Boom or boom-boom? It's the eternal question.

New Year's Eve could prove to be something of a damp squib for some men in the Italian city of Naples.

Hundreds of Neapolitan women have pledged to go without sex unless their men promise to refrain from setting off dangerous illegal fireworks.

Local authorities are backing the women and have sent out text messages urging the men to "make love, not explosions".

God bless America—where we can blow shit up and make sweet, sweet love afterward.

New Year's Eve could prove to be something of a damp squib for some men in the Italian city of Naples.

Hundreds of Neapolitan women have pledged to go without sex unless their men promise to refrain from setting off dangerous illegal fireworks.

Local authorities are backing the women and have sent out text messages urging the men to "make love, not explosions".

To have no talent is not enough. You gotta have a gimmick.

Reverse Cowgirl (warning: her site has that NSFW American Apparel ad running down the side) says that submissions for her two blog projects, Letters from Johns and Letters from Working Girls, will be ending on January 14th, 2009.

Letters from Johns has run about fifty letters from anonymous men who pay for sex. The letters are, for the most part creepy, but some are sad. Here's the beginning of one:

I am now in my mid 40s. In my early 20s, a time when I had very little sex experience, I'd gotten married. We were incompatible sexually, never really comfortable together that way. Still, we had a big group of friends and family. Because of that (and just plain fear of change,) we stayed together for several years.

During this time of sexual frustration at home, I became obsessively interested in streetwalkers. At first I would just go to different parts of town where street prostitutes worked and watch them. Then one day I paid for a blowjob and it was on— every chance I got I was out getting street sex. In the car, in alleys, doorways and parking lots, in the hallways of apartment buildings, once in an airshaft of a public housing project, in the cab of an abandoned truck and sometimes in scary hotels.

Letters from Working Girls has run significantly fewer letters than Letters from Johns. Some of the letters are fascinating:

I am not terribly good at writing letters, which is strange because my day job is one for which I write constantly. I am a journalist call girl. Or at least I was, until recently. I met someone. I quit before he had a chance to ask me to. It's just easier that way.

I think at this juncture, I should defend the men that came to see me. There was nothing wrong with them, and they were not perverts. Most of my clients were single, unhappily married or married to a person that couldn't understand their needs. One even had a wife with cancer. I know you're probably thinking that he's the worst of all, but sex is important. He needed the comfort and solace of flesh against flesh, and in today's society, the only way to get the flesh against flesh comfort is sex...

Both projects were a year long. If you have something you'd like to contribute anonymously, now is the time, although both sites will stay up for your browsing, um, pleasure.

Today, the other meaning of yellow cab:

Yellow cab (Ierō Kyabu?) is a term referring to an ethnic stereotype of Japanese women, and by extension other Asians, suggesting that they are sexually available to foreign men. The term combines the use of "yellow" to refer to Asians and the image of a yellow taxicab which can be "ridden at any time."

It specifically refers to wealthy women who travel overseas or to foreign enclaves in Japan seeking to meet foreign men.[1] The term is believed to have been coined by the targets of such women in the late 1980s, but it was quickly appropriated by the Japanese media as a way of sensationalizing and censuring the women's behaviour.

Atrios makes an excellent point...

While the fact that virginity pledges and abstinence-only sex "ed" don't stop teens from having sex is unsurprising, I doubt that even proponents are particularly surprised. They aren't interested in abstinence, really, they're interested in making sure "bad girls" get punished for having sex by being subject to the appropriate consequences. So it actually works as designed.

Breakfast.

Teenagers who fail to eat breakfast in the morning are more likely to lose their virginity at a younger age, according to a new Japanese study. A nationwide survey examining the sexual experiences, family relationships and lifestyle habits of 1,500 Japanese found an unexpected connection between eating breakfast and teenage sex.

The average age of first-time sex for those who ate breakfast every day as a school student was 19.4, compared to 17.5 years of age among those who skipped the first meal of the day.

And some sad news for the Christofascists at the American Family Association: not even the kind of theocracy that you long for can stop teenagers from having sex.

Premarital sex on rise as Iranians delay marriage, survey finds

Rising numbers of Iranians are spurning marriage and having sex illegally outside wedlock, Iran's state-run body for youth affairs has said.

A survey by the national youth organisation found that more than one in four men aged 19 to 29 had experienced sex before marriage. About 13% of such cases resulted in unwanted pregnancies that led to abortions. Sex outside marriage and abortion are outlawed under Iran's Islamic legal code.

America's CIA has found a novel way to gain information from fickle Afghan warlords - supplying sex-enhancing drug Viagra, a US media report says.

The Washington Post said it was one of a number of enticements being used.

In one case, a 60-year-old warlord with four wives was given four pills and four days later detailed Taleban movements in return for more.

"Whatever it takes to make friends and influence people," the Post quoted one agent as saying.

"Whether it's building a school or handing out Viagra."

I will never understand Santa hat porn, or the sexy Santa hat.

Where did the Santa hat even come from? Someone on WikiAnswers asked and got this response:

your moms a- hole

Good one!

But, really: Where did it come from? Wikipedia isn't helping. Here is a detail from the earliest known drawing of Santa Claus by American Santa-Claus-drawing-popularizer Thomas Nast:

That looks more like your standard ski hat, I guess. But then it got stretched out, nightcap-style, into the floppy, fuzzy thing we see today. And it is not at all sexy. Sexy people can wear it:

All that hay looks awfully scratchy, though.

And I suppose there's the whole lap-sitting and wish-granting angle, plus there's the weird accent on the words "naughty" and "nice" that are maybe supposed to be sexy but always seem sort of creepy to me. But listen, porn people: you've got a giant, fuzzy floppy hat with a pom-pom on top of your head. Not. Sexy. Now be good little hotties and go put on a pair of bunny ears.

Hustler Magazine releases "All-Sex Issue"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If this was a lesson worth teaching in 2004, it's a warning worth heeding today:

A 27-year-old lady presented with persistent cough, sputum and fever for the preceding six months. Inspite of trials with antibiotics and anti-tuberculosis treatment for the preceeding four months, her symptoms did not improve. A subsequent chest radiograph showed non-homogeneous collapse-consolidation of right upper lobe. Videobronchoscopy revealed an inverted bag like structure in right upper lobe bronchus and rigid bronchoscopic removal with biopsy forceps confirmed the presence of a condom. Detailed retrospective history also confirmed accidental inhalation of the condom during fellatio.

Six months! She must have thought, "Hey, I started coughing a while after I inhaled that condom. And I never chucked it back up. These antibiotics aren't going to cut it—I should tell my doctor." But no. She waited until the truth was revealed by videobronchoscopy. This strikes me as not unsimilar to the woman who carried a half-gestated calcified baby for three years and just commented that everything was going great except "the baby never came out."

Tip from NaFun.

So what did it take… over 2000 years? But FINALLY the world's hottest virgin makes the cover of Mexican Playboy magazine. Model Maria Florencia Onori (who's undoubtedly a virgin herself… otherwise why choose her?) stars as the Virgin Mary, and after seeing a copy, God responded, "Dude… I'd totally tap that."

I write an advice column. Other people write advice columns. I frequently get letters from readers asking me to take the authors of other advice columns to task when they write something stupid. I expect that the authors of other advice columns get letters asking them to take me to task when I write something stupid. I usually disregard these requests because keeping track of my own stupidity is enough work. I don't have time to keep track of Amy's and Carolyn's and Abigail's too.

But I'm going to make an exception: Slate's "Dear Prudence" responded to a question from an expectant mother whose husband cross-dresses. Daddy only cross-dresses at home, "so as not to alienate friends and family and to keep his work associates from finding out," but what do they do now that they're having a kid?

If we keep it hidden, our child will most likely find out someday—when mom is doing the wash for two dress sizes—and then feel betrayed and hurt. If we keep on as we are, then our child will likely tell someone that daddy wears dresses, and it wouldn't be fair to burden anyone with that secret. What is the best thing for us to do?

Prudence's answer is larded with limp sarcasms and drips with contempt. She describes the father-to-be's cross-dressing as a "compulsion," makes inane jokes about cross-dressed teddy bears and daddy dressing up like Madonna, and frets about a child "growing up amid such sexual confusion." Those are fighting words for cross-dressers—particularly the "sexual confusion" crack. Straight men who like to wear dresses aren't confused, Prudence, they're just cross-dressers. (And to the person responsible for headlines at Slate: cross-dressers and drag queens are two very different animals.)

But... and I'm sorry to disappoint the many angry readers who've asked me to take Prudence to task... I happen to agree with Prudence's advice:

It's time for your husband to limit his dressing up to times when he's not with the baby. As your child gets older and mobile, your husband will have to take more steps to separate his fetish from your family life.... You feel this aspect of your private lives is none of your family's business, or your husband's colleagues', and that is an excellent attitude to maintain with your child.

Setting aside the sexual aspect of cross-dressing—and that cross-dressing in front of your kids, like doing D/s in front of your kids, involves your children in your sex life in an wholly inappropriate manner—there's the little matter of the closet: Daddy is keeping his cross-dressing a secret from family and coworkers. The mom to be is correct: her child—no choid—should be burdened with keeping secrets like this for mommy and daddy, particularly when the consequences of the secret getting out are so severe. (The letter writer says that her husband would lose his job if his coworkers found out.)

And, yes, odds are good that the kid will find out "someday" that daddy like to cross-dress. But I doubt the kid will feel "betrayed and hurt" that this secret was kept from him. If anything, the the kid will be grateful—particularly if the kid only discovers this secret after he's an adult.

I can hear cross-dressers grumping now: "Your kid knows you're gay, Savage. You're not keeping that a secret." But here's the relevant question: Is it who you are? Or is it something you do? If it's who you are—gay, lesbian, straight, bi—your kid has a right to know about it. Your sexual orientation isn't private, it's public; it determines who you date, fall in love with, live with, have kids with. But the stuff you like to do with your sex partners is private. Cross-dressing, BDSM, anal sex, pony play, watersports, whatever—there's no need for your kids to know about it. Or your parents. Or your neighbors. That stuff is and should be private; it's between you, your sex partner(s), and the friends you confide in about your sex life. That's not to say that you should be ashamed of your cross-dressing/BDSMing/pony-playing/whatevering. Far from it. But there's nothing shameful about respecting other peoples' right not to be burdened with too much information about your sex life.

So, yeah, my kid knows I'm gay. But he doesn't know what his dads do for kicks. This cross-dresser's kid will know his dad is straight. But he won't know—shouldn't know, doesn't need to know, doesn't want to know—what his dad and mom do for kicks.

ABC:

Study Reports Anal Sex on Rise Among Teens: Lack of Sex Education, Virginity Pledges, Ignorance Contribute to Risky Behavior

Carry—a Colorado college student who had been in a steady relationship for months—was recently cajoled by her boyfriend into some sexual experimentation.

He wanted to try anal sex, and even though the 20-year-old said she was "OK with the idea," she nervously downed several drinks before their lovemaking began.

Within 15 seconds, Carry — not her real name — said she was "crying and asking him to stop."

Recently, researchers at the Bradley Hasbro Children's Research Center in Rhode Island suggested that anal sex is on the rise among teens and young adults.... Experts say girls and young women like Carry are often persuaded to try [anal sex] for the wrong reasons—to please a partner, to have sex without the risk of pregnancy or to preserve their virginity. But many don't understand the health consequences.

Maybe if we had comprehensive sex education—which would cover anal and oral intercourse, and their risks and rewards—teenagers would better understand the health consequences of anal sex. As things stand now, though, even "good" sex education—good by American standards—ignores or glosses over anal intercourse.

Another note on ABC's story: it starts with the usual innocent-girl-pressured-into-anal-by-demanding-boyfriend horror story. But if you read it all the way to the end you'll learn that a lot of women are interested in anal intercourse for their own pleasure, not just for their partner's pleasure. Which makes the women-in-peril image ABC uses to illustrated the story...

...seem just a touch sensationalistic.