The first edition came out in 1997.  This second edition, completely revised includes new materials such as confronting myths about anal sex, anal pleasure, clear and illustrated discussion of the anatomy, helpful tips on safety, preparation, hygiene, and enemas.

A great book to read as your next bedtime story.  It will put a big smile on your face the next day even if you didn’t get any.  Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women can be purchased online.

Excerpts on the book can be found by clicking:  http://books.google.com/books?id=hLv1ohTIiicC&pg=PR16&lpg=PR16&dq=ultimate+guide+to+anal+sex+for+women+excerpts&source=bl&ots=MppSAqDMAz&sig=O2jok-NK4X6LjxmsY_O-ucFjfP4&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result

No surprise there as Oklahoma has not voted Democrat since 1964.

It’s going to be a long night, one I’m not planning to stay up for. I have a test in one of my classes tomorrow that I should be studying for instead of watching the returns on television and the internet.

Some thoughts and observations about this election day:

–Overheard on the bus this afternoon: a woman telling another passenger that Barack Obama, if he wins, would be the youngest President in history at 47 years of age. I had to jump in and politely correct her. Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy claim that distinction. According to Information Please, Roosevelt was 42 years, 322 days old; Kennedy was 43 years, 236 days old.

–A friend of mine from school celebrated both her 20th birthday and her first Presidential election today.

–Most of the people I know at school were planning on voting for Obama. My older (read: my age) friends were going with McCain.

There were long lines at voting precincts today, just as there had been in Oklahoma’s early voting. The precinct I voted at did not. I was in and out in about ten minutes.

No matter who wins, history will be made. Both Barack Obama and Sarah Palin were born in the 1960s, as I was. That’s a first, too. That will become common as my generation ages.

It’s when some future President is born in the 1980s or later that will freak me out!

You may recall that I looked at Tumblr once before - and ended up not doing anything with it.

I think I have a use for it now though - you might call it �??anything except Twitter�??.

Twitter is very public. It�??s kind of like text messaging the world. I wanted some kind of record of �??what I�??ve been up to�?? so I can look back and recall what I was working on each day. At timesheet time, I�??ve discovered this method of working is invaluable. Twitter is an obvious candidate for this task, but I�??m sure those who follow my twitter posts (over 200 of you!) have absolutely no interest in my various battles with C#, SQL, PHP, SharePoint, Javascript, and so on.

A little lightbulb appeared above my head and switched on. Tumblr. Perfect. It lets me post text, photos, quotes and anything else I deem �??remember-worthy�?? into a record that I can look back on. It�??s public, but I have no problem with that - I have nothing to hide.

At the same time I was playing with Tumblr, a new web startup appeared -Posterous. Similar in many respects to Tumblr, but it�??s visitor interface is fixed (you can monkey with Tumblr). It�??s primarily designed to be posted to via email, and it displays media files wonderfully. If you were looking for a no-nonsese photo, video or sound blog, Posterous hits all the nails on the head.

I seem to have quite accidentally found myself using Wordpress, Tumblr, Posterous and Twitter.

• Wordpress (in the guise of this blog) is great for long think pieces - like this one.
• Tumblr is great for posts no longer than a short paragraph - mainly to myself as reminders - although others may indeed find them entertaining.
• Posterous is great to post photos for sharing with the world and it�??s dog. Random snaps you otherwise would not have deemed interesting enough for Flickr, or a blog post.
• Twitter is great to elicit responses from your peers. A single sentence cast out to the interwebs and whoever may be watching.

One of the �??issues�?? with dumping information in so many places is how you might follow somebody that does so. Easy - FriendFeed.

Friendfeed provides an aggregated feed of everything I write, say and post across all services I have chosen to include. It also lets me follow the firehose of information coming from all of my friends. Even if people are not members, I can add �??imaginary�?? versions of themselves and attach their known feeds. It�??s veryclever, and has supplanted Google Reader as my main means of keeping up with the world.

The show is called �??Buzz Out Loud�??, and is hosted by Tom Merrit, Molly Wood and Jason Howell. Together they talk every day for half an hour or so about the latest tech news stories. They are informed, witty, and relaxed - and make a perfect listen while trying to wakeup during the commute.

Head on over to Buzz Out Loud today and have a listen - you�??ll like it. The show is available for download from the CNET site in MP3 format, or via the podcast directory in iTunes.

Other podcasts making their way into my consciousness at the moment are GDGT, and of course GeekBrief, hosted by Cali Lewis.

Nobody guessed that the New York Times might not survive for another 10 years.

While it’s terrible to see such well known institutions fall, it’s also tremendously exciting to be present during times of enormous change. As laughable as it may seem right now, our grandchildren will not understand the concept of printed newspapers. Devices such as the Kindle and Sony eReader are just the start.

The future is exciting, complex, and ultimately unknowable. People often write about information overload - I don’t  think that quantity of information is necessarily the problem - the problem is the intelligent delivery, selection and presentation of it.

The next few years will see the development  of tools and techniques to filter, massage and present the growing torrent of information. Really Simple Syndication might be seen as Leonardo’s sketches. At some point over the next few years somebody will reinvent the printing press, and the book. The appearance of the hideous Kindle on Oprah recently was an early indicator.

We are privilaged to live in such exciting times.

It�??s difficult to judge if nothing is going on in terms of development of their various properties, or if they are just bad at communicating news. Granted, they are not as bad as Apple, but surely they could do a little better? (but not perhaps as transparent as Steve Ballmer, who told the world a couple of weeks ago that they may as well wait for Windows 7 than purchase Vista).

Perhaps part of the problem is that news tends to come from Google via one route - the �??Official Google Blog�?? - and the blog typically only reports on finished articles (which makes sense). It might be sensible - given the huge coverage Google receives if they even add a damn font to Google Mail - that they had a blog for each of their properties, and included posts about future direction and ideas.

The best example of a company being wide open with the community is without doubt Automattic - the people being Wordpress. With their recent posts about the new features they are working on, they let the community see everything from the concept artwork through to the in-house prototypes. They also listened to the community response.

With Google, you get the impression that Mail, Reader, Notebook, Docs, Talk, Blogger, and many other properties could be a lot better if only they weren�??t left to rot for months on end. Google seem to love pushing new ideas out the door, but they do so at the expense of their existing ideas that are working.

Perhaps it doesn�??t matter. As I mentioned earlier, Google have such a strong reality distortion field around them that they only have to stick a different logo up and a million bloggers will report it - which then wags the media dog.

So, what’s my take on the whole thing? I find the political landscape embarrassing and a little bit scary.

I have never seen so much hate and discourse in America. From a Congresswoman calling for McCarthy style inquisitions to flat out racism and hate mongering in political rallys. Admitting that you are not voting for McCain/Palin means that you are “not a Real American” and that you are a socialist. Honestly, I have NEVER heard such absurd things.

I am afraid that if the political climate continues, and America does not get a grip, we will see far more violence and hatred rear it’s ugly head. In North Carolina, someone killed a black bear cub and hung Obama signs from it. An Obama/Biden sign was stolen from a minister’s yard and replaced with a Confederate flag.

Scarier still, or potential future Vice President is running around the country claiming that certain parts of the country are not “Real America”. Please note that the parts that are not real America are those that are on the “elite coasts”. Rep. Hayes told a North Carolina crowd:

liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God.

Really Hayes? Is that what you think?

I honestly don’t know where any of this is going, or what will happen in this country if Barack Obama becomes president. I don’t know if American can handle a black man as president. All, I know is that I am living through history. A history that might leave America with another black mark in it’s history books.

It would appear that those holding the perse strings, Elevation Partners, are unwilling to let such a situation continue, and are in the process of engineering a take-over in all but name. Forbes.com are moving into the Forbes building. Their boss will become the Forbes boss. Many of the Forbes old timers will be shown the door, and all the writers will write for both web and print.

Quite apart from the divergent writing styles required for web and print media, this is an important news story. It marks the somewhat public beginning of the end for print media that has been coming for quite some time.

Newspapers have been in trouble for a long time now. As the interent has become ubiquitous in middle-income households across the developed world, advertising revenue has left print media and been funnelled into the net - with the likes of Google, Yahoo and Federated Media delivering targetted advertising campaigns direct to potential customers with analytics that print media can only dream of.

Concerns about the rainforest mean people are reluctant to buy print newspapers and magazines - regardless of the fact that computers and electricity do far more harm to the environment than printed media.

The explosion of affordable, connected devices such as smart phones and “netbook” computers has lured the various eschelons of the intelligencia away from print media too. Where business people once read The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, or the Financial Times, they are now watching live stock tickers in their hand, scrolling through RSS feeds tailored specifically for them, and listening to podcasts while commuting to and from work.

It would seem that “Old Media” has to either evolve or die. The Huffington Post is perhaps the best example of a news organisation embracing the internet. The New York Times is also fighting to adapt.

The coming months and years are going to be interesting. In the same way that computers invaded the printing and typesetting industries twenty years ago, they are now invading the <em>delivery</em> medium of the written word.

He could care less.

It could be because he’s 65 years old, in resonably good health, and things like birthdays just get in the way.

I have several friends like that. Birthday-shirfday. Big, fat, hairy deal.

On my last birthday, I was just anxious to get it over with. I still regard my birthday as a day to be celebrated, as in “hey, I made it another year! Go me!” But this past February, it just wasn’t that big a deal. I had the flu, so as far as I was concerned, the calendar could have skipped a day and I wouldn’t have noticed.

My next birthday, it’s kind of a big one: 45 years on this spinning blue marble called Earth. It’s the 50th one I’m not looking forward to. With my luck, on that day, there will be an invitation from AARP for me to join.

Funny thing is, being that “retired persons” is part of their name, is that according to the Social Security Administration, I can’t really retire until I’m 67 years old. That’s in 2031, folks. A long way off still.

But back to Charlie.

Today’s just another day to him. I wished him a happy birthday, he said thank you, then pretty much implied that he wanted nothing special done today. So I’m not doing anything special.

Except thinking good thoughts. He can’t stop me from doing that.

Happy birthday, my friend!

I’m hoping that if this economic crisis does anything positive it brings us back to values that don’t include watching Brittany’s every move.   I think it’s been proven that Katie Couric might be over 50 but is much sharper than somebody ten years younger.

I’m unsettled.  I’m scared in ways I never expected to be, and ways that I did.  I knew that I had a limited window in which to sell my apartment and I just made it.  I knew the economy was going to go south, I just didn’t know when or how sharply.

Many people think I have it easy and create my own problems.  That’s true to a point.  What’s also true was that I put my apartment on the market Bear Stearns imploded.  When I came back to New York Lehman Brothers went under.  As my apartment was in Manhattan and my income very tied into the stock market these events were significant to me.

It’s simplistic and stupid to pretend otherwise.  The buyers could have walked away from the contract.  People with less money have walked away from contracts with more money

I feel inhibited and scared to say that money is important to me.  That I almost wished the buyers would break the contract as this is a time of great economic uncertainty and I could easily get a job in New York.  I might have hated it and all the reasons I wanted to leave would have been intensified but I would have felt secure.

I was going to take my apartment off the market when all of a sudden there was much interest in it.  I know I probably wouldn’t have been able to make that kind of money for the next five or six years.  It wasn’t a million or anything people think when they think Manhattan.  On the other hand it wasn’t shabby.

I have been around the block often enough to know how hard it is to keep money.  I have lived in Manhattan most of my life so it’s still difficult for me to understand the concept of not spending, spending, spending.

I just arrived here on Thursday, and I intellectually understand that I need time to adjust.  I’m trying not to put pressure on myself, but I don’t know how much longer an all cash buyer will have an advantage.  I could probably get a small mortgage and buy something incredible but the whole point of this is to be as unshackled from bills as possible.  Because I didn’t have a mortgage in New York I was free to do what I wanted to do until the maintenance and health insurance costs became unbearable.

My friends who live here are summer people.  Though they can’t wait until I find a house so they can come and approve or disapprove.  It’s not up to them to make a life for me.  It’s up to me.

A friend appointed me Myrtle Beach coordinator for a project.  Nice but I know uh my hair stylist who is very tied into the community but away right now.  I don’t feel comfortable asking people to participate in this project when they don’t know me yet.  I’m not going to fall back on my “I have an invisible disability that makes strategic planning more difficult for me” excuse as I have proven over and over again I can strategically plan.  Yet…

i realize that this project can help me meet people but I also have to focus on finding a house and this is the first time in two years I have had any breathing time.

Color me psyched but scared.  Color me almost having a panic attack.  I don’t have panic attacks anymore.  I found out that they were an actual physical thyroid problem.  I do have panicky feelings and my emotions change from moment to moment. I think that’s normal considering there are so many different options in just buying a house.  Broker?  Foreclosure?  Pre-foreclosure?  Bank foreclosure?  For sale by owner?

Then there’s that project which culminates in less than month.  Color me pink, yellow and with gag over mouth.  Color me talking incessantly.

I want to buy a house as I do think this is a good time to but I’m scared to spend money.  That seems to be a common instinct.  Just as I shook my life up, America went to hell….

When I was in my 20’s it was so easy to just pick up and begin new lives.  I lived abroad.  I lived all over Long Island and Manhattan.  I visited my sister for a weekend in Cambridge MA and came back to New York two years later with a college degree.  It was very easy for me to meet new people and “bond” but hell it was the 70’s.

No longer near my 20’s this is difficult. I need to be able to structure my time better.  I need to stop saying “I need…”

Crossposted at Courting Destiny