(Remember, kids: Don't do drugs!) In this episode, Rich and I answer questions about Wikipedia, roommates, and sugar daddies. Got a burning question? Send it to potpsych@jezebel.com. Or to Twitter.

Boxers or Briefs? from Pot Psychology on Vimeo.

Jeana—the one who always wants everyone to get along—is so uncomfortable during Tamra and Gretchen's fight that she begins eating her feelings.


Every time I hear about Vicki's "love tank" all I can think about is her vagina. And I don't like it.


What's with Tamra's vibrator discrimination? Clearly she hasn't heard of a miracle worker by the name of Hitachi Magic Wand.

This is a great masturbation device, a gorgeous pair of plump life size breasts with a pussy in a realistic flesh colour, and also has an integral multispeed vibrator for extra sensations! Slide your hard erection in between these pert babies and thrust into the hot pussy, your dreams will come turn as the vibrations tease your erection to fullness and you work your way towards that urgent ejaculation!

Except, that is, for this "Rocker Apparatus," invented by Georgianna Reid when she stuck a dildo through the front of her wicker rocking chair and used her legs to rock the chair and thereby, well, you know. Although Hess's post is called "Dildos of the Future," a wicker chair seems rather a low-tech method compared to some fucking machines I've seen. But, to Reid, it must have been quite the pleasurable revelation — and good for her!

The only other application with a woman's name on it is for the "double anchor strapless dildo," for whom the (I hope) husband-and-wife team of Steven and Carolyn Skidmore are listed as inventors. The device defies description but I will make an effort if you'll look at the picture.

My understanding is that the woman wearing the strap-on, instead of putting it in a harness, sticks the barbed bit in her ass like a butt plug and the shorter end in her vagina and, thus "anchored," fucks her partner (in the application, it's intended to be a woman, but choose your own adventure) with the longer protuberance. I'm going to guess that the Skidmores have a close relationship.

The other inventions — including a dildo attached to an Ab Rocker (which I am pretty sure I saw in some gay porn), a make-a-copy-of your-willy kit (similar to what Tracie used to make a lollipop 18 months ago) and the idea of female sperm — were all invented by men, possibly for their own use. But what was the stupidest sex toy you ever saw — the one that was designed for how a dude thinks women fuck themselves? And what would you invent, if you could?

The Dildos of the Future [The Sexist]

Earlier: Sexual Chocolate: Testing The Clone-A-Willy Kit

My favorite part about how women were discovering how to pleasure themselves is this lady's face when she's shown a vibrating dildo.

The documentary also talks about the feminist protest of the 1969 Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City, a pivotal moment in the women's movement. Usually, for retrospectives on feminism, we hear a lot from scholarly talking heads who have not only studied and analyzed the movement, but were also part of it. But Sex in '69 featured a lesser-examined — but equally illuminating — viewpoint: that of a 1969 Miss America contestant. In this clip, Susan Anton, Miss California 1969, gives her take on how the protest affected her. Interestingly, 40 years later, she is grateful for women's liberation, and thinks we still have a long way to go.

•  Dr. Fabiola Carrieri says she was not offended by the comment made by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi ("I wouldn't mind being resuscitated by you") while she was working in an Abruzzo field hospital. She said it was merely a "gallant" compliment intended to lighten the drama of the situation. •  Police in Saudi Arabia are investigating an elaborate hoax that involved sewing machines, cell phones, and a non-existant substance called "red mercury." •  A Swedish man has announced that he plans to display what he calls "Scandinavia's largest collection of erotic items" in his Stockholm garden. He owns over 15,000 "erotic items" to combat society's "anti-sex" leanings. • If you're looking to build your own erotic collection, be one of the first 100 people to stop by Babeland on tax day and receive a free Gold Digger vibrator. • Dr. Aronne, author of new dieting book The Skinny, explains to the Wall Street Journal why a big meal makes you want to eat more. He also sets up a daily diet plan that advises groundbreaking weight loss measures like breakfast and salads. •  The Houston Chronicle explores yet another stupid trope for ladies in Hollywood: the high powered, but still mentally unstable, career woman. • Judith Krug, the founder of Banned Book Week and former director of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom, has sadly passed away. •  The Iraqi government has been working quietly on a draft law that seeks to protect victims of sex trafficking and punish the abusers with fines and prison sentences. Currently Baghdad offers no protection to victims of trafficking. • Allen Andrade, 32, is scheduled to go on trail today for the murder of Angie Zapata, a transgender woman. Andrade is believed to be the first person tried for a hate crime under the sexual orientation section of Colorado's hate crime law. •  The Parks and Recreation office of Spokane, WA, have employed an exterminator who plans to detonate some 100-150 squirrels that hide in the ground with a special machine called the Rodenator Pro. •  A man from Texas has been ticketed for cursing at his neighbor about his cat, who liked to "defecate" in his yard. "I used the slang word, the four-letter word to describe what the cat was doing," he later explained. • In attempts to escape prosecution in a fatal drunk driving case, the defendant published his own (fake) obituary. He was later found alive, hiding under a pile of rocks in New Mexico. •  A polar bear from Chicago has been brought all the way to Detroit to mate with two females at the Detroit Zoo. • Spokesmodels at the New York Auto Show have been forced to field questions about the bailout from attendees, despite the fact that they are employed by temp agencies and don't actually have anything to do with the auto industry. • 

O's sex expert, Dr. Laura Berman, suggested that parents have a discussion about the basic mechanics of the male and female anatomies when their kids are around 10 or 11 years old. Then, when children are 14 or 15, parents should have an in-depth conversation about self-stimulation, and mention that one option includes vibrators.

Gayle and some of the moms in the audience were totally freaked out by this. Gayle said it was "too much information," but the whole point of the show was that kids are learning about sex in other places anyway, so parents should take the wheel and edify their spawn themselves to ensure they are getting accurate information.

Dr. Berman's argument to scared moms is that it's important that girls not only know about their own bodies but understand what it means to reach an orgasm. Because if they know what an orgasm is, and that they can do it for themselves, then they can own it, and they will know that they never have to depend on another person to make them feel that way.

The first time a vibrator ever met my ladybits was in high school and, rather grossly in retrospect, it belonged to my boyfriend's mom. What? We washed it off before and after. He wasn't particular skilled at my clit and neither was I, so we sort of just used it as a dildo a couple of times and then quit bothering with it. God, I hope she doesn't read this. If so... I'm sorry! I was young and foolish then! We really did wash it thoroughly!

Personally embarrassing admissions aside, my second (and non-borrowed) vibrator was a gift to me from two guy friends for my 17th birthday. The one friend bought it at Spencer's Gifts and it was 9 inches long with a light-up tip (first question I asked: "Why does it need to light up?"). For the general amusement of the party I had for said birthday, they brought along batteries. My friends ended up — and when I say my friends, I mean, literally, almost every single one of my friends — played a game of surprise hot-potato with it in which the goal was to hand it, buzzing, to someone before they realized what they were touching. It got hidden in a drawer in my bedroom for a while and brought to college with me, since I still hadn't figured out that whole clitoral-stimulation orgasm thing yet. For some reason, I started using it with my first college boyfriend, and finally figured out how to get myself off. Once I did, I was hooked, so when he went away, I kept using it. It got used with and without a succession of boyfriends over the years, but finally bit the dust my senior year in college. RIP, baby.

My second vibator I bought during graduate school, a similarly-unadorned hard plastic model in beige. Between a long-distance relationship, the end of that relationship and a second LDR, that shit buzzed its last less than a year into our relationship while I was living in New York for the summer. It had the same staying power as the guy I was seeing at the time, come to think of it. Fuck you, waste of $10.

My third toy I purchased at a sex shop off Columbus Circle in NYC. I got all fancy that time and bought a gold-colored one — but still hadn't learned my lesson buying cheap vibrators: It lasted less than 6 months, so into the trash it went. I finally decided to get a little smarter about attending to the needs to my clit after that, and bought one with attachments, which lasted me several years. I even kept it all in the box, which was adorned with pictures of a naked girl utilizing it. The first time I hired movers, I stuck the whole thing at the bottom of a box of books which, naturally ripped open. The movers carefully hid any evidence that they'd found my vibrators, and then one of them left me a note with his telephone number. I never called.

A couple years into my relationship with my fancy vibrator and accessories, I was on a business trip in New Orleans and practically squirming with horniness. I didn't mean to cheat, honestly I didn't, but all those sex shops on Bourbon Street were just calling to my clit, so I walked into one on a lunch break and bought my first penis-shaped (if still rigid plastic) vibrator. My boyfriend at the time wasn't happy about my purchase (because it was penis-shaped, I guess?), so I pretended like I didn't like it any better than my old toy and kept it hidden away when he was around. But, once he was gone, so was the old (and faltering) vibrator, attachments and all.

To my great surprise, that spur-of-the-moment New Orleans purchase is still with me, 5 years later. I might have spent more on batteries than I ever would've on a Magic Wand, but I don't care. I know my vibrator is getting older and it's not quite getting the same RPMs as it used to and goes through batteries quicker than I remember (of course, that might just be me using it more often than I used to), but I already rue the day when I have to hide it in with a bunch of other trash no one will bother picking through and go to a sex shop and buy a replacement. Maybe after that I'll suck it up and do the environmentally conscious thing and buy a plug-in model, but something about fucking myself with anything that has a cord hanging off of it might be a little too scary and/or tampon-like for me.

Earlier: Sci-Fi For Women: Marrying Your Vibrator
How Do You Dispose Of Broken Vibrators?

I hinted at this a bit in my post about that Roman Polanski documentary, but people really took it the wrong way, saying that I was a rape apologist or something, which is just silly. I think what it comes down to is maybe the divide between second and third wave feminism. Or actually, maybe it's that some people don't accept that feminism isn't monolithic, and that we can (and do) have different views about a number of things, from porno to age of consent, with the one basic truth being that "women are people too." Of course I'm not a rape apologist. But I'm a child influenced by riot grrrl and the sex-positivity movement, so maybe things I say can come off as harsh, and perhaps get misinterpreted by those who don't place as much importance on those things. (Or maybe people placed too much importance on an IM conversation, which is always a more casual form of communication.)

Anyway, this is kind of related to that, but only slightly: What I'm getting at is that yeah, duh, rape is bad and awful and horrible. But there's so much more to our shared culture as girls than just rape, domestic violence and menstrual cramps. We have unicorns, and Easy-Bake Ovens, and our favorite vibrators, and Maybelline Great Lash, and a female presidential candidate, and stories of losing things up our vaginas for days on end that make us laugh.

I like the girl parts of being a girl. I can enjoy cross-stitching and cock-sucking. And I can express my own opinions without being labeled a bad feminist. And I, nor anyone else, should ever have to apologize for any of it.

Related: Bikini Kill - I Like Fucking [YouTube]

The unicorn both came to represent Christ, and also began to represent purity and chastity. The idea that unicorns could only be tamed by virgins became a widely held belief, and images of unicorns resting their heads in chaste womens laps, with not so subtle sexual undertones, began to appear in artwork.

Heh. Funny then, that one of my favorite unicorn novelty items has nothing to do with chastity at all.

I have this vibrator, which a man wears on this dick while the unicorn horn tickles your clit, and the back end tickles your, uh, back end. Not that many people sell it anymore, so I'm wondering if it's made of that bad material stuff that you're not supposed to put near your near and dear region.

One of the myths that the Time piece points to is that unicorns are no longer around anymore because they were "too slow" to make it onto Noah's ark, and thus, were forced to take to the sea, and have evolved into the very real, and very weird narwhal.

And while unicorns are often associated with Lisa Frank, and rainbows and butterflies, we actually like the way that they are portrayed in this Perry Bible Fellowship strip:

A Brief History of the Unicorn [Time]
Earlier: The First Unicorn
Something Stinks

Stats: The Cone is a British sex toy that, as its website puts it, is made of "soft, squidgy plastic." (Squidgy is such a fake British word.) There is a 3000 RPM motor within, and there are 16 different built-in programs of vibration. The two controls on the device help you manage the speed, intensity and pulsing of those programs. It requires 3 C batteries. The price, as I stated above, is $130.

Pros: You're supposed to sit on this thing, inserting the tip either into your vagina or your butt hole. I don't do the butt thing when I'm just playing around alone, so I sat on it with my vadge. That lasted for maybe a minute. I was too scared to release all my weight onto that thing, because it gets rather wide at the end (7" at the base), so I was sort of holding myself up with my thighs. I don't really work out or anything, so after holding that yoga-esque pose for 60 seconds my legs turned into jelly. So instead, I sat down, placed the cone on my bed, and wedged it between my legs, and pressed it up against my crotch, Western saddle-style. I have to say that the motor was totally on par with the kind of strength I need to be worked properly. And the pulsing was really awesome. I really was partial to program 14, that had heavy, altered pulsing, with some steady vibe thrown in every few seconds for good measure. Also, it's super-duper quiet.

Cons: One of my friends at our brother site Gizmodo told me that when the editors over there review gadgets, one of the ways they rate it is by trying to use the item without reading directions, because nothing should be that difficult to use that you would need written instructions. I feel like that line of thinking particularly applies to sex toys, because when you're ready to get off, the last thing you want to do is sit down and try to have to use your brain. The Cone fails on this front. I didn't understand how to open it, and even though there are two buttons, I couldn't figure out the off and on situation. Also, I could only come while using this thing if I was sitting upright, and personally, I like to lay down and relax when I'm playing with myself.

Verdict: Great motor, good vibes, bad design. If they could make this thing as a hand-held, or even as something a little more conducive to other positions, it would be much more on point.

Stats: The Mary Mermaid is a dildo in the shape of a mermaid (and also, disturbingly, the virgin Mary), with a fin that curves up for clit stimulation. It's part of manufacturer Fun Factory's "Twist 'n' Shake" line of toys, and has separate controls to adjust vibration of the fin and rotation of the dildo. It's 9.25" in total size, with 4.5" of "insertable" length. It takes 4 AA batteries, and costs $73.95. It's a little bit noisy when you have it going at full blast, but nothing out of the ordinary. Check out the way it moves and sounds here (don't worry, this is just a demonstration and my vagina does not make an appearance):

Pros: This thing looks and moves strangely and its freakishness alone kinda turned me on. Having separate controls for rotation and vibration (each of which can be completely shut off) is a plus. The sound of the mechanism isn't too loud or annoying.

Cons: I warmed up with some fin vibe before plunging the dildo in. I also put on some Xtube porn to help me along. I inserted the top of the dildo in after a few minutes, but it (or my vagina) was being stubborn and wouldn't really go in, even though I was plenty wet. I turned up the rotation to see if it could sort of twist its way in there. I could only get the bulbous head part in though. While the top portion was still inside me, I let go of the Mermaid and looked down to see what was going on. The bottom half was seriously flopping around like a fish out of water. I couldn't help but think of that Faith No More video. I couldn't get off.

Verdict: Meh. It's pretty much just The Rabbit, repackaged as a mythical creature.

Mary Mermaid [VibeReview]

Earlier: The NEA: Is This "Luxury" Vibrator Worth It?