Random raves

An ad for a new "adult-oriented" channel on Sky in NZ:


I counted more than 20 naughty references after a couple of goes - I had to look up the more women-hating references like Tony Danza and Sanchez... and a "rusty trombone" was a new one for me! But I have no idea what the lost watch is referring to - help please!

I'm in the process of reading O: The Intimate History of the Orgasm, which is fairly decent in a popular-science kind of way. However, the author has just characterised virtually all women as being multi-orgasmic, and I must say that's not exactly my experience. I think less than half of the women I've had sex with could do it consistently.

So, with that in mind, I'm desperately curious to see if it's just me. *snicker*

I'm trying to get how you experience it in general - we all have ups and downs and varitions, but I would like an impression of your average kind of responses. Feel free to comment if I've made some terrible omission, or you want to add something. If you don't really want the entire universe to know how you come, I've enabled anonymous commenting. :-)

[Poll #919138]

... and no more spamitude today, I promise.

Firstly, while I think my sexual tastes are relatively unbizarre (no laughing in the cheap seats!), I just found the vid for B-Line by Lamb on YouTube (I like the track, although I actually prefer one of the remixed versions), and I find it oddly sexy. I mean really. And don't worry, it's not the weird figure she morphs into so much as the whole thing. I think I'm getting stranger in my old age.
( embedded Lamb vid )

Secondly, update on my knee. It's going really well, and while it got a bit tired the days I walked to work last week (it's only 15 minutes), it held up fine. I am finding I need more physical rest at the mo, but part of that is hormones too.
( Knee incisions )
The incisions are smaller than my little fingernail - about 7mm at the most. There are no stitches at all. At least not any visible ones. Getting to sleep can be a bit tricky, since I sleep mainly on my stomach, and put weight on my knees (depending which side I have my head on), but once I've drifted off it's all good. The ache is minor, and I've only been taking a couple of paracetamol in the afternoons when it's been feeling tired. For just one week after, I'm pretty happy. Yay!

I was downloading a Firefly vid from Megaupload, and they have lots of lovely advertising for adult dating sites and the like. There's a pop-up for Passion.com which circumvents the Fx pop-up blocker, meh.

Why is it that (nearly) every profile pic on these sites is just vile? Bad underwear, bad lighting, wierd desperate cultish expressions, incredibly unflattering body postures/positions etc, flesh bared in odd ways. And we won't talk about AdultFriendFinder.com. Obviously I'm getting old: I don't ever like looking at close-up pics of genitalia. And if you're looking for another woman, surely a pic of you screwing your hubby is not really going to do the thing? (especially when you say you're NOT after MFF threesomes!)

And, for those people I might chat to online, if I say (after a while, like several sessions, in a non-sexual context) "do you have a pic?", please do NOT send a pic of your tits. Call me old-fashioned, but I'd rather see your face before getting up close and personal with other parts of your anatomy. And really, I can wait to see those parts in the flesh. If ever. Honestly. I don't need pictures of boobies, I have my own to look at, ok? Thanks.

Does anyone wonder why I prefer bi women (and lesbos, actually) who have had some experience with women before they try to get in my pants?

I just bought The New Glucose Revolution to give to my girlfriend. She's complaining that she needs to lose weight (ok, she's a size 20-something and 5'4") and she's in the throes of starving herself. She let me know today that she's feeling a bit woo-woo from her "diet". Argh!! I resisted the urge to go round and bitch-slap her (I was at work and she's an hour's drive away), and bought the book, which is the bible of the whole GI (glycemic index - glucose absorption rates of different foods) area.

It could discuss a lot more about GL (glycemic load - the GI of a food as a function of the total amount of carbs it contains), which I think is a better scale because it's easier to calculate and doesn't give wierdness like saying watermelon isn't so desirable as a fruit because of its high GI. Its GL is low. The reason for the high GI is that the carbohydrate in watermelon is absorbed almost as fast as sucrose is; however, because a watermelon is 90% water, you're actually consuming very little carbohydrate for the weight of what you eat. Still, this book is a good start, and it does actually give GLs in its tables, even if it's far too dismissive of them in the text.

Getting to the peeve point, the book bloody well keeps citing commercially prepared foods with a stupid ™ symbol. Things like Weetbix™, Burgen™ etc etc etc blah blah bloody blah. A trademark is defined as:
... any word (Poison), name (Giorgio Armani), symbol or device (the Pillsbury Doughboy), slogan (Got Milk?), package design (Coca-Cola bottle) or combination of these that serves to identify and distinguishes a specific product from others in the market place or in trade.

There is no need at all to use the trademark symbol, unless you are the owner of the trademark and you want to make it absolutely clear that you're claiming it as a trademark. However, it's the name, or the logo, or the combination of colours or sounds that are unique to your product that actually IS the trademark. Any normal Joe Bloggs, who is not an advertising copywriter, does NOT need to use a trademark symbol, except for the purpose of deep irony. So long as the item is set off by some device like Initial Caps, like any proper name, and the trademarked name is preferably used solely as an adjective, not a noun (although "Weetbix cereal" does sound a bit clumsy, but it'd be fine for formal writing), then you are adhering to international law governing trademark citation. Ok? Good. Just tell all those book editors the same thing (non-fiction books being the worst).

Other peeve du jour: this is purely grammatical, although (obviously) I am NOT a grammar expert. But this one is getting more common, and it tweaks me mightily. Less versus fewer. If there is one of something, you have less of it. If you have lots of somethings, you have fewer of them. You have less cash after visiting the gaming parlour, and undoubtedly fewer coins. Quite often people will substitute the fewer with less, like "I had a lot less coins after that game, which totally sucked me in". Wrong wrong wrong. You would never say "I had a lot fewer cash". It's the same the other way round.

Think of the kind of thing you have, like milk. Milk, because of its nature, is a single item. You drink some of the milk, you have less of it. But, if you have lots of bottles of milk, those are many items. If you drink 3 of your pint bottles of milk, you have fewer milk bottles remaining (assuming you dispose of them when empty), although you will still have less milk too. A simple reminder: if you use the pronoun it to refer to an item, you have less of it; if you say them to refer to the items, you will end up with fewer.

Now for the frivolity: I had a dream last night ( and it was fairly graphic )

Edit: For embarrassing spelling mistake. And check out eringryffin's comment below on counting to differentiate between less/fewer.

It seems like a contradiction in terms. But, I am one, and I'm posting up here to save having to write this out again and again, since a lot of people seem to be engaging in the (frankly, incredibly retro) activity of asking me to explain myself. Some have put the inquiry in not-so-polite terms, but, well, you know what I think of you anyway.

I sometimes have slept with men because:

• I would rather sleep with a man (sometimes) than do myself or use sex toys (as some have suggested would be the better alternative) because it is very hard to kiss oneself or have one's toys kiss you. Or do any of that sensual body-contact stuff. Unless you have a more vivid imagination than I do.


• Not all women are attractive, and a very few men are (to me). Logically, there may be times where there are some men who are available who I fancy more than any women who are available (Robert Downey Jr, you can have my email address on request eh, not any more).

I am definitely a dyke because:

• My cultural, political and social identity is very much lesbian. "Queer" works as well, but I'm not of the "I'll shag anything" school (not that there's anything at all wrong with that; I'm just not that flexible), and my history, emotional life and commitment is orientated towards women.


• Men don't turn me on physically very often (and by that, I mean when we are actually getting down to business). If they push the right buttons, it will work eventually (if I like them enough), but I have never looked at a man and gone weak at the knees. The most intense reactions I've had towards men are along the lines of: "He's a nice guy. We've been having a good time. Why not?" But you might as well call me "vibrator-sexual" as well, if that basic physical-outlet stuff is a determinant of my sexuality.


• I have never had - and am pretty sure I never will have (although perhaps I should bite my tongue, in case) - romantic feelings of any description for a man. Affection and friendship, yes. If I should ever fall in love with one, then I'll call myself bisexual.


• I have slept with 3 men in 16 years. There was a gap of none at all for 13 years, and since that interlude, it's been another 13 years. Women come out and call themselves dykes within weeks of previous relationships with guys. Or even simultaneously, in the case of married lesbians. When do the "boy germs" evaporate and do you become a "real" dyke?


• In response to the previous point, I know some of you would say "Never!" But how many lesbos do you seriously believe have never slept with a man? I personally know two out of literally scores of dykes that I know. Does that mean they are the only real lesbians? If so, I hope the two of you have a nice life together.


• Women move me in so many ways that men don't. There's no logical reason, since women are fucked up in as many ways as men are, but I can generally deal with a woman's brand of fucked-up-ness better (perhaps in the same way I can tolerate people who talk lots but I'm not able to endure someone who eats with their mouth open constantly).


• I am so much better at having sex with women than I am with men (despite all the tossers who assure me that you don't need much technique to do men. Yeah right.)

So, that sums me up, sexual-identity-wise. None of this is by way of a justification, because I really don't know why it still seems to matter. I'm not even going to enter into the whole argument of our identities being defined purely by who we have sex with. "Queer" is probably the best label for me. But I have had people ask me recently (and politely) why I personally don't identify as bisexual. So, the above is why. Also, by saying all that, I am not in the slightest bit trying to demean anyone who is bi- or pansexual. I just feel that I have a certain lack of flexibility in that regard, and I admire people who do have it and are able to express it well in their lives. I most certainly do not have any moral or "more pure twue queer" high ground.

This should hopefully also explain why I've felt calling myself bi would be fairly dishonest, especially for those men who might otherwise be interested. Fundamentally, I think it would be unfair to give myself a label that would give some people (men) the wrong impression of my potential availability.

ETA: Comments are off. I'm tired of rehashing the same arguments that should have died out 30 years ago. Read some Adrienne Rich (since her argument that each woman should encounter some kind of lesbianism in her life to fully understand her own sexuality and emotional life could be flipped the other way, although not actually, because there is still a lot of compulsory hetness out there). Write your own blog post about "fake lesbians" if you feel so strongly - at least I won't have to read it.

By the way, if you're a guy who has had an intimate encounter with a professed dyke, try not to read too much into it until she says there is something to be read into it. Dykes can be "bi-curious" as well - a drunken snog is not a statement of intent. A one-off fuck is not a statement of intent. Sorry, it sucks if you care about them, but in the same way it can be for us queer women who get experimented-on by straight women, it's a landmine. Sometimes you can work something out; often you don't. And look, if weird intimate stuff keeps going on, and she's not being honest or refuses to discuss the situation, get yourself out of it (this applies no matter what your gender is). It's not cool being the "experiment" if you're not into being a lab rat.

I was going to rave here about my new toy ($150 off, woo hoo!), but I saw a BIG omission with my list of things I love doing.

Reading. For god's sake.

Would I rather read than have sex? Generally not. But reading is bloody crucial to my daily life. Not having a book makes me go seriously buggy.

Still, it doesn't mitigate the fact that my preferred activities involve consumption and not creation. But, man, I so value the creativity that gives me the things I love.

[And I can't yet rave about the other toy (not exactly work-safe, although nannyware probably won't react) I bought in Melbourne, since I haven't had an opportunity to try it out on someone yet. And they'd sold out of these (not worksafe either), the buggers! It's my g/f's birthday in a week, what am I supposed to do?]

*snortle*

abstinenceonly.com - a celebration of non-penetration

(Or, lock up those domain names, kiddies!)

It gets 10/10 for use of food for sex-education purposes.