Real Dolls: Love in the Age of Silicone (PDF)

I met Meghan Laslocky at a party at the Game Developers Conference back in March. As always, teledildonics came up, 'cause that's apparently all I talk about these days. She mentioned that she'd done an article on Real Dolls at one point, and emailed me the link.

3 months later, I actually read my email.

So, here you go. 28 pages on the history of the Real Doll, a few user stories, and some theory on why $6,500 worth of silicone and plastic can turn into a relationship, an addiction, and a hobby, all at once.

I's talkin' again! I sure like hearing myself speak these days...

(Topic for this one is completely undecided so far, so expect to be surprised! I know I will be.)

Writers With Drinks

Writers With Drinks has finally broken out of the spoken-word ghetto and into the slightly larger hipster-entertainment ghetto! To celebrate, we're having an explosion of literary greatness, including:

• Judy Budnitz, author of Nice Big American Baby and If I've Told You Once

• Clifford Chase, author of Winkie

• Sesshu Foster, author of Atomik Aztex

• Anthony McCann, poet and author of Moongarden

• Kyle Machulis aka qdot, who blogs at Slashdong.org

• Comedian TBA

Where: The Make Out Room, 3225 22nd St. btw. Mission & Valencia, San Francisco, CA

When: Saturday, June 9, from 7:30 to 9:30, doors open 7:00

How much: $3 to $5 sliding scale, all proceeds benefit http://othermag.org.

Though I'm not sure whose face, or what it's saying.

Me, Johannes of Monochrom and The Virtual Hole at DorkbotSF (more pictures here)

Picture thanks to Shifz

So I'm all about short notice speaking engagements these days!

I'm speaking tomorrow night as part of a rather impromptu Dorkbot at the Porn Palace here in SF. Who knows, maybe I'll finally get to meet the kink.com/fuckingmachines people. At which point, the universe will implode on itself.

Anyways, info:

Dorkbot SF

Wednesday, May 23, 2007(7:30 PM)

The Porn Palace

415 Jessie Street

San Francisco

94102

To cap off this weekend's craziness and take advantage of

maker faire folks in town being here to party with us,

and due to popular request, we're doing an impromptu

dorkbot this wed.!

Violet Blue - Pain Boys and Electro-Stim Interview with Kyle Machulis

http://tinynibbles.com

Monochrom - and their latest projects

http://monochrom.at

Shifz - Cocktail Robotics

http://shifz.blogspot.com

Team Unicorn (amy jenkins, liisa pine, wendi flybutter) - Triumph of Chastity the Legend of the Unicorn

Amy's flickr set

Kyle Machulis (qDot) - his latest projects

http://slashdong.org

Guest MC and Host Jacob Appelbaum

FREE ADMISSION but donations are highly encouraged. All proceeds will go to the San Francisco Crisis Center

CASH BAR 21+

For full details, including attendance, visit:

http://upcoming.org/event/193005

John Halcyon Styn, that guy with the pink hair you've probably seen before if you've been around the internet for any length of time, was doing teledildonics long before I ever got into the field. Here's a video of his experiments using the Safe Sex Plus toy around a decade ago, back when webcam houses were still a novel thing. Neat stuff! (Well, other than the fact that it shows how little the technology has moved in a decade, heh)