Is It Possible To Get Hemorrhoids From Anal Sex? from Pot Psychology on Vimeo.

ANA MARIE: Greetings from Milwaukee's FINEST hotel.

MEGAN: You're at a Marriott, aren't you.

ANA MARIE: But you know, I had to wait, like 90 minutes for my luggage last night. I didn't get a king size bed! There is no creamer in my in room coffee! WIRE COAT HANGERS!!!! Actually, we're at "The Pfister," which has led to many attempts at humor from the traveling press corps. Personal favorite? "Pfister? I hardly knew her." (Hi, Sasha!)

MEGAN: See, I prefer wire coat hangers to the kind that don't come off the rod, which it's just like: really? I'm going to steal a hanger? Fuck you.

ANA MARIE: Actually, the coat hangers are fine. And there's a robe. That was all a rather extended segue into Alex Balk's rather awesome rant about a certain campaign journalist's peak at "how the other half lives." That someone would — apparently unself-consciously — use the title of a book about the lives of the desperately poor to describe the life of a pampered campaign journalist is... gosh, the word "ironic" is overused, huh I admit: I have complained about such things as HAVING TO GET UP EARLY. Or WAITING IN LINE.

MEGAN: Not that I like mornings. Or other people in my way.

ANA MARIE: Totally! It sucks!

MEGAN: Or pretty much anything before coffee.

ANA MARIE: But you know what? I am staying in Milwaukee's finest hotel. And I'm not being sarcastic.

MEGAN: I used to work for a Milwaukee-based company. It's really not a bad town. It's way better than Lansing. Plus, you really can get cheese with pretty much everything you'll eat there.

ANA MARIE: But to anyone complaining in public and unironically about pretty much anything inconvenient about life on the trail gets one response from me: I bet they deliver the luggage right on time in Baghdad, asshole. Seriously: More journalists have died covering that illegal war than any other international conflict. So if you are unsatisfied with the food in the file center, I am sorry. And this is just staying in the realm of "other bad jobs IN JOURNALISM you could have." If we went in the direction of "thankful for having a job at all" I could get a little angrier. Oh, and I've just made a discovery! Outrage is as good a pick-me-up as coffee.

MEGAN: Yeah, asshole, come blog with me! My couch can totally fit two people and I guarantee you won't have trouble finding your bags because my apartment is small. Also, I mean, like, has that guy not traveled other than for work? My sister went on her honeymoon and the airlines lost her luggage for two days.

ANA MARIE: Oh, and did I say "other bad jobs in journalism"? I meant "other jobs you could have in journalism which is rapidly shrinking pool thanks to the ever growing trend of treating news as entertainment and otherwise not putting any money at all into actual investigative reporting but instead spending $50k a month to keep you on the trail covering Barack Obama from the confines of a slightly off-smelling CHARTER PLANE."

MEGAN: He should be thankful it's not a bus.

ANA MARIE: A bus that people the color of certain presidential candidates used to sit at the back of. I suppose we should move along. But if I see Dean Reynolds today, I will ask him if he slept well on the pillow top beds here at the Pfister.

MEGAN: Why, so we can state obvious things like McCain's mortgage buyout plan will cost taxpayers money? Let alone make the government the entity responsible for foreclosing on people?

ANA MARIE: Oh god. Well the good thing about McCain's plan is that it depends on him being elected president.

MEGAN: But he's that one with the stones to bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran which we're obviously going to need to do.

ANA MARIE: Well I was worried we'd look silly going bankrupt as a nation spending on only two wars. Three? That makes us look like at least we have a reason.

MEGAN: Well, if we actually gave a shit about nuclear proliferation we might have had 4, but since it's all about posturing and hating on those of the Islamic faith, we might keep it to 3.

ANA MARIE: (Side note: apparently outrage+hangover is a worse combination than coffee+hangover because I'm kind of nauseous!)

MEGAN: Not including Pakistan, of course, we would never attack Pakistan, what with its stable and Democratic government run by a kleptocrat with little intention of hurting his personal access to power and money by reining in Taliban and al Qaeda insurgents on the borders that are attacking American troops in Afghanistan. There, well, that's a time for diplomacy.

ANA MARIE: But Megan, they're all BROWN (ish)! Can't add NoKo to the list just based on that? Well, Pakistan is a failed state.

MEGAN: It totally was (not) when Musharraf, our Great Ally, took it over in a political coup.

ANA MARIE: I am too hungover to even roll my eyes.

MEGAN: Also, do you think anyone in our foreign policy establishment has looked around and gone, hmmm. Maybe the reason countries like Iran want nukes is because when countries like Pakistan get them —regardless of their politics or warlike nature — America starts teabagging their leaders?

ANA MARIE: (And drinks last night were, of course, bought on the tabs of various major news organizations. BUT THEY DID NOT HAVE BASIL HAYDEN AT THE BAR, so I'm pissed.) Or, you know, countries like Iran want nukes because we have them?

MEGAN: My hangover is brought to you courtesy of a $9 bottle of Greg Norman Syrah bought at the grocery store. My outrage is from 2 years of a foreign policy Masters program.

ANA MARIE: I love Greg Norman wines! I had some GN chard on Tuesday. At the PF Changs in Nashville. Where dinner was courtesy of a nice Secret Service agent. BUT THEN IT RAINED. FUCK YOU, UNIVERSE.

MEGAN: Well, it was after Labor Day, presumably you weren't wearing white.

ANA MARIE: I haven't worn white since my thighs grew to their current size.

MEGAN: Best headline to a boring story we'll get all day: "Todd Palin had unusual access to wife's staff."

ANA MARIE: His wife has a staff? I thought we only made transgender jokes about Hillary! Yay, progress!

MEGAN: Also, I guess we now know what kind of kicky sex she was with "Driller" who I think the Secret Service probably should have dubbed "Drillee" if this is true.

ANA MARIE: I'm just glad women in power no longer have to be kind of butch in order to have people suspect they have a penis.

MEGAN: Well, they are pretty easy to buy these days, except in Mississippi.

ANA MARIE: And Scalia is so pissed about that. I see Hannity re-upped with Fox. So, you know, the nation is safe. In the sense that Colbert will not be cancelled for the next whatevermany years.

MEGAN: I think Scalia is pissed at the proliferation of sex toys because he blames them for not getting any ass. When, really, even lacking a sex toy, I would not ever have fucked Scalia. I don't think I'm alone in this.

ANA MARIE: Okay, I have met Scalia and I found him charming. But I also — in my single days — was not a stranger to sex with guys that made me hate myself. (Thank you Chris for saving me from that!)

MEGAN: You know, I actually thought about it and there's not anyone I hate myself for fucking. But I am also really egotistical, so it might have just not made a dent.

ANA MARIE: I actually argued with Scalia about partial birth abortion. At a party.

MEGAN: And? Did he argue back?

ANA MARIE: He basically tolerated my and my friend's drunken ranting with good humor. When he probably could of had us arrested. Or killed. Quick side note: I was once telling this story the daughter of one of our major presidential nominees and she asked, "Who's Scalia?"

MEGAN: Ok, but, I mean, it's not really fair to ask Malia to know these things.

ANA MARIE: Hint: this daughter had skin that could not in any way be described as "dusky." To be fair, Malia was really articulate when she defended the Kelo decision.

MEGAN: Anyway, should we discuss the new Ayers ads?

ANA MARIE: Christ. Here's the thing — and I know you might/will definitely disagree — what's weird about the Ayers shit is that, of all the things you could use to draw Obama's judgment into question, the best you can come up with is Ayers? Serious? Because I honestly think the 20 years he spent in Jeremiah Wright's church is a more interesting question. I ultimately don't think it changes my mind about voting for the guy, but it's a more interesting question.

MEGAN: Well, I mean, I don't disagree with you that there are better rational things but I think the Ayers think allows McCain's campaign to repeat the word "terrorist" over and over again and you know people ain't thinking some white college professor dude.

ANA MARIE: Yeah. Tho I don't think McCain actually focus-grouped that. Then again, he didn't have to.

MEGAN: It's like a twofer. It's hard for people to articulate why it's racist and wrong and it engenders the responses you want.

ANA MARIE: And the really funny thing? I don't think anyone on the campaign actually put any thought into that strategy. It just sort of happened! Like casual racism everywhere.

MEGAN: I don't know, this is the team of political strategists that gave McCain a black baby 8 years ago. I don't think it's unintentional. Because, like you said, the Wright thing is more interesting and complex. And, God knows, McCain's got his own bad associates, so it's not like they're doing Ayers to avoid getting into Palin's religion either.

ANA MARIE: You're going to make me link to my article about how Steve Schmidt is not a "Rove protege" again, aren't you?

MEGAN: You can, but I wasn't necessarily talking about Steve Schmidt, either. The Bush 2000 team pre-dates Schmidt.

ANA MARIE: Interestingly, most of the Bush 2000 team is actually working for Palin.

MEGAN: Who is, naturally, the person out there hitting on Ayers the hardest.

ANA MARIE: Yes, that is suggestive. And not in a good way! (Unlike, say, the idea of Palin's "staff".)

MEGAN: It's just another wink and a nod from Bible Spice.

ANA MARIE: Can we use that metaphor from now on, instead of "dog whistle"? Which is insulting to dogs.

MEGAN: Yeah, it's really unfair to compare dogs to racists.

ANA MARIE: Someone last night caught me watching Top Model on the plane and (there is a connection here) I had to explain that after a long day of covering an increasingly ugly race, pretty much the only things that help me unwind are really bad reality television shows and pictures of adorable animals.

MEGAN: I watched Project Runway, but, in the end, I wish I'd just stuck to Rachel Maddow.

ANA MARIE: NO DO NOT TELL ME
SPOILER ALERT
::HANDS OVER EARS::
LALALALALALA

MEGAN: Ana, I hate to tell you, there is no Santa Claus.

ANA MARIE: I am bitter and cling to my belief in a gun-toting Easter Bunny.

Would You Ever Date A Mentally Retarded Person? from Pot Psychology on Vimeo.

5.) Anal Is Optional Some gay men I know who are in their mid to late 20s have never had anal sex and don't really ever want to. Maybe they just haven't met that special guy to lose their anal virginity to, or maybe they are correct in the assessment that it just isn't for them. (I wouldn't know about pitching, but catching can hurt like a motherfucker.) Other gay guys I know only have anal sex with someone They're really close to. In this day and age where porn is so pervasive, people feel required to be a little more adventurous (which can be a good thing!), but just because you're open to trying new things, doesn't mean that your asshole is. And forcing the issue can lead to rectal bleeding.

4.) Sex Can Be Expected Or A Given For the most part, when gay men go on a date, or hook up with someone they've met on the internet or whatever, both parties assume (and hope) that the end result of the evening will be sex. I totally get this. Particularly because, personally, I would never be alone with a man unless I'd already decided that I wanted to fuck him, and also because I don't see the point in holding in my farts around someone all night long unless I got something out of it. Camille Paglia has said that "one of the costs of modern feminism is that women must be like gay men who understand that every date is a sexual encounter," adding that the way for women to be safe in our sexual relationships is to acknowledge and accept that it's dangerous territory, and to be equipped to deal with all that that entails. She's said, "Everyone in the gay male world knows that the price of sexual adventure can be death, so I am tired of young women regarding themselves as a special class that somehow wants a perfect experience."

3.) Stay Friendly With Former Lovers Every gay guy I have ever met stays friendly with at least some of his former hookups. Sometimes they become really close friends. Sometimes the old flames (heh) set them up with other guys they'd slept with, acknowledging that they are much better suited for each other. Sometimes they have sex with their ex-BF's ex-BFs. It's called "six degrees of Kevin's bacon." This might just be a New York thing, I dunno. But it's kind of a good idea. I say, yes, stay friendly with past hookups — and eliminate any jealous feelings — especially if they're hot or really genuine, because birds of a feather and all that. They might be able to set you up with someone else that you can actually date long term.

2.) Dominant/Submissive Roles With most gay couples there is a top and there is a bottom. But there is a give-and-take aspect to pretty much all sexual relationships across the board. In straight relationships, there seems to be this embarrassment for "progressive" people about a man taking the dominant role and a woman taking the submissive role. It's like the parties involved are afraid they'll set the women's movement back 50 years if a girl's hair gets pulled, or if her ass gets smacked, or if she's told what to do in bed. As long it's between consenting adults, no one should feel bad about what turns them on. Gay men don't have this problem of dividing the sexual power play.

1.) Resolving Our Sexual Selves With the Rest of Our Lives Identifying as gay means that your sex life helps defines who you are way more than it does for straight people. Perhaps having it so out there is why it's so much easier for gay men to embrace their sexuality while also embracing other facets of their lives, like for example, domesticity. Maybe it's part of the whole virgin/whore thing, but people find it weird when hyper-sexual women are also into things like, say, homemaking. It's totally accepted that gay men can be equally psyched about going to Bed, Bath, & Beyond and sniffing out a sale on pillows and matching damasks, and going to bed and having marathon sex (maybe in a threesome?). But people still have this stereotype in their minds of what a woman who enjoys filthy sex should be like. We should all accept that women, too, are multi-faceted creatures who might be into sucking a dick one night, and tatting a doily another; nailing a picture to the wall one night, or getting nailed against a wall another.

Earlier: Mad Men: Don Draper Dominates Dames

Related: Full size female advertisement [Coloribus]
Full size male advertisement [Coloribus]

P.S. No animals were drugged in the making of this video.

No. 1: It Can Make Chicks Fat
You know how you settle down with a girl and you start a family and then you fall into a routine which quickly turns into a rut, and you suddenly realize that you carry some resentment toward your wife for allowing herself to gain so much weight since your wedding day? Guess what. Your dick did that. When it impregnated her, and thus fucked with her metabolism and energy levels looking after the children you shot out of your balls and into her womb.

No. 2: It Smells Bad When You Don't Clean It
Yeah, it seems like really obvious info, except for the fact that most dudes seem to be utterly clueless on this one. Maybe only gay men and straight women are able to get their noses close enough to that area to be truly offended by the must.

No. 3: It Doesn't Want To Go In My Butt Without Permission
Your penis is a gentleman. The guy attached to it should be one as well. You need to knock first before you enter the back door. Your penis prefers it that way.

No. 4: It Doesn't Mind A Helping Hand
Your penis loves hands. You should know that more than anyone. But what you don't seem to understand is that while your peen might like to be touched, it also likes when your hands pitch in as a group effort on getting a job done. So when you're boning a girl, your penis would appreciate it if you also rubbed her clit with your fingers.

No. 5: It Will Still Stay Hard If You Keep The Condom On
I love raw dogging as much as the next girl, but there are times when you need to wrap it up (like if I don't know you from Adam). Don't pull that shit about how you can't cum with a condom on and worse yet, you can't stay hard, as though it's a threat like, "You better ride bareback or you're not getting fucked." Listen, your fussiness is your problem, not mine, and not your dick's. It's in your head. It's called conditioning. Try practicing jerking off while wearing a rubber.

Things You Didn't Know About Your Penis [CBS News]

Lately, more than ever, there seems to have been a resurgence of second wave-y anti-porn sentiment in feminism — and even on Jezebel — which to me, is weird for many reasons, perhaps most notably because mainstream people seem to be embracing the idea of pornography more than ever. I mean, the pages of O magazine even recommend a sex-positive attitude about porn, for crying out loud. Tristan agreed that it's growing trend, citing Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs as an example.

"Porn has always been, and continues to be a huge issue for women. I don't know if the debate will ever be over," Tristan said, "But it's hard to hear from other feminists. They haven't seen my porn, they haven't seen Candida Royalle or Belladonna. So they don't see that porn is not one monolithic thing that's all bad."

When asked how she deals with that, she said that she believes everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that they should watch her movies before expressing it to her. "Porn is complicated. [The perception of it by the public] has been over simplified. Porn is as cerebral as it is visceral."

And that makes sense, considering many of her movies are educational. Her Expert Guides series (for anal, cunnilingus and fellatio) sort of break the porno mold: She's into organic and authentic climaxes. ("I would rather the actors share a part of their sexuality, than have me tell them what to do.") And in the Guide to Cunnilingus, there aren't any penis penetration shots, which, she said, Vivid initially told her wouldn't work, because "if there's no cock, there's no scene."

But changing the way things are done is all part of Tristan's master plan. "Everything I do is deliberate—very deliberate."

[Image by Jeff Koga for Fleshbot]

Earlier: Fear And Clothing In Las Vegas
Last Night I Boned An AVN Award Nominee
You Never Forget Your First Time: My Day At The Adult Entertainment Expo
Related: 2008 AVN Awards: Dispatches From The Front
(Lots And Lots More) AVN 2008 Red Carpet Photos: Still Gagging On The Glamour

In the bedroom, Jezebel might be described as a "sloppy vixen."

• She explored early: over half of you learned how to orgasm before the age of 15, and nearly a third of you can masturbate if someone else is in the room, thanks to the freshman dormroom situation.
• Over 40% of you would totally bone down with your friends exes, but only if there were no emotional attachment.
• And a third of you have HPV. Perhaps you got it from your friend's ex-boyfriend?
• In her defense, if Jezebel is a slut, she's an honest slut: nearly half of you only lie by a 1-3 partner margin of error when giving your "number"; 27% of you don't even know your number.
• Jezebel prefers "Sade sex" to "Slayer sex", and forget doing her up the ass; 35% of you are haven't even had butt sex, and less than a quarter of you actually like it.
• And the room she likes to get down in? It's 54% likely to make Moe's look clean.
• And who she gets down with? He's a lot more likely to force you to watch "Stripes" than go anywhere near, like, guns and shit.

  
  Meanwhile, Jezebel's stance on current affairs might be described as "bleeding-heart realist."

  • When it comes to cuteness, Jez is mostly color-blind. In movie stars you are most likely to fantasize over the Caucasian Clive Owen, but when it comes to babies you kind of want a Maddox, although you love the rest of the Jolie-Pitt babes pretty evenly. You're deeply appalled by racism in celebrities, even when they are as dumb as Paris Hilton. You're good at compartmentalizing; you'll admit it when an enemy of democracy happens to be kind of hot. But when it comes to democracy protesters you narrowly prefer Pakistan's lawyers to Burma's monks, though much of that margin can be attributed to the dramatically-increased likelihood that the lawyers will actually have sex with you. You aren't delusional.
  • Which may explain why Jezebel is deeply skeptical that violent sex offenders can be rehabilitated, even when they are underage. About 20% of you wanted to see that group of teenage gang rapist-pornographers castrated and/or sentenced to death.
  • Jez has a nose for white lies and falsehoods: almost half of you believe Tyra banks is lying when she says she's never had plastic surgery.
  • Nearly 60% of you expect you'll vote for Hillary, but half of that 60% admit it would only to be to get Bill back and make it stop.
  • Because a mere 7.2% of you wanted Bush to be our president in 2004, and that number has not gotten higher since.

  The Jezebel lifestyle is definitely something to aspire to.

  • Over 50% of you think you're to old to have an abortion when your eggs are too old to hock on the black market .
  • And once born, of you think three or maybe four is too old to be carrying around a kid.
  • 81% of you think Michael Lohan is a better parenting role model than the "White Oprah."
  • You're highbrow about your media consumption: 64% of you prefer Tina Fey's comedic gems to Kim Kardashian's gem of an ass, and basically all of you would rather read anything than Teen Vogue.
  • And finally, definitely all of you drink too much. What a segue! Go do that now!

  So anyway, there you have it — a brief glimpse into the heart, soul and boy-panties of your garden-variety Jezebel. She's an HPV-havin', Tyra-disbelievin', bleeding-heart slob who chronically masturbates to fantasies of Clive Owen, and we wouldn't have her any other way.

I lost my virginity at 17, and had oral sex in the months leading up to that, and I definitely considered myself a virgin until that Saturday morning my boyfriend half fit his ween into me for the two and a half minute commercial break during a Real World marathon. Lemme tell you, the licking was so much better than the sticking. But it's like that for most girls, right? So if our first go at vaginal intercourse is kinda whatevs, then why do we consider it the event?

PSST - ASK YOUR KID ABOUT S-E-X [NY Post]

Because, I have to confess, I am an ass-virgin. I haven't ever had a long-term relationship with someone experienced in the art of anal pleasure (at least, I'm reliably told it can be pleasurable) and the one guy I dated who expressed an particular interest tried the timeworn tactic of telling me that I'd like it "once I got used to it" and then insulted me to try to change my mind. My response to that was that if I could have pleasurable sex or painful/uncomfortable sex until I got "used to it," I was pretty well going to opt for "pleasurable" every time, thanks. He thought I was selfish, I thought he was an ass-obsessed pig, and things didn't work out.

But, anyway, so when I told a couple of close girl friends about my ass-virginity over a few bottles of wine a few weeks ago, both expressed shock and amazement that I (of all people) had never done it, and proceeded to tell me how much they liked it under certain circumstances... and then they both clammed the fuck up. I didn't learn anything from either of them that I didn't already know despite the booze. So, I surveyed my gay friends, who are much more talkative and less circumspect about the finer points of ass-fucking, as well as hilarious pseudonym-choosers.

"Chad Dandylion" told me that "the rules are the same [as for vaginal intercourse] — it needs proper preparation, and if it's your first few times, a very gentle touch." Below, "Chad's" 10, uh, tips for the uninitiated:

• 1) Make sure you don't have diarrhea or anything else that makes you shit a lot and leaves the anus inflamed
• 2) Don't eat roughage at least 24 hours beforehand
• 3) Give yourself an enema with lukewarm water
• 4) MAKE HIM EAT OUT YOUR ASS FOR SEVERAL MINUTES. This relaxes the ring of muscle, acclimates you to the sensation of having something probing your hole, and also happens to feel really really really good
• 5) Use lube, not spit. make sure the lube is latex-safe
• 6) If it's your first time, make him go slow, make him be gentle. if you get startled, you can clench, which hurts at first, or if he's rough he could accidentally do some damage
• 7) When he pushes inside, push back like you're taking a shit — this opens up the anus and makes the initial penetration easier
• 8) if you're not being a total whore and taking it doggy-style, sitting on him is easiest, because then you can control the speed at which you get opened up
• 9) You control the pace, unless you're a submissive bitch and then you let him pound you till your eyes roll back
• 10) Be vocal, give him hints as to what feels good and what doesn't. If you like him teasing your hole by pulling out to the head then pushing back in all the way, tell him that. If you like him mostly in and skooching it around, tell him that. Remember: as the bottom you are, ultimately, in control. Unless you don't want to be.

Since some of that didn't sound so terrible (except for maybe the enema thing, and the eyes-rolling-back thing), I figured I would ask another gay friend of mine for his advice because the more the better, right? "Chance" told me that his only real advice was not to let a Marine fuck me up the ass, because some "straight" jarhead came over and fucked him with so little grace and lube that he ended up having to get the inside of his asshole stitched back together at the hospital the next morning and then learned what a panty liner was.

I think I'm going to stop asking now. Well, except for this little poll.

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