Mr. and Mrs. Kink (dot com)

I am overwhelmed with emotion and at a loss for words at the outpouring of support that people in our community have shown our family by donating prizes for the raffle, buying tickets, cross posting to spread the word, and the kind words that have gotten us through a very difficult time. We are proud to say that our personal need has been met and good (us, the sinners) triumphs over evil (them, the morally superior). To feed off of Graydancer’s post, we have proven that “a community proving that a community of pervs cares more about her education than an administration full of assholes.”

This means that instead of being my personal mission to fight for my daughter, I am on a bigger mission for the greater cause. I recognize that I am not the only person going through this battle. In fact, it’s a series of small battles that are all a part of a greater war on personal freedom, often with children in the crossfire.

This shouldn’t happen, but if you’re living an alternative lifestyle, it very well could happen to you. The only way to combat it is to put on the armor, link up arm-in-arm, and take them on as a commUNITY. That is exactly what I’ve seen in the last few days and I think we can do more!

The raffle continues, as it is scheduled to end on Sunday (8/17/08) at 10pm, but from this point forward, all proceeds will be going to the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom as a contribution from the community that has stood together and won this battle. This is our way of supporting the war that has been waged in the land of the free against personal and sexual freedom. At the end of the year, the refunded monies will also be donated on behalf of this community.

The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom is a national organization committed to creating a political, legal, and social environment in the United States that advances equal rights of consenting adults who practice forms of alternative sexual expression. NCSF is primarily focused on the rights of consenting adults in the SM-leather-fetish, swing, and polyamory communities, who often face discrimination because of their sexual expression.

My deepest gratitude to those who have supported and continue to support this cause. I have never felt such a sense of community in my entire life. So here is the current prize list for the new official National Coalition for Sexual Freedom raffle. Check back, as we seem to be adding prizes daily.

From Lochai there are three 5×7 museum signed prints from his recent exhibit at the World Erotic Art Museum, two of them are not only museum signed prints, but are also very limited editions.

Alley Bound and Curves are a limited edition of 10 museum signed prints. If you win, you will receive either 6/10 or 7/10. Beach Bound is Lochai’s iconic World’s Most Erotic Photograph winning piece, and is a signed museum print. (Sold normally at $75/print)

Ellie Lumpesse has donated three books:

The Straight Girl’s Guide to Sleeping With Chicks by Jen Sincero
Aqua Erotica by Mary Anne Mohanraj
The Ultimate Guide to Fellatio by Violet Blue

Ellie is also offering:

a 30-minute private phone session (that can include her amazingly sexy man) if you win.

Sam donated:

custom, hand made jewelry (a necklace and earring set) to a runner up. “It’s not a kinky prize, but pretty,” she said. Pretty indeed! Take a look: http://quem98.livejournal.com/306470.html

Thursday and D donated:

a signed 8×10 print of any one of their photographs
a copy of the book, The Mammoth Book of Illustrated Erotic Women.

And Thursday has also offered:

one of her sexy (orgasmic) voicemails to a lucky winner. Let me tell you, that is one hot prize.

The writer of Between My Sheets offered:

A brand new, still in the package, never been used Silver Bullet Vibe.

And just now I heard from my Naughty Secretary who offered:

Her services as a graphic designer. There are two separate prizes - each being two hours of graphic design time (normally charged at $120/hr). In addition to participating in this raffle, she is doing her own auction to raise money. She is sponsoring a silent auction of one of her paintings on her web page.

Edward, from Exjinn.net, the company that hosts all of our blogs and provides us without outstanding support and service, has offered:

A 50 gig hosting plan from Exjinn.net with 1-year of service.

Essin’ Em:

just donated a copy of the book, Wetter, with her story signed personally for you. As if that weren’t generous enough, she has also offered an 8×10 print!

Sabrina Fox - does the name ring a bell?

Sabrina Fox, as in the redhead hot as fuck bondage and fetish model, Sabrina Fox, was chatting with me today and mentioned that she has a few pairs of latex panties that she recently wore for a photoshoot that would offer as prizes. Latex panties worn by Sabrina Fox, anyone? Oh wait until I tell W about this when she is older.

Jeff Mach commented: (THANK YOU, JEFF!) [This is one of those prizes that I would like to know if you would like to be entered to win. If you're not in the area and can't use the tickets, then they would do you no good, but if you are in that area, then it's a great prize!]

I am running a New Year’s Eve fetish event in New Jersey at the end of this year (on NYE itself). I’ll offer a ticket (that is, admission for two people, including gourmet meal and champagne)

and

I run the Wicked Winter Renaissance Faire, now entering its fourth year, every February - again, in Jersey. We’re going to three days this year, and tickets for all three days would usually be at $40; I can donate two pairs of those, as well.

I feel like George from “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Graydancer, who posted a very insightful post about the society that we live in, just twittered me (it sounds dirtier than it is) and said:

I didn’t realize you were adding prizes. Throw in an audiobook version of my novel, “Nawashi“.

Rose Fox offered a very generous and naughty prize — a very good combination for this crowd!:

I used to review DVDs for AVN, and I’m still on Vivid’s mailing list, so now I have a closet full of unopened Vivid porn DVDs. I’ve been trying to figure out how to donate them someplace and would be delighted to offer them for your cause.

There are too many to catalog, so perhaps 10 “grab bags” of ten DVD’s? I’d do my best to include a varied selection so that the winner is fairly likely to get at least a few titles that suit their tastes.

(Just a note on this: because of the laws regarding the selling of pornography, the winners would need to submit a copy of their ID to Rose in order for her to be able to send them to you.)

Beautiful Rebecca has offered:

an original piece of sensual art from the artist. It was scheduled for a gallery show next year but we would much rather have it go to your cause as it hit home. It is 3×4 metal with an object representing a uterus called, “Oikos Cella”.

Alternatively, for those who win, but don’t feel that this art is right for their home, she is an interior designer and has offered to do a consultation for a room re-do. The details are kind of extensive, so I’ll discuss it with the winner personally.

Ms. Nikki Nefarious and AlteredAperture.com) has donated prints and a rope kit:

Collette for TABU Magazine 8 x 12
Jamie in Latex 8 x 12
Girl’s Best Friend 8 x 12
Scream 8 x 10
GarGirl Bound 8 x 10
The Enforcer 8 x 10
Sarah Sealed 8 x 10
Red Hood 8 x 10

and then A Starter Rope Package (4-pack of multi-colored ropes in different lengths and hemp rope cuffs)

Lily, who calls herself Lily (the rope ho) in her comment has donated

3 x 30ft hand-dyed, processed 6mm hemp kit

Radical Vixen, who most of you know as the editor of the weekly sex blog digest, Sugasm, is a very active political advocate. She has offered two books for the raffle:

She’s on Top: Erotic Stories of Female Dominance and Male Submission
Sex and Bacon: Why I Love Things That Are Very, Very Bad For Me

Thank you, so much! I cannot tell you how moved I am by the random kindness of the community. Lochai’s the one who started the commUNITY concept, but I get it better than ever now.

I’m officially re-launching the “Catalina’s Emergency Tuition Fund Raffle” as the “The Battle Is Won, But the War is Not Over” raffle with all remaining proceeds from this point forward going to NCSF.

Here is the link to buy your virtual ticket.

Tickets are $10.00 each, you can buy as many as you’d like (if you’d like to donate $50.00, for example, I’ll enter your name 5 times). You are not obligated to buy a virtual ticket. You can also just donate to a very worthy cause at any amount.

I really will write down names and put them in a hat, and my daughter can pick the winners. At this point, she is well-aware of what is going on. We’ll choose the winners on August 17th at 10 pm. You will be notified by 10:30 pm by email. Heck, we’ll even try to find someone to film it and show it to you all :)

Viva la Vida by Coldplay

All the best things I could find for you in one week, and some things I have forgotten to include for a while now.  I’m a little late this weekend, because I spent a little too much time socializing.  However, in my own defense, against myself, I would say that I have worked 18 hour days 7 days a week for …  what seems like an eternity.  Okay, enough self-rationalization.  I’m late, but no rabbit had to die.  Here is this week’s Good Things List - hopefully it’s a better version than Martha’s.

A Good Blog To Read!

Fanny Lucette is a Ph.D. psychology professor, with M.A. degrees in related fields. She has been a counselor and educator for many years. She recently wrote a guest post for me on Catalina Loves (thank you thank you thank you!!) and she will be joining the new community blog that will launch soon at bestsexbloggers.com.  Her blog is not a sex blog per se, but as she describes it on her page, “All of us have questions about relationships, sexual thoughts or behaviors. My life experiences and professional credentials will help you sort through it all.”  So take a look and hit your RSS feeds because you’ll want to keep up with Ms. Lucette once you’ve started reading.

A Good (Strap On) Dildo

Strap on play.  Three little words, but they can invoke an entire mental scene, can’t they?  Strap-on sex.  Imagine the scene.  Is it a lesbian scene?  Do you see it as a Domme/sub scene?  Is it a loving couple experimenting with assplay together?  It really can be any and it can be all.  The fact is, I have used strapons with women, as a professional dominatrix, and also as a loving wife (even a submissive loving wife, at that).  I choose the Corsette Harness as my new favorite strap on harness because it’s soft, velvety, black, feminine, and (important for practical purposes) it adjusts easily so it’s easy to slip in and out of gracefully.

A Good Podcast

Graydancer’s “The Ropecast” is the new home of the premiere rope bondage podcast.  This podcast talks about kinky sex, consensual adult bondage, and discusses dominance, submission, sado-masochism, and the iniquieties of the square knot in a frank, open, and entertaining way.  (I didn’t write that, by the way, but it is all true and well-written, so why re-invent the wheel?  I copied and pasted from The Ropecast site).

A Good Book

It’s going to become very obvious to you soon, so I’ll just ‘fess up now - I am definitely kissing Graydancer’s ass this week.  Why?  Because I’ve admired him for so long and I practically begged him to be a part of bestsexbloggers.com.  I told him that I would, in fact, kiss his ass, if he would join.  He joined, so here is Graydancer’s book, Nawashi - A Novel of Erotic Magic.  Take a lookee and buy a coppee.

A Good Educational Opportunity

Did you know that you can take free courses online from MIT (yes, that’s the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT).  Well, kind of.  Read carefully, but essentially they make their course materials available online and though you don’t get credit for it, you can learn for the sake of learning.  Now here’s the cool thing, to me, anyway.  I thought that MIT only offered courses in science and math.  I was wrong.  Here is the course description of the course I’m currently taking:

Este semestre la materia combina obras ya canonizadas de finales del siglo XIX y del XX con algunas obras de reciente aparición. De los géneros literarios, vemos poesía, el cuento corto, la novela y la autobiografía. También vemos una película de tema ficticio y dos documentales. El estudiante que se interese por hacerlo puede usar los materiales en la Reserva y en la red para familiarizarse con la historia literaria y cinematográfica de este período. Nuestro enfoque principal, sin embargo, será leer bien y de modo analítico, textos literarios de diferentes momentos históricos y culturas nacionales (e internacionales). Aunque discutiremos analíticamente las tres películas, su interés principal para nosotros será, en un caso, conocer el argumento ideológico de una novela muy famosa e influyente que, por falta de tiempo, no vamos a poder leer en sus totalidad, y en los dos otros casos, para contextualizar una autobiografía y tener un punto de comparación para estudiar cómo se puede reconstruir la memoria simultáneamente individual y colectiva. Otros temas, que se estudiarán en varias obras, serán el bilingüismo (español/inglés) en ciertos escritores hispanoamericanos contemporáneos, y el auge de la novela best seller en la América Hispana.

So, in case you can’t tell, that’s an advanced Spanish literature course.  Who knew I could brush up on my primary field of study with free online courses from MIT?!  I just found out recently, but I’m on it!  The Catalina Downer Disclaimer:  You might have to buy books and don’t forget that books are not free.  Ever.  So, though the courses are free, you can’t necessarily say that you can take any class you want for free.  Sorry.  But this is about as close as you can get!

A Good Corset (and lingerie)

Mio Destino is located in Europe, but delivers worldwide and has a domestic office.  Their corsets are undeniably quality.  You’re not buying an ebay corset, this is the one you’ve been saving up for.  They aren’t so horribly expensive that you can’t afford it unless you’re married to a very wealthy international finance attorney, however, they’re not cheap either.  The selection is unbelievable - corsets by designer, shape, by fabric, corsets to wear out, bridal corsets, underbust corsets, and corset skirts.  They are the way to go if you’re in the market for that special one.

A (PERFECT) Album

Viva la Vida by Coldplay is amazing.  Brian Eno produced it, so when I first heard it, I rejected it stating simply, “I’m not interested in listening to another U2 album.” What a bitch!  Now, I come back with my official opinion - “This is the best Coldplay album yet.” You must listen to it through headphones.  That’s my only caveat.  It sounds good over speakers, and it sounds great in the car, but there is something special about listening to it in the headphones, like being able to hear Chris quietly count off.  Also, I own the official album and then I also have the special Marky D. Sade found this two weeks before it was released version.  The difference is that I have two extra tracks - Lost (acoustic) and Lovers in Japan (acoustic).  The trick is that you have to listen to the album, looped, without the two extra tracks.  Let song 10 fade into song 1.  I won’t give it away here, but just do it.  It’s neato.  I think my favorite song right now is Strawberry Swing.  It’s a great way to start the day - Chris Martin telling you it’s such a perfect day.