Ah, that bawdy Renaissance!

This morning Reuters is reporting that a British museum in Oxford "has paid $387,000 for a Renaissance plate which shows a male head made up entirely of phalluses." One of them is even pierced. How do I know? Ananova, bless 'em, has pictures.

It's a good thing that other cultures had a means of sexual expression or we wouldn't know so much about their technology. These things last because folks from later prudish cultures kept them in safe places; unless you're an archaeologist, you wouldn't believe how much sexy stuff exists in the basements of museums, fondled only by "experts."

In any case, the traveler can visit the Secret Room in the Naples Archaeological Museum to see smut from ancient Rome, or visit certain Romanesque Churches to see sexual images carved into stone. By the way, the Roman phallus was used as a good luck charm. You saw them over shop doorways every time you went out to get your daily grub.