My Sexy Spring

Good Clone, Bad Clone

This workshop will explore the erotic possibilities of clones, which the presenter knows little about, but finds really hot.

Who or what would you clone? Yourself? What would you make your clone do? Would you clone someone to watch? An exciting introduction to the possibilities of clone play. Also discussed, the possibility of clones replacing orignals, deceiving partners and what to do if your clone is better in bed and more popular than you are.

Please note: current technology allows only the cloning of dogs, cats and sheep.



Werewolf Sex

Hot, sweaty, biting and furry, werewolf sex is drenching itchy sex by the naked light of the full moon. Learn to howl with an actual lycanthrope.

Don't settle for sex with just animals or mere humans: werewolf sex is raw, unpredictable and dangerous and will leave you soaked, trembling and smelling vaguely like your dog's sweater.

Covered: that "dog" smell.

Not covered: Silver bullets, full moons and other lies. Vampires, mummies, zombies.



Shrink Ray

Are you size-curious? Would you like to get small, or are there things you’d like to do with tiny people? Really tiny people? The kind that maybe need a submarine to get around inside of you? Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. Both shrinkers and shrinkees are welcome in this workshop which will explore all the many important technical challenges and Lilliputian rewards of macro/micro play. Whether your final destination is Lilliput or Brobdingnag, the Shrink Ray workshop should be your first stop. Special emphasis on safe adventures, escape procedures, what to say at the doctor’s office.



Is My Gay Robot Really Gay?

This workshop will address the tricky question posed by many robot owners whose robots are programmed, labeled or identify as “gay”: is my “gay” robot really “gay” or just programmed to? Topics discussed include free will and determinism, identity politics, late Foucault, the whole tin can phenomenon. Robots and their owners are encouraged to attend. Gay supercomputers are covered in another workshop: Help, My Gay Supercomputer Is Always Right And Running My Life!

Discussed: C3PO, K.I.T.T., V.I.N.C.E.N.T., Hymie from Get Smart, Gaybot 2,000,000, Lesbotron, Lt. Cmdr. Data, The Death Star. Was Robot from Lost in Space really gay?

Not discussed: Gay robots.



Bug Sex
Bug sex is hot. You live for like a day and go around tasting everything. It doesn’t get dirtier or sluttier than this. Bugs get swatted, crushed and some of them kill and/or eat their mates = H -O -T. Discussed: How to get a waterbed shaped like a dried-up slice of runny pizza, having thousands and thousands of maggots.



How to Masturbate Like a Supreme Court Judge

You know they do it. What do you think is under their robes? Discussed: Death penalty, suspension of habeas corpus.



The Sensual Cave Man

How to “dumb down” your foreplay. Fire or No Fire? Beyond the monobrow.



Help, My Gay Supercomputer Is Always Right And Running My Life!

This workshop has been cancelled.



Are you a female looking for another partner or for the Joy of Kissing workshop? Please consider this man. Has own toothbrush. Respectful and considerate. Likes: kissing. Friendly, open, will respect boundaries. Leave a message or call.






The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell.

For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at the tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed and appear infinite and holy whereas it now appears finite & corrupt.

This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.

-WILLIAM BLAKE

TURN NUMBER 67: REPORT FROM THE FIELD; WORDS: 58,114

NEXT BY 28 JUNE 2006

Dear Mysterious Listener,

more splendid photography by Crookedletter



The week of the 14th marks the anniversary of this curious journal, and not coincidentally, my own. We are both one year old. Ah, the places we’ve been, the things we’ve done and those sounds, those terrifying sounds!

The purpose of The Encouraging Voice is to amuse and delight you, possibly in ways that you do not wish to be amused and delighted, but find amusing and delightful in the end, after a curious and sometimes trying life that defied most of your expectations. If you are so minded, please email me or leave a comment: The Encouraging Voice works hard and wishes to be one of your top vacation destinations on the web. If you need more towels, better excuses, or simply someone to throw bed sheets over your head please let us know. We are especially keen to know what your favorite pieces are, if some items are too long or too short, too obscure or not obscure enough. We would also be keen to a contest as to a typology of how many kinds of story appear in The Encouraging Voice.

As always, we are happy and truly honored to have you here. It is kind of you, you, who are so beautiful, to visit us, an invalid and shut in, disfigured and alone, in our humble sitting room of endless turns with no center. Crete welcomes you, Athenian, and makes a gift of its paradoxes.



NEXT: INNOCENTS ABROAD

Year One

After first night -and we only called it that, we slept -we were optimistic, pragmatic, logical. We rested and when we arose we thought things would be clearer. Our legs were tired, but we thought after a little hike, we would be back in the open air again. We could imagine the open air. As that day grew on, we became angry and frustrated with ourselves. When we finally settled down to rest again, we reminded each other that it was only a matter of memory -we had only to retrace our steps. After the next day it was clear there was no memory to recapture. Then it was a matter of logic: if there is a way in, that same path is a way out. Logic sustained us for about a week. Then it became a myth, like any other, like our lives before. By the end of that week, we simply walked, we rested, we had grown tired of cursing. That was the week we thought the labyrinth was infinite. In the week to come, we came to wonder if it was not the labyrinth, but our minds that were bewitched, that the whole structure might not be no more than a few turns, but were somehow unable to remember or think. Then we realized for this trap, even a single turn would be sufficient. Then we realized it made no difference and how meaningless a word like “infinite” is.

Waking in the labyrinth was always a shock, a dreadful realization, an awful familiarity. For the next month we discussed our confused and vivid dreams in the labyrinth, now more real than our memories of our lives before. Then as we discussed them, the details of our dreams began to merge and we hoarded them as secrets from the other.

For many nights now, and I cannot say how many, I have dreamed only of the labyrinth. I would confess this to my companion, to know if he, too, now dreams of turns and passages that give birth only to more identical progeny of turns and passages. I would ask if his legs, too, are so weary and tired that he cannot feel them. If his ears too, are so deaf with the dumb echo of our steps endlessly clattering that he cannot tell if we are walking, have stopped walking, or are being followed. If his eyes, too, are so used to the inevitable and unvarying pattern of turns and passages it is wholly believable that he lost sight long, long ago, and is blind. This would explain much, of how we are able to see in the labyrinth, long after we should have exhausted all source of light. But how do we sustain ourselves? And where do we get the energy to negotiate these interminable turns and passageways?

When did we enter the labyrinth? I know it has been a year, a year since our birth, our birth as inhabitants of the labyrinth, upon which we entered it from the outside world. I know that we are twin, like a man and his shadow. But I do not ask him, for we may be no more than this, joined at the feet. And if he cannot answer, then I am actually alone. And if he answer, then he is alone, alone, alone.

66th TURN;
WORDS: 58,114

Reading Wittgenstein’s "Philosophical Investigations" Considered As Log Entries Of A Failed Expedition to the Antarctic

.--We have got on to slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk: so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!

A good ground looks like this.

[Can a dog lie?]

Could one teach a dog to simulate pain?

One could imagine an animal, angry, frightened, unhappy, happy, startled. But hopeful? And why not?

[How does this line intimate the way to go?]

Does the sign-post leave no doubt open about the way I have to go? Does it shew which direction I am to take when I have passed it; whether along the road or the footpath or cross-country? But where is it said which way I am to follow it; whether in the direction of its finger or (e.g.) in the opposite one? --And if there were, not a single sign-post, but a chain of adjacent ones or of chalk marks on the ground-- is there only one way of interpreting them?-- So I can say, the sign-post does after all leave no room for doubt. Or rather: it sometimes leaves room for doubt and sometimes not. And now this is no longer a philosophical proposition, but an empirical one.

[Speed is not important here.]

“Now I know how to go on!”

Can I say "bububu" and mean "If it doesn't rain I shall go for a walk"?

I say "There is a chair". What if I go up to it, meaning to fetch it, and it suddenly disappears from sight.? --"So it wasn't a chair, but some kind of illusion". --But in a few moments we see it again and are able to touch it and so on. --"So the chair was there after all and its disappearance was some kind of illusion". --But suppose that after a time it disappears again-or seems to disappear. What are we to say now?



Justification by experience comes to an end. If it did not it would not be justification.


TURN #65
WEEK: 52; WORDS: 57,552

The Beautiful Phrases (Followed By Exposition) Number One: “I’ll kill you -I’ll kill all of you!”

“I’ll kill you” can be anything else but a beautiful phrase, depending on who says it and how it is meant: it can be ordinary belligerence, idiotic aggression, wholly quotidian threatening behavior, or even an empty threat or term of endearment. Homicide is as old as the human family itself and we can suppose the only reason for Adam and Eve not killing each other right away is that it would have made for an extremely short Bible. No, homicide had to wait a generation for its innovator, the much maligned Cain, who merely did what half the people there were thinking at the time, anyway.

“I’ll kill you” ranks with “I love you” as a careworn and indispensable expression, at least in a world such as ours where people are so lovable and yet somehow this has not worked out into a general principle: hence: “I’ll kill you.” Note how much more useful this expression is than the present tense: “I kill you” (or sometimes “I kill you”) which is a generally useless and redundant expression (c.f. “I am here”) if you are actually killing someone: most often, it is just wishful thinking. There is, I admit, a certain pathos to “I kill you! Kill! Kill! Killlllll youuu!” especially if the speaker is hopelessly restrained and the addressee has only a pitying look in response: it illustrates a gap between our language and our world.

Yet, in itself, “I’ll kill you” is not a beautiful phrase; it can be muttered under the rummy breath of any old cranky malcontent who no one takes seriously until one day they explode in a paroxysm of violence that will be a cause for wonder only for those who write editorials. This is where “-I’ll kill all of you” comes in.

Some commentators on Christianity feel that it is a reworking of Platonic philosophy and spiritual concepts found elsewhere in Greek thought, a sort of cartoon adaptation that people could follow. Some attribute its success to the fact that, unlike the tradition of Greek thought, it could provide an individual answer to the person, a personal salvation. Christianity succeeded, they argue, because it was all inclusive.

The history of Rome may also have something to do with it, but my point being that in a kindred fashion “I’ll kill all of you,” takes a mere threat of homicide and generalizes it to a wider audience. What is the limit of the audience? Is it limited only to those immediately present? Or does it extend, like the curse of Cain (passim) to all of the “you”, all the descendants? Is it addressed to a nation? A people? All humanity? Even the speaker, gripped with homicidal fury in his illocutionary act may be unsure of its span of application. This is only one of the things that makes it beautiful.

For in extending the threat the speaker has made it clear that he is outnumbered. Yet, his homicidal desires, far from being restrained by this fact, expand to accommodate it. He has gone from a simple personal attack to a vendetta, from a skirmish to a war, from a mere atrocity to a holocaust. If he had any sympathetic listeners, it doesn’t matter now: they are included. For this person to make such a turn, I would argue, is a beautiful thing. Especially if it is blurted out at the end of a long series of reversals for the speaker at a bar, a wedding, or a baby shower. Reversals that have made the speaker into an existential hero, a true rebel.

Note that the dash in “I’ll kill you -I’ll kill all of you!” is essential to it’s beauty. The dash is the essence of the modern style, capturing its revolutionary and immediate character, its ability to shock and juxtapose. Many thoughts that could otherwise never be completed or thought -or are still unthinkable -are achieved only with -the dash.

Nietzsche -understood -this.

In the case of “I’ll kill you -I’ll kill all of you!”, the dash represents a poignant and profound turn in the speaker’s thoughts (c.f. “Deaner -Who are you?” “I am -I am the Stallion”). Perhaps she has just realized that no single co-worker is perhaps responsible for informing the staff of Chili’s that it is her birthday. Or perhaps she feels that the judgement of the spelling bee judges does not reflect the way English is actually used today. Or perhaps quite simply, Southern Comfort should never have been served at the baby shower in the first place. In any case, it is the dash that shows the soul’s flight from mere homicide to genocidal program.

NEXT IN THIS SERIES: “HOW MUCH TO LIE DOWN WITHOUT CLOTHES?”

64th TURN; STANDING OVER THE BODY OF WILLIAM SAFIRE
WEEK: 51; WORDS: 57,187

NEXT BY 12 JUNE: SOONER THAN YOU THINK