The Outspoken Clitic

NOW HEAR THIS:

My internet presence will be a little sparse for the next 2.5 weeks.  I am at the beach.

As you were.

Picture this: it’s Friday night chez moi.  I’ve got a huge party to go to Saturday night, so I figure I’ll stick around my apartment and relax.  At some point I decide it’s toy time, like you do.  I reach over to my bedside table and I grab my new Leo and my Eroscillator (which has permanent pride of place on my bedside table, it’s that good).  I flip the thing on to the first setting and…nothing.  I am confused.  I flip it back into the off position.  Then I try again.  Still nothing.  I push it up to the second setting and BAM, it springs to life.  Wait, what?  That’s right, the first setting has kicked it, but everything else was still working.  I don’t know what trickery of wiring made this particular malfunction possible.  Keep in mind that I am a wuss and I only ever use the thing on the first setting, very occasionally the second for short bursts, so this is a BRUTAL development.

In a fit of panic, I email the address given on the Eroscillator website.  Their returns page says they have a one-year warranty, but I’m not sure I qualify, since I purchased my Eroscillator from EdenFantasys, not directly from the manufacturer.  I emailed them on a Friday, and as I whinged to Epiphora on gchat, I wasn’t expecting a reply until Monday.  Well I WAS WRONG.  Sunday morning rolls around and there, in my inbox, is an email from Inge, saying they’d replace my beloved Eroscillator!  That I didn’t even buy from them!  On a Sunday!  She’s the best.¹

So, I sent it off post-haste (the Advanced Response Corp office is just across the city from me.  Maybe I should have just walked it there and saved myself some postage), and for the last week and a half I have been Eroscillator-less.  Woefully Eroscillator-less.  I mope around, glance at my Hitachi, and throw myself onto my couch in a fit of melancholy.  My lonely fingertip attachment has been sitting on my bedside table, gathering dust, waiting for its companion to return. All is misery and sadness at my apartment.  Much like a Russian novel, only warmer and with less vodka.

Until TODAY!  I came back from running, and in a blaze of glory, my doorman handed me a package that had come for me.  I clutched the package in the elevator, ripping off the tape before I get inside my apartment (I know, this was ill-advised, but I was truly crazed).  Inside the package–at this point I was safely inside my apartment–I found my new Eroscillator, which I promptly plugged in to find THREE WORKING SPEEDS!  Oh rapturous day! I chortled in my joy.

And now, with great happiness, I get to go back to using my favorite vibrator. All is right again with the world.

Not a review, but The Final Checklist:
THE ADVANCED RESPONSE CORP IS AWESOME: ✔

1. I emailed her from my personal email address, so she didn’t even know I was a reviewer/affiliate.  This is just the normal, totally awesome level of customer service. [↩]

Hi, everyone.  My life has gotten a little better (please hope for me that I don’t get anymore big curveballs for a while, and that things slowly but steadily continue to improve), so I decided that I could handle venturing back out into the virtual world and getting back into reviewing.  The lovely Epiphora helped me with a site redesign and I’m happy to be back!  I should have a bunch of new stuff going up in the coming days (including an epic tale of love, woe, and redemption involving my Eroscillator), so stay tuned.

What have I been up to since I posted last?  Well, I moved to New York City (yay!), I’ve begun the process of setting up my own business, and I’m slowly getting back into post-graduate academics.  Things are still hard and getting up in the morning is still a challenge, but I’m in a better place than I was before.

So, without further ado, I present to you the new Outspoken Clitic!

Well, finals are now over and I have time to post again!  Somewhat belatedly, I decided to participate in the holiday wishlist meme.

Here are the steps (via Epiphora):

1) Make a post listing your wishes. If you wish for real possible things, make sure you include some sort of contact info.

2) Visit the lists of others. If you see a wish you can grant, and it’s in your heart to do so, make someone’s wish come true.

3) You needn’t spend money on these wishes unless you want to. The point isn’t to put people out, it’s to provide everyone a chance to spread the joy. Gifts can be made anonymously or not — it’s your call.

It’s probably easier for me to just link to her post, since she’s got a list going of other people with wishlists!  Head over and check it out.

My Wishlist:

I’m actually pretty simple this year.  I’m going to be moving again in the spring, so I’m trying not to accumulate as much stuff as in past years.  So:

1) Anything off of my sex toy wishlist (this is always much appreciated).

2) More importantly, I’d like anyone who has experience with trauma and PTSD to let me know that I’m going to feel OK eventually.  I’m really, really struggling at the moment.

That’s pretty much it.  I’m really looking for some hope this holiday season.

Oh, also, if you can make it NOT GET DARK AT 4:15 PM IN BOSTON, that’d be awesome, too.

Soooo…hi!  Site’s back up!  Apparently there was some sort of electrical fire at my host?  Anyway, we’re back in business.

I just got paid.  What’s the first thing I do?  Buy some new toys!  I also finally bought an Eneloop rechargeable battery set, which I’m ridiculously excited about.

I know I’ve been kind of silent these past few days; I’ve been overwhelmed with grading (my class is up to 120 and I’m the only TA).  But there will be new reviews coming soon, I promise!

I just found this, via Erin Leone. It’s called the Coalition Against Toxic Toys, or CATT.  This is a fantastic resource for learning about and avoiding unsafe toy materials. The site is affiliated with Smitten Kitten and provides lots of resources, so I suggest you check both out!

Oh the heels of the publication of the 2008 Best Sex Toy Reviewers (on which I was flattered to find myself listed!), there were a few posts around the community lamenting the plethora of reviews and the perceived lack of “real” sex blogging.  These posts were pretty offensive, in my opinion, since they failed to account for diversity of preferences and drive within the community.  The “fact” that there are too many sex toy reviews is treated as a foregone conclusion we must agree with.  I don’t.

The value of the sex toy community to sex toy retailers has also been ludicrously overestimated.  Sure, it’s some free advertising, but I’d be willing to bet a moderate-to-large amount of money that the revenue these sex toy retailers see come in from sex blogs is but a tiny, tiny percentage of their overall revenue.  We’re not that profitable, so we should probably get over ourselves.  Is it good to only review for safe, sex-positive, feminist retailers?  Absolutely.  As a community, we should definitely be voting with our feet (or credit cards) on that issue: but let’s not pretend it’s going to make a huge difference or drive the somehow undesirable companies out of business.

I started this blog so that I could have a venue to separate the good parts of sex from the bad parts of sex (my ex) after a horrible abusive relationship that has already cost me years of happiness and will take more before I’m well again.  I started this blog with the intent to review toys, exclusively.  I find real sex triggering.  Does it follow that I’m less of a sex blogger because I don’t write about actual sex?  Or that I don’t blog about my personal life?  I’d like to think not.  But it’s the height of hubris for someone else to assume that they know what’s best for me to be writing about on my own blog.  If you want to write more about sexuality, go ahead.  There’s no reason that anyone else should have to just because you think it’s better.  Communities are diverse places, and trying to get everyone to do the same thing strangles them.

But anyway, I’m not going to be able to say it better than Epiphora already has, so head on over to her place and check it out.  Sex toy reviewers: keep on reviewing, and ignore people who think they somehow know better than you what should go on YOUR blog.  On the flip side: don’t like what someone else does with their blog?  Don’t call them “less”, just do something different.  End of story.

You be the judge!

1) I’m viciously asthmatic and I’m allergic to most trees, grasses, dust mites, and a lot of perfumes.  For most of my life I’ve been on weekly allergy desensitization shots.  It’s good times.

2) My esophagus doesn’t work, at all: I have a condition called achalasia and had to have surgery when I was in high school so I could eat.

3) I somehow managed to catch Whooping Cough when I was a sophomore in high school, despite the fact that I’d been vaccinated as a child.  That was fun.

4) Natural selection has been out to get me since I was born (see 1, 2, and 3) and for the good of humanity I should probably never reproduce.

5) In high school I competed on an international level in rowing, asthma be damned.

6) I biked from across the USA last summer with two broken elbows.  I’d never ridden a road bike before and while training before the trip I struggled with clipless pedals (fell a few times)…  I desperately want to bike cross-country again, but I’m not sure if I’ll have the time.

7) Missouri is hands down my least favorite state in the Union.

8 ) My favorite states (that I biked through) are Oklahoma and New Mexico.  Oklahoma was great because it was flat and had lots of sunflower fields.  New Mexico is just gorgeous.

9) I know a LOT of dead languages (like, a lot).

10) I study the development of languages over time as a profession.  By figuring out how the brain makes mistakes during acquisition (these mistakes lead to change), you can figure out how your brain is computing language, which I think is awesome.  Also, since some types of language change are systematic, you can actually reconstruct how people talked 8-10 thousand years ago (you have to work backwards from related dead languages).  I think that’s pretty freaking cool, which is why I’m getting a PhD.

11) My favorite dead languages are Old Irish, Greek, Hittite, Egyptian, and Akkadian.

12) I really enjoy being able to show off in museums by reading inscriptions.

13) I have three younger siblings (two sisters and a brother).  My brother is the youngest and  I’ve become that older sister that buys her younger brother presents for no reason.  (To be fair, though, I have been known to buy the sisters random stuff for no reason.)

14) I’m half-Lebanese.

15) I lived in Cairo for a few months, but my Arabic is still pretty sad.  I’d kill to be natively bilingual.

16) One of my little sisters is going to be an archaeologist.

17) I live with three roommates who are going progressively more insane (or maybe they were always insane and I’m just now noticing).  And it’s not entertaining insane, either.

18) My high school boyfriend owned a jacket that looked just like Michael Jackson’s in the ‘Beat It’ video.  This ex-boyfriend turned out fine, though.

19) I have a lot of body image issues I’m working through.

20) I’m also working through PTSD from an abusive relationship and can’t use/review/deal with realistic sex toys.

21) I love Mystery Science Theater 3000 and wish it was still running.

22) I’m a HUGE Joss Whedon fan.

23) I’ll eat anything with coconut in it.

24) I’m running out of things to say.

25) I went to a party at a fellow grad student’s house last night.  On the way, I slipped on the ridiculous amount of ice we have here, fell on my bag which contained a bottle of wine for the party, broke said bottle of wine, and ruined my bag and everything in it (RIP, phone).  I fortunately managed not to be speared in the side with broken glass.

I totally cried during that speech.  Unbelievable.  :-D