“A current trope making the rounds,” a recent art review declared, “is that ‘pornography is the new rock and roll.’” It may well be true. No longer for loners in trenchcoats, pornography has become what rock music was a generation ago: a venue for the young and the rebellious and the hip to challenge society as it is imposed on them by their elders. Instead of dressing in louche clothes and chanting the lyrics of Rolling Stones tunes, today’s youth take off their clothes and make amateur porn. Maybe one day, just as the rock hits of yesteryear come to be played on “soft rock” radio stations, the porn films that define today will be broadcast to old folks nostalgic for the golden days of the early internet — the halcyon time when anyone could be a porn star.

One of the most fascinating trends to emerge in these glorious pioneer days of internet pornography is the rise of “fucking machines,” otherwise known as automated erotic stimulation devices. A generation ago, the vibrating dildo was about as sophisticated as a fucking machine got. Nowadays, there are all manner of crazy contraptions that you can see on web sites such as fuckingmachines.com or in books such as Timothy Archibald’s excellent Sex Machines: Photographs and Interviews. Watching the participants in these films getting fucked by pimped-out drills and pistons, you get a taste of what your forefathers must have felt watching those first films of the Wright Brothers flying their airplanes.

It goes without saying that the increasing popularity of fucking machines will inspire all sorts of do-it-yourselfers to cobble together some experimental gizmos in their basements and garages. “Honey,” says the wife, “I think I’ll throw out that old blender…” To which the husband replies, “Hm, not so fast, sweetness, not so fast. You might could sit on that motor, dolly…” But hey, DIY guy, it’s worthwhile to put a little planning into your project. The blade on that blender? Take it off. Otherwise you may well end up like the unfortunate couple trying to make a sex toy out of a saber saw. Maybe the magician at the circus can saw a girl in half without drawing blood, but you shouldn’t expect such clean results at home, particularly when sawing through your lover’s genitalia.

(Thanks to “Chris Finch” for the link.)

The This is NOT Sarah Palin Inflatable Love Doll product page offers a few further details. Curiously, it doesn’t list a price. If TopCo weren’t such an established business — the place has 1500 employees making sex toys in California and China — you’d be tempted to think the whole thing is a hoax.

It’s no joke, however, to consider how Sarah Palin has tapped into the national libido in a way that Geraldine Ferraro never managed. There are any number of photoshopped Palin nudies floating around the net. The query “Sarah Palin naked” currently returns 32,300 results on Google. Compare that to the number of search results for “John McCain naked” (452) and “Barack Obama naked” (592) and that pretty much tells you all you need to know.

Once you think about the matter, it’s surprising that prominent political figures aren’t more commonly the focal point of libidinal energies. J.G. Ballard wrote a scandalizing text titled “Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan,” but it had nothing obvious to do with the stated topic. Monica Lewinsky showed the world that there are starfuckers who dig the presidential sweet meats. But how come there aren’t more varieties of political and presidential erotica? George Washington dildos (perhaps emblazoned with “George Washington Slept Here”), Abraham Lincoln ben wa balls, Franklin D. Roosevelt butt plugs… Hell, Obama is a handsome guy. Aren’t there women and gay men who would get off on a NOT Barack Obama Inflatable Guy Doll?

(Thanks to Furpo for the link. The actual report can be found at the FDA’s web site.)

In a way, this is a perplexing turn of events. On one hand, you don’t want the government to interfere in the bedroom. If guys want to stretch their cocks, by all means let them stretch their cocks. On the other hand, penis enlargers are obviously a big business, as the amount of spam related to penis enlargement demonstrates. Probably it’s also a crooked business with many fraudulent products. In that sense, the FDA would be doing men a favor by requiring the devices to meet certain minimum requirements for safety and efficacy — and by impounding devices that do not meet those minimums.

Are penis enlargers and cock rings really causing rampant injury out there in the wilds? PervScan spent some time querying PubMed, the search engine for medical articles, to try to learn whether doctors are really encountering injuries as a result of these devices. A few results:

- Penile entrapment injury: a case report. The article describes “a novel method of liberating the penis from a nonexpandable metal ring through a combination of multiple puncture wounds and manual compression.” Translation: they poke holes in the penis and squeeze it. Ouch!

- Urethrocutaneous fistula due to a retained ring of condom. The article describes “the case of a 30-year-old man who developed a urethrocutaneous fistula and penile shaft necrosis after a condom broke during intercourse. Neither the patient nor several physicians could identify the retained ring of condom, which had been buried under newly epithelialized skin.” Um, a condom broke, the guy never removed it, and the skin of his penis grew over it? What the…?

- Treatment of penile strangulation caused by constricting devices. The article describes “five different cases of strangulating objects (wedding ring, metal plumbing cuff, bull ring, hammer- head, and plastic bottle neck).” Moral of that story: don’t try any of these at home.

- Lymphedema due to chronic penile strangulation: a case report. The key word is chronic. The article describes a 62-year-old man “admitted with swelling of the penis caused by long term use of a penis enlarging ring. For the previous 20 years, he had noticed small pruritic nodules on his penis.” Here’s a rule of thumb: if you notice nodules on your penis for more than a decade, do see a doctor.

As it turns out, there are a number of other case histories describing penis rings and enhancement efforts gone wrong, horribly wrong. Of course, it is unclear whether these injuries result from faulty devices or the faulty brains of the people who use them. Perhaps this is what happens when you think with your dick — and then use a cock ring to cut off the flow of blood to your brain?

Here is a picture of the place. Here is its website.

Park Slope is a neighborhood where bohemians go when they’re tired of bohemianism but don’t want to become bourgeois. The leafy streets are lined with handsome turn-of-the-century brownstones. These have become quite expensive and thus the folks who inhabit Park Slope are less artists, musicians, or college kids than their financially successful counterparts — people who’ve actually made money as designers, photographers, and technologists. As a result the place has an arty but staid vibe. You’ll see cool moms walking down the street — and they may well be “two moms” who’ve adopted a baby from somewhere. If there’s any neighborhood in all of New York that’s ripe for a “kid-friendly” sex shop, it’s Park Slope.

It’s all well and good. But the thing that galls about such a place is that there is actually a lack of adult-friendly sex shops. When Rudy Giuliani was mayor of New York, he very successfully “cleaned up” Times Square and the other gloriously dirty parts of town. Basically that meant that the government zoned most sex shops and strip bars out of business. The remaining ones were exiled to neighborhoods so peripheral that hardly anybody bothers to venture out to them. It’s easier to download net porn than to hop on the subway.

It used to be that New York sex shops were wild and woolly. They pushed at the limits between stripping and prostitution. They were havens for drug dealers, petty criminals, and people you’d call characters. For that reason, they were quintessentially New York. It’s no wonder the Beat writers — William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and company — drew so much inspiration from the Times Square of the 1940s. It was an exciting place.

And it’s gone. The drug dealers have gone to jail, the strippers have become camgirls, the hookers have migrated from the streets to Craigslist, and the sex shops have become “kid friendly.” Ok, it’s a new world, you can’t stop the march of progress. But it’s a dispiriting state of affairs when there are no more sex shops that are sleaze-friendly, dirt-friendly, and maybe even a little dangerous.

It took some searching, but PervScan finally found one of the original reports about the broken love doll in a Romanian newspaper. (Disclaimer: PervScan doesn’t read a word of Romanian and online translation tools didn’t do much to render this article intelligible in English. It may be the wrong story — but the picture of the deflated love doll suggests not.) Evidently the Emanuelle Sex Shop in Brasov is the town’s best known adult attraction. You can actually find other pictures of it online. However scenic its location, though, its business practices apparently leave something to be desired.

It is curious that this story should have been reproduced in at least half a dozen newspapers worldwide. It’s a simple matter of a consumer complaint. If the guy had bought a defective toaster, no newspaper would write it up. Why does the mere presence of a sex doll cause this to be international news? Clearly it’s because there is a taboo on admitting that you use one or that you masturbate at all. Bringing a lawsuit over a sex doll is like climbing a tower with a megaphone and shouting, “Hey, I jerk off!” Even nowadays, when porn is ubiquitous and sex toys common, people just don’t broadcast their self-love this way. And yet, if you sent letters to fifty different major newspapers declaring that you’re a compulsive masturbator, would any editor find it newsworthy? Probably not.

Maybe it’s the hint of slapstick in the whole episode that makes it newsworthy. You imagine the guy raring to go. But when he mounts the doll, it deflates beneath him. He frantically blows it up again, lies on top of it, and the air leaks out underneath him. He tries again, blows it up, tries not to put his weight on it, but still the air wheezes out — and to top matters off, its prerecorded moan doesn’t even work. Frustrated, the guy crams his boner back into his jeans and races off to the sex shop for a refund. The owner, however, seeing a used love doll, isn’t about to take the seminally contaminated thing back. A big fight ensues with them shouting at each other, “I’ll see you in court!”

It could make a funny skit with pratfalls and blue balls. Does that make it newsworthy? Probably not. But against the backdrop of so much other dismal reportage, it’s practically a feel-good story.

(Thanks to James for the link.)

Here is a picture of Mr. Jex. He looks like a regular bloke, the kind of guy you see chugging a few pints while watching the World Cup. His robbery was caught on surveillance video, and here is a still of him wielding the vibrator at terrified customers. It is difficult to make out that it is in fact a sex toy that he’s holding, but that’s precisely the point: the victims couldn’t tell either, so they did the smart thing and presumed it was a threat. You can’t help but wonder how they would have reacted if they had recognized it. Maybe they’d have laughed. Maybe they’d have thrown themselves on the floor and spread their legs.

All things considered, it’s a pretty silly story. However, it does raise an interesting question. People deflect all sorts of things — cucumbers, toilet-paper rolls, bubble wrap — from their intended purpose in order to use them as sex toys. How, conversely, do people deflect sex toys from their intended purpose? How do they use and misuse them for non-sexual ends? Robbery is one possibility. You wonder how many other obsolete toys are used as paperweights or bookends. Windows could be propped open with simulation cocks or flowers planted in the famous Fleshlight. Or for those of you who are not only perverse but green, there is the Rabbit Amnesty program — “the world’s first sex toy recycling scheme!” What do you think they do with the recycled vibrators?

As so often happens in life, today’s novelty arrived when it was least expected. Over at Schneir on Security, one of the best blogs covering security and technology, this blipped up on the radar: Tampon Taser. A tampon taser? A stun gun for that time of the month when your cherry is in sherry? No, a taser disguised as a tampon. Here is a picture, and here is some of the promotional copy:

Ladies can replace that monthly period with an exclamation mark as feminine hygiene goes lethal with The Pink Stinger, a taser/stun gun creatively disguised as a tampon… except for the buttons, prods and high voltage. This weapon of mass absorption aims to target a niche market consumer, that being the tampon wielding women who desire private and discreet security in a friendly familiar package…

The beauty of this taser/stun gun, aptly named The Pink Stinger, is its ingenious design and ability to be concealed nicely and unassumingly into any purse for ultimate stealth. The taser’s gentle glide zapplicator easily fits in the palm of your hand for incredible comfort and protection and ready for honorable discharge at a moments notice. In addition, its fresh floral scent helps eliminate the smell of fear, not just cover it up.

The Pink Stinger packs 50,000 volts of power at your finger tips. Because it is an advanced taser gun, you do have the option of stun or taser capabilities with a simple click of a switch. In the Stun setting, you need only make contact with intended target via the 2 prods for an effective toxic shock rendering the victim disoriented, demoralized and embarrassed. When shooting in Taser mode, 2 extra absorbent cotton tampons with barbed probes and 14 ft. of wire are expelled and propelled by compressed nitrogen. Electric current then passes to the body, where the probes have attach to the clothing or bare skin, causing central nervous system disruption, possible urination and certain humiliation.

And don’t forget the small print:

Need not be female or menstruating to use effectively. Tampon taser/stun gun to be used for security purposes only or in self defense. It is not intended nor recommended for vaginal insertion.

So how’s that for ultimate feminine protection? A great security system for the ladies but not so good for the guys. Yet a new reason for men to fear tampons the other 3 weeks of the month.

Setting aside the taser itself, that is a hilarious bit of writing — perhaps one of the funniest product descriptions you’ll ever see. But then when you think about it, the Pink Stinger is a pretty perplexing product. What exactly is the point of disguising it as a tampon? Many women would be more embarrassed to have someone notice a tampon in their pocketbook than a taser. And it is difficult to see how the gizmo could be useful during those critical moments when you might really need a stun gun. Suppose some guy shoves you into a dark doorway and threatens to mug or rape you. You think he’s really going to pause if you say, “Hey, wait a minute. Either you scared the piss out of me or I just got my period. Mind if I paw around in my bag for a tampon?”

The manufacturer specifies that it is “not intended or recommended for vaginal insertion,” but it is easier to imagine this thing coming in handy if you actually kept it in your vag. Then when some guy tries to violate you, you can reach down, yank it out, and give him “50,000 volts of power” on the weiner. That would fry his hot dog.

Of course, keeping it in your vag would raise all sorts of other questions about hygiene, side effects (maybe the manufacturers could add a little switch to make it vibrate?), accidental discharges. Maybe they could send a few Pink Stingers over to those Sex Toy Testers for some hands-on testing.

(Thanks to Furpo for the link.)

There is a very good reason that prostitution is known as the “oldest profession”: there is insatiable demand. The only way you could eradicate prostitution would be to neuter every male with a nickel in his pocket. Hell, that probably wouldn’t work either. Removing the possibility of orgasm would encourage the neutered johns to explore weirder precincts of libido than they had been wont to do before. The prostitutes would just end up with kinkier clients. Perhaps the demand for hookers would even increase, since no client would ever feel quite satiated.

That seems to be the net effect of the Special Law on Prostitution recently enacted in Korea. A site that seems pissed off about the law notes that prostitution continues to thrive in the country. “The Special Law on Prostitution was a law that went into effect to eliminate prostitution, but paradoxically, it has expanded and transformed new prostitution markets. The shrewd responses of prostitution providers, which have nullified the aim of the law, and persistent demand have combined to make prevalent a sexual culture more abnormal and perverted than before.” The site details how the law has only given momentum to “2 cha clubs,” daeddal-bang joints, and fetish parties.

These “doll experience rooms,” where johns can download some porn and then boink a sex doll, are just the latest creative (er, “aberrant?”) response to the Special Law. While at first blush it might seem ridiculous to patronize a sex doll, on reflection you can see that it has its advantages. In the first place, it skirts the law. In the second place, some sex dolls are extremely expensive, so sharing the costs is helpful. In the third place, you don’t have to bother storing a sex doll in your closet or making up crazy excuses to explain to your family why you’ve brought home a buxom bit of plastic. (”Um, I’m learning CPR…”) In the fourth place, it’s an excellent investment for “brothel” owners, since they don’t have to split profits with the dolls. About the only downside to the operation is the cleaning costs. It can’t be fun to work as the vagina mopper in a doll experience room.

It is difficult to understand how, in this day and age, any young man would prefer to face airport security with an explosive device than admit to his mother that he uses a penis pump. It implies that his mother is as appalled by sex as she is impressed by jihad, and that the guy would rather face three years in prison than parental scorn for the rest of his life. He must have one tough mom.

Still, though, you’d think that he could come up with a better lie. He could have called it an air pump for a bicycle tire, or perhaps one of those manual pumps you can use to make espresso on a stove. Anything would be better than calling it a bomb. For that matter, the very fact that he thought to call it a bomb suggests that there may really be something suspicious about the guy. It’s like a Freudian slip. Out of the million devices he could name, he thought of a bomb? Why does he have bombs on his mind?

At any rate, if there is any silver lining to this story, it is the fact that the guy apparently needs a sexual aid when spending time with his mother — which is to say that at least he’s not sexually aroused by her. He doesn’t suffer from an Oedipal complex. He may be dumb or suicidal or whatever you think his excuse implies, but otherwise he may well be psychologically healthy.

RealDoll styles itself as the Rolls Royce of the fuck doll industry, claiming that it utilizes “Hollywood special effects technology to produce the most realistic love doll in the world.” If you have a gander at their dolls, it’s hard not to agree that they look pretty enticing — certainly much more than the blow-up kind you can buy in porn shops. Have a look at a doll like this. Not bad.

This article describing the inner workings of RealDoll’s factory makes for fascinating reading. There’s some wonderful detail: customization options (want a she-male or a celebrity lookalike?); operating instructions (give its crotch a warm douche); marketing demographics (customers include short guys and burn victims). There’s a brief mention of a guy who bought every type of doll that the company makes. That’s at least fifteen dolls. Where would you keep all those things? And how would you pay for them? At over $6000 per doll, the guy has invested practically a hundred grand in a collection of mannequins.

Given the sophistication of RealDoll’s technology, it’s interesting to speculate on how its future products might evolve. If it reaches an unsurpassable threshold of lifelikeness, will it slip over into the creation of lifelike mutants and monstrosities? There’s a parallel in the history of painting, as the drive to render things realistically culminated in the Renaissance and then slipped over into Mannerism (elongated necks, distorted hands, impossible limbs). RealDoll already uses its advanced techniques to create one doll that looks like it’s straight from some manga comic: check out Anna Mae. Could this point to a future in which fuck dolls are “lifelike” only in the sense that they resemble alien life?