Dried Sage

Wednesday, January 31, 2007 by Jeff Today's entry is for adults only. No kidding. But then I figure that I know all 8 of you who read this and (don't prove me wrong!

) I think you're all mature enough to handle it. But be careful what you click on - you just might get it!
There are three reasons for today's post.

First, I want to impress upon you how extensive and truly amazing is. Second, I hope to encourage a little sexual - yes, sexual - education and exploration. And third, well, I'm just curious what effect this will have on traffic volume to this website (if this is your first time here - welcome!

). Let's begin. , the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, is self-touted as the "largest reference website on the Internet," and at 1,612,758 entries it's hard to argue.

It is the site on the Web, more popular than eBay, Amazon.com, Facebook and the BBC. I don't remember exactly how it happened, and I certainly don't want to incriminate myself unnecessarily, but a few years ago I stumbled across an entry for some bizarre sexual act that I'd never heard of, and as is characteristic of the Internet, I quickly found links to other entries on strange and wonderful sexual minutia.

Some were educational, others inspirational, and many were downright funny. In the years since I've spent many, many hours sifting through Wikipedia's non-sexual content and have learned, as you probably have too, a little bit about a helluva lot of things. Recently, though, I was reminded of this early encounter with Wikipedia, I decided to return for another look at the bluer side of things and (against the better wishes of my girlfriend) to share.

One thing I discovered is that I'm not alone. The entry this month at Wikipedia is (other notable entries: sexual intercourse is 22nd, female pornstars 24th, pornography 28th, masterbation 36th, oral sex 40th, and George W. Bush is 45th).

Just ahead of World War II at number 17 you'll find the fascinating . Now that one's worth a look. This isn't just a handy bedside reference, but also a great place to penetrate this large and unwieldy world of Sexipedia (another to begin is the ).

Here you will find not only diagrams but descriptions of ways to do it standing up, sitting down, kneeling, with your genitals, with your mouth, with somebody else's mouth, two penises, three anuses - it's truly astounding. Here at Sexipedia you can learn more about , discover the science of , or even read about ! The options are overwhelming.

You already know what pediphilia is, but how about , , or scores of other mind-blowing ? You don't want to be caught with your pants down when that beauty you met at the bar suggests and you don't know what it is. Wikipedia!

Don't embarass yourself by trumpeting your musicianship when he asks for a . Wikipedia! Before you agree to with a new partner, find out what the health risks might be.

Wikipedia! Friday, September 15, 2006 by Jeff If you haven't come across yet, it's time to check it out. Type in an artist or song name and a new station will automatically be generated that plays songs with similar musical characteristics.

Later you can add more names to diversify your station. Its founder explains it this way:

Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome.

Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like.

With each new song you're able to further customize the station by giving a "thumbs up" (play more like this) or "thumbs down" (I don't like it!

) to that song. It requires that you sign up for a free account where your stations with be saved. I started with Massive Attack: Pandora responds: "To start things off, we'll play a song that exemplifies the musical style of Massive Attack which features electronica roots, downtempo influences, trippy soundscapes and many other similarities identified in the music genome project.

" With that it began playing "Future Proof" by Massive Attack (it doesn't always start with the band you chose), followed by a pretty cool and trippy track by a band I've never heard of, Breakbeat Era: "From here on out we'll be exploring other songs and artists that have musical qualities similar to Massive Attack. This track, "Rancid Remix" by Breakbeat Era, has similar a female vocal, trippy soundscapes and many other similarities identified in the music genome project." How cool is that?

It's all free with advertisements, but if you absolutely can't stand the ads it'll cost you a cool 36 bucks a year to lose those (apparently you gain nothing else with a subscription!). Enjoy.