Rudynate

I have a few slogans that I have adopted as "words to live by." One of them came from "Jonathan Livingstone Seagull."

I didn't realize Foundation was that old.. Yes context is important. I remember, when I was a little kid, in the early sixties, my mother read Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" and became an instant environmentalist. For the time, it was an extremely influential book. I picked it up a few years ago, and found it lightweight and simplistic, but realized that one had to be mindful of the time and the intended audience.

A long time ago, when I was in graduate school, as a practicum, I did much of the cataloging of a major gift to the Gay and Lesbian Center of the San Francisco Public Library. The gift was the Barbara Grier collection. Barbara Grier was a co-founder of Naiad Press, a major publisher of Lesbian literature. This collection she donated comprised thousands and thousand of different items. Included in it were just about every piece of gay fiction that had been published up to that time - yes, every single one of the Gordon Merrick novels, etc. etc. Most of it was pathetic, it was so bad. I would sit there paging through these novels, wondering, "Who writes this stuff?" To me, about the only pieces of gay fiction that were worth the paper they were printed on were "Faggots" and "Dancer from the Dance."

The voice of reason.

That's why I liked LeGuin so much. She was extremely original. It just amazed me how she could construct alternative universes out of nothing. On the other hand, I read Asimov's Foundation trilogy, which is well thought of by SSF fans and didn't find an original idea in it. The scope was certainly epic, but it was just an amalgamation of the same old stuff.

I used to think of SciFi and fantasy fiction as a "guilty pleasure." I thought it was a trifle light-weight but I really enjoyed getting lost in it.

I used to like to binge-read an author that I liked, reading everything by that author I could find in one uninterrupted succession. One author I did that with was Ursula K. Le Guinn. I especially liked the cycle dealing with the Hainish and the Ekumen. I also did that with William Gibson's cyberpunk novels. Another book I really enjoyed was Anthony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential."

I really liked his writing. And I was doubly impressed with it knowing that English wasn't his native language.

I read "The Cancer Ward" also and liked it. As a matter of fact, I think I read it twice, I liked it so much. I remember, in the 70s and 80s I was very big on Jerzy Kosinski. He's been dead for awhile.

Actually, "Buddenbrooks" is a book I have meant to read for years. I just ordered a copy.

Now that I think about it, I think I read "Death in Venice" three times.

I loved "The Magic Mountain." I think I even read it twice.

This is a great thread. I used to read voraciously, but now have difficulty maintaining my interest in a book long enough to finish it. The last fiction I read was "Snow" by Orhan Pamuk. I got bogged down in it about two thirds of the way through, and left it laying for months, then finally finished it. That says more about my reading habits than it does about whether or not it was a good book.

I know strange things happen. Last year, on Christmas, I was in the emergency room. Christmas morning, I woke up and I noticed a couple small punctures on the heel of my hand - had no idea where they had come from. By afternoon, they were beginning to itch and they were a little swollen. I went to friends' house for Christmas dinner and came home about 9P. When I took my shirt off I had a dark red streak that went all the way up my arm into my armpit. I thought, "Fuck!!" I felt fine, no fever, so I was thinking I might wait until morning to get it looked at, but I wasn't totally comfortable with that. I called the advice nurse at Kaiser. she said it needed to be seen right away because it was so fast-moving - it couldn't wait until morning. I was dreading going into the ER on Christmas - figured it would be jammed and I would be there for five hours. It turned out there was nobody there. I left probably 30 minutes later with an antibiotic. When the culture came back it was some weird bug that the doc had never heard of.

That's the missing piece in this conversation, wrapping the sounds. Otherwise, as soon as they come out of the autoclave, they become contaminated. The healthcare professionals will get all over my case, I know, but I don't think sterility is as much of a priority in a relatively "clean" environment. Healthcare environments, by definition, are not "clean." Hospitals are petri dishes - crawling with bugs. So, of course, aseptic technique is essential in order to protect the patient from infection. What do you do when you get a cut at home? I don't know about anybody else, but I wash the blood off with tap water and slap a band-aid on it after the bleeding stops. What's sterile about that? I don't ever remember getting an infection from a cut. Before the development of aseptic technique, the only people who went to hospitals were the poor who couldn't afford to receive health care in their homes. I seriously doubt that homes of the early 19th century provided a sterile environment, but they were cleaner than the hospitals at the time. I suspect that same is true today. The average home is probably much less conducive to infection than a clinic, doc's office or hospital. Was it Semmelweiss who discovered that the simple measure of having doctors wash their hands between deliveries drastically reduced the incidence of post-partum infections in hospitals? All of that having been said, I would not let someone else use a sound on me who wasn't gloved and I couldn't imagine trusting anyone else to have thoroughly cleaned sounds between people.

You could achieve the same with a pressure cooker.

And of course there are all those stories of guys needing to have all manner of things retrieved from their butts.

A lot of the "edgier" sexual practices do involve pain, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Thus, they are unsuitable for those who can't or won't associate pain with pleasure.

Gorgeous picture. I have stuffed my dick with a variety of implements and its very erotic. As the implement slides in, I get a very stiff boner. I would love to try it with a partner with real sounds. I had a cystoscopy a couple years ago and, surprisingly, found it really enjoyable. The uro used a blunt syringe to pump a local anesthetic into my dick, followed by a syringe full of lube. The scope slid in nearly painlessly. The feeling of the scope snaking around in my bladder was very pleasurable.

Some also inject themselves with insulin for the anabolic effect. A side-effect is that it causes visceral fat to accumulate.

I don't think I have ever seen a straight escort. I'm very curious, though, and probably will at some time. He would have to be someone who is fully interactive though - I like it all, the more the better. Because TH appears to be fully interactive, he might be a good candidate.

But isn't he just saying that TH may not be for everybody? Maybe the reviewer meant chemistry on the part of the client, rather than chemistry on the part of the escort. The fact that he's mostly straight and appears to perform well with men would suggest that chemistry isn't a problem for him. The thing about the review that would send up a red flag for me was " I'm not much into kissing or anal with anybody and I had a fantastic time with TH." That might suggest that the escort's repertoire is limited and that you should keep your expectations low. Nonetheless, I think TH is a total stud and I wouldn't be surprised to find that he's a very sweet guy.

I feel the same way. Not my normal type, but I'm very curious about him.

That may be true. However, an alcoholic who is living sober successfully would never give away responsibility for his/her sobriety to anyone else. A person whose relationship with an escort has gone awry has no less of a responsibility to manage the situation.

What an angel.