First of all, any post that in any way references Heroes automatically deserves a mention of Kristen Bell, and a link to a hot picture (notice how I don’t plaster your screen with pictures of her hot, pliable, pale flesh… I have mastered the art of self-control, obviously…)

With that out of the way (and it’s hard to push Kristen to one side, I assure you, but I’ll do my best, for the 10 or 15 minutes it takes to write this), in case the Gods really are smiling down on me, and someone from the cast of Heroes happens to read this blog, I should probably mention that Hayden Panettiere is also very beautiful. I would turn neither of these fine blonde beauties down, given the opportunity. Everyone deserves a chance, after all. Save Seb’s libido, save the world, remember?

Anyway, I had my hair cut today. My sister’s a hairdresser for some snobby salon called ‘Rush‘, so I get funky and ‘modern’ hair cuts at a fraction of the price that other mere mortals might pay. It was only later, as I was looking through some photos of my new hair, that I looked remarkably like Sylar. Similar shape of face, fairly large eyebrows, and the same air of evil omnipotent malevolence (it’s true,  I’m evil). You wouldn’t leave me in the same room as your teenage, blonde daughter, would you?

Well, maybe if she’d misbehaved a little…

Recently Heroes has received a lot of bad press (although not as bad as Season 2, but we can blame the WGA writers’ strike for that!), with total viewing figures still way down on Season 1 (and losing out to some truly atrocious American programming). I thought the episodes we had before Christmas were fantastic! Hopefully the end of season 3 (volume 4) will continue the upwards curve of excitement and mystery that Heroes really thrives upon. And stay away from the time travel please — don’t writers understand that time-travel paradoxes drive intelligent people utterly nuts? “But he could go back in time again to fix it…!” that wouldn’t make for a great story though — Hiro only goes back in time when it best befits the burgeoning paradoxical plot.

The thing is, it’s still far greater than any other supernatural drama on TV (but BSG is starting again on Friday…) I guess after such an awesome first season it was only natural that people would grow a little tired after a poor second season and not tune into season 3. I guess season 4 will make or break the show, as long as we’re treated to an awesome finale to season 3!

I think people forget that downloadable TV episodes (and on-demand via a variety of services) bite into viewing shares significantly. I know of one TV distribution group that can shift over 500,000 copies of popular TV shows on a weekly basis (Lost, House, Heroes, etc.) Not all of these downloaders are from the USA, but some certainly are (most are Europeans that don’t want to wait for their local TV stations to syndicate the shows).

Anyway, while I’m on this fairly-geeky streak, I’m going to slip in one link on flying… cars! Yes, flying cars. No, they haven’t been injected with some kind of ‘Hero serum’ — they’re just flying cars. Slightly impractical? Maybe. Awesome? Hell yeah!

I’ll leave you with a picture of me, posing with two of my cute female friends.

Instead of gulping down my morning coffee in a valiant effort at blogging before 3pm each day (yes, my morning coffee can go on for some time, and include some refills…) I’ve decided to blog late at night. This way I have a whole day to experience weird and wonderful things that I can then relate to you in a lovely little blog post. Like this, in fact. I also figured it would then be ready for those of you that might read this over your morning coffee, at a far more sensible hour than I.

So today, this annoying (but cute) little Indonesian girl flirted incessantly until I finally capitulated and agreed to do some kind of audio blog. Now, I’m no fool. I know this is purely about the fact that I’m British. I speak fairly well (and thankfully I don’t sound too stuffy), and I do like talking, but I can tell when I’m used.

Let me give a little back-story. After being chain-assaulted on my multiple trips to the States, I figured something was going on. I’m not the best looking person in the world, and these were mighty cute girls that could’ve had their choice of men. It was around the 5th girl, on my second visit there, that I emerged briefly from under the proverbial duvet to take a breath and suss out what was actually going on. In a brief moment of post-coital clarity it was obvious: they were after my voice! It was confirmed when I said the wrong name into a girl’s ear during foreplay — and she just said ‘Talk to me some more, Sebastian!‘

I could bitch and whine about it, but really… why? Embrace the ability to seduce women simply by opening my mouth! I do like to think it has something about what I say, and not purely how I say it, though. I’ve seduced girls purely with the power of my voice — and I don’t mean bellowing out in a commanding tone: ‘KNEEL DOWN BEFORE ME, WITLESS WENCH’; they fell for my British accent.

I fear I’ve built it up a bit too much now, so… try to cool down a little before clicking ‘play’. And remember, not everyone in England sounds like Vinnie Jones (though part of me wishes I wish I did) or Prince William. There is a space between, which is where I stand.

 
Without lingering (if it was awful, please say so… otherwise, let’s just leave it unsaid), I have a bunch of gaming links that I need to share, because they’re just too awesome to sit here on my laptop.

First, the Sprite Stitch Board where a bunch of awesome sewing nerds (man, there are nerds of every description…) try their best to recreate various classic sprites (flat 2D images) in cross stitch, running stitch… all sorts of stitches! My favourite’s the Zelda map, which someone has obviously spent way too much time on.

Next up we have a horrifyingly awesome school play (I think?) of … Live Action Monkey Island (not to be confused with Super Monkey Ball, gaming newbies!) I wish I was kidding. These kids act their hearts out in a re-make of the 1990 LucasArts classic The Secret of Monkey Island. It runs for 10 minutes, and you probably don’t want to watch past the first minute or two.

Penultimately, we have a cute story of two Danish kids that had their gaming session interrupted by the Danish equivalent of SWAT. You probably turn the volume down a little on any of your modern warfare games, if you live in a built-up area. And you have paranoid neighbours that think the youth of today carry automatic machine guns — and grenades.

And I leave you with (apparently, according to my friend Darryl), the worst commercial ever made (I quite like it, but I am into musical theatre, which is sometimes just as atrocious) — Microsoft Songsmith.

It sure looks like my tiny little foray into audio blogging (or podcasting, which is audio blogging, but with more regularity, and some kind of RSS syndication) was a success. There was unprecedented activity on my blog today, so I can only assume that people really want to listen to some English beast babble on and on about… not much. Fortunately (well, for me), I’m not going to podcast just anything — no, I’m going to make it INTERESTING!

‘How is Seb going to make it interesting?’ I hear you ask. I’m not entirely sure yet, but I have a few ideas. They’ll probably be based on the normal podcast topics: geeky reviews (of games, music, films, hardware) and other esoteric stuff (like those chaps that record their roleplaying sessions). I will probably focus on the reviews (I tend to have strong opinions on all things geeky), and… perhaps perform some kind of audio drama. Yes, I’m going to create a story, along with characterisation and maybe some naff sound effects. You’d be right in saying that audio plays/dramas/books aren’t all that interactive (although they can be exciting, with the right narrator!), so I will spice it up a little to fit the whole ‘blog concept’, so that we have a dialogue  between the writer, and the readers. Or speaker and listeners, in this case.

What I’m going to do is act, perform and narrate an interactive story. A basic murder mystery to start with — a murder, some possible suspects (all with water-tight alibis of course!) and some motives. I’ll then give the listeners of this blog a chance to choose each step in the story (either via discussion consensus, or poll). It probably won’t be a huge story, but hopefully it’ll be interesting enough to keep people entertained, and interested in what direction the story takes! As an added bonus, it’ll also keep the British accent junkies sated too (and maybe some other accent addicts happy, if I can work some odd characters into the story). If I can be totally honest, the stalkeresque emails are… unnerving.

When will I do it? Let’s aim for the first episode to be… next week.

With that exciting news out of the way, I should probably focus on less-exciting things (so you go away thinking ‘Cool, that Seb guy’s gonna make a podcast!!), like… some chauvenistic flowcharts. Heck, while we’re on the topic of girls (the topic does say ‘Ga Ga’, and each and every man knows that all women are at least a little bit insane, even the ones they love dearly), here’s a chart that can help men read a girl’s face (dangerous at the best of times, castratingly hard at the worst of times). Being a worldly man that’s experienced a wide gamut of female emotions first-hand I don’t need such a chart, but perhaps it’s worth printing out and keeping in your wallet, for emergencies.

Finally, we have this: http://www.vimeo.com/2809991

I’m not a huge Star Wars fan, so I can’t really tell how accurate she is… but I have a suspicion that proper Star Wars geeks will be frothing and fuming at such… sacrilegious treatment of the Star Wars canon. Plus, she’s pretty cute, and I have a lot of time for cute girls.

Just before I finish, it’s just been brought to my attention that two pop starlets (is Justin Timberlake a full-blown star yet? I guess, grudgingly, he is) are destined to butcher one of the 90s most iconic love songs: I Will Always Love You (16 weeks at number 1 in the UK!). It’s heretical that such a cover could ever be produced. I can’t (I refuse to!) believe Dolly Parton needs the money — I mean, come on, she has her own amusement park for Christ’s sake! (OK, admittedly, it’s called Dollywood, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that she’s probably stinkin’ rich). Something sinister must be afoot. Maybe Whitney Houston needed more money to fuel her crack cocaine habit or something, and so she went crawling to Dolly for a quick and dirty bail-out. Maybe.

Tonight my cousin, one of the few people I am close enough to consider ‘a friend’ — and there aren’t many of those, as I’ve said before — called into question my sexuality.

Attractive but hairy and short cousin (definitely a Beta male, compared to my Alphaness): “Have you got a girlfriend yet?”
Seb: “No…”
Cousin: “I’m starting to seriously worry about your sexuality.”
Seb: “Just because I like musicals, and wear pink pashminas doesn’t necessarily make me gay. Just confident with my sexuality. There is a difference you know, big boy.”

I mean… what’s the rush? Sure, if you’re female, and you have some kind of ticking biological clock (why do girls run out of eggs, while men can continue churning out those wriggly little bad-boys well into their 80s?), there might be some urgency to the whole procreation thing; but as a man, am I meant to feel that every girl I meat (er, meet) is the partner I’ve so desperately been seeking to create my genetically-superior Uber Race? Okay, so I’m not blonde, nor am I blue-eyed, but Hitler didn’t necessarily get it right. Maybe that’s why he tried to exterminate my ancestors — he knew that from the ashes, a 6′5″ brutish beast would arise. A monstrous male so potent, so indomitable that he felt a world war was necessary to remove any chance of his blood line persisting –

But I digress. If my cousin is to be believed, I’m gay, so any chance of me making babies is pretty damn small. Sorry mum. Sorry ladies.

Now, I’m sure you’ve seen pictures of me on this blog. I don’t look gay. You’ve also heard me; do I sound gay?

So what’s the problem?

I certainly get on better with girls than boys, which is odd (and I don’t really know why — other than the things listed above, I don’t really share any common ‘female’ interests). Perhaps I’m lucky to have known a couple of girls that have appreciated geeky, cool things as much as me. They’re both in America now.

So, why do I get on better with girls? Why does my cousin think I’m gay? I think our long nights spent in tents, in the middle of cold, rainy fields, snuggling for warmth have biased him.  But no, seriously, it’s because… I’m girly. I’m camp.

I like musicals. I own around 200 recordings, from the 1950s through to today. I was listening to Guys & Dolls earlier, and then I sang along to Wicked a few hours later. My second trip to the USA was actually a 5 day jaunt to New York City where I somehow crammed 6 musicals in. Is that gay?

I have long hair (OK, it’s short right now, but it’s been long for years!) I have a pink hair brush too (a big, lovely flat brush that slides silkily through my hair). I have been known to tie my hair into pigtails, ponytails, pineapples. I remember the day I asked a girl in my class to show me how to braid my own hair (it never stayed in… apparently I didn’t do it tight enough). Does that make me gay?

I love the colour pink. I have pink shirts, pashminas, jackets, hats and scarfes. Whenever I go out somewhere, I think I should wear at least something that’s pink. But then look at this way: I love a girl that’s wearing pink. Baby pink, hot pink. Naked, with a pink blush covering her cheeks, her stomach. Luckily my ex-girlfriends have all been fans of pink too. Or quickly become fans…

Musical theatre is easier to defend — it’s complex music. I like complex. Simple is boring (this goes for people too!) The standard composition of verse, chorus, verse, chorus all but disappears in musical theatre; instead you are treated with themes and reprises. Characters can have their own chords, or even their own notes. The music itself tells the story of the moment, rather than the lyric — the lyric becomes more of a dialogue between the characters, often driving the story forward. Some musicals are almost entirely song-driven, so this is of course the case! The music leads you towards other planes of emotion — the sudden plunge of violins propelling you down a path, a sad path, a romantic path. An easy example here is ‘Something There‘ from Beauty & The Beast. The song is incredibly simple, and the lyric is mostly spoken, but the music is what really tells you what’s going on: they’re having fun, they’re rolling around in the snow, they’re getting more comfortable with each other, almost intimate. In just 2 minutes, you have a damn good idea of how these two (seemingly) disparate characters came together.

That’s what I like about musical theatre. It’s harder to listen to, and I certainly don’t get much work done while I have a musical playing, but there’s just so much more to appreciate! If you can see past the often overly-trite and simple story-telling from the lyrics, the songs take you on a ride, much like a very well engineered album by one of the greats (like Bruce Springsteen). Just try to remember that the lyrics have been shoe-horned into the music: the full orchestral music, as opposed to pop music where the lyric is what seperates a hit, from a truly great tune.

If you were wondering, before I move on from musicals, the title of this blog is a line from Avenue Q, a musical that you must ALL see! How can you resist a musical starring muppets? Muppets that have sex with each other, no less.

Now, I must remind you to cast your vote on the poll! You have until Tuesday. I would just like to thank the cruel bastards that voted for the Eastern Europe/Slavic option. Thanks. Don’t take advantage of my generosity next time!

Sadly, it’s true. While 40% of all games players are female (a rather large percentage that often shocks some people), only 15% of them play games like World of Warcraft (WoW).

I think this is probably because of the perceived element of competition in games such as WoW or Runescape (another online game). Girls tend to stay clear of the male stomping ground and focus almost entirely on ‘god sims’: games which give the player complete control over the denizens of a virtual world, such as The Sims — which is, incidentally, one of the largest selling games of all time. The female gamer market share is something most game developers can only dream of capturing. Another popular genre for those lovely female gamers are ‘dress up’ games, where there is more emphasis on a character’s appearance — there’s even a site dedicated to finding such games! The rather cutesy look of the site is probably an indication of the target audience.

Moving onto a more specific area — online gaming –  Nick Yee’s research (The Daedalus Project) dwarfs every other body of work on the topic, even if its objectivity is hotly contested by many other academics. There are simply too many interesting statistics available from the project so I won’t bore you with them, but poke around if you’re interested in finding out more the new and exciting breed of online gamers — gamers like me.

The only pertinent statistic, is that 35% of all WoW characters are female — and only half of those are actually played by girls in real life. Not only does this mean that only 15% out of 11.5 million players are female, it also means that 50% of all female characters are being played by boys. Now, gender-bending isn’t a new thing! Tt’s pretty common in online games, where you interact with tens or even hundreds of people each day, and playing a female can give you a certain… edge. Female characters are given gifts, they receive beneficial treatment and generally have a much easier and enjoyable gaming experience than males. Someone is much more likely to stop and help you kill some big, gribbly beasty if you’re female. (Isn’t gribbly the best word ever?)

All of these things are real life phenomena too –  this is just one example of virtual worlds imitating real life.

Sadly, in my guild, we only have about 5 girls (well, that I’m certain of), out of about 150 people. That seems a fair bit below the 15% Nick Yee suggests. On top of that, I think only 1 of those girls is an actual ‘free gamer’, and not in the guild purely because their boyfriend is there.

So, this is my attempt to drive more girls to online gaming in general, and my guild in particular. While it’s true that many people play online games like WoW for the competition, and being first, many people play just for the fun. There’s also lots of dressing up you can do, with thousands of aesthetic choices you can make to your character. I guess it’s by no coincidence that most girls prefer ‘Tolkein fantasy’  — they identify easiest with those lithe bodies and pointy ears, right? But still only 15% are female! We must increase that number! For geeky men like me all over the globe!

I think the problem is, at least for a hardcore guild like mine, is that the guys that I play with simply don’t get out. They don’t meet anyone, because games like World of Warcraft require a certain amount of time investment that makes socialising outside of the game a little difficult. I guess, considering women are much more social creatures than men, I’m not drawing a very good picture here. Let me recover with a pretty photo of my character:[SinglePic not found]

See, isn’t it PRETTY? A dragon! and swirly… magical things! Just ignore the skeletal dragon in the background.

Anyway, as I was saying, as the guys don’t get out much, they don’t get girlfriends — or at least socialise with girls. Without some kind of female contact, it’s quite hard to become socially adjusted — and you have to present yourself as a well-adjusted guild if you want to woo those few female players.

Girls just don’t appreciate it when they first thing they see upon joining the guild is ‘Argh, I’ve got itchy balls.’

So, girls, start playing an online game and adopt a geek today. Teach us the arts of grooming.

Today is a day of change, after all.

As a corollary to my post earlier today, this video highlights why girls need to play online games, like World of Warcraft.

And boys, do your bit to fight rapidly-strengthening stereotypes. Don’t tell girls your penis is like an acorn attached to your torso.

I’m going to tell you a little story about a cheerleader, as a build-up to a ‘my first kiss’ entry, which I have to post before the end of January, for my lovely fellow bloggers over at 20sb.

I’m actually stalling for time, because I actually need to contact the girl that I first kissed, but she’s not responding to my telephone calls. Maybe the kiss was that bad…

Anyway, the cheerleader (who incidentally looked a bit like Hayden Panettiere). I’m going to step on some toes here, so I won’t be using real names, and I’m going to be fairly obscure with dates, just so I’m fairly safe from some people reaching false conclusions. I am not a manwhore, despite what you might have been told, and I don’t like kissing and telling the story… but I think this one is fairly safe.

It was some time in early Summer, and I was still at university. I’d been dumped by my first girlfriend a few months earlier, and had my second girlfriend (well, the second girl that I’d been intimate with) had just dumped me — for another girl. So it’s safe to say I was fairly sore at the time, considering I’d managed to make it to 18 years of age without a girlfriend, and then chewed up and spat out by two girls in close succession.

My self-asteem has never been the greatest. Being confident about my abilities is only a recent thing, and I’m still pretty nervous around girls that I fancy (’like‘ for you Americans). There’s something about being bullied that just destroys all of your own self-worth, you know?

It was a bit of a cruel joke, then, to be dumped by my first girlfriend for a guy twice her age. And then an out-of-nowhere dumpage from my second girlfriend, because she decided she liked girls more than boys.

Being a resillient personality, I didn’t take it too personally. Girls still seemed to be taking an interest in me. I still had the gift of the gab; I could still make girls break down into tears of laughter. The problem was, and still is, that I can’t tell if a girl likes me. You know, in that way. I can’t make myself believe that she’s interested in me more than friendship, or she just likes a good laugh. The whole concept that a girl wants to… er… bond with me is just foreign to me. Damn that bruised self-asteem. Damn those bullies.

If only more girls would be like the cheerleader, from the Deep South. After a long internet courtship (I knew I’d be visiting that part of America in a few months), we finally met up in a large house, somewhere near the Appalachians. There were other people present, so for a while we just had to make do with drawn-out glances at each other. A slight licking of the lips. Dilating pupils. It was painfully obvious that the moment we were left alone our carnal desires were going to explode.

Later that night, after everyone else had gone to bed, she snuck into my room and… well, it was wild. Really, really wild. To this day, I put it down to the fact that she was a cheerleader. She had muscles I hadn’t heard of,  in places I’d never seen, let alone felt. I guess it’s expecting too much for every girl I meet, that likes me, to be like that. It’d be nice, though.

For a few days this continued, and I saw and experienced the heart of the Deep South. Trailer parks, hillbillies, and more churches than I thought possible. Some of those towns have 10 churches! For a population of just a few thousand! I had inane conversations with people — people that didn’t care what I said, just as long as I continued to talk. Conversations that made you wonder if lobotomies were performed at birth, instead of circumcision.

All the while, I had this cute, blonde cheerleader by my side. She was intelligent too — this was obviously recompense for the bad times I’d had before. Blissful recompense.

On my last day there, waking up, and stepping out onto the porch that surrounded most of the house, there was a beautiful cobalt-blue lake below me. The sun was just starting to rise over the mountains, and a jet-skiier was speeding across the clear, crystalline water.

A few moments later I felt a gentle tugging back towards the bedroom; I looked down and saw her arms around my waist.

That was one of my most spectacular and memorable holiday romances.

For a long time I’ve wanted to go to the sub-Saharan savannas. I want to watch springbok leap gracefully through the tall, dry grass. I want to pat a hippopotamus on the head and call him a ‘good boy’. I want to do many things, and I admit you can’t do much in Africa except for look at things (unless you want to go and hunt animals, but that’s not really my thing), but the allure of going as far ‘into the wild’ as you possibly can does have a certain appeal. A limited appeal, I must admit — I’m usually OK for the first 48 hours, and then I’m really craving the internet, and my email. And Facebook.

Although given a camera, and the African savannas… I could probably get by without technology for a little longer. Imagine, I could be taking photos like this:

I was reading through a magazine, a year or two ago, which highlighted the 10 most romantic hotels in the world — places you go to on your honeymoon, or at least experience with another person. It was a sappy time for me, as I was totally smitten with my girlfriend at the time, so I put myself in each of the hotels, and imagined what it would be like for me, for her, for us. ANYWAY… one of them was a ‘tree tent’ somewhere in Kenya. You hung, in a tree, far enough off the ground that you were safe. Part of the attraction was that you could hear elephants eating in the night, and other animals crawling around the tree. The level of mod-cons available was pretty low — I think there was a portable toilet — but you don’t go to a place like that for the whole romantic-weekend-in-a-king-sized-bed-with-room-service thing.

I looked around on the internet, for the tree tents and this is pretty close. Some of the other hotels were just as astounding, like the one in Borneo (or another Pacific island), where the hotel was built over/around some kind of small lagoon and collection of small islands. Each hotel room had its own little island, connected via some wooden walkways. Maybe one day there’ll be another suitable girl to take to such places!

Tomorrow I’m going to try and take some more photos, and perhaps record another little audio entry. You should go and vote on chapter 1 too. Listen, and vote! It’s no good if the votes are split. Oh, and a friend and I are working on a web comic, which won’t be related to this site in any way, but if you are into gaming web comics (and by God there are thousands of them on the Internet), and you like zombies, and brains, maybe you’ll enjoy ours!

In my effort to discover yet more good music I downloaded the entire Earth Wind & Fire discography. You probably know a few of their great hits like ‘September’ and ‘Boogie Wonderland’ (and ‘Fantasy’ and ‘Boogie Wonderland’!), but this is just a tiny fraction of their vast wealth of awesome songs. They’re often described as a delicious fusion of… well, everything that exemplified the 1970s: Disco, soul, R&B (the good kind) and occasionally some African ‘world music’. And their songs are LONG too — they go places! None of that 2-and-a-half-minute-radio-wankfest that many bands succumbed to from the 60s onwards.

Anyway… Soul and R&B have the same kind of underlying tone and story: sex. I’m not talking entirely about… you know, fornication, but that does play a big part; especially for bands like Boys 2 Men where all they ever sing about is sex (go watch the ‘Honest R&B Song‘ if you haven’t seen it already). And where they want to have sex. Even the occasional song about their favourite positions… chrikee! But, as I was saying, this kind of music is about sex — men, women, their interactions. It’s about people, I guess, as they find themselves, or God (often God with the black Soul groups). Actually, I guess it’s called ‘Soul’ because it appeals to your soul… which is a spiritual thing, right?!

Sooooo… All this soulful and rhythmic music actually got me thinking. It actually… got me a little horny. Randy, baby. So, as you might’ve guessed from the subject of this post, I’m going to talk about SEX!

I’m sure most of us know where we are and what we’re doing once we get into the sack; hell, we can do almost anything in the bedroom and get away with it. Something magical happens when you have two naked people in a bed. You’ve already pushed through most of the barriers and inhibitions — the courtship, the embarrassment of early fumbles and awkward silences. Then that moment finally comes: you kiss. Not one of those normal kisses though — that passionate kiss. The kiss that speaks volumes; that lingering kiss that you just know is going to lead to sex.

Before you know it, you’re fumbling with each other’s clothing and trying to get naked as quickly as possible. You’re trying to navigate your way to the bedroom without losing your lip-lock (there’s probably a term for that kind of thing — Siamese Lovers, or something). Then you’re in bed, either under the duvet, or above, contorted into some kind of twisted meshed embrace where you can’t tell which limbs are yours.

And then that magical moment occurs… you can do anything. You’re both stripped away, mentally and physically. Your bodies are extensions of one another. There’s no peer pressure, no prejudices — you can just do whatever the hell you like.

I think that’s what I love the most about sex: the intimacy. Intimacy actually describes that moment perfectly — it means ‘to become familiar with’ and ‘innermost’. You’re both there, becoming very familiar indeed, baring everything, even your innermost secrets and desires.

There, I’ve shared what sex is like for me. That’s why I don’t have sex with just anyone — I want it to be special and intimate, damnit! Why not write about what sex is like for you, if you have a blog?

I wanted to share one more thing with you: a flow chart for dialogue during sex (from FlowingData). I never have a problem finding the right things to say during sex, but I understand it can be a problem for couples where one person has more experience than the other. Maybe you’re uncertain if you’re making the right noise; is that a grunt of pleasure, or pain? Perhaps you’re just not very talkative during sex, and you want to improve in that department. Dirty talk during sex can be very saucy, let me tell you! When a girl talks dirty to me… well… it ain’t pretty. But that’s another topic, for another day.

I was rubbing and scrubbing away at my vast, expansive body. I’m in that semi-catatonic just-awake state that I’m sure you’ve all experienced; you know, when you wake up up after just 4 hours sleep, and while the idea of going back to sleep sounds lovely, you have to be somewhere, or do something.

So there you are, teetering, only just standing upright under the jets of water. You can feel sensation slowly returning to your feet and your hands. You’re having a glorious moment; you’re coming alive!

It’s around this point, the point where I’ve become sentient yet again, that my brain kicks in. I slowly come to realise that, yet again, I am doing one of the most boring things in the world. Ever. Showering (and shaving!) are probably the two things I despise most in this world. Ethnic cleansing? Pretty bad. AIDS? Awful, I agree. But being obligated to shower and shave 300 or more times each and every fucking year is akin to having your testicles injected with fish paste and dangled in a hungry pool of piranhas.

I’m sorry, I just can’t even begin to imagine what showering will be like for me in 60 years. ‘Oh, hello there Mr Leg, are you enjoying this as much as me? We’ve only done this twenty thousand times before…’ I really and sincerely hope someone will have invented some kind of ultrasonic cleaning device shakes the dirt from me while I sit here in front of my computers. Contemplating the alternative, a life resplendent with 20 minute bouts of terminal boredom, my brow furrows as I fathom just how many days I will have spent showering, by the time I’m 80. I drop the soap.

It takes about 15-20 minutes a day to shower and shave (a conservative estimate — I’m huge, remember, it takes time to get into all those nooks and crannies), if you multiply that out, assuming 300 showers a year, that’s 100 hours. That’s over 4 days a year I spend doing basic personal hygiene. If you assume you’ve showered since you were 5, by the time you are 80 you will have spent 308 days showering and shaving. ALMOST A GODS DAMN YEAR OF YOUR LIFE.

So, I’ve become sentient and self-aware, and I’m thinking: Shit, I’m showering… yet again… isn’t this fun. And then I thought to myself: What if I was a girl? I would have to exfoliate, and body scrub, and depillate. I’d probably be spending 30, 40, 50 minutes a day making myself presentable — every frackin’ day!  If a woman spends twice as much time as a man making herself look pretty, she’ll probably have spent 2 years of her life in the bathroom, by the time she’s 80. 2 years. Sweet Moses.

Can someone please think of a way to remove this incessant, never-ending drivel from our lives?

Anyway, I started thinking about women, in the shower. No, this isn’t leading where you think it is — scrub your mind! No, I was washing my ample bosoms when I suddenly thought: Why do men have nipples? I mean, I’m not complaining, obviously — you have to love it when a girl goes to town on your nipples — but really, why do we have them? Just for sexual gratification? To provide a way for evil kids to bully you? (’nipple/titty-twisting’ occurred at your school too, right?)

I kind of knew the answer already, but still I did a little research. It’s the standard stuff — we all start off as girls, until testosterone kicks in and we sprout a penis and our ovaries become testicles. Nipples are there from before we start generating testosterone, so we get lumped with them for the rest of our lives. I did come across one fairly-funny thing though — male breasts can still make milk. If we get a jolt of oestrogen, our mammary glands can become functional! We could breast feed!

I’ll end this now, before some wise-ass feminist suggests men should stay at home and look after the babies, while the mother goes out to make money, and sleep with the secretary.