let the sunshine in!

It was definitely sad to see Hysteria go. Another small, locally-owned business pushed out of the market.
My darling wife and I went to their going-out-of-business sale*.
I picked up, wait for it....

A SOLAR POWERED VIBRATOR (at 60% off!)
It is difficult for me to express how much this thrills the eco-geek in me. Basically, as you can see, it's a bullet with a control attached that looks kind of a like a cell phone. You flip the control open so that it stands up at about a 45-degree angle, and it charges in the light! ALSO: It does not necessarily have to have direct sunlight. The electrical lights inside the store were enough to charge the floor model. Understandably it is not waterproof, due to the solar-panel and cells I think. I have not charged mine up or tried it out yet, but am super excited to do so. Mon Amore saw this while at the store for a bachelor party last spring, and told me about it and that it seemed like something that would be perfect for me, except for being a little pricey as compared to similar battery-powered toys.

I'll let you know how it works out.

*unlawfully gay married at Boulder Pride '08, not the same person as Mon Amore.

Locavist?

I have slowly, and modestly, trying to learn to be a locavore. This is not the smartest or easiest thing to do in this ecotome in the winter.
(I'm not sure which it is, to tell you the truth, does Colorado count as the American South-West?)
But, here I am, and thus I sojourn. I decided that student and apartment life were not especially well-suited to this little project, given that I do not currently have a patio, balcony, or even a window-box, and do have cats that like to eat plants in all forms that enter the apartment.
I also used to have a roommate who had a small tropical jungle
(members of which needed to take longer showers than I do bi-weekly)
in our dorm, which has made me a bit more conservative than I might otherwise be about urban farming.

I decided to start small - I would buy local as much as possible, beginning with beer and wine. I'm situated particularly well to do this in Boulder, a city rich in microbreweries and vintners. Local booze instead of imports. Money was, as always, an issue. Good, local, earth-friendly beer and wine is quite often more expensive than imports from South Africa, South America, Europe, and even wineries in California. Colorado made wine was often at least twice as much as the other available options. I often cracked and went for bottles that I knew and liked from more exotic locales.

With food I thought I would start by trying for everything at least to have been produced in this country. Small steps, right? . . .
Right.
I discovered a very important thing about me:
I AM NOT GIVING UP BANANAS.
I'm not. I'm sorry, I'm just not that good of a person.
I know:
they are NOT grown in these United States
they are often not farmed in an ecologically sustainable way
OR one that is benevolent towards farmers as people
AND they are a major culprit in the carrying of foreign pests ie) spiders to places they ought not to be in their shipping.
I'm sorry world, it's my favorite way to get potassium. I eat one with breakfast pretty much every day. I have them in smoothies, pastries. I just really like bananas. And I'm not even making any kind of innuendo about genitalia.

THEN, It occurred to me:
I HAVE LOCAL SEX!!!

Why is this relevant? I used not to. It used to take 3000 miles worth of flight on the part of one or the other of us for Mon Amore and I to get down in person. One might also consider the environmental cost of phones, phone-hours, and computer-hours (ergo the power to run them and materials acquired from the DRC to construct them) to have phone or internet sex.
Think of how much we're saving now that we're in the same place! Heck, we even LIVE together, no one even has to drive across town to fuck.

I know, I know. This is about as legitimate as buying carbon offsets or indulgences so far as salving a conscience goes, but there you have it.

My future plans include moving entirely towards domestically produced things of all kinds, including sex toys, etc. I confess, it will take a while. I'm young, I don't have a lot of money, and I was raised low-ish, middle-ish class in North America, I have certain ideas about myself and the world of which it is going to be really difficult for me to let go - bananas, tomatoes year-round, and the GAP.

But... I'm trying.

Rabbit Amnesty and Kidnapping

It was not too long ago that I expressed my concern that sex be ecologically sound and sustainable.
In England, LoveHoney has taken a step in that direction. They have a sex-toy recycling program!


Its not entirely clear to me whether or not this applies solely to rabbit vibrators, or if other sex toys can be recycled as well. In either case, its a step in the right direction, and given the enormous popularity of rabbit vibrators, a pretty big one at that. As an added incentive for the Rabbit Amnesty program, if you do recycle your old rabbit, they'll give you a new one at half-price! How cool is that!

I'm genuinely curious to know what exactly happens to the recycled components of the rabbits. Is the silicone melted down and re-formed? If so, is it re-formed into shiny new rabbits, or something else? What else would it be turned into!? I dare to conjecture that we may someday soon be looking at the possibility of vibrators made from post-industrial material. And why not? Goodness knows what was done with the class/aluminum/fibers that are recycled into new products. The recycling process of those things involves such thorough sterilization that it doesn't really matter. In Prince Edward Island they have only glass beverage containers. Bottles are sterilized and re-used as they are until they are no longer fit for re-use, at which point they are melted down and made into new bottles. Granted, they don't give you a coke for half-price when you recycle the bottle from your last one, but they do give you a deposit fee back on recyclables. When I was a kid I did pretty well at the corner market exchanging bottles I found on the ground for candy.

The only trouble is...

someone stole a shipment of vibrators on their way to be recycled....

Six cartons of toys cleaned and on their way to be recycled were stolen. Their estimated value was 750 pounds - $1118.40 based on today's exchange rate.
I am going to assume that either there must have been toys other than rabbits were in those boxes, or that there is a depreciation of the value of a used sex toy (the rate and calculation of which I would dearly love to know). At about 25 pounds for a new rabbit from LoveHoney, the estimated value of the stolen sex toys would mean that they boxes contained 30 rabbits, which it seems to me would need fewer than six cartons to contain them. It also means that the exchange rate on sex toys from the U.K. to America is really high. While 750 pounds sterling will buy you 30 rabbits (shipping not included) at LoveHoney, $1118.40 will only buy you 12.4 of the original RabbitHabbit from Babeland.

Evidence suggests that the theives planned to sell the stolen goods. There have been reports of people offered cheap sex-toys in pubs in the area. ew. Look out if you are approached by someone selling rabbits in Bath, cause, um, you wouldn't be sketched out by someone selling sex toys places other than a store anyway.