Science, Sex and The Ladies at Alternet and Salon.com!

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I'm not making excuses (I actually am making excuses), but I haven't posted the last couple days because I got home from my 3 months of day-job science business in Brazil on Saturday (no more Brazilian breakfast buffets and living in a hotel, no!!!), and I had to pack up and move out of my house beginning immediately (movin' closer into the city!).


It's been a little insane the last couple days, and on top of all that, SSL got a kick-ass article at Alternet Saturday morning, and then it got picked up by Salon on Monday. Jill Hamilton wrote the article - you might know her from a blog called In Bed With Married Women. It's funny as shit. I would check it out if I were you. I can't thank her enough for seeing this crazy as doc, and wanting to write about on some established, motha fuckin' sites. I mean Salon and Alternet are kinda bigtime for this mom n' pops deal we got goin on here. It upped our Vimeo and IndieFlix views, well, a lot, and we got tons of emails about small screenings, and other fun shit. Point is, all that stuff made having to move in weather far colder than I am now accustomed, after almost no sleep during a 20 our travel period much, much more exciting that it would have been. But, seriously, my seat would not go back even slightly on the 8 hour flight from Sau Paulo to Miami, and that sucked. I never have trouble sleeping on planes...or in classes...or in cars...or standing up, but I couldn't sleep at all, and there were only like 6 movies available - I had only not seen Taken 3.

That was my Brazilian bathroom, complete with Portuguese flashcards on the mirror.  

There was some good comment threads on the Alternet one. I always have to get my hands in there. I can't have random nay-saying comments hanging out there that can easily be answered and talked about civilly. So, that took up some time too, but it was fun. I'll do a post on those comments soon. Someone told me they wished I'd just shut up - she was a bit fighty, that one. Now, that would normally make my stomach turn into knots, but it doesn't anymore. I think I've grown, my friends. I just try to be nice and honest, and usually people are back, but when they're not, no biggie. I leaned that I've gained that ability this weekend, so that's another good thing to have come of all this.

Back to work...Go check out the Alternet and the Salon posts. It'll be fun.

LEGALIZE O ORGASMO!!!

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I guess it's supposed to be the rainy season here in Ribeirao Preto (the a in Ribeirao Preto is supposed to have a squiggly above it, but I can't make my keyboard do that, so just so you know. Also it's pronounced kinda like Heeb-ah-roun Pray-toe. It's really hard to remember that R's sound like H's in Portuguese. Also that squiggly a then o makes a kinda nasal 2-syllabled sound that's a little like the oun in noun, but making sure you pronounce it like it's 2 syllables.) Anyway, it was supposed to be the rainy season here all December, January and February, but it really didn't rain much, and it's actually a pretty big problem. Then, in March it just started raining a lot. People here were all like, "dude, that's weird." But, the rain is welcome, given the near drought situation.

My point here is that we used to do a lot of walking around the city on weekends, but the rain was keeping us in more the last few (we walked around one of the many malls instead).  We had perfect luck (sorte) though on Sunday. It rained, Then we walked to Centro (the aptly named center of the city), and back. It was a good 3 hours, and just as we were getting back to the hotel, it started raining again for the rest of the day. We avoided all rain!

There was also more surprise sorte. There's actually some pretty cool graffiti around. Someone is quite the artist here, but we happened upon some graffiti that was not so much artistically lovely, as much as right on and appropriate for this blog. It was next to one of the many "Sex Shops" that seem to be kind of like a chain,  but they each have their own look, and a different feel to the scantily dressed mannequins in the window. This one had a, I would say, "fancy" feel. The dude had some tuxedo speedos on and the gal had a classy black see-through nighty. Some are more S&M, some are more playful. I haven't been in one yet, but I should check it out, right? Okay, so next to this sex shop is the following graffiti.

Now, o orgasmo definitely means the orgasm in Portuguese, but legalize seems to be kinda English-y. The translation for legalize is actually Legalizar, and "Legalize" doesn't seem to be an actual word here. I'm pretty certain the orgasm is not illegal in Brazil, but I'm going to assume this is just a way to promote a pro-orgasm stance. Now that i think of it, "legal" means cool here, so I wonder if it's some new slangy off-shoot of that. Okay, just searched a bit and Google doesn't seem to think so. I'll see if I can get to the bottom of this, but in the meantime, know that we must have some Brazilian amigos (yeah - it's the same word in Spanish and Portuguese) in the Orgasm Equality Movement.

CATGASM and Other Things

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Okay, so I'm in Brazil now, and I'm not ready to write a proper blog right now so this will be a bit of a quick hodge-podge, so here goes.

1. 50 Shades of Grey is opening tonight, and clearly, that needs to be SSL Reviewed. I mean if it's anything like the book, there will be more lady-gasms had in ridiculously unrealistic ways than you can shake a stick at. However, I don't know when it's coming to Brazil, and if I can see a non-Portuguese dubbed version. Luckily, Barnaby, one of we three directors of SSL, offered to watch it tonight and write a guest SSL Review of it - so look forward to that.

2. I got to Brazil, worked one day, and then Carnival started. Well, it's this upcoming Tuesday, but it kinda goes from tomorrow (Saturday) thru Tuesday. My work is closed until Thursday. So, that's pretty awesome. Now I get to go to some beach near Rio with a co-worker to her parent's cabin for 4 days to chill and watch an old-school folk-style Carnival Parade (no topless ladies with giant feather headdresses). Anyway, I'm pretty into it, and that's why this blog post is so short.

3. Sometimes I just Google something that might be relevant to this blog to see if there's something out there on the internets that I might want to write about. Well, in that spirit I Googled "catgasm" that's right, "catgasm." Guess what? I found an awesome Tumblr title none other than CATGASM. There are lots of cute pictures of cats, and you should probably look at it. http://catgasm.tumblr.com/ 

Santa Paws, Brazil, and The Right Kind of Lust

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Christmas Hodgepodge

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It's the day after Christmas, and I had to work all day, and so I thought I'd just put up a hodgepodge of things that don't really have to do with ladies or orgasms or anything because that will be easy and fun. These things may or may not be interesting.

1. As you might remember, I was on a business trip in Brazil recently, and they had this awesome buffet for breakfast at the hotel. Let me just say that Brazil folks are into juice, and I think I'm on board. They have all this fresh ass fruit down there, and they just grind it up - no water, not sugar. From my observations of other customers during my restaurant outings, I would say juice is more popular than soda. That not official, but I can say that there were about 12 different kinds of these juices at this hotel buffet, and I tried most of them. Watermelon juice? Yes, that is mighty fine - yes indeed.


There were also all these cakes at the breakfast buffet. I would say like about 15 or 20. There were lots of chocolatey type ones, and some fruity ones, and they were all fabulous. The first one i had was carrot cake with chocolate, and the carrot cake didn't have all that nut and raisin bullshit in it. It was just like an orangey homogeneous cake with chocolate on top, and I had the same thing later that day when someone brought one of these cakes to work. It's a popular cake in ol' Brazil, and rightly so.

My kind of carrot cake - with chocolate

There were also lots of other things at the buffet, but I mostly focused on those things. Please enjoy some pictures of my breakfasts. I took pictures of them, every day because I was sending the pick and the Portugese translation of all the items back home - I now easily have the words juice (suco) and cake (bolo0 and I'm pretty good with my fruit names.

Lemon cake with fruit, juice, and a Brazilian favorite - cheese bread (that's the ball thing)

Milk cake with chocolate and pineapple  - also that's the watermelon juice

coconut cake - don't particularly like coconut, but loved this cake. The plate looks like a f'd up smiley face with a big hat.

2. This is a Christmassy picture of my cat Ramona. She enjoys naps under the Christmas tree, batting at silver garland, sitting on wrapping paper, and hiding from Christmas visitors who are under the age of 18. She dislikes most food and for the other cats to look at her.

3. I was staying with my sister overnight on Christmas Eve to help ol' St. Nick get the presents down the chimney and to see all the kids on Christmas morning, and long story short, I left a message for one of the kids as Santa with a disguised voice, and it was like a Christmas nightmare. It was all things creepy, and although it was meant to be a scare tactic, it was unnecessarily terrifying. I may have eternally scarred a child. As you can imagine, it was also the hilarious highlight of our Christmas season. Merry Christmas!