting around, your gaming geek will go apeshit over the X-Arcade MAME Cabinet system, which comes with 190 classic games. With a little help from the googles, you can easily expand it to a slightly larger library (like just about every game ever released.) Get a copy of Arcade Ambience, fire up some Journey, and get ready to share a Big Gulp with the most grateful geek in the world . . . provided you can tear him away from Tempest.
Ohh shiny!
Geek Tags are little dog tag-shaped necklaces and keychains, emblazoned with different geeky phrases, like "The geek shall inherit the Earth" and "I *heart* Elves." They also make a tag with a d20 on it (my personal favorite) and some that simply say "geek" "gamer" or "31337." These are fantastic stocking stuffers, or a way to tell your geek, "I accept you for who you are, so here is some geeky jewelry. Now make with the diamonds already." ($20) If you get one of these, and you're not going to make with the diamonds, your geek girl may like a pair of microchip earrings ($25) to go with her "I *heart* my geek" T-shirt ($17.99).
It's more fun when you do it together.
If you'd like to encourage your geek to get out of the house from time to time, your gift could be an activity for you to do together. My personal favorite is Geocaching, the perfect marriage of technology and exercise. It's a treasure hunt, where you use a GPS receiver to find hidden "caches" all over the world. Handheld GPS receivers can be purchased from Garmin or Magellan for under $100. A guide to purchasing one can be found at the official Geocaching website, which has extensive forums and one of the most welcoming online communities I've ever encountered. Geocaching is also a good way to explore areas around your home that you never knew existed. For example, I've lived within ten miles of the Echo Mountain Hotel ruins for my entire life, and I didn't even know they existed until I went looking for a Geocache nearby two years ago. Now it's a regular hike for me and my family.
If your geek likes to explore, but isn't too keen on that whole "walking around" thing, astronomy may just be perfect for you both. It's one of the only hobbies that naturally appeals to all kinds of geeks, but is also interesting and accessible to most normal people, too. Depending on your budget, you can invest as much as several thousand dollars on various telescopes, and accessories, or you can spend significantly less on a book like the Rough Guide to the Universe, or Peterson's Guide to the Stars and Planets, and take a trip through the heavens with an inexpensive pair of binoculars, or just your eyes. I can say from personal experience that there is nothing quite like looking through even a small telescope and seeing the rings of Saturn, the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, or craters on the moon so bright and clear you feel like you can reach out and touch them. And the first time someone sees a distant galaxy or nebula with their own eyes? It's truly magical, and with the right person, it can even be romantic. In fact, if you're with the right person and it isn't romantic, you're probably doing something wrong. And if you're doing it right, you may even find yourselves needing a Level 1 Human crawler as a result of your night under the Milky Way.
Uhh . . . you're not helping me.
If you're still stuck, WIRED has a numbingly comprehensive review of 300 gadgets and tech toys to look at. If you can't find something there (or just don't want to wade through 300 different product reviews) you really can't go wrong with just about anything from Think Geek, the original one-stop shop for things that make 90% of the population scratch their heads, while the remaining 10% of us silently laugh at them on yet another dateless Saturday night. Jinx is also a good place to look for T-shirts that are geared slightly younger, and toward gaming culture, and X-treme Geek, while crossing over with Think Geek quite frequently, also has a few unique toys and gadgets, as well as some things that are just plain silly. Books from Penny Arcade, Userfriendly, Dork Tower, Joy of Tech, or PvP will also make most geeks jump up and shout "LEVEL!" when they open them.
Of course, if you ladies out there want to completely reject the notion of materialism and consumer culture, and instead dress up for your geek in the Princess Leia Slave Girl outfit, that's also about as good a gift as you can ever give him. Trust me.
Wil Wheaton sincerely hopes that, whatever your holiday of choice is, and however you choose to celebrate it, that it's a good one, spent with people you love, or at least don't want to strangle.