The new USB fleshlight is basically an input device that can translate your onanistic thrusts into movements of the mouse. Theoretically it could be used to translate thrusts into other things too, like shooting in a game or moving around in a virtual space. You'd just have to write the controllers to do that.

However, the beauty part of using the fleshlight as a mouse is that the setup is plug-and-play. Plug the old fleshlight in, start thrusting, and you're moving the mouse.

The question is, why the hell is anybody marketing these things? Apparently they come with some kind of awful videogame that is mostly hand-controlled but later switches to thrust control. The game involves you trying to seduce a nurse, and Machulis sums it up nicely:

You have to sit there hitting the "hand presents" or "take medicine" button for 10 minutes. Then she takes off her shirt. Then you have to fondle her by clicking for at least 15 minutes. Notice the problems here?

"Hitting". "Clicking".

All you can do with the fleshlight is move the mouse. You can't click shit. So, you've gotta spend ~20 minutes doing things with your regular mouse before you can do anything with the fleshlight. And you sure as shit ain't gonna have both the mouse and the fleshlight going at once, unless you want to know what it's like to have your penis actively fighting your hand.

Due to popular demand, I actually included pictures of the action scenes. And yes, it really took me about 10-15 minutes to get to this point. My hand hurts. And not in the fun way. And, of course, once you do get the payoff, you find out that the male character (i.e. you) looks like a radiation experiment gone awry. Bugged out eyes, missing half his chest hair...

The fun in this device, however, is going to be all the hacks you could do on it. Think about it: now you have the first-ever cock controller! You could buy stocks . . . with your cock! Read a blog . . . with your boner!

Continues Machulis:

Assuming I can figure out a nice, cross platform way to unfuck the HID shit, expect to see libinteractivefl on sourceforge sometime soon, 'cause you know handing out headshots with this thing in an online shooter would be beyond awesome.

TMI About the Interactive Fleshlight [Slashdong]

Back in the late 1990s, Matt Rice got pregnant and had a baby with his male partner Patrick Califia. And of course there have been dudes with uteruses dating back to the early twentieth century. If you don't believe me, just read Pagan Kennedy's amazing biography of one such wombtastic guy, The First Man-Made Man, which is about the first transgendered male — ie, the first dude who could get pregnant (he didn't choose to do that, but led a pretty damn interesting life).

Throughout the past century, people have been writing about pregnant men in science fiction. The people in Ursula Le Guin's novel Left Hand of Darkness are, like the aliens in Enemy Mine, all one gender and therefore "men" can get pregnant. In Marge Piercy's novel Woman on the Edge of Time, everybody grows babies in artificial wombs but both men and women can nurse the infants when they're born. And of course you haven't lived until you've seen Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie Junior, dressed in a peach-colored pregnancy suit and confessing, "My nipples are so sensitive."

Plus, as I mentioned earlier, trannies abound in Varley and Stross novels, so it wouldn't be OMG SHOCKING in their worlds if a chick became a dude but kept his uterus for further use. Plus, the genre of fanfic called MPreg, where familiar male characters get pregnant, has been around forever.

So say it loud and say it proud — dudes can has babies! And we already knew that!