Ever tried floating things with your mind? It’s harder than it looks. Lots of squinting, and it gets you nowhere. How do superheroes do it?

Lucky for us, we don’t need mutant powers, we have the world of first-person perspective games–where objects float through the air with the greatest of ease. Because, when the introduction of a visible avatar, or even a good old-fashioned arm, seems too entrusive, we’re left with levitation.

Not just guns, but boxes, spinning saws: Half Life 2 speaks for itself. Or, if you’re looking for an example from the other side of the tracks, try VirtuallyJenna. Floating sex toys are strange enough; what about floating tongues and floating members? Talk about a disconnect.

We may never be able to master the fine art of levitation in real life, but children’s books and television have long since taught us the meaning of floating: repression.

Mathilda had no outlet for her brilliance, and she could throw chalk with her mind. Jean Grey was forced to suppress her sex-obsessed alter ego, and she could throw cars. So what, pray tell, are us gamers repressing?

Wikipedia has been the talk of a lot of intellectual media lately. After all, wikis are pretty unique projects with a unique approach to creation–and Wikipedia as an elaborate source of common knowledge, a collective cultural written consciousness: That deserves some serious attention.

But let us not forget, however impressively massive Wikipedia may become, there’s always a wiki still bigger: the internet itself. It’s an elaborate, open-source pool of information that we all can (and do) add to.

We turn to the internet with a huge range of everyday questions, even though we accept on a basic level that we can’t always trust the answers it provides. Remember, before Wikipedia, how did we learn about things? We googled them. And like Wikipedia, the internet knows what we know–at least what we think we know.

Yes, I’m off on a safari. Well, kind of. It doesn’t involve any real wild life. Plus, I’m not actually going anywhere. Okay, I admit, it’s not a safari, it’s just a new bout of Second Life research on the furry community for American Sexuality. But there will be claws involved, that I can bet.

If you’re a furry (or if you play one on TV), and you’d like to volunteer yourself for an interview, an in-game chat, or some research-based hanky panky–because it is that kind of an article–feel free to comment or email me. I won’t lie, beyond the basics, I don’t know much about you guys. But I hear you’re darn good in text bed.

At the Sex in Games Conference a few months back, one of the big points that got stressed about sex-based games was that interactivity gives games a sexy edge over straight pornography. It seems a title like VirtuallyJenna should be a prime example of that: porn 2.0, thanks to interactivity.

We’ve talked a lot about what exactly interactivity is–and one of the definitions that comes up again and again is the ability to impose your will on an environment. But I never expected a game to take things quite so literally.

VirtuallyJenna isn’t about what you can do with a famous porn star, it’s about what you can do to her–or, moreover, what you can make her do. (”How would YOU fuck Jenna?… Make her do whatever you want!”) Being part of the action is secondary at best. Theoretical turn-on number one: your ability to control.

Perhaps you stopped by the site last week, looking for your regular dose of sex and games babblings, complete with Hello Kitty “back massager” and naughty pictures of an electronic Jenna Jameson. And perhaps you were taken aback to find instead a more subdued Heroine Sheik, with a “tech culture blog” slogan, and safe-for-work Hello Kitty toasters.

Fear not, friendly reader, sex and games are still near and dear to our collective heart–and they’ll remain a big part of the blog. But sometimes even websites need to grow up, at least a little bit. So don’t be fooled by the adorable Link figurine. Remember that Nixon mask you wore for Halloween like ten years ago? Fish it out of the closet; put it on. ‘Cause things here are getting mad serious. Just don’t tell Bonnie…

A question of cultural perception:

Is it possible to be bisexual without actually having sexual interactions with members of the same sex?  Bisexual people can get a lot of guff from both the gay and straight communities.  But it seems, to top it all off, they’re often held under a general lense of suspision.

Maybe our reluctance stems from the archetype of the ”bi” girl–we all know at least one–who gets drunk at parties and makes out with her friends… for attention, for kicks, for whatever.  Maybe we assume bi is just code for neo-hippy. Or maybe, in this day and age, where we’re wedded to the idea of being one thing or the other (straight or gay) we don’t want to face a reminder that, to some extent, we’re all somewhat queer.

Either way, it seems that to prove yourself gay (to the satisfaction of most people) isn’t difficult at all.  If you come out, people react.  Or, even if you don’t speak up, people are more happy to make assumptions for you.  A married man who fantasizes about men–even if he never touches one–would still be “gay”.

So where does that leave bisexuals?