Over in the Scantily Clad Holiday Cheer Department (one of our favorites) is The Cup Size Choir, depicting gorgeous women of varying lingerie sizes laid out on crisp, white sheets, ready to sing for you. Seriously, touch a key and cup size A to cup size G will belt out a “La!” which can be combined in pre-recorded songs like “Deck the Halls,” or in a song of the user’s own composition. The site is already somewhat overwhelmed with visitors; don’t be surprised if you get an error message. But it’s worth checking back later.

The Choir was dreamed up by Italian lingerie company La Senza, and it was created using some interesting techniques. “We filmed the girls on a bed with a guy holding them on his back,” said one of the creators, Bernard Magri. “Then, as soon as the countdown got to zero, the guy ducked down and the girl sang. Pretty low tech, but it worked!” We tend to sing when someone ducks down on us, too.

If you can't get to the link, you can get the general idea from the video:



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While it’s not exactly marriage, it’s close; Illinois has voted in a bill allowing same sex civil unions for those parts of the population long denied marriage. There’s a neat twist, too—the bill allows opposite-sex folks a civil union as well, for all those people who like a little more separation with their church and state.

Meanwhile, an attempt to oust the judge who ruled that California’s anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 is unconstitutional is over before it really got started; and Christian activists who are miffed that Apple pulled the anti-gay marriage app the “Manhattan Declaration”—have produced a petition signed by 16,000 people in an effort to get the app reinstated. These are tough times for marriage equality, but little victories are being won every day, so chin up! (App down!)

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If ever there was a time to accuse romance novels of being a tad “puritanical,” now’s the time; apparently the market is flooded with Amish, Shaker, and Puritan romance novels that are growing more popular as we speak. In lieu of bodice-rippers, welcome to “bonnet fiction” (bonnet-rippers?)

The saucy Amish storylines commonly follow an innocent girl torn between the bad boy and the pious boy, traipsing along old formulas that emphasize the battling impulses of lust and restraint within us all. And while sex—if it happens at all—happens way off stage in the stories, some say the bonnet-rippers say more about our modern life than our modern sex drives.

“There’s a sense in which the modern heart yearns for a time-out, a breather,” says Donald Kraybill, a sociologist at Elizabethtown College. Maybe amid the fast-paced chaos of today’s world, it’s charming to some to live in a world where authoritarian social rules keep women from attending college? Hot. And don’t forget the butter churning. Nothing gets us going like butter churning.

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These days, one can’t spit on the Internet without hitting a story about the upcoming Twilight/Breaking Dawn sex scene that has many a sparkly vampire fan trembling in anticipation—but apart from lewd photos of Kristen Stewart’s wrist, (how steamy?) little is known. Except that they took nearly 12 hours to film the first part. Twelve hours of sex? Wow. We know that most people don't really mean it when they say they'll “go all night,” but maybe vampires do.