Sounding or urethral sounding is the medical use of probes called sounds to increase the inner diameter of the urethra and to locate obstructions in it. Sounds are also used to stretch the urethra in order to receive genital piercing.
Urethral sounding and urethral play are also used to refer to this practice in a sexual context.
Urethral play can involve the introduction of either soft or rigid items into the meatus of the penis (as well as farther in). Objects such as sounds are usually only inserted about halfway into the glans and can usually be easily retrieved. Other toys and items, such as catheters, may be introduced deeper; in some cases even into the bladder. Some items may even be allowed to curl several times or expand within the bladder. This action in the male may be directly or indirectly associated with stimulation of the prostate gland and some types of bladder control.
If not conducted carefully, sounding carries a risk of irritation, tearing of the urethra, or of urinary tract infection. Infections may become serious if they progress to the bladder or kidneys, and should be referred to a doctor.
In medicine, sounds are instruments for probing and dilating passages within the body, the best-known examples of which are urethral sounds and uterine sounds. Some people enjoy using them for urethral play.
Urethral sounds are designed to be inserted into the male or female urethra, for the purpose of stretching or unblocking a stricture. There are a number of different types of urethral sounds:
These sounds or dilators are intended for probing a woman's uterus through the cervix, to measure the length and direction of the cervical canal and uterus, to determine the level of dilation, or to induce further dilation.
Sound is the fourth studio album by the British band Dreadzone. It was released in 2001 on Ruff Life Records.
"Silly" is a song written by Fritz Baskett, Clarence McDonald and Deniece Williams and performed by Williams. The soulful ballad was released off Williams' My Melody album in 1981 and became the most successful track off the album reaching as high as number fifty-three on the Billboard Hot 100 becoming an even bigger success on the R&B chart where it peaked at number-eleven. It has since gone on to become one of Williams' most requested songs over a career that has spanned over thirty years. The song featured production by Williams and respected Philly soul producer Thom Bell. The song was recorded at Philadelphia's acclaimed Sigma Sound Studios. The song would be later covered by singer Taral Hicks nearly two decades later in 1997 and was released as the second single off Hicks' debut album becoming a hit on the R&B chart.
One of Williams' influences, Patti LaBelle, later recorded the song for her 2005 album, Classic Moments. Singer Monica later sampled the instrumental intro and bridge of the song for her number-one R&B hit, "Everything to Me" and also interpolated Williams' ending high notes at the end of the song. Monica and Williams sang "Everything to Me" and "Silly" respectively together at the BET Awards in 2010. The-Dream also sampled the song for his song "Silly", which featured Casha, on his free mixtape 1977.
Pluto (プルートウ, Purūtō) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Naoki Urasawa. It was serialized in Shogakukan's Big Comic Original magazine from 2003 to 2009, with the chapters collected into eight tankōbon volumes. The series is based on Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy, specifically "The Greatest Robot on Earth" (地上最大のロボット, Chijō saidai no robotto) story arc, and named after the arc's chief villain. Urasawa reinterprets the story as a suspenseful murder mystery starring Gesicht, a Europol robot detective trying to solve the case of a string of robot and human deaths. Takashi Nagasaki is credited as the series' co-author. Macoto Tezuka, Osamu Tezuka's son, supervised the series, and Tezuka Productions is listed as having given cooperation.
Pluto was awarded the ninth Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize, an Excellence Prize at the seventh Japan Media Arts Festival and the 2010 Seiun Award for Best Comic. In France, it won the Intergenerational Award at the Angoulême International Comics Festival and the Prix Asie-ACBD award at Japan Expo in 2011. The series was licensed and released in English in North America by Viz Media, under the name Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka. By 2010, over 8.5 million volumes of the manga had been sold.
The Mutants, or Hill People, are the main antagonists of the The Hills Have Eyes remake film series. The Mutants are deformed outcasts, created through radiation poisoning.
The teaser trailers and prologue of the 2006 remake of The Hills Have Eyes, as well as newspaper clippings seen in the film and dialogue from mutant character Big Brain, reveals that the Mutants are the way they are due to radiation. Sometime in the fifties during the Cold War, the American government forced the populace of a New Mexico mining town off their land to perform nuclear testing in the area, unaware that the towns inhabitants fled to the nearby mines, where they were exposed to radiation given off by the atomic bombs being tested. Subsequent generations of these miners were born as malformed Mutants.
The graphic novel, The Hills Have Eyes: The Beginning expands upon this origin, revealing that only some of the miners gave birth to Mutants; those that did were driven from the nuclear testing village the miners inhabited after the government stopped testing in the area, and sent back into the mines to live a meager existence on supplies sold to them by a nearby gas station owner named Jeb. When Jeb became unable to supply the Mutants any longer, the Mutants' leader, Karen Sawney Bean, made a deal with him; Jeb would trick anyone who ventured to his gas station into going into the Mutants' territory, where they would be killed and eaten, with any valuables they had being given to Fred and his family to sell. Soon after Karen Sawney Bean died, her son, Hades, became the Mutants' leader. The Mutants, led by Hades, attacked the nearby nuclear testing village sometime after Karen's death, killing everyone in it and taking it as their own.