As you may or may not have noticed, we have a new feature here at Silver Stars. We now offer a collection of guides that offer up tips and how-to’s for all sorts of sex activities, from choosing the right vibrator to how to engage in anal sex. The guides are designed to give you a basic understanding of the topics and help you to introduce them into your sex life.

We’ve spent the last few months assembling these guides. We’ve started with guides that cover the topics that we get the most questions about. And we intend to add to them quite regularly. We will continue to fill the list out with a wide range of topics covering all sorts of activities.

Our guides are meant to be informative starting points to get you moving on your road to discovering new things. They are not meant to be all-encompassing resources, so if you find that you still have questions, most guides contain links to places where you can get more in-depth information.

No discussion about our guides would be complete, however, without talking about our wonderful author, AlwaysArousedGirl. AAG, as she is known by her avid readers, has a widely read blog where she discusses her own adventures as a lover, writer and mother, and the balancing act that oftentimes encompasses. Her posts are as hot and steamy as they are touching and occasionally heart-rending. You’ll also encounter her writing in lots of other high-profile places as well, such as Janes Guide and Fleshbot. So with such an impressive resume, we are thrilled to have her writing guides for us.

So even if you are experienced in all of the topics covered, check them out anyway. You may find something new and informative there and if nothing else, you’ll get to enjoy AAG’s down-to-earth way of approaching these subjects.

In the meantime, if you have any suggestions for guides that you would like to see or topics that you would like to have covered, let us know about them in the comments below.

Click here to view our list of guides.

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Got another very hot image for you. This time it’s from a site called IShotMyself.com. As you can probably guess from the title, the idea behind the site is that people make photo sets of themselves and submit them to the site. So lots of very stunning amateur photography. Plus, it’s a very cool concept by a site that goes to great lengths to ensure the positivity of what they are doing. Very sexy indeed!

(Click for larger version)

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According to an article in The Guardian newspaper, one in five women in the US are childless. These numbers were gathered by a survey from the US Census Bureau. That equates to 20% of the population! I have to admit that I am quite surprised by that number. And according to the article:

“The proportion of childless women has been increasing steadily by about one percentage point a year,” said Jane Dye, the report’s author.

Here comes the part that I disagree with though:

The bureau’s statistics give no clue as to whether US women are consciously putting their careers before their families and remaining childless, or are experiencing fertility problems perhaps as a result of trying to become pregnant towards the end of their fertile years.

How about the idea that maybe they just aren’t interested in having kids, as opposed to “putting their careers before their families.” This really struck a sour note with me. You see, Ash & myself made the decision some time ago not have children. Ash has a definite motherly instinct to her, but so far no real desire for kids. As for me, I really don’ t relate well to kids and I have absolutely zero desire to have one. I’ve always felt this way and it was something we discussed before we got married. We decided that if it happened, then it happened. But we weren’t going to make any special efforts to have kids.

What has surprised me is the number of people who, when they found out about this, looked at us as though we were fire-breathing demons. The most common answer that people give is, “That’s ok. You’ll change your mind.” Like we haven’t really thought about it and sooner or later we’ll wake up, come to our senses and procreate like we’re supposed to.

I even disagree with the term ‘childless’. I prefer to think of it as ‘child-free’. You see Ash & I like to sleep late on the weekends. Decide at 11 o’clock at night that we want an ice cream cone. Leave on a Thursday going out of town on a whim. And even fornicate all over the house whenever the urge strikes. All of which are not kid-conducive. We value all of these things and, as selfish as it may sound, don’t want to give them up.

Kids change everything about your life. At least, if you are a good parent, they should. And we happen to really like our life the way it is at the moment. Our best friends just had their first baby and we are witnessing with them first-hand just how much your life changes and that is something that we have no plan to accept.

And yes, we even value running our business, which requires a ton of effort. But that most certainly isn’t why we decided not to have kids. It was more of, “Hey, since we don’t have kids, we could take the risk of opening a store!”

So it was with much surprise and glee that I saw this article and realized that there are lots of people that are choosing not to have kids, just like us. And that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are infertile or that they are career-obsessed workaholics either. Because there are a few folks out there, just like Ash & I who have decided to forego that experience and not take the route of what we are ’supposed’ to do next. And if that leads to a hollow existence of spending time with just the two of us, sleeping late, taking vacations on a whim and fornicating everywhere, well, we’ll just have to try to make the best of it.

Click here to read the full article

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Seems that the current administration and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are colluding to adapt the definition of ‘abortion’ to now include the use of contraceptives, such as the pill, the patch, the shot, the ring, the IUD, and emergency contraception.

They have just announced a proposal which strives to now redefine conception as taking place, not at the moment that the embryo is implanted in the uterus, which is the widely held medical viewpoint, but rather at the moment that the egg is fertilized by the sperm. This would basically mean that any form of birth control which occurs after the moment when the egg and sperm meet, would be an ‘abortion’.

So you may be asking that if the medical community at large doesn’t classify abortions this way, what is the motivator for the HHS to classify it like this? A poll. Yep, an honest-to-god opinion survey. Here’s the quote, directly from the proposal:

A 2001 Zogby International American Values poll revealed that 49% of Americans believe that human life begins at conception.

What makes this so appalling though, (and this is the real hook of the proposal, by the way), is that there is no way to detect that an egg has been fertilized until the embryo implants itself in the uteran wall. This is why the medical community makes no attempt to classify that moment as when pregnancy begins.

So there you have it. Not science, not research. A poll… just like you get called to take while you’re trying to eat dinner. But our current governments viewpoint has been so strongly slanted toward teaching ‘abstinence-only’ (which has been a total failure, but is the topic for another post), that I can’t say that this move is terribly shocking.

So what does this mean exactly? They want to reclassify the moment that an ‘abortion’ takes place to a biologically undetectable time. And the repercussions of this is, to quote the source article:

Anyone working for a federal clinic, or a health center that receives federal funding–even in the form of Medicaid–and would like to prevent a woman from accessing most prescription birth control methods has federal protection to do so.

This is absolutely an outrage. What can you do about it? Well, for starters, MoveOn.org has started a petition, which you can sign to express your disapproval. The next step is to send a clear message to our government, local, state and federal, that we will not stand for this kind of crap and we will fire them come election time. Remember that they work for us. And it’s up to you to make them remember it too.

Click here for the source article.

Click here to read the actual proposal.

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I’m going to starting posting photos from my favorite image source, Flickr, from time-to-time. Basically, when I come across a stunning image that I just want to share with you I’ll toss it up here on the blog. This is the first entry into my Flickr Faves. I hope you enjoy these.

Thanks to pixel8rsouth for sharing this photo.

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OK. So this isn’t really sex-related, but I still feel the need to share this. I came across this song on XM last week and I’ve been in a bit of a dry-spell for great new music recently. For those of you who don’t know, music is my absolute passion. I consume it like most people consume fluids. It’s been this way since I was 4 or 5 years old.

Anyway, I wanted to share this song with you because it is one of those rare tracks that makes the hair on my arms stand up. The lyrics and raw emotion are truly something special here in that they perfectly capture the feeling of what the song is about. So check it out ‘Sometime Around Midnight’ by The Airborne Toxic Event.

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Props to Jamye Waxman for pointing me to this article up on iVillage. It’s an excerpt from author Steve Santagati’s book ‘The MANual’ where he tries to list out what physical things, such as clothing and whatnot that men notice about women. You may want to hop over there and read it and then come back, because I’m going to share my feelings about this. So go ahead. I’ll wait….. Done? OK, let’s continue.

My first thoughts after reading it were that it sounds a lot like what HE notices/wants in a women with a few generic things tossed in. Lingerie I can agree with. In both that I love it on a woman, and that she feels sexier wearing it (or so my wife tells me). Plus we run a lingerie store, so it’s just good for business to say “Every woman should buy lingerie…. from Silver Stars…. frequently.”

Shoes, I somewhat agree with. Although there are lots of foot fetish folks out there who would have a stroke at his views that men just don’t care and never notice them. I say somewhat though because I think it is a part of a complete package. If shoes are doing what they should in an outfit, they should blend well and accentuate the whole. In my experience, if I notice the shoes, they are either garish, or they look painful.

His hair opinions are where I realized this is just what he likes. This statement here was a giveaway:

Your style, color and texture are no matter. Your hair only needs to have a clean, tousled, just-out-of-bed look.

I’ve seen really sexy women with all types of hair styles and I don’t find my wandering eyes drifting to any particular configuration. Long, short, I like it all. And I can appreciate a hot ‘fresh from the salon’ look as much as a ‘just out of bed look’. Bald… not so much. Ash got her hair colored red awhile back, and suddenly guys everywhere were telling her how hot her hair was. No change, other than the color. So his point was just refuted completely.

He goes on with some more generic crap about ‘pick a dress that accentuates your best body parts’ (no kidding) and some others of his opinions that he passes off as what ‘guys’ want.

You want to know what I think? My opinion is that each style and personality can be sexy. I can see some girls out in just the plainest t-shirt and jeans and think, “Wow, she’s gorgeous.” And when I take a second to focus on her individual features, they can be pretty ‘plain Jane’. It’s more about the way she carries herself and what fits her personality. It’s about finding the look that you are comfortable with.

I’ve seen women before, especially at formal gatherings, who are dressed to the nines in what should be a knockout outfit. But it’s obvious that is so far from who they are that they look like they are completely miserable. So the eyes wander right on by without a second glance. By the same token, this could be the same girl in the t-shirt and jeans and in that, she’s a stunner.

So since we’re all sharing (and please feel free to share your ideas in the comments below), that’s my opinion. I love girls who dress to fit their own style and attitude. Nothing is sexier than a comfortable woman…. except for a woman in lingerie (hint, hint)

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Whew! We’re coming off an absolutely whirlwind week. My ‘day job’ as a software engineer got put to the test this week as we had a killer deadline to meet. So I had some 8AM - 2AM workdays this week. Plus the store was just opened and we’ve been ironing out the kinks in that process as well. Hence the lack of posts. But things are settling down a bit now and the posts should start getting back to normal.

As for the store, we’re quite pleased. We’ve had quite a bit of business and no one really knows that we’re there yet. We’re very positive about the change and hopeful that business is going to be good. So, if you haven’t gotten around to stopping by yet, please do. We’d love to see all of your friendly faces.

I’ve got a few new pictures for you of the new store as well. So check them out.

We’re open again! Yeah!!!

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First off, let me apologize for the slow news week. The reason for the lack of words to entertain you is that we are preparing for a minimal reopening on August 1 of our brand spankin’ new lingerie store. It’s really starting to come together and we’re very excited about the progress so far. It has been a grueling two weeks with late nights every night. And we’ve still got a long way to go.

Notice that I said that we’re having a ‘minimal’ reopening. It’s because we haven’t received all of our stock yet. We’re only about half stocked, but we do have all the fixtures and things in place. This is mostly due to the fact that, much like cars (unbeknownst to us), apparel manufacturers do not use catalogs with the same year as the year you are in apparently. We chose our product lines from the 2008 catalogs (crazy, I know) and quite a few of the lines were discontinued, because everyone should be ordering out of the 2009 catalogs. There’s a diatribe I could go into here about how it’s 2008 and I’d be carrying these items in 2008, so why is the 2009 catalog out already, but I’ll avoid it (for now).

So, we’re waiting on updated catalogs so that we can round out the remaining 40% of out stock. But in the meantime, we’ve been closed for so long that we just don’t feel like we can wait any longer. So we’re quietly reopening with what we have and once we have the full stock in place, we’ll have the ‘grand’ reopening.

So that’s what the plan is and what is going on right now. We’re going to get some pics of the new store uploaded soon. Probably over the weekend, when we have a moment to breathe. In the meantime, if you have some time this weekend and are in the vicinity of the store, stop in and say hello. We’re expecting it to be very slow since no one knows we are open, so we could use the company. Ash & I will be there all day Friday and part of the day Saturday, and our wonderful employees Heidi and Shannon will be there all day Saturday. So stop by if you have a chance!

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Cracked.com has very funny article up that lists their Top 5 Sex Experts Who Made the World a Worse Place (To Do It). Most of these come from the 1800’s and it gives you an idea for where some of those crazy sex myths came from (hairy palms, anyone?) Here’s an excerpt:

Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing was a German psychiatrist, sexologist and hypnotist who coined the term masochism, meaning he could get you to put cigars out on his balls, tell him how it made you feel and then make you forget it ever happened.

While discussing sex expert Havelock Ellis, who was abstained from sex almost his entire life:

We guess you could make the case that his sexless life allowed him to remain objective on the topic, so that he could, for instance, write a detailed description of the male erection without the usual interjection of “HAVING A BONER ROCKS!!!” that plagues the works of other males in the field. Still, it’s hard to take cooking advice from a man who has never eaten.

Very funny stuff. Do go check out the full article.

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