elfs | "Uncanny valley plushie goatse."

What is it with people reading over my shoulders this week? (Hah! Just writing that made him look away.)

A couple of weeks ago I posted about, among other fun discoveries, a "love pillow," which was basically a mount for a Fleshlight, a soft, cushioned pillow to hump against while having a technologically enhanced wank.

The company that made them had started making pillow cases printed with your favorite anime characters on them, and the pillow came in two sizes: a standard sized and an extended length "body" pillow. It seems that the pillows were a best seller, because the product line today is mind-bogglingly more complex. The standard-sized pillow was vaguely shaped like a female body, but now along with the original design you can get ones with prominent buttocks (including one that is nothing but the lower half of a human torso). The pillow designs run from just-a-pillow (with mount sleeves and drawstrings) to bodies clearly meant to seem human, including one that is unquestionably sold to resemble a pubescent child. I guess we should be happy the store even sells its "Venus."

And as love dolls go, these are completely modular. Heads and boobs sold separately and mounted to the pillow with velcro. You have to look at the "how to use" illustrations in which exceptionally happy fully clothed men show how to hold these partial torsos for the best pleasure, and the four page "beginners" manga is a scream. There are some very disturbing accessories, including the crying 12 year old girl head that goes with the "cutie" body. If you're cheap, there's a simple pillow with a boob simulation wrap, over which you can put a pillowcase printed with, well, with whatever you want.

Perhaps equally disturbing is the maintence page, in which the manfacturer shows you how to open up the (ahem) front and rear sleeves and clean them as needed. The illustration is best described as "uncanny valley plushie goatse."

If ever there was a way to explain Japan's population crash, this is it.

And I admit to some sympathy with (well, most of) the purchasers. A lot of people started their masturbatory discovries face down, humping a pillow. This is just a way of doing so comfortably and pleasurably. Sex-- or even masturbation-- becomes a hobby when you work toward improving it and spend money on doing so. (I suppose it really becomes a hobby when you have a blog where you tell others how to do it better.) Besides, if you do it right and enough, it's aerobic exercise, ne?