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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I picked up a copy of Sex In The South based based on the recommendation of a friend who had read it and said it was an interesting look at the underground sex culture of the south. By dwelling here in the land of Dixie, I can attest to the fact that sexuality is quite repressed in the South, although probably not as much as one would suspect. And overall I did enjoy this book, but it isn’t without its pitfalls.

First off, you should know that Sex In The South’s author, Suzi Parker, is not a sex writer. She does not earn her living writing, talking and/or teaching about sexuality. She merely got caught up as a third party in a minor sexual scandal in Arkansas and decided to take a deeper look at sex in the south. This is crucial to understanding her position as she ventures into the more sexual side of people in the south. She had zero experience or exposure to many of the things that she witnessed while writing this book. So this was very much a learning process for her.

And therein lies the best part of the book. Not only do you get a bit of insight into what could be going on in your neighbor’s bedrooms, you also get to tag along with her as she ventures into various situations with wide-eyed innocence ad not knowing what to expect.

The book is divided by state and each state contains two or three different situations that she encounters in that state. The situations that she writes about includes fairly tame scenarios, such as an in-home sex toy party to the rather over-the-top, like an S&M weekend retreat (in Alabama, no less!). She attends the Ms. Gay America Pageant, a Burlesque club here in good old Atlanta, what has to be the most explicit strip club I’ve ever heard of and even a photo shoot for the website Southern Charms. So you get a chance to witness all sorts of sexual activities being performed across the Bible Belt.

The thing that I really found off-putting is that she has a somewhat condescending tone throughout. She looks down on those who have really kinky lifestyles, such as hardcore BDSM players, as though they are completely foreign to her. But she also looks down on those who are totally sheltered as well, where she makes several jokes at their expense in the book. So basically, she falls into the pit of ‘normalcy’ where there is some sort of happy medium, I guess. It’s not terribly prevalent, but you can sense it in quite a few bits of her dialog.

Also, you can pretty much skip the section where she visits Gennifer Flowers’ night club. It adds zero insight into sex in the south and is more like celebrity-watching.

Other than those complaints though, it is a very interesting and enjoyable read. I very much enjoyed following along with someone being exposed to the various flavors of sexual lifestyles going on in the south for the first time. It is also interesting to see how much of these activities still have to be hidden and sheltered down here, for fear of community repercussions. And when you do encounter people who flaunt their sexuality out in the open, such as ‘Skirtman’ the cross-dresser, it comes across like a breath of fresh air as you find yourself admiring these people for putting it all out there.

I must warn you though. If you are a fan of amateur porn, the story regarding Southern Charms may destroy your image of what goes on on an amateur porn set. Suzi delivers a classic line at one point after watching about three different scenes transpire, where, in frustration she finally declares, “Doesn’t anyone ever have an orgasm around here?!?”

I took away a couple of things from this book as well. First, there is a statement that one of the coordinators for the BDSM weekend made that I have adopted as my mantra when I encounter sexual situations and fetishes that I don’t fully understand. His statement, when asked about a particularly outrageous sexual situation was, “I look at it this way. Your kink is not my kink, and vice versa, and that’s okay.”

The other thing I learned was that Memphis is apparently the BDSM center of the south, where the culture is thriving and anything goes. Who knew!

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We have returned from our trip out west to the Adult Novelty Expo and it was certainly an exciting trip, both in the good and the bad. We got to meet some really cool people, see a LOT of new products and learn some interesting things in the process. Overall, the good far outweighed the bad.

First off, on the flight going out there, the only thing that could’ve been worse was if the plane fell out of the sky and exploded. It was chaos checking in, then they canceled our flight, it took them 2 hours to get us re-booked on another flight, which didn’t leave for about 3 hours after that, they ran out of food on the plane, so we had nothing to eat and then to top it all off…. they lost our luggage. For those who are interested, I would caution you to stay away from US Airways.

But we soldiered on, not letting this dampen our spirits to see the latest and greatest that our beloved sex toy purveyors had to offer. And it turned out to be a great thing too. Because we had a really great time.

As I mentioned before, we met so many cool folks. First off, we finally got to meet our wonderful sales rep, Joy, who has been with us from the very beginning, offering guidance and insight into a market we were very new to. There may not be a Silver Stars without Joy. Here’s a pic of Ash & Joy from the conference:

Joy also introduced us to Michelle, who runs Naughty Cupids out on the west coast. It’s a small scrappy startup just like us. She shares a lot of our same philosophies regarding sex education and positivity. She’s doing the home party thing and website sales and she’s hoping to open a store soon. Michelle is just a fantastic person and we spent a good portion of our trip hanging out with her. Unfortunately we ended up with no pics. But we’re hopefully going to meet her again at another conference soon, so we’ll make sure to snap some then.

Next up, we met one of our favorite bloggers, authors and all-around sexperts, Jamye Waxman. This was definitely one of the highlights of the trip as she turned out to be such an extremely cool person. We talked sex and sex toys a bit, she offered up all sorts of tips on our store situation and we just had a really nice chat. She’s now on our ‘Awesome’ list. So if you get a chance to meet her, make it a priority. We can’t say enough good things about her. Here’s Ash & Jayme at Aneros’ booth.

We also met several people from Babeland, who we modeled our own store after in many ways. They were all very friendly and an all around pleasure to converse with as well.

Last… we joked about it before we left, but it actually happened. We ran into the porn king himself… Ron Freakin’ Jeremy! The Hedgehog, baby! He also was extremely friendly and likable as well. Ash grabbed this shot below with him:

Just so you know, you can click any of the images above to get a full-size pic as well.

So all in all, it really was a great trip. I’ll follow this up soon with details about what toys that we saw, but for now, we’re all energized about the business. It was great to talk with so many people who are familiar with the sex toy industry and what the joys, trials and tribulations are. So we’re really getting cracking on getting the lingerie store open and getting the changes that we’ve been putting off to the website in place. Expect big things here soon.

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We are heading out to California to the Adult Novelty Expo today. We’re going out to see what cool new toys are getting ready to hit the market and to see if we can’t score some freebies and maybe a few early releases so that we tell you all about them. We also hope to finally meet some of the folks face to face that we’ve been chatting and doing business with for the last few years.

We are very excited about this trip as we’ve been trying to go for about four years now and the timing has never quite worked out. But we finally pulled it off this year. So there won’t be any new posts for the next couple of days, but as soon as we get back, I’ll bring you all the juicy details about what’s upcoming in the toys and gadgets world.

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Well, it’s time to confirm the rumors that have been circulating about the store. We have evaluated all of the choices and we have chosen to convert our existing physical store into a lingerie boutique! We are very excited about this change and we can’t wait to open up and show everyone exactly what we’re putting together.

The idea is to create a very hip little boutique that stocks all kinds of sexy unmentionables. And more than just that, we want to provide an upper-scale, fun atmosphere, but also keep the prices easy on the wallet. We want to make this a shop that you look forward to visiting often.

We are also planning on carrying a wide variety of styles, from mild to wild. And we are going to be carrying a significant selection of plus sizes.

What does this mean for the website? Only that in addition to all of the toys that are currently available, you’ll also get a much larger selection of lingerie. We’re going to continue to stock and sell all of our great toys and to be continually expanding our line as well. We will also offer all of the lingerie that you find in our store online as well. You will no longer be able to buy toys for in-store pickup however. Other than that, everything will remain the same. You’ll just have more choices about what skimpy outfits you want to go with your new toys.

So that’s the current scoop as to where we are. We are hoping to have the physical store open for business in the next couple of weeks, so keep an eye out here for updates. And we hope to see you all soon in our new store!

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