[Thursday. Too much information. But really, this one's very easy going. The more active your imagination, the better this one will be. Hit up Lilu's blog for more embarrassing tales!]

You probably don’t know this but… I wear glasses. But due to a firm belief that I look a lot more photogenic without glasses, I always remove them for photos.

In fact, the only photo that features me in glasses (other than the obviously-posed Ask Me Anything knitting photo!) is the famous ‘Messiah reawakens’ scene, which depicts the second coming of Christ in the form of a hairy, bespectacled nerd, in the Ritz-Carlton, Los Angeles:

This story, as you’ve now guessed, is about my glasses. It’s going to move quickly, so make sure you keep up!

Yes, before you ask, glasses are irritating. Yes, I have to push them up regularly like Hiro in Heroes. No, I can’t do extreme sports like bungee jumping or white-water rafting with a pair of glasses.

Get contact lenses, Seb!

No! Why? Because of my party trick.

Party tricks are special things that are usually discovered when paralytically inebriated — and often at a party. It was after a particularly wild party that I discovered this one…

There we were, tearing clothes off each other. We’re both down to our underwear. I’m standing there, tall, proud, erect; socks, boxers and… glasses!

‘Take them off baby!’

‘In a moment sweetcheeks, I gotta see what you look like… if I take them off now you’ll just be a big blur…’

She obviously disagreed with my logic — perhaps she was afraid of what I might see? — and begun wildly grasping for my glasses.

Before I know it, she’s knocked them from my nose! ‘You drunken bit–’ I look down. There, balanced perfectly in mid-air, are my glasses.

It looked like one of those bad disguise kits.

And that’s how I discovered that particular party trick.

You’re probably thinking that, while it’s kinda neat, it’s not really that much of a trick. In fact, other than amongst a crowd of drunken buffoons, it’s an entirely useless party trick (unless you need a thinly-veiled excuse to whip it out, to impress the girls, of course).

And I would’ve agreed with you! Until last week…

There I was, peeing my customary torrent of… pee.

If you don’t already know: I hate peeing. I hate shaving. I hate showering. I hate spending time doing useless crap.

So of course my mind wanders to more interesting things, like astrophysics, or girls. I was pondering the finer points of female genitalia when I rubbed at my eyes and accidentally knocked the glasses from my nose.

Nooooooo!!

My hands reacted a lot faster than I thought humanly possible. A little too fast. Wet, warm, slightly-sticky hands. Ugh.

But I needn’t have worried. My glasses were safe and sound, perched upon my penis.

As I write this, bear in mind two things: a) our heating is broken. It’s currently about 5 degrees (40F) in my room; my breath is condensing and I can’t feel my nose, fingers or anything below the waist, and b) I haven’t had sex in a while now. So I am cold and frustrated and the owner of a penis. [If this is all 'too much information' and you find yourself reeling, you certainly shouldn't visit Lilu's blog.]

Now, most people often refer to penis-wielders as ‘fortunate’ or penises themselves as ‘useful’. Even in a worst-case scenario, a penis is functional. But you (girls) are all glossing over the most important feature of the penis: it’s external.

You know how, when you go outside in the cold, you slowly lose sensation in your ears? Or your nose? Or your toes? The same happens to men with penises (ambiguity intentional and necessary in today’s politically correct world).

I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that very few of you have ever seen a shrivelled-up penis. You’ve probably not even seen many flaccid penises: it’s the kind of thing that most men keep wrapped up in their underwear — for a reason. The non-erect penis is really not all that great. You see, popular culture has portrayed man — and the mighty penis — as an object of utility and dominance. But only when it’s erect.

The flaccid penis is useless. It hangs there, exposed, sensitive, wrinkled. I don’t think women appreciate just how safe it is to have internal bits. Do women have to coax their genitals into a satisfactory position for urination? Do women have to reach into their boxers with ice-cold hands and dredge out their dilapidated dong?

Let’s not forget we also have testicles. They’re odd things, nuts; I think you’d be hard-put to find many people that actually dig balls. If you ask 1000 random guys for their favourite part of their anatomy, I doubt any of them would say ‘my balls’. That’s because they too are external and highly sensitive. They also get in the way. We can’t cross our legs properly, and if we jump and land badly, we can crush them. Again, when it’s cold, they also shrivel up until we look almost pre-pubescent. They suck themselves right up into our pelvis, which is an experience unlike any other I assure you — it is only topped by the experience of them, for want of a better term, descending again.

The whole ice-cold hands thing also applies to nuts, by the way. At least with your penis you have thick skin protecting you from the immediate, freezing sensation of cold, fumbling hands — not so with testicles. They’re all thin and soft and very sensitive to heat (they’re designed to radiate heat, to keep the little spermatozoa cool, y’see).

I think I should spend a little more time illustrating the pitfalls of the penis: if you’ve seen a flaccid penis, you’ll know that they are generally small. Some are larger than others, but generally we’re talking 2 or 3 inches — 5-8cm. Do you want to know how small it gets when it’s cold? Well, I measured this morning, as I climbed out of bed (alas, morning glory would be a fine and fortunate thing): 3cm! THREE CENTIMETERS! 1 inch!

Once that tasty tidbit has settled in, now imagine trying to manipulate that perky pecker with frigid fingers. You can’t simply pee au naturale because it sticks out horizontally — you gotta angle it. It’s even worse if you have a foreskin, incidentally, as you have to try and roll it back — seriously, it’s just HORRIBLE.

So next time, when you audaciously (and ignorantly) claim that men in general and penises in specific are ‘cool’ or ‘much more functional than my darn vagina’, think again, missy.

There’s a very specific period of my teenage life that I remember fondly. I was about 13 and not yet set apart from my peers by height or sharp wit or beard. I was smart, having been bumped up a couple of classes, but the bullying hadn’t started yet. It was just a twelve month period, but I think we had more fun that year than any other that followed (at school anyway, university is something else entirely).

This is a story about me and the boys. The year was 1997 and we were 13. Out of a class of 12, seven of those were boys and six of them had grown up together since kindergarten, aged 1. To say that we were close would be an understatement — we were basically brothers.  We were almost inseparable at school, always perfectly in-step and full of rapid chatter as we moved from classroom to classroom, laughing at jokes we could guess the ends of and finishing each other’s sentences.

Despite our closeness, we were still very different from one another. Some of us were academically brilliant while others simply did enough to get by. I wasn’t a chatter-box back then, but I did always raise my hand in class — I was that kid (though to be fair, I did always know the answer). I wasn’t particularly playful either… but my friends were! They were complete pranksters and always up to no good! And I always stuck at the focus of the damn crossfire.

There’s a strange kind of loyalty between childhood friends. Or maybe it’s just the fact that children are capable of firing and forgetting. When you’re 13 you can pull your best friend’s pants down, but don’t try it when you’re 31.

What I’m trying to say is, as the shy, unassuming, genteel member of the group, I was always the butt of their jests, jibes and practical jokes. I could tell you a lot of stories from that year. I could tell you about our out of bounds adventures or our scary dungeon-crawling experiences beneath our Victorian-era school building. The problem is… I’d have to ask them for permission first. A lot of the stuff is probably quite illegal too, in hindsight (it’s not really a consideration when you’re a kid), so I should probably stick to just the boner-related humour — well, except one childhood erection story that I can’t tell you until two people die.

With the preamble out of the way, let’s begin! It was a history class, and I had just stepped outside the room to talk to the teacher in private. I’d been a very naughty boy and she wanted to squeeze an apology from me — something she knew would be difficult. After a few fruitless minutes we both trudged back into the classroom, she with a frown on her face, and me with a grin.

I sat down.

A chorus of giggles erupted from behind me.

The teacher turned from the blackboard and the diagram illustrating the fall of the Roman Empire to see what a bunch of boys were giggling about. I too tried to turn around.

But I couldn’t. Because they’d glued me to my damn seat.

‘Shit, I’ve been glued to my chair’ isn’t really the first conclusion you jump to in such a situation. Let’s face it, it’s not the kind of thing you really expect, even from your prankster best friends. So of course, instead of thinking rationally, I just tried to turn around with even more force.

Rrrrrippp. There went the seat of my pants. Glue, warm, sticky glue was now pooling in, on and around my smooth, hairless… bits. I still wasn’t free either; I was still very much stuck.

By this stage, the guys behind me were in hysterics. The girls to my right were also staring at the desk, my chair, my pants. They were waiting to see what the teacher would say, before breaking their boring and sensible decorum.

Now, don’t ask me to explain the next bit. It doesn’t make sense to me now, and it never makes sense when you’re a teenager, but, yes, my fragile, nervous body decided that it was perfect time for a boner. Boiiiingggg!

Thank God I’m sitting at a desk or this could be a lot worse.

I smile nervously at the girls and try to shuffle a little further under the desk. It’ll all be over within a few minutes. Well, except for the glue. Shit, the glue.

Noooo, the teacher’s walking towards me…

‘What’s going on Seb?’

Where do I start… ‘I’m, er, stuck.’ A nervous grin — mine, not hers.

She looked down at me, cowering behind my desk. She must’ve misread the weird mix of tortured emotions displayed on my my face. The following act would never — COULD never — be forgotten. Twelve years later and what she did next is still indelibly scarred upon my subconscious.

She pulled back the desk with all the aplomb and fervor of an amateur magician.

‘Ah-ha–!’

A choked cry of alarm — from her, not me.

‘JESUS CHRIST!’

There I sat, my skinny teenage todger bursting forth from within my torn, sticky, glue-caked pants.

Unable to move. Exposed to the entire classroom. The only real saving grace is that I was 13 and not 16, or it would’ve been a lot messier.

(You can click either to get a larger, zoomed-in view… if you really want that…)

First, I just wanted to clear up some issues. Yesterday, when I ‘leaked’ (sorry) the first picture on Twitter, I had a lot of responses questioning the colour (and consistency?) of my urine. No, I do not have anything wrong with my kidneys. I’m not taking any vitamin supplements. I did not drink a lot of orange juice. That’s just the natural, slightly-radioactive hue of my urine. Sorry. That’s just how it is.  [And if you want more too-much-information, hit up Lilu's blog. Can girls write with yellow snow as well as boys...?]

Would it make it any better if I said my entire family were out and about enjoying the snow on our estate today, as I defaced our lawn? I think my sister’s off to the left somewhere, making a snowman. Also, after I had done up my fly, we made snow angels. My mother’s up the drive, shaking snow from the trees. I think my dad was off in the other field making a ramp to practice his snowboarding.

Anyway, it’s still snowing here in the UK. It’s really, really crazy. It’s easily the most snow I’ve ever seen — apparently it’s the most we’ve had in 50 years! The first half of it fell during the Christmas holiday, but this latest batch has effectively shut down the country. Really, really crazy.

I thought I’d spend a little time discussing the marvels of sexual fetishes and fantasies in east Asia. The region is special because of the time it spent disconnected from the Christian religion of the west and mid-east — Japan and south-east Asia never ‘enjoyed’ the medieval sex-is-bad-and-depraved Dark Ages. As a result, those Japanese (and the Thai, and any other Buddhist/Shinto countries in the region) have some really different ideas of what’s normal, and what’s sexually amoral.

For a start, the penis is good. Just like in Rome or Greece or anywhere pre-Christianity, the penis is a sign of fertility! Of strength and power! That never really went away in the East (check out the Japanese Fertility Festival for evidence!)

But, as you know, depravity feeds depravity. It’s a slippery slope, which is probably why the Bible/Testament-based faiths are so strict — those old prophet dudes knew that if you didn’t nip it in the bud, shit went south real darn quick. It might start with sodomizing your neighbour, but before you know it, you’re rubbing your ass in old oven fat and screaming ‘BANZAAAI!’ at the top of your lungs.

So, anyway, to both educate and disgust, I’ve compiled a list of the weirder fetishes and practices to come out of the East. For more TMI (because you can be sure that the next bit is going to be really gratuitous), check out Lilu’s blog.

From here on out, the links might not be safe for work. I’m not going to link you to porn, but there are descriptive diagrams… Also, that image above is a boy. Well, kind of… a ladyboy… she was once a boy.

Bukkake / pronunciation: boo-kah-kee

Ah, the poster-boy (or girl) of disgusting eastern culture! This is perhaps the most ‘popular’ of weird sex acts — not to say it’s a common practice, but it’s been the staple of western porn for quite a few years now, so it’s quite ‘well known’.

Bukkake, from the Japanese ‘bukkakeru’ meaning ‘to splash’, if you didn’t already know, is when multiple males shoot their (often voluminous) load on the face of some poor, (un?)suspecting victim.

It actually came about due to the ban on distribution of obscene materials in 1907 — you can’t show the genitals, but you can show everything else… thus… bukkake! What a great work-around…

Omarashi / pronunciation: om-ah-ras-ee

This one’s pretty weird. Literally ‘leaking’, omarashi is all about… wetting yourself. Or, more accurately, about girls with bladders that are full-to-bursting. Mostly this isn’t a hardcore thing — it’s deriving (sexual) pleasure from watching someone that really needs to pee. They can be fully dressed, or naked, it’s not really important.

There are also Japanese game shows which involve heroic tests of bladder strength…

Hentai

Ah, my personal favourite! (Well, some of it.)

You’ve probably heard of Manga, or anime — the ‘Japanese style’ of comics and animation, but you might not have heard of hentai. Actually, if you’re an Internet nerd, you’ve probably heard of it… or even seen it (and as you know, hentai is one of those things that can not be unseen).

Hentai, other than graphic depicting sex (obviously), is infamous for two reasons: it often involves protagonists that look very young (both male and female), and tentacles — big, gribbly, dribbly tentacles. You might know the term ‘tentacle rape’ — that comes from hentai.

If you’ve never seen hentai, it’s definitely an eye-opening experience, if only to appreciate the sound effects made by the voice actors… (seemingly, it’s quite hard to accurately produce penetrative tentacle noises in the foley studio).

A brief nod in the direction of Lolicon and Shotacon should also be mentioned at this stage (you should only really read those if you’re of a hardened disposition though…)

The Ladyboys of Bangkok

I had to end with the most exciting prospect of a trip to Asia: a run-in with the kathoey ladyboys of Thailand. They’re actually quite common all over south-east Asia, but mostly in Thailand and the Philippines. I have no idea why, but I find it better to not question such things. (It’s probably due to Buddhism and its different way of thinking about such things.)

They range from transsexuals to intersexuals, to cross-dressing and merely effeminate males. And they’re not just prostitutes, escorts or courtesans, that’s the weird/cool thing — they basically fill the entire role of… being female. They work in beauty salons and serve in restaurants. They dance in clubs, they model, they become pop acts… basically, all the ‘eww, weird’ stigma that we have in the West doesn’t exist over there.