"He achieves continuous sperm transfer after having been removed by the aggressive female, or has moved away himself. At the same time, his palp (sexual organ) plugs the female, thereby monopolizing her." READ MORE

Second in a pair of essays today on Louis C.K. Previously: The Louie Bubble. READ MORE

The word "hated" adorns Hunter Moore's social-media bios. He has drawn the ire of the music industry, young people from all over the United States (as well as Canada, England and Australia), of privacy defenders—and, well, of many, many other people who happen to come across his website, Is Anyone Up?, and find it appalling. The death threats have not fazed him. Nor has the spectre of lawsuits; while many have been threatened, to Moore's knowledge, not one has been filed. READ MORE

It seems worth mentioning that, as loaded as this charming Times style report on Alex Dimitrov's gay poetry salon is with the air of "hot dudes getting together and getting it on!" (for example: "The play between art and desire is always in the air" sounds spicy but is immediately followed by something about how the salon went to Brooklyn in summer?) and as... wanton as host Dimitrov himself comes off (like: “I sort of had a list of gays that I wanted to come, and some of them that I wanted to sleep with"), there's not a single incident in the story of anyone hooking up. Actually, just one gay divorce.

It would never occur to me to describe ears as “handsome volutes to the human capital.” That it did to Charles Lamb, who also called them “ingenious labyrinthine inlets” and “indispensable side-intelligencers,” says one thing about him and something else entirely about me, but it says something, too, about the linguistic environment where volutes to the human capital can thrive. Whether because of the Internet or some other mysterious, homogenizing influence, our language has lost some biodiversity. Even our obscenities—the parts of language least likely to lose their verve—have dwindled, and the survivors have dulled from overuse. “You've got balls,” we say, when once we could have yelled that “the testimonies of your Manhood are swell'd as big, Sirrah, as a couple of Norfolk dumplings!” Where we use mean hypotheticals, like "I would love to have the ability to make you sore," our ancestors promised each other nights spent “in prigging, wapping, and telling of drunken stories.” READ MORE

I'm not sure I really even know what cosplay is, other than that lots of people do it, and not necessarily for sex, just for fun and coolness, but the other night I was watching The Switch, one of the best movies of 2010, despite its problematic insemination issues, and (no spoilers!) at one point there's a kid's birthday party and all the adults are dressed in pirate hats and you can't help but think: wouldn't it be sexy and fun to dress up as a pirate or a lion or something like that sometimes? It'd be like you were in an Adam Ant video all the time! There just aren't enough excuses these days to dress up in elaborate costumes. (Also, think of the truly excellent costume party in Beginners! Who wouldn't want to meet Ewan McGregor when he's dressed as Freud and also carrying a puppy? I mean, what more do you need, shoes made out of chocolate cake?) Anyway, Comic-Con is coming and the goose is getting fat, please fashion for yourself a complicated hat. But who to dress up as even? I totally get stumped there. Just don't leave your sexy funtime costume thingies laying around or half of Chicago gets evacuated.

"I met another guy who was funny and went to film school at NYU. He was twenty-two and had a tiny apartment on Great Jones Alley and I thought he might make a suitable boyfriend, or at least a suitable deflowerer. He was older, he’d done it before, and, I had been told, all men were dying to have sex at all times, so it would be easy enough to get him on board with my project. It was harder than I thought. He was eager to make out and grope, but to my surprise and disgust, he seemed very uneasy about engaging in actual intercourse once I admitted—in the most blasé terms—that it would be my first time. It is possible this young man had located the term “statutory rape” somewhere in the back of his head. Or, perhaps his father or mother had warned him that girls get attached to their first lover—you break it you bought it, or some such. But his reluctance was no match for my romantic poetry: I told him that he didn’t have to worry about me falling in love with him, and that if he wouldn’t sleep with me I’d find someone else who would. As it happened, we split the difference." READ MORE