Even your mother looks at porn.

Whether you realize it or not, porn is everywhere, touching every last corner of culture. And you, dear oblivious reader, may have unwittingly helped yourself to an eyeful on more than one occasion today. You probably know a handful of pornographers (if you’re not one yourself), and you probably enjoy a harmless peak more often than you realize. Yes, pornography is exploitative, gamy, and generally gross, but, man, does it get you Web traffic. So, if you’re feeling a bit “funny,” here are some ways to gratify yourself without sullying your eyes with a feast of flesh.

1. Sizzling Bacon Porn

This is my favorite kind of non-porn pornography. Bacon is to food porn what large breasts are to regular porn. Check out the fifth image in the bacon slide show: “Plain scallops quickly turn savory,” reads the caption, “when wrapped in, you guessed it, bacon.”

2. Vegan Porn

What better way to wash the bacon grease off one’s hands than with Vegan Porn? The salty, sensual delights of bubbling pig fat are quickly neutralized by the dry, rational prose of vegan advocacy. (There’s hardcore vegan porn too, but many find it distasteful.) This is like reading the fiction section of Playboy: It’s titillating and erotically illustrated, but you know you’ll have to get down and dirty in the Penthouse Forum if you really want to have a good time. (Note: We’re talking about vegan porn here, not vegan cuisine; just because veganism makes for less-than-ideal masturbatory material doesn’t mean it translates to less-than-ideal meals.)

3. Gratuitous Motor Porn

This is an invention of the good folks at Wired (“gratuitous motor porn” is their term, not mine), and I have to admit that as a non-gearhead, looking at it doesn’t arouse me in the least. Still, this kind of porn is noteworthy for the fact that it operates in two metaphysical planes: There’s real, hardcore porn for those who get off on its straight, grease-and-metal aspect; and there’s a more stylized version that celebrates things on wheels that look like vaginas and penises.

4. Real Estate Porn

Maybe it’s because I’m satisfied with my studio apartment, but I don’t find so-called “house porn” all that sexy. Even so, there are some peeping toms who can be satisfied voyeurs even when the room they’re peering into doesn’t have people having sex in it. This is perhaps the non-porn porn most similar to real porn, in that each is about lusting after a basic necessity (shelter, for real estate porn; companionship, for real porn) you can’t, (at least right now), have. One can survive without a $225,000 Ferrari, and one can hit Safeway without buying bacon, but everyone needs a home. And just as there’s always someone better looking than your partner (except for me; no one’s better looking than my partner), there’s always a bathroom that’s nicer than yours. For sowing dissatisfaction and jealousy, real estate porn is hard to beat.

6. Geek Porn

Geek Porn is a little too self-aware, too hipster-ish for my taste (Lameness should be enjoyed, not celebrated as “so-lame-it’s-actually-cool”). Even so, it’s a popular genre among Star Wars fans and connoisseurs of inside jokes. Of course, given Star Trek’s track record of legitimate (and groundbreaking) eroticism, geekiness and sexiness would seem a natural fit, but alas, this one’s been hijacked by people who are cooler than us.

6. Shoe Porn

Shoe porn feels safe, since it’s difficult to make any part of a shoe look inappropriate. You can stare at these $3 million bad boys on your screen all day, and nary a colleague will realize just how close to bliss you actually are. Unfortunately for shoe pornographers, the decidedly unsexy Economist has begun to horn in on the action, which is like watching Martha Stewart Living branch into erotic cakes.

7. Golf Porn

Seems like an oxymoron, this unholy combination of man’s most boring time-waster with his most gratifying, but that, my friends, is exactly the point. Strokes, balls, and holes are the name of the game here, and let’s not forget the the vast overlap of terminology shared by golf and sex.

8. Gun Porn

While it’s easy to note that men use guns and penises in remarkably similar ways, good gun porn really just comprises the proverbial bag of dicks. It’s all about quantity over quality. I mean, this is just hot, and this, while intriguing, is just wrong. Despite this fundamental difference, though, there’s still the Larry Flynt-ish advocacy of gun porn, which gives it a greater legitimacy that it may or may not deserve.

Image: Deviantart, thebittenword, Jakob Montrasio, Gordana AM, SarahC1978, A Strakey, Nicholas Putz, onigiri-kun, eek the cat

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