Storm blogs, ” Seriously, “8 Miles Wide” would still be just a big big idea (and the occasional outburst from friends and family members in the know) if it weren’t for the tireless creative megawatt team at Sockeye Creative. James Westby, Tom Grissom and Katie O’Grady, especially, kicked so much ass on this goofy little ditty born in my twisted brains.

Also important to thank – Wilf’s, Mary’s Club, Portland Parks and Rec., Mark Acito, Rick Emerson, Byron Beck, Kevin Morris, Laura Domela, Mary Urbanski, Brenda Casebeer and her trusty steed Brego, Kavita Jhaveri, James Beaton, Davey Nipples, Scott Weddle, The Jim Brunberg, Adam Lundeen, Steve Sharp and all the brilliant extras and personalities who so generously donated to the cause.

Last, but not least, thank you, Portland, Oregon. Your endless support of all things weird will always make you the coolest city on the planet. Bless your rainy and rosy wild heart.”

Check out the behind the scenes videos:

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ArNMGsigq4

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCz8PwSRZoU

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GanA1cnxIPE

Licorice - Glycyrrhiza glabra

She gathered her findings from a study, conducted by Dr. Alan R. Hirsch, neurological director of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago, IL.

“One of his studies reveals that women who were exposed to the scent of licorice had a 13 percent increase in bloodflow to their sexual organs compared to a 1 percent reduction from the scent of men’s cologne,” Laurel explains. “Though the exact reason that licorice arouses women is unclear, Hirsch believes that it is either an unexplained chemical reaction in the brain or olfactory-evoked nostalgia.”

It seems that Dr. Hirsch is fond of measuring changes in blood flow to the sex organs. He and colleague Dr. Jason Gruss also initiated a recent study to investigate “the impact of ambient olfactory stimuli upon sexual response in the human male.”

Thirty-one men, aged 18 to 64 years, were tested. Dr. Hirsch selected 24 different odorants for the study. In addition, six combinations of two of the most well-liked of these were also chosen. The effects of the 30 odors on penile blood flow were assessed by comparing a subject’s brachial penile index while wearing an odorized mask to his average index while wearing an unodorized mask. This was done for each subject for each odor.

After being attached to a penile plethysmograph (which measures blood flow), three minutes were allowed for acclimation. Then a blank, nonodorized mask was applied for one minute while a baseline brachial penile index was recorded. The combined odor of lavender and pumpkin pie had the greatest effect, increasing median penile blood flow by 40%. Next in effectiveness was the combination of black licorice and doughnut, which increased arousal by 31.5%. The older men tended to respond strongly to vanilla.

The doctors offer several explanations, but the direct connection between odors and sexual response cannot be denied: “The odors may also act neurophysiologically. A direct pathway connects the olfactory bulb to the septal nucleus, which in turn induces blood flow and erection.”

Increase in Penile Blood Flow Produced by Top 10 Odors in 31 Male Volunteers

Alfred Charles Kinsey (June 23, 1894 – August 25, 1956)

I just glanced at my “Trends of Twitter” Google widget and noticed something new. Maybe I just never paid attention, but that seems hard to imagine. Nonetheless, today the top of the Twitterverse is dominated by the following sexual timeline hash tags: #beforesex, #duringsex and #aftersex.

In 1948 and 1953 the Kinsey Reports on male and female sexual behavior shocked the nation by talking frankly and for the first time about a subject that had been taboo up until they broke the ice. The greatest controversy surrounded the creation of the Kinsey Scale, that categorized sexual behavior from 0 to 6, with 0 being completely heterosexual and 6 completely homosexual.

Kinsey said, “Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories… The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects.”

The findings revealed, “11.6% of white males aged 20–35 were given a rating of 3 (Equally heterosexual and homosexual – bisexual) for this period of their lives. 7% of single females aged 20–35 and 4% of previously married females aged 20–35 were given a rating of 3 for this period of their lives.”

Kinsey further inflamed debate with his findings that an estimated 50% of all married males had some extramarital experience at some time during their married lives and 26% of females had extramarital sex by their forties.

Despite the efforts by many different conservative family-values and religious groups to discredit the Reports, together they have sold more than three-quarters of a million copies and have been translated into thirteen languages. Many people consider them to be among the most successful and influential scientific books of the 20th century. Au contraire, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male has been on two conservative lists of the worst books of modern times. It was #3 on the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s 50 Worst Books of the Twentieth Century.

Much of the criticism has to do with the sampling methods and the groups that Kinsey utilized for his studies. If only he could see the sampling data available on Twitter…

Twitter on Viagra...

Tiiu Kuik

It started gaining steam last month with the appearance Tiiu Kuik in Marie Claire’s May 2009 feature (Pace dei Sensi or Peace of the Senses), uncovered quite nicely in Nudity: another fashion shoot without the fashion by Fashionising.com. They note a growing trend in Blogs > Fashion Diary > Fashion Photo Shoots on the lovely, lithe, Tiiu Kuik naked for Marie Claire Italia – again.

A naked Natalia Vodianova graces the cover of Vogue UK’s June 2009 issue… led by the fashion-transitioning of Playboy France, featuring  Lily Cole in the October 2008 cover and inside, a 14-page photos spread, “Sweet Lily” (inspired by Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melody Nelson album) with editorial by Xevi Muntane.

Gisele Bundchen

“Supermodel Gisele Bundchen once vowed to never pose nude; ‘I would never be naked in a fashion picture.’ So we have no idea what the pictures in Vanity Fair, May 2009 thus constitute. Perhaps being topless isn’t quite the same as being naked, but if so then what of this picture (above) where she appears to have forgotten her clothes altogether?”

For more on this wonderful shift, check out Fashionising’s editorial, with tons of links: Nudity and fashion: who needs clothes?

Italy, France, the UK… whassup wit dat? Why don’t I get to live in a grownup country? You can trace it all back to a very certain aggressive Middle Eastern cult, that currently has some very paranoid fears about other aggressive Middle Eastern cults.

As Amara says, “It’s fun and healthy to flirt!” …but what happened to subtle? She turns the tables on Woody in describing her encounter with a younger man in… Reverse Flirting; The Unlikely Tale of an ‘Older’ Woman.

Our first official release is set for the New Moon, Saturday, April 25 and the focus is on Understanding, Experiencing, Balancing and Empowering your Chakras.

You are cordially invited to submit informative, artistic erotica… articles, short stories, poems, photos, audio narratives, art, music, links to your videos. Deadline is the end of the day on Thursday, April 23. Click for Submission Guidelines.

We are also re-emerging on the Internet air waves with a new show on BlogTalkRadio. Please, let us know if you are interested in being a featured guset.

Audacia Ray

I am easily wooed into the gimme gimme now now world of Web 2.0. As such, my usual internet haunts include my blog Waking Vixen (which celebrates its 5th birthday in 2009); Twitter, where naturally I am @audaciaray; and the loathesome Facebook.

I’ve been busy and will give you a run down in just a sec – first though, a few events that if you’re in NYC you’ll be excited about but might be mad about if you don’t live nearby.

First up, a panel I’m part of on Tuesday, April 14 at Brooklyn Law School entitled, Porn, the 1st Amendment and the State of Obscenity Law in an Online Society.

The Internet has changed the face of pornography by allowing for unprecedented participation in the creation of explicit media. In addition, the internet has provided means for Web proprietors to promote sex-oriented services that have enabled people with HIV, minorities, and others to connect and explore their sexuality in a way that was once impossible. Within this framework, speakers will explore the current obscenity law, and its chilling effects on this new discourse.

And the details:

Brooklyn Law School
250 Joralemon Street
Student Lounge
Brooklyn, New York 11201
From 6:00 – 8:00 pm
Speaker(s): Featuring Prof. Derek Bambauer (BLS), Prof. Elizabeth Glazer (Hofstra) and activist and former sex worker Audacia Ray.

This weekend I’m teaching a full day workshop called Speak Up! Media Training for the Empowered Sex Worker to a small group of sex workers here in New York. The workshop is being planned by Sex Work Awareness, the small non-profit that I co-founded last year. Speak up is made possible by a fundraiser we did last fall – the NYC Sex Blogger Calendar: http://sexbloggercalendar.wordpress.com. I’m pretty proud of the work we’ve done to make this media training happen, and we’ll be turning out 10 women thoroughly prepared to do activist battle, media-assault style. To celebrate, we’re having a bit of a cocktail hour after the conclusion of the workshop – and though the workshop is open to participants only, the cocktail hour is open to all. Come gawk at super-smart hookers, strippers, dommes, and porn stars – or just buy us drinks. We’ll be at XES, 157 West 24th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues, starting at 5.30 pm on Saturday, April 18.

In other news, I’ll be attending Sex 2.0 for the second year – this time around it will be in DC on Saturday, May 9. I’m leading two sessions, “Revisiting Naked on the Internet” (my book is turning 2!) and the other is “Sex Work 2.0 in the Time of Obama” More info here: http://www.wakingvixen.com/blog/2009/04/09/sex-20-in-dc-may-9th/

Other big changes in my life:
I’m working in the non-profit world as an online strategist at the International Women’s Health Coalition, where among other things I’m running a blog called Akimbo at http://blog.iwhc.org, plus making videos about sexual health and rights: http://youtube.com/intlwomenshealth. I’ll also be doing my third semester as an Adjunct Professor of Human Sexuality at Rutgers University this summer (see, I told you I’d gone legit).

I’ve got lots of other stuff up my sleeves, which hopefully I’ll remember to tell you about. Feel free to look me up around these here Internets in the meantime!

xo
Dacia
Audacia Ray
Waking Vixen, Personal Projects and Blog: http://wakingvixen.com
International Women’s Health Coalition: http://iwhc.org
IWHC Blog, Akimbo: http://blog.iwhc.org
Sex Work 101: http://sexwork101.com
Speak Up! media training: http://speakup.sexworkawareness.org

Under the leadership and guidance of the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua, an international Buddhist community and monastery was established on the 488 acre site. The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas as it is known today, is one of the first Chinese Zen Buddhist temples in the United States, and one of the largest Buddhist communities in the Western Hemisphere.

Into this pious realm, steps our heroes… Amara and Shyena, two westerners, lifelong students of eastern philosophy and yet advocates of the sensual life – ready to undertake a 7-day retreat, meditating and celebrating Guan Shi Yin, the Goddess/God who helps us cultivate compassion.

“I never imagined I would visit a Buddhist monastery, and to tell the truth, I often felt something too complex or grand in all of it for me,” Amara explains. “It took hearing Guan Yin’s name to lure me into the Dharma Realm, and the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, after which, perhaps, nothing will ever be quite the same.”

Read all about her life-changing adventure in “How Lucky We Are… About the Guan Yin Retreat.”

Monks at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas

It turns out that Amara has more secrets to reveal and what better place than at a Buddhist Monastery that was once an insane asylum to come back to one’s senses.

“Returning to our room after an entire day of recitation I am dying for a cigarette,” she reveals. “Of course there is no smoking permitted within the place, so I must go outside to sneak one. This is day one of seven. I’m thinking, God, this is awful. Ridiculous! I can’t do this here.”

Find out how she beat back the Nicotine Demons and rekindled her love of film making while you enjoy her latest online video production, a  glimpse within the walls of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in “Two Confessions… on the making of this video.”

Susie Bright’s Journal is the title of her blog where you can find a ton of information about her, subscribe to her audio shows and find links to her other videos.

Susie Bright, also known as Susie Sexpert, is an author, editor, activist, performer, lecturer, sex guru, teacher, and mom. She has a weekly program entitled “In Bed with Susie Bright” distributed through audible.com, where she discusses a variety of social, freedom of speech and sex-related topics. Bright co-founded and edited the first women’s sex magazine, On Our Backs, “entertainment for the adventurous lesbian,” from 1984 to 1991. She founded the first women’s erotica book series, “Herotica” and edited the first three volumes. She started “The Best American Erotica” series in 1993-2008. Bright taught the first university class on the subject of the aesthetics and politics of pornography at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California in 1986. She became well-known for her scholarship in sexual representation through her courses on the subject at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She currently resides in Santa Cruz, California.

During her career, Muhlhahn has delivered more than 700 babies and has practiced midwifery in New York, Texas, and Oregon. She is the midwife featured in Ricki Lake’s controversial documentary, “The Business of Being Born,” which provides an insider’s look at natural childbirth in the home setting, and her expert opinion has been included in articles in The New York Times, Vogue, and Parents Magazine.

Muhlhahn’s debut memoir, “Labor of Love” hit bookshelves in December 30, 2008 and includes tales of the homebirth of Muhlhahn’s son, recounts the formative experiences of her adolescence, and offers readers engaging stories culled from her practice of midwifery. This powerful book chronicles the unconventional decisions she has made to find, then honor her profession.