First of all:

Dani Coutu-Shaw, I do not have your email. However, I DO have some links for you with sweet crochet chart-y goodness! So, here they are:

Some Russian granny square pot holder type things
Quelques modêles français - Je pense que tu devrais commençer avec les «mod. napp. petits». Bon?

In other news, my thread over at Craftster about the crocheted vulvas has been a hit! And a girl flipped out on me and accused me of making porn and corrupting her 8 year old son! And then she got the smack-down from the top moderator and left Craftster in a self-righteous huff! But everyone else likes them. :) So, I'm going to sell the pattern, and I'm working on it presently. There will be sex education material included, of course.

The most-updated (hopefully final) design:


The most common question is "what the hell is it for?" No one asks me that when I crochet monsters, but I digress... It's for sex education, it's for fun, it's for having an accurate 3d model that is not intimidating, it's for making something cool and interesting and pretty out of something that is considered bad, dirty, shameful, obscene, etc., despite the fact that it is SUPER COOL and FUN TO PLAY WITH and THE WAY YOU GOT HERE. Let's face it, the diagrams we see are inaccurate and incomplete -- the diagram in the tampon box is wrong, the diagrams from health class are wrong, even the MEDICAL TEXTBOOK DIAGRAMS are wrong (seriously, ask any gynecologist). It's time to get it right. It's time for women to actually know what they look like "down there" and that there's three holes, NOT TWO, and that the clitoris is much more complex than you ever knew.

Also, it is the time for crocheting vulvas on public transit, because it makes me giggle to myself.

is this skirt:



Tutorial here at craftster.org.

Yesterday, when I was out buying material, I also went to the Toronto Women's Bookstore and picked up a couple of books:
1. Vaginas: An Owner's Manual: "Topp, a single, 20-something writer, teams up with her mother, Livoti, a seasoned gynecologist, to demystify the female reproductive system. The younger author felt lucky to grow up with a mother who was knowledgeable and forthcoming about the female anatomy, especially when she reached her teen years and realized that most of her friends weren't so lucky. Too many women are uncomfortable discussing their private parts with friends or even doctors, say the authors, and this can lead to misconceptions about their own bodies. Despite the catchy title, this is a deep examination of the body. Starting with an overview of the basic organs, then moving into menstruation, maintenance, menopause and medical problems, the authors investigate every nook and cranny of those elusive female parts. They explore sex, contraception, STDs and abortion from a nonjudgmental, pro-choice, woman-to-woman perspective."
2. Regulating Sex: The Politics of Intimacy and Identity (Perspectives on Gender): "The purpose of this volume of essays is to address contemporary dilemmas surrounding the regulation of sexuality via a series of spirited dialogues between scholars from diverse disciplinary, national, and theoretical perspectives. The contributors to Regulating Sex seek to address complex political questions surrounding the state regulation of sexuality, including: Is the pursuit of marital rights the best means to attain erotic freedom for gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals? Should the flourishing of the international sex trade demand a different state response than other sectors of the expanding global economy? How can we simultaneously empower and protect children in the course of their erotic decision-making? The authors in this volume draw upon original sociological, historical, and anthropological research to challenge conventional framings of gay marriage, human trafficking, and the sexual protection of children. The volume concludes with a discussion of new directions for theorizing about and advocating for sexual justice. Divided into four thematic sections and fourteen chapters, this text serves as an excellent companion reader to undergraduate and graduate-level syllabi in the sociology of law, gender, family, and sexuality."

I think, for now, I'm going to research sexuality and sex education as much as possible, and try to work my way into a job about it. I should find out if there's a semi-organized group lobbying for decriminalization (at least!) of sex work in Toronto. If there is, perhaps I will offer my publishing and/or web skills.

I noticed that the Toronto Women's Bookstore has a huge section of lesbian erotica... which I suppose is needed, but what about the straight girls? I suppose you could argue that straight girls can get their erotica from pretty much any other bookstore that sells such things, but I guess I expected it to serve all sorts of women. Maybe I just failed to notice that section? Or maybe I should have continued walking down the street to Good for Her? They also had a section on "knitting and crafts" which had knitting but no crocheting books. I kept quiet though, because I'm secretly plotting to try to get them to sell my crocheted vaginas. I'll sneak some crochet-respect into the store on the sly...

#1: from a tutorial at craftster which I mysteriously can't find now... argh. I don't really like it, but it seemed simple (and was) and I'm just starting to learn to sew, so... yeah. There's something wonky with the top of it, I think the instructions might have been a little off. However, I did learn how to sew darts, so that's something. Except that the darts weren't in the pattern, I added that. I just can't leave well enough alone, can I?



#2: okay, this one I like a lot better. I copied it from a tank top I have and like, and used some of the scads of material I bought today. Much more my style than the first, and a lot simpler.



Hey, notice how I don't look like I've gained any weight in that picture? Yeah, that's because it's from the front. As I've mentioned before, I gained 30 pounds in the month after I went off anti-depressants, and it's starting to drop (8 pounds so far, since May), but yeah... hello tummy. Does anyone have any exercise suggestions that are a) NOT RUNNING*, b) don't involve the gym, and c) don't cost exorbitant amounts of money? And maybe something that I can do while also playing on the Internet? This whole 'sitting in a chair all day' thing isn't really working out the way I had hoped.

*A note about running: I know, I know, it makes YOU feel awesome and YOU compare it to a heroin high. HOWEVER: When I was a kid, I was on the track team. I didn't come in last, but I wasn't stellar either. Also, no matter how often I ran, I always felt like I was dying. I never got past that 'huge cramps, lots of phlegm, feeling like I'm about to vomit' stage. Plus, my phys. ed. teacher told my mom (when I was within hearing distance) that I "don't run right and never will" and that she could tell from the way I walked. Have I mentioned that I was the kid who everyone picked on? And that there was NOTHING WEIRD ABOUT THE WAY I WALKED? I might have to look that teacher up and slap her when I go home next**, because that little comment increased my self-consciousness and hatred of phys. ed. ten-fold.

**Psst, which will be on the weekend of August 6th, oh Brockvillians, if you are paying attention.

Some time ago, I said on here that I was thinking of putting some of my papers on my website. Today, aeons later, I actually did it.

Gay Marriage and the Toronto Star: Support at an Arm's Length is a discourse analysis I did for Language, Power and Persuasion. It was a lot of fun. Some of the terminology is Linguistics-specific, but I think it should be rather readable nonetheless.

Child Poverty in Canada was written when I was at Tyndale, for Sociology, and while I hated the class, it was worth it just for having written that paper. I learned a lot, particularly about child poverty in Toronto.

Oh, and yes... in my little warped universe, papers are "fun" and make horrible classes "worth it." Now you know my dirty little secret.

This is Finch station. The section in yellow is for GO Transit buses and York Region Transit buses and entrance to the subway for pedestrians. The section in blue is for TTC buses and entrance to the subway for TTC bus passengers.

The parking lot above the red line is for people who get free parking because they take the subway downtown instead of their cars. It is a block long. It is always full, and that is encouraging.

This article in the Toronto Star, Holistic spa under scrutiny, had me both furious and hopeful at the same time.

Basically, this is the problem: There is prostitution. There is prostitution everywhere. There is prostitution even in (gasp!) Toronto and it ain't going away. Now, being that prostitution is illegal, prostitutes are not the safest people in the world. Being a hooker on the street is probably one of the most dangerous professions in the city, so, smart people that they are, they band together and run an establishment where, if something goes wrong, they have other people there to help them out. This avoids the whole "getting in the car with strangers who sometimes kill you" aspect of the job.

Much of the time, these establishments pose as holistic spas, massage parlours, etc. Because this is illegal, city inspectors spend a great deal of time in these establishments, trying to shut them down. The article states that "it's a problem that costs taxpayers $2.5 million a year in inspection and legal action costs." So, we're spending a ton of money shutting these places down. They also complain that the manager of the establishment featured in the article lied to them, saying that there was no sex happening in her establishment, when sex was happening there while she was saying it.

Well. I'm shocked. You mean, she's running an illegal business and didn't straight-out tell you? It's a shame, because drug dealers are usually so honest with the cops, why wouldn't these guys be?

"I saw a naked man on top of a naked woman on her back and he was having sex," said Peter Milczyn (Ward 5, Etobicoke-Lakeshore), who was present for the inspection Monday evening. "He was thrusting."

This is, indeed, shocking. Adults! Having consensual sex! Behind closed doors! We must stop this at once! Well, we must stop it so long as it is not a business transaction. Stripping, that's fine. Escorts, they're fine so long as you're paying for companionship and not the sex that often results. As George Carlin says, "Fucking's legal. Selling's legal. So why isn't selling fucking legal??!"

Milczyn goes on to impress me with this statement: "My personal attitude is we should be licensing brothels in a few select industrial areas with proper health monitoring — make sure it's safe and let the government collect taxes from it. We should accept reality and regulate it."

This is exactly what we should do. Instead of spending 2.5 million dollars annually on shutting these places down, we should legislate them, tax them, ensure that sex workers are tested regularly, and protect them from abuse. In New Zealand last week, a man was fined for removing a condom while having sex with a prostitute and thus putting her life in danger. I fully support the decision, because the 'morality' of someone's job shouldn't mean that we are allowed to risk that person's health.

That, of course, will be the opposition. The 'morality' of it. Well, it doesn't really enter into it, does it? There are plenty of 'immoral' sex-related activities that are perfectly legal. The two people caught in the article would have been in the clear if there was no money exchanged -- the state doesn't legislate THAT morality. I suppose people are going to argue that if we have a red light district, suddenly EVERYONE will be using hookers. Um, except that it's already a booming industry and if you want to, you pay for sex in tons of places in Toronto. There's a girl that hangs out around Chris's building that, I'm sure, will be happy for another customer. (I'll warn you though, she's got a crazy look in her eye and makes us nervous.)

No one is going to be forced to use these services, just like no one is forced into a same-sex marriage, just because it is legal. No one is forced to drink alcohol. No one is forced to smoke. No one is forced to listen to country music. It's all good.

Personally, I would love it if we had a red-light district so that sex workers were safe, customers had a guarantee that they were disease-free, and legal recourse could be sought if people are jerks like the Kiwi mentioned above. In fact, I would go farther than that: we should offer advanced sex education for sex workers -- techniques, muscle control, interesting positions, fitness, flexibility -- and offer the world the best sex it's ever had. Toronto: Better Orgasms! It could be our new marketing strategy! Hell, it's better than the stupid Toronto Unlimited campaign.

Ten Things:

1. Chris and I started dating a year ago today. Happy anniversary to us!

2. Port wine. I cannot recommend it enough. It is red and sweet and will not bite you. It is like ice-wine, but not HOLY HECK expensive.

3. Last year I had a prof from northern Ontario who used the word 'y'all.' I'm jealous of her and her third-person plural pronoun. 'You' just doesn't cut it.

4. Did you know that men have clitorises? Mmhmm, it's true. Without male clitorises, there would be no erections. Also: men require more pressure in stimulation than women because there's a bunch of stuff around their clitoris, whereas ours is right out in the open, so be gentle. Anatomy is fun! I have plenty of other secret trivia about clitorises too. For example: did you know that clitorises are shaped like a wishbone and their legs wrap around the urethra (and vagina if you have one)? Now you do!

5. Olives = not so good. Stuffed olives = better, but still not quite a favourite.

6. It's taken me 24 years to realise it, but brie cheese is just about the best thing ever. Brie cheese and baguettes. Take me to France!

7. I've completely adjusted to life without anti-depressants and am still uncrazy. Yay!

8. A brief guide:
Weak atheism: doesn't believe in a god
Strong atheism: believes gods are impossible
Agnostic: believes you can't know one way or another
Deist: believes a god made the world and then left
Theist: believes a god made the world and still interacts with it

9. Mimi Smartypants gets caked. I need adventures like this. Also, her daughter has a Darwin boat:

"No one pissed me off this Thanksgiving. All was smiles and relaxation and wine and pie. What's with that? Where are the dysfunctional holidays of yore? The absence of Redneck Racist Stepbrother-In-Law, to whom I once memorably said "If you don't drop the subject I will pour gravy in your lap" (tight little ha-ha giggles all around as everyone tried to pretend I was joking), and of whom LT once said, to his father, "If he comes, we don't," may have had something to do with the peace and quiet. Or maybe children really do mellow out the world and smooth over the pricklies. The most tension we had all day was when LT's stepmother brought out some toys for Nora to play with. One of them was a stuffed Noah's Ark, and when I saw it I cried, "Look Nora! A Darwin boat!" Ignoring the dirty looks from The Saved, secular Nora and her secular mommy happily pretended that Noah was Charles Darwin, back from the Galapagos with breeding pairs of animals to study in captivity."

10. My cousin is four. When I went home for his birthday, we had the following conversation.
Erik (sliding down the stairs on his bum): "See? I can slide like THIS!"
Me: "That's pretty cool, Erik. Melissa and I used to do that when we were your age, did you know that?"
Erik: "Really??! You were MY AGE??! I didn't know that!"

How can it possibly be humid? We haven't had enough rain for humidity! It is bloody hot and doesn't show any sign of letting up, and to top it all off, we're having a drought. Well, I'm not sure what the line is between "only a quarter of the needed rainfall since May" and "drought," but whatever. At least my office is air-conditioned. Home, not so much.

Seriously funky crochet. I only wish I could do that.

This week has been a mixed bag. I had a nice weekend with Christopher and his kitties and we saw the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition, which was cool. There was a girl there who made scarves with greenery on one side and carrots on the other, it was pretty funny. Chris drooled over paintings of streetcars, and I gave up yet another chance to tell Peter D. Harris that I absolutely love his stuff. (I always fear that I will sound stupid -- "empty overpasses! I have no idea why I like them so much but I do!") Then again, I have been feeling a little weird lately... a little stressed because my two summer jobs are STILL overlapping (the first should have been done weeks ago), and I'm feeling emotional for no reason (PMS? fuck off!). Then, a girl I know (knew) at home committed suicide last Friday and ugh... that brought up a lot of stuff to do with my uncle's suicide, and she was from the church that I grew up in, and I love that church and this is hard... So, I cried for a while, which I've been feeling like doing for a few weeks now.

I still wish there was a secular equivalent of church. I don't think a lot of my non-Christian friends know what it means when I say that I love the church I grew up in. It's not the building (heck no, monstrosity that it's become), it's that I started going there when I was two years old, and saw it grow from about 300 people to 1000, and it's a huge social network and there are people there that have known me practically my whole life. I have friends there that I played with in the nursery when we first got there. I ended up going to college with some of them.

I remember leaving that church when I was 17, for another church, and wanting to write them a letter and say "I'm leaving because you guys suck at this, that, and the other thing" and I ended up writing them a long letter thanking them for all the things they had done for me over the years -- whether it was giving me a place to hang out and play with other kids, or being people I could go to for advice or laughs or confidentiality. Their theology wasn't quite the same as mine at the time, but I knew their hearts were in the right place and they were doing their best. Nobody in my family goes there anymore and I'm an atheist, and I still consider it my church back home.

I also miss the potlucks. I'd instigate some, but it's not as much fun without a billion little kids running around. In high school, Tim and I once brought a cooler full of water balloons to a potluck instead of food. I think the parents were ready to kill us, but we were heroes for a day in the kids' eyes. :)

Friday = one year of dating Chris! Yay!

Please note: Dinosaur Comics on Canada (Dinosaur Comics is just about the best thing ever.)

From The Story of V, page 276:

"One of the most startling recent discoveries about the characteristics of orgasm is that these muscle contractions are one of the first sensations humans ever experience. That is, incredibly, both female and male foetuses orgasm in the womb. The following description of female orgasm in utero is from the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and was reported by two Italian doctors during a routine pre-birth ultrasound scan.

We recently observed a female fetus at 32 weeks' gestation touching the vulva with the fingers of the right hand. The caressing movements were centred primarily on the region of the clitoris. Movements stopped after 30 to 40 seconds and started again after a few minutes. Furthermore, these slight touches were repeated and were associated with short, rapid movements of pelvis and legs. After another break, in addition to this behaviour, the fetus contracted the muscles of the trunk and limbs, and then clonicotonic movements of the whole body followed. Finally, she relaxed and rested. We observed this behaviour for about 20 minutes. The mother was an active and interested witness, conversing with observers about her child's experience.

The authors concluded their astonishing account of in utero female orgasm by saying: 'The current observation seems to show not only that the excitement reflex can be evoked in female fetuses at the third trimester of gestation but also that the orgasmic reflex can be elicited during intrauterine life.' Perhaps it's not surprising to hear that male foetuses too have been found pleasuring themselves in the womb. Indeed, it's not unusual for parents-to-be to see their embryonic son grasping his erect penis in utero, while moving his hands in a repetitive masturbatory fashion, for up to fifteen minutes at a time.

Well, yeah. I mean, with 9 months to hang out by yourself, who could keep their hands off of this?

How to Land a Career in Technical Writing:

Ms. Whitlock is now A.B.D. in English and a full-time staff member at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, where she writes Web site content, training materials, documentation that allows departments to maintain their own Web sites, course handouts, and academic computing-policy statements. Her job draws on several skills she gained in graduate school including "problem-solving, making information accessible, ordering ideas, researching, sounding authoritative even when you don't feel it, focusing for a long time on a single task, working under pressure, making deadlines." Like Ms. Whitlock, other humanities A.B.D.'s and Ph.D.'s are making careers in technical and medical communication. These fields offer good pay, a strong job market with the probability of continued growth, and plenty of opportunity to learn new things. <snip>

"The reading, thinking, and writing required of graduate students in the humanities can serve them well in a technical environment," he says. "Teaching experience is also helpful. It's common for technical writers to be asked to help develop and deliver training."

So, perhaps I should go for that Master's after all. I don't really know how to decide something like this. I have wanted to be a professor for so long, and part of me thinks that I'm just writing it off when it's still possible—I mean, maybe I could get an amazing teaching job in Toronto. But, probably not, so is it worth the extra seven years of grad school? But I would like to do a Master's thesis—a discourse analysis of sex education materials used in Canada, perhaps just Ontario.

One of my friends is starting a Master's at York in September and they're throwing money at her left, right and centre -- $11 000 so far for a $6 000/year program. I'm almost 100% certain I could get a teaching assistant job if I were in the Theoretical Linguistics MA (especially since there are no LING PhDs to compete with and the profs know and like me), and that's a surprisingly decent chunk of change. So, presumably, I could do an M.A. without incurring any more debt. I wouldn't be living extravagantly, but I also wouldn't be owing anything more OR having to start pay back my OSAP as long as I'm still in school.

But then I reflect on how I'll be 25 when I finish my BA, and if I do a Master's, I'll be 27 when I finish that, and then if I went for a year of college, that would put me at 28... Of course, I've had friends who sucked it up and went back to college at 28 after being out of school for years, so I know it's not that big of a deal. I guess I just don't want to be paying my student loans FOREVER. It would be nice to start making money at some point.

Then there's the whole graduate school versus college tension. I'll admit it, the thought of going from university to college feels like a step down. I know that it's not, I know that college is just as good as university, and in some cases, much better, but there is still the glorification of academia and graduate school and all of that. I have felt less comfortable with academia lately because I wonder how much of an impact it has on the rest of the world (at least when it comes to the humanities and social sciences). I mean, it's great to write about how our language recreates and contributes to discrimination against women (for example), but if the only people who read about it are Women's Studies students, aren't we just preaching to the choir? Being in lingustics, it's part of my discipline to pay attention to how language is used to exclude people, and I see academic language as unnecessarily complex in certain instances in order to divide the world into categories of "educated" and "non-educated"—if you can understand and use the terminology, you have a half-chance of participating in the dialogue. (I find it easy to speak academia-ese, so maybe that's one reason why it's so hard to let it go. I can fit in the group quite easily.) On the other hand, that terminology is often rich and conveys ideas that are not found elsewhere. It becomes difficult to talk about ekstasis and discourses without that vocabulary.

Maybe that's why technical writing is attractive to me. It is basically a job in which you take a complex set of information and set it out in a simple, ordered way that makes it clear to anyone, regardless of background. I can see how my Linguistics background could contribute to that, especially by making me sensitive to gate-keeping* (bah, more terminology).

In any event, I'm glad I have another year to think about this.

*Gate-keeping: This term is used in Linguistics to refer to verbal encounters designed to screen people and determine whether or not to grant access to your group. Job interviews are an excellent example of this, but there are many situations in which this happens. One's accent, vocabulary, decision whether to swear or not, tone of voice, body language, choice of clothing (this can be seen as a type of language in some situations), all of these things can contribute to such decisions.

Yay Canada Day! This means that it has been exactly one year since I met Christopher. They're having fireworks to celebrate it! ;)

Some college certificates I'm looking at:
Seneca - Technical Communication Program
George Brown - Editing Certificate

There are some other technical writing programs around town too, but I would lean towards the one at Seneca because it has a co-op semester. Right now the thought of being done school in two years (rather than the 8 I would be looking at with a PhD) and having an ever-increasing job market sounds pretty good.

I do wish that gay marriage would have gone through BEFORE the Pride Parade rather than a few days AFTER (would have made it that much more exuberant), but yay! and here are some photos:

Two-spirited people of the First Nations:

In First Nations culture, two-spirited people are those who have a female spirit and a male spirit. They are treated with much respect and honour and are thought to carry extra wisdom because of the two spirits.

National Defence Minister Bill Graham:


The MCC float was about 300 people long, with at least 15 different churches represented:


PFLAG: