Observations on a pink shop

Because I’m easily bored, I happened to go through the catalog of a sex toy shop. This was interesting, because my personal approach to these things is roughly as in a George Carlin quote —

Jerking off is all I need. You know what I mean, folks? I ain’t gonna double my money; fuck that shit. I just jerk off, wipe off my chest, get up and go to work.

— so I wrote down some random observations:

• Isn’t “girl pussy” redundant?
• There can be no context where “sand” is a word you should want in the name of your product.
• Maybe this is my bias, but to me “Vulcan” means (a) Greek god of volcanism and other burning ejaculations, and (b) the Star Trek race of Spocks. Neither screams “pinch that at my genitals!”
• Some of these… things… must be gag gifts. Or something you buy, wave around uncertainly, and then leave in the kitchen drawer when you move out. Or something you hollow out, sure in the certainty that if somebody finds your monstrous latex thingumbob, they won’t be first thinking, “I wonder if it has something hidden inside?”
• There’s something called a “vibrator tuning kit”. Not tuning as in music and good vibrations, but apparently as in adding all kinds of side-wangs to it. The whole idea fills me with horror; I don’t want to know if there are glue or screws involved.
• Most of the products are easy to understand; but about one in ten makes me go “Where do you put that thing? What… do… what, ‘place your penis between the rollers’?”
• I’m not sure how to feel about the bolded claim of “200 thrusts per minute!” I’m not sure if this is how you should market these things.
• Also, glass dildoes. (Dildos? Dilda?) If I was a woman, I would not put one in myself in a million years. Nothing whose failure mode is “sharp glass slivers everywhere” would be going in my hypothetical ladyparts.

I feel like I could make a crack about the price of some of those things, but I’ve bought stupidly expensive books and lots of frivolous electronics; I’m not in a position to crow about what others buy to make themselves feel good. It’s just a whisper-thin difference of culture that you occasionally see a sneering news item about love doll owners rather than about hard-core bibliophiles. And, really, book lovers collect such greedy, overlarge harems that they go beyond any excess of sex toys. (“Books? Can’t find anyone to talk to, right? And that many books… overcompensating for something, am I right?”)

Plus, since I hate the kind of people who think life should be austere, harsh and PG-rated, I really rather like the idea of there coming, eventually, a day when the tittering has faded away and a mixed group can gab around the watercooler, not about their phones, but about the sex toys they’ve recently bought.