Things That Please Me: Stereoscopic Vixens

We interrupt this lull in postings with a scandalous report ~ I have discovered an amazingly expansive archive of naughty peep~show cards from Chicago's Columbian Exhibition of 1893.

What is it about the erotica of yesteryear that makes it so much more tantalizing than today's bare-it-all trashiness? Call me old-fashioned, but I find a demure hint of skin much more appealing than a spread-eagled centerfold... and real bodies with real skin and hair a LOT more alluring than the airbrushed and landing-strip-shaven models. The shy poses, the oft-ludicrous settings... I love it all.

As we are sadly lacking a stereoscopic viewing device to properly appreciate these three-dimensional treasures, my man took it upon himself to create a few animated gifs that combine the two images: behold the jittery loveliness.

There are no less than 57 pages of stereoscopic peepshow galleries, and a whole additional gallery of risque French Postcards. A few of the images are clearly more recent than Victorian times, but the vast majority are vintage naughty bits; truly an epic collection.

As my own body metamorphosizes to accommodate the little person growing within (only three more months!), I am ever more appreciative of the female form in all its incarnations ~ I am enchanted by what the body of a woman can do.

The combination of form and function is truly magnificent. And so I raise a toast for the sheer glory of this corporeal existence, and for these complicated systems of bones, blood and breath we call home.

Literate Smut

In my various travels on the Interwebs the past few months, a few enticing morsels of the saucy variety have caught my wandering eye... shall we say, a more discerning brand of erotica.... pretty enough to make me want to feature it here. And this post is oh-so-not-safe-for-work, lovelies ~ especially the links.


The ever-flowing fount of alternative cultural goodness that is Coilhouse first lured me to the sumptuous Web site of Coco De Mer. Founded in London by Sam Roddick, daughter of Body Shop proprietress Anita Roddick, Coco De Mer started as an ethically-sourced high-end erotic toy shop. I found an interview with Sam about how this came to be.


While many well-intentioned feminist-owned sex toy shops tend towards the well-lit and clinical in an effort to make their clientele feel safe, Coco De Mer is dolled up like a Victorian boudoir. There's nothing unsavory about the shop - it appears an oasis of luxurious unabashed sensuality and revels in the range of pleasures of the mind and flesh. The shop has since blossomed into a virtual community, complete with startlingly gorgeous photographs...


...arty explicit short films, user-generated dressing-room images, and an online storefront filled with delightful, if expensive, treats. Longing for a $170 sustainable silk organza blindfold? Or handmade Paul Seville custom leather restraint gauntlets? Coco De Mer provides.


After having my senses thoroughly tickled by my visit to Coco De Mer, I wandered over to Filament, the site of a brand new ladies' magazine out of the UK, on the recommendation of Seattle artist Libby Bulloff. I was intrigued by a line from the editor's note... "We stand at the back of the male strip revue on a hen night, looking past the oiled, muscle-bound hunks, checking out the narrow-hipped lads behind the bar." I ordered the magazine straight away.


I found the publication to have a refreshingly candid air, with blush-inducing stories and alluring photo spreads alongside articles about atheist parenting and alternative history. Creatrix Suraya Sidhu Singh used a Livejournal community to research the female gaze ~ and so the mantra of "what women think is hot" guided her image choices, and common sense guided her content choices. Her promise: no fashion, no diets, no celebrity gossip. What a relief ~ I'll definitely be looking forward to Filament #2.

A little cheeky diversion is always a good thing, in my humble opinion.

Why I Love Isabella Rossellini

Truly, one just can't help but adore the fabulous and talented Isabella Rossellini.

Never mind that she came to New York from Rome at age 19 and paid for school by being a translator and circus ringmaster. Never mind that she's been romantically linked to Martin Scorsese, Gary Oldman, and David Lynch. Never mind that she's stunningly beautiful, brilliant, and an active environmentalist.

I love her for her fearlessness. She was mesmerizing as the masochistic lounge singer in Lynch's neo-noir classic Blue Velvet. And who could resist her as a double-amputee beer baroness wearing beer-filled artificial legs in the beautiful surrealist film The Saddest Music in the World by Canadian genius Guy Madden?

But it's Green Porno that sealed my love for Ms. Rossellini. When asked by the Sundance Channel to make a series of "flashy environmental" shorts, Isabella took it upon herself to illustrate the frequently disturbing sex lives of insects.

Most definitely not safe for work, but delightfully bizarre and candid, the series features a charmingly amorous Isabella frolicking about in an oversized, cartoonish set, mostly made of paper. And she's just released Season Two - on sea creatures. Please let there be an octopus episode, please!

Here's a recent interview with Isabella. And my favorite snarky feminist pop culture rag, Bitch Magazine, just featured the series in an article called Wings of Desire, on the radical gender role implications of documenting bug sex.

You know you want to see Isabella as an orgasmic snail in a giant homemade paper maché costume. And her accent makes a statement like "We're sequential hermaphrodites" sound positively sensual. Just go.

Seven in One Blow

I tend to avoid blog tagging... it feels too much like a chain letter, and those give me hives. So I heaved a great sigh when Down & Dirty Designs tagged me - I knew it was inevitable. I decided to succumb, so - seven random things about me, but sorry, can't abide by ALL the rules.

{one} I still make hand-made valentines for everyone in my family and my dearest friends.

{two} At six years old, I tap-danced on the table at my grandmother's well-attended 60th birthday bash and sang Comedy Tonight.

{three} I was on a team of about 8 people that built a 35-foot-long, 15-foot-tall glowing blue iceberg stage/chill lounge/bar/DJ booth with a life-sized polar bear on top, and drove around in it in the desert.

{four} When I was a senior in high school, I wrote my college entrance essay on the benefits of having seventeen grandparents.

{five} Less than four years ago I was in the countryside outside Bucharest, trying to organize a staged battle between Romanian extras dressed as Celtic warriors, led by a warrior queen, and British Roman re-enactors, complete with chariots, horses, weapons, and armour.

{six} I was in a TV ad for a menswear at the age of three. I sat in an over-sized armchair and said to the camera "The men in my life wear Rochester Big and Tall." No copies exist that I'm aware of...

{seven} And in honor of Valentine's Day: I had the best, most colorful wedding in the world to the most amazing man ever. During the ceremony, he wore an electric blue vintage suit, I wore my grandmother's wedding dress, and my one and only "bridesmaid" didn't decide what to wear at the wedding until the night before ~ and she ultimately chose a traditional dress from Afghanistan that had been hanging on my mom's wall, and was only a little faded. She was also barefoot. I loved it.

Happy Heart Day to you all!!

A Most Curious Menagerie

The work of Chicago artist Jessica Joslin always makes me feel as if I've stumbled upon a strange and beautiful alternate reality.

Gustave, Clockwork Circus, 2008
With her scientific attention to detail, Jessica has the most enchanting way of melding together the mythical, the mechanical, and the anatomical to create whimsical little beasties that are hauntingly life-like.

Lupe, Flights of Fancy, 2005
She uses found objects to make each oddity like a relic from a natural history museum that never was, in glorious juxtapositions that make magic out of the workaday world's detritus: brass meets fur, leather meets glass, velvet meets bone...

Lartet, Flights of Fancy, 2005
And I simply adore the names she gives her creations, names that somehow impart a sense of purpose and the promise of a breathtaking story - Odette, Leopold, Callisto, Lautrec...

Figaro, Curiosa, 2007
You can see more of Jessica's creations in her new art book, Strange Nature. And read Coilhouse's excellent interview with her if you're as intrigued as I am.

Add this to the list of Things I Must Have One Day When I Am Rich - a Jessica Joslin familiar to keep me company in my golden years.

Bits and Bobs

I always loved Brit colloquialisms like "bits and bobs" or "I'm well chuffed." In fact, I may single-handedly try to bring "chuffed" into the American lexicon. Who's with me?

On to the bits. First, a tease - new designs are coming for Adornments for Tarts, at last. I received some exciting bundles in the mail - new raw silk, new velvet ribbons. And there's also a winter special in the shop - free pair of earrings with the purchase of a collar!

Also, my last post on my love of cephalopods helped inspire a new group blog from select members of the Etsy Steam Team. Come visit the Cephalopod Tea Party - a blog dedicated to a love of tentacled sea creatures! We plan to scour the inter-webs for all things octopus-ish, squidly, and tentacled for your enjoyment.

And there you can find treats like this outfit. Someone beat me to making my long-desired tentacle corset...

Found via BoingBoing, from this treasure trove of fabulous couture.

In other exciting interwebs fame news, I had an image featured on Theremina's drgblz blog, where LOLs meet airships - yay for ridiculously juvenile internet memes!

Finally, in the how-many-social-networking-sites-can-Choklit-frequent category, you can now find me on Twitter and on Facebook. If you must.

Sweetness of Home

The weekend's events were beautiful chaos, and I'll have a full report soon. In the meantime, I just wanted to share what felt like the most beautiful sight in the world when I finally got home last night from Steampowered, and three full days under florescent overhead lighting ~ this little corner of my workshop, where my love Stache had put flowers for me.

It's so very good to be home. Now I am off to sleep, since I must wake up extra early to VOTE!

Black Cat, White Cat

I find myself melancholy, trying to write a brief tribute to my poor Nimbus, who left us for the big donut-bed in the sky over the weekend.

It's the end of a feline era. Nimbus and her sister Carolina, to whom I said goodbye last spring, were born the month I graduated high school, and kept me furry company through a parade of houses and boyfriends and jobs for, uhm, more than fifteen years.

Nimbus kindly eased our transition by keeping us up all night with her grating senile meowing for the past few months, so we were definitely ready to let her go. Didn't stop me from crying, though. My home is now kitty-less for the first time in my adult life.

Fortunately, she was forever immortalized in psychedelic cat YouTube fame in this video a few years ago, with music and imagery by the illustrious Stache.

Oh, the purr! I intend to go out and rent Emir Kusturica's Black Cat, White Cat in honor of both my dearly departeds. Perhaps a zany Balkan comedy will cheer me.

Farewell, Nimby. All the peacock feathers and pets you could wish for in heaven, my sweet!

Goodbye, Chat Noir

When I started blogging, I promised myself I wouldn't write about my cats. This blog is just too new for me to be posting the cat already.

But sometimes one has to break one's own rules, and this is such an occasion. Late last night I had to put down Carolina, my kitty companion of 15 years.

This poster always reminded me of her - she had the exact same elegantly rumpled black fur and haughty amber-eyed stare.


She was a very good kitty and I'm going to miss her tremendously. Although there will be more room and less claws in the bed tonight, I'm going to be a wreck, and probably will be for a few nights still to come. Here she is, clearly making evil plans for household domination, in 1994.


Skyeboy made a beautiful little pine coffin for her, and sometime this week we'll have a burial.

Fittingly, the band is playing at a bar called the Black Cat this weekend - and so I'm considering it a wake for Carolina.

Farewell, sweet furry friend.

The Joy of Moo

I'm beside myself with excitement... my new Moo cards arrived today!


Whee! So cute and little. Why do we love the Moos so much?? I'll be handing these pups out like candy.

And what's even better, Stache gave me a tiny felt Moo wallet with six Moo-sized pockets to keep them in, made by fellow Etsyian Claire of Stitch and Shoot. Thanks for being so darn thoughtful, Claire! Who knew the world needed Moo wallets?

Sleeps With The Fishes

Tonight I'm reminded that life can be so simple, so fragile. I'm traveling for work, writing from a hotel in Boston right now. When I reserved my hotel room, the agent asked if I'd like a goldfish in my room. Excuse me? A what?

"A goldfish, ma'am, it's just a little something special we offer our guests. You won't have to take care of it, just... enjoy it."

Call me sheltered, but I'd never heard of goldfish as a feature. It seemed like a good, if odd, idea. Soothing, perhaps. Colorful, certainly. So I couldn't help myself, I got excited. And when I arrived at the hotel last night, after nearly an hour of driving in circles lost, the desk clerk seemed excited, too. "Welcome, welcome, you made it! Lilly is waiting in your room for you!"


And she was. Lilly seemed well enough at 1:30 in the morning when I finally made it to my room, if a little placid. I settled in and slept.

But in the morning, things had gone horribly awry. Lilly was upside-down. Not floating at the top, mind you, and still opening and closing her mouth mournfully, but being upside-down is never a good sign for a fish. This was definitely not soothing. I told the front desk as I left for the day, "I'm worried about Lilly. She's not well."

And upon my return, the spectacularly orange Lilly was gone, replaced by a large, pale white, heartier finned creature. The notepad next to the bowl said "Hi, my name is Lilly!" But it clearly wasn't Lilly.

I'm listening to the Radiohead song"Weird Fishes" in honor. Sleep well in the big aquarium in the sky, little hotel fish. Oh, what you must have seen in your short life. But dead fish don't tell tales.