I saw the oddest text conversation:

"Was it good?"
"lol it was good-ish"

I wanted to smack the person on this end of it.

"Fairly good" would have conveyed the same thing and actually been English.

Yael Tamir imagines a country called Libidia, where women with unnaturally enlarged clitorises find they cannot do anything else but have sex and therefore seek to remove the clitoris in order to have better lives. In this way she suggests that sexual pleasure undermines other valuable human functions . . .

Academia: where you can be paid to spend your days imagining enlarged clitorises.

I love it when I'm competitive with someone . . .
. . . and they keep insisting that I have to be merely lucky.

That's some self-esteem, isn't it?

I randomly get dry while being fingered, is something wrong?

My boyfriend and I are just having fun and making out. Then he starts fingering me and i'm wet and then after probably a half hour or so, I seem to go dry every time. It's not as if I'm no longer "horny" I just get dry.

Is something wrong or is this normal?

Additional Details
We're not boring. I'm seventeen...i'd rather not add another pregnant teen to the world.
- κιm♥

I assume if you're getting wet, it's not boring to you, and if it's not boring to you, who cares what anyone else thinks?

I feel compelled to point out that Russell Marker synthesized progesterone in 1937. It's now 2010. The Pill has been around for many years, as have condoms. Your desire to not get pregnant is laudable, but just in case you aren't aware, someone should point out that there are things you can do about it.

Exaggerated tales in Cosmo aside, the human body isn't really designed to continually stay in the "arousal" stage. The arousal mechanism is slightly different in every person, so while some people can probably do what you are describing with no ill effects, it's entirely reasonable that some people (such as you) would not be able to continuously secrete lubrication.

This is normal.

In fact, a man typically climaxes within 10 minutes of the start of an encounter, so basically you're engaging in sexual activity beyond what your body is evolutionarily designed for.

Only leavers will be cool.

"Okay, he clearly does not understand the limits of the media."
- blackandbluesocks on the Discovery Channel hostage-taker James Lee

It isn’t just the media he doesn’t get. More fundamentally, his rants revealed a man who failed to understand humanity. There is no centralized location where you can flip a switch and all of a sudden people behave differently. We are people, not robots.

I haven't been blogging that much.

From 2004 to 2010, with a break of about a year in the middle, I posted near-daily updates in this blog. This summer, however, I've let that lapse. I went entire weeks without posting entries, and I did it shamelessly, unapologetically, like some kind of unfaithful modern lover who betrays you, ignores your emails to return the keys, and then critiques your poor form when you react badly.

Truth be told, it was a long time coming.

The first reason is that a blog is an outlet for writing, whereas my writing is now almost always done at a professional level. When it's not, I'm writing to handle real life things like politely asking companies why they have triple billed me for the same expenses, or why my cell phone seems to have used more minutes in one month than it is humanly possible to be awake. I don't really need it as an outlet for the words that seem to well up from within, because bastards throw their pitiful carcasses in the path of my word cannon. "Fire at us," they snarl. "Fire!" And I oblige them.

The second reason is priority. Quality, of course, has dropped, and so pride plays a part, but the more important reality is that I simply don't have time. That is, while I could be posting random pictures of vuvuzelas dressed as schoolgirls, I would much rather go out and do things.

I do not, mind you, think this is some part of some big anti-intellectual kick, the way that I have seen certain other bloggers triumph action over thought as if thought were somehow inherently unclean. Nor do I - maudlin approach aside - really think of it as abandoning you.

It's not you. It's me.

I just need some me time. Say you understand.

89 words

Typing Test

This latest installment, by onlyxlovexremains, is a doozy. You have been warned.

This is kind of hard for me to write since there's just alot of detail and events that I have been through but I hope I did my best to explain it. If not just let me know so I can better clarify.

The first time I probably ever met Skylar was when my mother started to baby sit for him when he was a baby. After some time, my mother went back to work and the few children who she babysat for, including my older sister and I started going to a different daycare. This would be where I got the first crush I have ever had on a boy and it was with him. I remember my family would always teasing me about going to his house and whatnot. I would always scream, No! I don't want to! I don't like him! I must admit, alot have changed since then and when I mean alot I mean a whole lot.

We started going to different grade schools in the town we grew up in which has a population around 3,000 people. He went to a Catholic school while I went to public school. Of course, I started becoming interested in a few others guys while there since he wasn't really in my life anymore. When I look back at all the guys I liked they all had something about them that was similar to the type of guy he is. A lot of the guys I liked were cute, dorky, short, had a nice smile, and of course, he's a lot like that. There are two things however, that still left a connection between me him besides the type of guys I liked at school. His dad is the manager of a municipal airport and does crop spraying for farmers during the summer time. The two things that still connected me to him, was their airport light that would wake me up everytime we were close to home... and... my favorite house to go by at christmas time was his house and their "Airplane Santa" display. I have also been one for having dreams that are a little prophetic, meaning future predictions. Believer it or not. In about 6th grade, when he was practically non-existent to me, I had a dream about a road that wasn't quite a road and it was up north of town. Well, his dad's aiport is up north of town and the road that wasn't quite a road was his dad's runway.

It was the summer before my 7th grade year and transfer to the only High School in town, that he popped up into my life again. I started hanging out with a girl that he went to grade school with and while hanging out at the high school he was there. She ended up introducing me to him and we kind of hung out with him and the friends for a little bit. Nope, this is not when I started falling in love with him. Probably because I wasn't really interested in the opposite sex at this moment. High school was going to be enough of a new and exciting experience for me to handle at this time. However, at the end of my 7th grade. He did talk to me, asked me a question and gaveme a compliment I probably won't ever forget. I had those light up flip-flops that you could buy at Walmart for really cheap. Well. He told me he liked my flip flops and asked me where I got them from and I told him Walmart. I know cheesy, right?

Well, I must point out that his compliment was one of the first I have ever recieved, especially from a guy . This isn't the only compliment he has ever given to me either. I get it right now as your reading this your probably thinking this is really all there is to it? Not at all. This is only the beginning when I was young, naive, and the cheesy things were a big deal. In the next couple years, I won't be that same girl anymore. Not the least bit.

Now, I take us to 8th grade where the connections start getting pretty strong for a person my age. I tried out for cheerleading at the end of 7th grade and made it to be a cheerleader for the wrestlers. I was at a football game with a friend when him and his friend came up to me and asked if I was cheerleading for wrestling (since he was going to be Junior High wrestler). I told them that I was and my friend ended up pulling me away to go some place else. I turned my head around and I saw his friend picking on him, saying "Ooh, a wrestling cheerleader". I got a whole bunch of butterflies in my stomach. He likes me. That was all I could think about for the rest of the weeks to come and I started looking forward to the beginning of the wrestling season. In 8th grade, my locker was also right next to his so I always fairly close to him if you know what I mean. I would lose my breath everytime his arm bumped against mine and everytime we had to go to our lockers I made sure we were there at the same time so I coud be close to him.

During wrestling trips, I got to see what kind of guy he was like as well. How he acted with certain people. He played a trick on two of the cheerleaders that were the oddball, drama queens and made them cause a scene on our bus because of mayo that got on their seat. The whole bus was cracking up because of it and he just sat there with a grin on his face. After a while, I noticed too that he would try to get it so he could sit closer to me and usually ended up sitting right behind me. I also caught a few of the guys teasing him about liking a cheerleader and of the six cheerleaders on the team, the odds of it being me was more than positive. Two weeks before Valentines Day and state wrestling competition, I started planning to tell him I liked him by giving him a letter and also provided some chocolate. Valentines Day came and even though my mother and sister didn't think I would do it I did it. By 7th period that day, it was obvious that the message was out and he just recieved it at the end of sixth period. He never talked to me about it, not even during state wrestling competition, but on the bus ride home I heard he was going to ask the really pretty, smart, blonde girl in our grade out. He ended up asking her out during lunch period the Monday after competition and, of course, since it was set up to go against me she said yes. They "dated" for about a month, when they danced with each other at a dance they didn't even look at each other. Only me. I think I realized a while after the situation passed that the reason they "dated" was because everyone knew I liked him, he was embarassed by the way I got the message out, and he just needed something to do to show me that he wasn't openly "interested" in me because of what people would think.

This situations are basically the same as the all the other ones that I have encounted for the past six years, just the outline of the plot was slightly different. There has been signs that he does like me and has liked me, but doesn't want the majority of others to know about it, only a select few. He'll cover up his interest in me by playing around, fiddling with my feelings, and making sure that the majority of the crowd does not know he likes me. There are a few good reasons I have come up with for why he is the way he is and these are it...

1. He Has a Domineering Mother
In his family, there are a grand total of 4 males and 1 female. The four males being his dad, his two brothers, and himself. The female being his mother. From what I know, his dad is fairly laid-back while his mother is more strict and controlling. How would this affect his development? When you grow up in a house when the woman of the house holds more power then all of the men in the house, including the father. Well, I've done my research and the results have shown that the males that grow up in this situation tend to be immature and feel the need to control members of the opposite sex to get back at their mother's dominance.

2. I've Heard He Has a Small Penis
If what I've heard is true and for many reason I do believe it is then he has an special kind of insecurity. This insecurity would make him want to keep to himself. If he got into a relationship with a girl, he would be insecure of getting intimate with her and might fear that she will tell people about his insecurity. Since he has this insecurity he is most likely afraid of getting involved with the opposite sex. From what I know about him, he does a good job of keeping to himself. I'm pretty sure he has never had a girlfriend. Also, there is a high chance that he hasn't been with a girl sexually, especially, if this fact is true. I do remember that he never took showers after gym like the other guys did. He also quit wrestling during 8th grade. Both of these factors could be because he did not want to get teased about it. I also heard from this one guy, that he didn't even need a jockstrap and few of his friends told me at a basketball game that he had a small penis. Plus, like I said before, he really keeps to himself.

3. He's a Conformist
He really cares a lot about what other people think about him. He doesn't want to be talked about. He doesn't want to be judged. He doesn't wanted to teased and picked on. He just wants to live his life without having to deal with being kicked out of the group and being stuck with the people who are "uncool".

These are the main reasons why he is the way he is.

Now, as I mentioned before I had many situations that were quite like the first one I explained. I also had to deal with a lot of bullying from the people I was around since they were all connected to him and immature. They believed it was impossible for me to love him. That I was a psycho stalker. I was getting paranoid out of my mind from all of the bullying that I took every day. After 5 years, my body had enough and I was coming home every night crying on my bed since all of it hurt so bad. My mother was getting fed up with dealing with me and what everyone else was putting me through so she called the principal. He was given a talk to by the principal and that his parents would be called. He went home that night and told his mother about his situation with me sparing all of the details that made me look messed up and she ended up calling my mother. My mother and his mother talked and in the end, my mother let her know that I was transfering to a different school 25 miles away. We decided on it before she called because my body was so tense from all of the stress I was dealing with. I was slowly starting to have nervous breakdown and couldn't take much more of the bullying. I only had to go for about a week more then I transfered to my new high school. During my last week some of bullying had died down since they heard that I was going to be leaving shortly. Even though the new high school was a long drive to get to I ended up where I needed to be to finish off my senior year and go on to college. We both ended up going to the same city for college, just different colleges. I'm pretty positive he knew I was going to one of the colleges in this city because I have family here and I told him about some of the special features a few years before. I may be the reason he came to the same city as me and why he's not in the city where he needs to be for his major...

Ever since I started liking him, I would always send him emails or open up my MSN space that only he had access to. I did it because I wanted him to know who I was, how I felt about him and so on. There were things I wanted him to know and it was the only way I could get through to him for the most part. After a while, he stopped viewing my MSN space though. He told me not to send him any more emails and I answered his request. The next thing I did was talk to him through my MSN name and status through MSN messenger. As of right now, I haven't talked to him all that much since talking to him like that is talking to a wall. He never responds and I just get upset since I never know what he's thinking.

Now, you probably wondering how do I even get the idea that were meant for each other. Well, I did mention before about my prophetic dreams and that's a big part in how I know. Ever since 6th grade when I had that runway dream, I had many other dreams that followed and all of them are about me and him. Me and him having a baby together. Me and him in this city together. Me and him getting married at a church in this city and having our reception at a motel not to far away from this church. I've had dreams about him checking up on me to see how I am doing. Or sending his friends or brothers to do so. I've had a dream about losing my virginity to him. I've had dreams where it's just me and him so close to each other that I can feel it when I wake up in the morning. The last major dream I had I was at a hospital, pregnant, his parents in the waiting room and I was about to deliver when I woke up in the morning with what felt like a "contraction" in my back that dulled off as I sat up in my bed. I've dreamt about his little boy when he's about four and when I turn him around to look at his face a flash of light ends the dream and I wake up. I've also had a vision from God while in the bathroom at my work place of his sons face and it looked so much like him. Not only have I had a vision, but my mom had one of me and him standing beside each other at her work place. She has also had a dream about him and his brothers coming by for a visit. She believes he's the one for me as much as I do.

Now, I'm not only relying on these dreams but my feeling as well. My heart is so strongly connected to him to the point where I can barely tolerate it. I'm so afraid of not being with him. Of there being another girl even though there probably won't be one that can even compare to who I am to him. I've told him I want to marry him. I've told him my dreams. I've told him about his son. That baby I hope to give him. I've told him so much, more then anyone else knows about me. I know he has some issues that he needs to work through but I love him all the same. He really is my soulmate. There's no one else that compares to him. I doubt there ever will be.

PS: Would it be alright if I asked him if he sex with this one girl?
It's kind of been bugging me for quite some time now and I just want to know what he has to say about it. I asked her cousin since she was talking to her about it over facebook, saying like "Oh my gosh, I got to tell your something that you did in his pickup!". Do I ask and if so, how?

Your relationship - if we can call it that - appears to be predicated on fear and irrationality. As such, it is unhealthy. You have listed many rational reasons not to be with him, but in the end, perhaps you merely fear that you cannot find another path.

While throwing about a lot of heavy concepts - destiny, marriage, true love - you worry about details like penis size. Of course sex is important to many people, but if gross anatomy is among the top three things you would publicly mention, I must question your readiness for such a serious relationship as you think this will be. (I mean, look, you just sent several hundred online friends graphic details about your suspicion that your future husband has a small penis. If they remember nothing else, this is what they will remember.)

There are dreams that come to pass, and dreams that do not come to pass. Think on it.

It's not complicated to be a great writer. You just have to be willing to do anything that will improve your writing. When I say this, invariably way too many people nod, because they think they get it, so let me clarify. If you happened to get interested in, say, frisbee aerodynamics one day, would you be willing to burn six years of your life getting a physics PhD so that you knew more about the aerodynamics of thrown objects? Would you intensely pursue this incredibly hard subject just so that one day you could describe that frisbee with greater clarity and precision than anyone else?

No; you would not. You would avoid this thing because it is insane. That very limit imposed by your sanity is why you fail at writing. Warren Ellis is Warren Ellis because he has spent an amazing amount of effort in purposefully removing his social filters while retaining the ability to be constructive, and Neil Gaiman is Neil Gaiman because he spent over a decade writing privately instead of having a normal life like a reasonable human being. You are strictly inferior to them because you lack their skill, and you lack their skill largely because you have not put in the hours.

Note carefully that this has little to do with laziness. Ellis can be lazy. He just artfully arranges his laziness so that it does not interfere with his writing.

Learn from Gaiman, too: you need to practice. Stick at it for five, ten, fifteen years before you really let the public see your stuff. Don't get in it for easy glory. Don't allow people to tell you you're great at start. They lie. They do this thing because the world is full of wannabe writers who get offended when the merest whiff of criticism appears. Part of learning to write is the need to sort workshops into useless ego boosters and actual writing workshops.

I'm told the best thing that can happen is for someone who knows what they are talking about to tell you precisely how you fail.