Celestial Reviews 360 - April 4, 2000

Note: NEW TAX EFFECTIVE JAN.1, 2000
Penis Tax

The only thing IRS has not yet taxed is the penis.  This is because 40% of 
the time it is hanging around unemployed, 30% of the time it is hard up, 20% 
of the time it is pissed off, and 10% of the time it's in the hole.  It has 
two dependents, but they're nuts.

Effective January 1, 2000, penises will be taxed according to size.  The 
brackets are as follows:
     10"-12" Luxury Tax
     8"-10" Pole Tax
     5"-8" Privilege Tax
     4"-5" Nuisance Tax

Males exceeding 12" must file under capital gains.  Anyone under 4" is 
eligible for a refund.  PLEASE DO NOT ASK FOR AN EXTENSION!

Issues still under consideration are as follows:
     Are there penalties for early withdrawal?
     Do multiple partners count as a corporation?
     Are condoms deductible as work clothes?

Second note: Sam was worried. His teenage daughter was hitch-hiking  home 
from Miami to Minneapolis by herself. 

She was seventeen but was built like she was twenty-five.  When she arrived 
home unscathed, her father was curious as  to how she avoided guys hitting on 
her -- and worse!

"I simply told the men who picked me up that I was going to the clinic in 
Minneapolis because it's the number one establishment in the country for 
curing V.D." she replied sweetly.

Third note: This is from a contest in Oxnard, California. The requirements 
were to use the words Lewinsky and Kaczynski (the Unibomber) in a limerick.  
Here are the 3 winners:

Entry #1:
There once was a gal named Lewinsky
Who played on a flute like Stravinsky
'Twas "Hail to the Chief"
On this flute made of beef
That stole the front page fromce you look such a mess,
Use the hem of your dress
And wipe that stuff off of your chinsky.

Entry #3:
Lewinsky and Clinton have shown
What Kaczynski must surely have known:
That an intern is better
Than a bomb in a letter
Given the choice of how to be blown.

Fourth Note:

Uther Pendragon is sponsoring a challenge (something like a contest but not 
much) on ASSM.  I am not formally part of this contest, but I'll comment on 
at least some of the entries (sometime after April 15, of course).

Here are the original rules for the challenge:

Task:

Write a story incorporating the sexiest scene of someone wrapping another 
person's cock in a condom.


Rules:  

1 The challenge is to write a story, not simply a scene; but the basis for 
judging is the sexiness of the scene.

2 Post the story to ASSM.  Post a notice to ASSD beginning "{ASSD} PC: " with 
the name of the story.

3 Deadline is April 15, 2000, for the benefit of Yanks who will find that 
deadline easy to remember.  Stories posted before March 6, 2000 are not 
eligible.

4 The person applying the condom must not be the person on whom it is 
applied.  

5 Judges will be announced later.

Note that the wrapper need not be the fuckee.  So, if you want a brothel with 
assistants too young to do the deed, but knowing how to block the seed, go 
ahead.

Neatness counts.  Imagination counts.  Eroticism counts more than either.  
You may enter more than once, and you may incorporate more than one such 
scene in your story.  It's a story if you say it is a story, but the sexiness 
of the scene would probably be enhanced by what goes before and what comes 
after.

=====================
Celestial Reviews Index:
=====================

"Not a Chance" by Miss Behavin' (romance) 10, 10, 10
http://www.missbehavin.com/notachance.html

"Screwed" by Ace (spouse watching) 7, 7, 7,
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=596597049

"Valentine's Massage" by Snake (wife-watching) 9.5, 9.5, 9.5
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=603270262

"S-E-X " by Jack of All Trades  (sex education) 10, 10, 10
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=600351545

"Crook's Interlude " by Caesar (sex with burglar) 7, 8, 8
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=598970988

"Irish Spring" by John Jameson  (romance) 10, 10, 10
http://www.asstr.org/~John_Jameson/irish_spring.html

"V Day" by E.Z. Riter (Valentine's Day threesome)10, 10, 10
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=584819296

"Memories of Things to Come" by Jubal Harshaw (renewed relationship) 8, 8, 8
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=582391452

"Swoon" by Andrew O'Nath (swingers party) 10, 10, 10
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=589925656

"Coveting" by Captain Steve (cheating  & revenge) 10, 10, 10
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=595349232

"The Six Letter Word" by Dr Spin (complete spouse swap) 9.5, 10, 10
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=566368954

=====================
Guest Reviews:
=====================

"Adult Education" by Wiseguy (hypnosis). Myers: {No numerical rating}
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=601344800
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=601239748
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=601239762
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=601322229
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=601322242

"Pleasure Cruise--Hostess" by Wiseguy (hypnosis). Lee: 8, 10, 8/9
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=601364237

=====================
Here are the Reviews:
=====================

"Not a Chance" by Miss Behavin' (webmaster@missbehavin.com).
http://www.missbehavin.com/notachance.html

Nadine is in love with Neal, who is the foreman on the ancestral stud farm. 
Neal regards himself as a member of her father's generation, and so he 
resists the advances of the younger, attractive woman. As the title of the 
story says, "Not a chance!"

Needless to say, Nadine breaks down the barriers. In short, she has grown up 
nicely from the kid Neal used to know, and so there's not not a chance - 
which is exactly what the English teachers mean when they say that two 
negatives make a positive - which means (in this case) that there is a pretty 
good chance. The romance is complicated by factors that have their 
foundations in country western music - tigers in tight fitting jeans and 
broken hearts of long ago.

The story also includes a version of "Strip Go Fish" - as in Strip Poker. No 
kidding. You gotta read it to believe it.

Ratings for "Not a Chance"
Athena (plot & character): 10
Venus (technical quality): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10

"Screwed" by Ace (aceinthe_hole@hotmail.com).
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=596597049

The man has explained to his beautiful new bride that his uncle has been 
screwing him metaphorically. That is, since Uncle Frank is both a lawyer and 
an accountant, he has been sticking it to our hero with regard to the 
family's business assets. Naomi (the wife, who has inscrutable oriental ways) 
decides that she can help. What she can do is let Frank screw her more 
literally, while our hero fixes things on his uncle's computer. {Actually, 
this is still a metaphor, since the screwing does not involve a circular 
inclined plane of any sort.}

Some important elements go unexplained - such as why the relationship among 
the three goes on the way it does. Some people may enjoy this ambiguity, but 
it bothered me a little. But overall, thyis was a pretty good story.

Ratings for "Screwed"
Athena (plot & character): 7
Venus (technical quality): 7
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 7

"Valentine's Massage" by Snake (snake138@hotmail.com).
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=603270262

When it comes time to acquire a Valentine's Day present, our narrator's good 
friend Dave suggests that Mike give Natalie a present of a massage at one of 
his spas. By the way, since Dave owns the spa, he has the rooms wired with 
cameras and sound devices. 

Well, Mike gives Natalie a veritable cornucopia of gifts on the Big Day, and 
the last one is the certificate for the massage. She is excited, so to speak. 
The masseur is Vince, who is not only a licensed massage therapist, but also 
a stud off the cover of one of those romance novels. I won't go into the 
details.

I think the difficult part about wife-watching stories is that it's hard 
<wink> to treat the subject from a new perspective. This author does a pretty 
good job.

Ratings for "Valentine's Massage"
Athena (plot & character): 9.5
Venus (technical quality): 9.5
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 9.5

"S-E-X " by Jack of All Trades ( tradesjackofall@hotmail.com)
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=600351545

This is a cute little story about how a young boy might learn about "the 
facts of life" from his father. Although the story is about sex, there is no 
actual sexual activity in it. But it was still a very nice story.

Ratings for "S-E-X "
Athena (plot & character): 10
Venus (technical quality): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10

"Crook's Interlude " by Caesar (caesar69SPAM@my-dejaFREE.com).
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=598970988

The narrator is a crook who has broken into a presumably empty house, only to 
hear the sound of a woman weeping. So he checks on the woman to make sure 
she's OK before he flees. Cheryl-Anne sees him and asks him to make love to 
her. He does - tenderly. Then he leaves and never sees her again. 

The story is interesting largely because the premise is so grotesque.

Ratings for "Crook's Interlude "
Athena (plot & character): 7
Venus (technical quality): 8
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 8

"Irish Spring" by John Jameson  (Jameson1780@altavista.com )
http://www.asstr.org/~John_Jameson/irish_spring.html

Anne Siobhan Leary looks like either a poster girl from the Irish Tourism 
Board or a pre-Christian Celtic goddess in modern dress. It depends on the 
light. She is from Galway, which, as ye may know, is located just a wee piece 
from Oughterard in the country of Ireland. If you need more information, 
check out William R. Wilde's History of Lough Corrib, first published in 
1867, which can be found online through any good search engine.

Our narrator is a fine fellow named Pat, who is not an over-the-hill would-be 
Lothario. Now there's a name more parents should consider when naming their 
firstborn male offspring. 

They meet in St. Louis in autumn, and Pat offers to be the younger woman's 
guide to that city, while she serves as his tutor in Gaelic. They visit the 
Missouri Botanical Garden (Shaw's Garden), which includes the Climatron, the 
big geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller. A knowledge of this 
information would have been useful on last Tuesday's edition of "Who Wants to 
Be a Millionaire?"

One of the grand pleasures of reviewing stories for this newsgroup the 
occasional opportunity to expand my knowledge of the cultures of the world. 
Although the typical "interratial" story tells us little about the real-world 
interactions of my black and white neighbors, some stories give us a good 
picture of places and experiences that would otherwise lie beyond my ken. 
Thus, by the time I got four pages into this story I fully hoped that I would 
know what young lasses of the Gaelic persuasion called it when they played 
Bury the Shillelagh with their chap of choice - as well as a few choice 
epithets that they might shout during the fockin' festivities. Incidentally, 
"shillelagh" was a word that lost me a spelling bee back in the days when I 
used to care about such things. Can you imagine that?

Pat is a decent sort - honestly planning to enjoy the pleasure of Annie's 
company; and the romance develops lazily rather than licentiously, while they 
chastely explore the wonders of St. Louis together each Tuesday. They get a 
third of the way through the story before they even get goose bumps and do 
the naughty no-no jig together and find out how sturdy her old bed really is.

My spellcheck came up short on its analysis of Gaelic dialog. It recognized 
an error in the phrase " if you don't fock me now I'll scream," but it 
suggested "foci," "folk," and "fork" as plausible alternatives. Anyway, it's 
a grand time they have.

This was a superb story. I plan to read it again next year to get meeself in 
the mood for St. Paddy's Day.

Ratings for "Irish Spring"
Athena (plot & character): 10
Venus (technical quality): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10

"V Day" by E.Z. Riter (ezriter@pdq.net).
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=584819296

This is a very good story. It really has two parts.

The first part builds the case for a sexy threesome for Valentine's Day. The 
author does that part about as well as I've seen it done.

But then the author throws in a really interesting twist. That twist makes 
the story much more complex. To be honest, I don't think the author works out 
all the intricacies of this twist, but that's because the ideas are quite 
complex - if you think about them - and this story DID make me think.

If you haven't already read this story, I urge you to check it out.

Ratings for "V Day"
Athena (plot & character): 10
Venus (technical quality): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10

"Memories of Things to Come" by Jubal Harshaw.
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=582391452

Billy and Christine have been separated for six months. She dumped him for 
another woman. Now the Other Woman has been unfaithful to her, and Christine 
has returned to seek solace with Billy in the middle of the night.

There's a Patsy Cline song hiding somewhere in this story. Except this story 
has more coffee and some puking in the toilet instead of t he simple tears in 
the beer that Patsy Cline usually offers us. But there's also some good 
reconciliation sex. Plus some realistic reflections on putting a broken 
relationship back together. As I said, there's a Patsy Cline song hiding 
somewhere in this story.

The story has some irritating grammatical errors - mostly minor punctuation 
problems and some faulty spellchecking - for example, we have a damn 
bursting. But they're not a serious problem.

I liked this story. The mixture of past feelings, current emotions, and 
expectations for the future did not blend quite perfectly; but this was a 
legitimate effort at a complex topic.

Ratings for "Memories of Things to Come"
Athena (plot & character): 8
Venus (technical quality): 8
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 8

"Swoon" by Andrew O'Nath (agjonath@ozemail.com.au)
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=589925656

The husband and wife are having some problems in their relationship. They go 
to a relationship counselor, and she arranges for them to attend a swingers' 
party.

Deep in my heart, I really doubt that swinging parties really solve a lot of 
marital problems. But I suppose hope springs eternal in the human breast. 
Actually, on DOOL Hope springs eternal. Period.

A nice thing about this story is that it gives the rules for a good swingers' 
party. That's something you won't find out from Martha Stewart. 

The story has the title for two reasons. First, whenever the narrator sees a 
great painting by Matisse, he swoons. He doesn't see any Matisses in this 
story, but it turns out to be a good pick-up line. I mean, if the girl 
replies that "swoon" is a lovely word, you know that she's different from a 
woman who would say, "What the hell is a Matisse?" The second reason has to 
do with mood enhancement.

Ratings for "Swoon"
Athena (plot & character): 10
Venus (technical quality): 9
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 9

"Coveting" by Captain Steve (sailtwo@hotmail.com).
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=595349232

Except for the very ending, this is one of the best stories I have read in a 
long time. All I mean by that comment is that the author should have left off 
the very last part.

What we have here is a guy who has eyes for his neighbor's wife. In this case 
the neighbor is a conceited, rich bastard who flaunts his wealth and his 
trophy wife. So after our hero loses a close boat race to this jerk, he 
sticks his head up through the floor from the basement. That is, he is in 
whatever they call the lower part of the boat and sticks his head through the 
hatch to talk to the winner, who is on deck. I'm non-nautical, and I don't 
know the terms; but none of that matters. The good part is that the rich jerk 
is on deck and the guy is half above and half below. The rich guy can see the 
man's upper body, and the man can see him. What neither of them can see, but 
what our hero can certainly feel, is the impulsive but explosive blowjob he 
receives from an unseen mouth (or mouths), while two pairs of hands fondle 
him from below. That's right - the man isn't even certain who is giving him 
the blowjob - his own wife or the rich guy's.

It's all much more clever than anything I can say here.

The very ending deals with what our hero will do for his wife in return. I 
think this is a major digression. It takes the focus away from a really 
stimulating, clever story.

Ratings for "Coveting"
Athena (plot & character): 10
Venus (technical quality): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10

"The Six Letter Word" by Dr Spin (drspin@newsguy.com).
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=566368954

I've reviewed several stories recently that recommend some form of swinging 
as an antidote for marital problems. In the previous sentence, I almost wrote 
"anecdote" instead of "antidote." I think maybe "anecdote" would be more 
accurate, because I really suspect that the theory underlying this approach 
to marital bliss is referred to as Pie in the Sky Optimism. In other words, 
it's a good story, but not all that likely to happen in real life. On the 
other hand, that's also what one of my friends tells me about my attempts at 
monogamy. So, who knows?

In this case we have a selfish bitch of a wife who is excessively 
competitive. She loses herself in a game of whist to a guy who is equally 
egocentric. I am a Catholic, and so I don't play whist. Maybe this is what 
everybody has to do when they lose at whist. I could never understand why so 
many religious fundamentalists frown on card playing. This could be the 
explanation. Catholics used to play Go Fish, but I think that changed with 
the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Now they mostly play Bingo.

The whist game was a sequel to a loss at Scrabble. The deal in the Scrabble 
game was that if the man won the woman had to dive naked into the pool 
several times in plain view of everyone. If she won he would have to jerk off 
in front of them. Anyway, he beats her with a six-letter word; and so she 
becomes his slave for a weekend.

Since the winner already has a wife on his hands, he leaves her with the 
loser's husband. Finding that a fox in the hand is worth two in the bush, 
they make hay while the cat's away, and so they change horses in the middle 
of the stream. That is, the nice guy married to the super bitch discovers 
that the mousy girl is just fine, and they live happily ever after.

Ratings for "The Six Letter Word"
Athena (plot & character): 9.5
Venus (technical quality): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10

=====================
Guest Reviews:
=====================

"Adult Education" by Wiseguy. Guest review by Dave Myers.
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=601344800
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=601239748
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=601239762
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=601322229
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=601322242

They say that what turns some people on the most about sex is power. I guess 
that's what hypno stories are all about, at their core. This story, though, 
really acts like it wants to be a straight ahead MF rom, of the slow burn 
variety. The only thing that is different is that both parties seem to have a 
hypno jones. You know that you're being asked to suspend disbelief that this 
is an "ordinary" couple when there are lines like:

"I have most of the same sites bookmarked on my laptop." That's when I knew 
this relationship was going to work.

Well, our intrepid hypnoteers find a class where they can learn from a true gu
ru the heights of sexual pleasure that can be scaled with hypnosis. In and of 
itself, it's a flawed, but workable, premise. It asks a lot of the reader to 
allow that this plot line should be accepted from the first paragraph. I felt 
the reader needed to be eased into this a little more. As it is, we hardly 
get to see how the couple interacts with each other sexually when there is no 
hypno involved. For such a long story, it seemed like a crucial piece of 
setup and character development. I don't think I know how these characters 
relate to each other at all except as where it concerns the hypnosis. Maybe 
that was the point, but in that case the story doesn't need to be but half as 
long. And like I've mentioned, the style of the writing leads one to believe 
that the author has MF rom leanings at heart; yet the plotting negates this 
and focuses on the tantra-like parts, minus any real spirituality in the 
experience.

The group nature of the teachings that this couple receive are never turned 
into some kind of orgy, thank goodness, as it wouldn't have worked well given 
the situation. But still, the author flirts with the possibilities while 
never really exploring the emotions of publicness that grow out of exposing 
one's sex life to others. This is a serious fault in the storyline- the 
author assuaging the couples' fears with the wave of a a hand near the 
beginning of the story, and the couples in the class breathing a collective 
sigh of relief with just a bit too much acceptance of their predicament. It's 
hard for me to accept.

The finale has the right ideas in mind for what could have been a pretty 
interesting tables-turned climax, but it can't be pulled together completely 
given the events that have led up to that point. Don't let this leave you 
with the impression that you will waste your time with this read. This story 
could be streamlined and tightened up into a pretty "great" piece, but it has 
its heart in the right place, and remains "fair", as is.

{No numerical rating}

Review: "Pleasure Cruise--Hostess" by Wiseguy. Guest review by Messrs. Lee of 
the The Mysterious Mr. Lee Organization (TheMrLee@hotmail.com)
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=601364237

Dana and her lover, Greg, are cruise ship workers who have signed on to an 
"hypnoerotic" cruise as their first voyage together. Dana is not having 
orgasms with Greg. She gets hypnotized, loses some of her inhibitions, has 
some great chocolate-sundae sex, and starts on the path towards recovery.

Technical complaint:

This story was submitted without either paragraph indents or double-returns, 
making reading a pain. We like to download stories, whip them through our 
formatting macros (which automatically convert either indent- or 
paragraph-delineated text into proper page formatting). When the on-line text 
has no indication where a paragraph ends, except (if we are so fortunate that 
our line length and the submitter's coincide) a short line at the end of a 
paragraph, we are stuck with one long paragraph. We dislike that, and we 
complain about it. You now have evidence of this fact.

Analysis:

Yeah, we like Wiseguy's stuff. We have read it before and enjoyed it, without 
exception. So we read  "Pleasure Cruise--Hostess," and had to confront yet 
another bizarre image: a wiseguy on a pleasure cruise. What would a 
gun-totting thug do on a sun and fun trip? Shoot craps on the lido deck?

Oops, we were caught in temporary confusion. Wiseguy, if his(?) writing can 
be trusted as a guide, is no wiseguy. Rather, he(?) is a romantic who is more 
interested in relationships than sex. Does that disqualify him(?) from being 
an erotica writer? "Pleasure Cruise--Hostess" raises this question perhaps 
more than his(?) previous writings have, at least for us. We found the story 
to be engaging, well-written, and full of nice little touches--details about 
cruise life (the person in charge of the ship's electronic systems is called 
an "engineman," despite not being near the engines; "Greg gives great 
thumb"--a nicely evocative image that plays on a cliche; the ending parallels 
an earlier story detail, providing a neat twist). Yet, despite our overall 
enjoyment, we did not find the story to be particularly arousing. Yes, there 
were some moments of heat that are hotter and more exciting than most 
"erotic" passages we read here--Wiseguy's descriptive skills almost guarantee 
heat. However, rather than build on each other, the tension created in the 
scenes dissipates as the story moves on to the character-centric concerns of 
the text.

Lack of heat, though, does not disqualify "Pleasure Cruise--Hostess" from 
being a great story, it just brings to question if the story is "erotica." A 
guide to this query may be found in some of Wiseguy's other writings. In most 
of his other stories (check out his page at ASSTR <www.asstr.org/~wiseguy> 
for his other works), he(?) creates more ongoing, building tension with the 
hypnotism trope. The other Wiseguy stories we read use hypnotism to create 
sexual action which might not happen otherwise. Wiseguy, true romantic he(?) 
seems to be, never misuses hypnotism--i.e., nobody hypnotizes someone into 
doing something out of character, or that they would regret--but he does 
create unusual situations, where people believe they may be doing something 
out of character. In this story, the hypnotism creates powerful orgasms and 
food fantasies (actually, a very nice touch), but little tension. Since 
Wiseguy has demonstrated that character-oriented, romantic hypnotism tales 
can be erotic without losing their "literary" quality, it suggests that this 
story should be considered slightly flawed erotica. The story *could* be 
erotic within the constraints of story framing, character emphasis, etc., but 
it is not especially so.

So, the story is not a stroker. Should you read it? We think so. This is a 
better-written story than most of the stories found on A.S.S.M. and there are 
some real pleasures to be found here. Oh, and you just read through an 
interminable review. Does not that raise your curiosity just enough to cross 
the resistance threshold?

Athena (technical quality): 8 (marked down for formatting)
Venus (plot & character): 10
Messrs. Lee (appeal to reviewer): 8 (eroticism considered)/9 (without 
considering eroticism)

<end>

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