We're a competitive bunch

So folks, following on from yesterday's post, here's the latest Sunday Times column. The unedited version. Sunday Times lobbed off a couple of the more risqué sentences before they went to print. So here's the whole thing, warts and all.



WE'RE A COMPETITIVE BUNCH
 


I recently read an article about Tatiana Kozhevnikova, a 42 year old lady from Russia, who set a new world record lifting weights with her vagina.

I must be honest, personally I didn't know that having a strong vagina was even a thing.

I mean I've heard of Kegel Exercises, the exercises women can do to keep themselves um er um... er... fit... down there... you know. (Thanks for that Dr Arnold Kegel, the women and men of the world applaud you.) But I had no idea that we had turned it into an exercise/weight lifting type event. Human beings are truly astonishing, give us a tape measure and half a chance and we’ll turn anything into some kind of competition.

I have always been under the impression that the competitive streak was mainly ‘a guy thing’ driven by testosterone more than anything else. Watch a group of dudes standing around a braai, and if the one stubbed his toe, then the next one has broken his foot, and the third one has lost a limb, but had it grow back again shortly thereafter.

But our new friend, weight-lifting Russian Tatiana, proves otherwise. And made me realise that it’s not just the men doing this. It’s all of humankind. There is close to nothing that we don’t compete over. And The Guinness Book of Records validates all of it. The world’s longest hiccougher, the world’s widest mouth, the longest distance travelled with a refrigerator. You name it; people have measured, timed or rated it. Think of any competition, there’s nothing too crazy, and if it’s not already out there, and you qualify, then the record could be all yours.

You’ve got to wonder why it’s so important for us to measure the world’s fattest cucumber, or the most balloons ever inflated by someone’s nose in three minutes, or the dog with the world’s longest tongue? Why are we doing these things? I suppose everybody’s got to be good at something.

If you’ve never noticed this rampant competitive streak before, I recommend you try this simple test the next time you’re at a dinner party. Bring up a topic, any topic. It really doesn’t matter what you bring up and whether it’s good news or bad news, the results will always be the same. Someone in your conversation circle will be able to better it. I guarantee it. Mention that you’ve only been on three dates in the last six months, and the girl to the right of you will have only been on one date in her entire life and it was with a one-armed bandit from South America who wore an eye patch.

Tell someone that you have a great GP and they’ll tell you all about their GP who is even better and faster and cheaper and nicer and more GPer than your GP. We just can’t help ourselves, it’s human nature. Hell, we even call ourselves the human race. If that’s not competitive, I don’t know what is.

Oh you’re tired because you didn’t sleep well last night, well, you can’t believe how tired I am, I haven’t slept since February. It’s a great game you can play that will provide hours of entertainment at even the most boring cocktail party. (You think your party was boring, you should have been at the one I went to last week!)

Tatiana, that Russian lady-parts weight lifter from earlier, told the media that she’s spent the last fifteen years training to reach her goal of lifting fourteen kilos. Wow, that’s pretty impressive. Give her another fifteen years and she’ll be able to lift your car.

On how she got started doing this (because how could you not want to know) Tatiana says: 'After I had a child, my intimate muscles got unbelievably weak. I read books and learned that ancient women used to deal with this problem by using wooden balls,’ she said. 'I looked around, saw a Murano glass ball and...'

And I think I’ll leave the rest of her story to your imagination.

Go Tatiana, way to turn a potentially embarrassing trip to the emergency room into a life-long career.

The world's strongest vagina

Sometimes you start out writing one thing, and end up writing something completely different. It's just the way things work, taking sharp left turns is par for the course.  

So here's the genesis of yesterday's Sunday Times Column.

I started out writing a post for this blog about a Russian woman who has the world's strongest vagina and half way in I started to think that perhaps it might make a nice column for The Sunday Times on how competitive we all are.

So here's the very original post i wrote, the one that got me started, and tomorrow I'll post the actual Sunday Times column that came out of this, for those of you who haven't seen it yet. And for those who did read the column in the paper, they did edit it a bit, so the column i'll post tomorrow will have some new little bits in it. (ooh, i said 'little bits' no pun intended.) 

THE WORLD'S STRONGEST VAGINA

I must be honest, personally I didn't know that having a strong vagina was even a thing.

I mean I've heard of Kegel Exercises, an exercise women can do to keep themselves um er um... er... fit... down there... you know.

Thanks for that Dr Arnold Kegel, the women (and men of the world) applaud you.

But I didn't know that we'd turned it into some kind of exercise/weight lifting competition. (Give humans anything and half a chance and we'll turn it into a competition.)

Tatiana Kozhevnikova, a 42 year old chick from Russia, has recently set a new world record for lifting weights inside her vagina.

That's her, lifting your car.

It seems that when it comes to her fanny, Tatiana is a bit of an over achiever. You see she already held the world record, but unsatisfied with the fact that she could lift 10 kilos with her vagina, she went on to shatter her record by lifting 14 kilos with her lady parts.

She told the media she's been training her vaginal muscles for 15 years to reach this point.

To be completely honest I'm not entirely sure how i feel about this. It all seems kind of pointless to me.

I understand if she'd spent the last fifteen years trying to cure cancer, or feed the masses. But strengthening her vag? i don't get it. So she can crack wallnuts in there, maybe?  
 
Hey, I suppose it wouldn't do if we were all the same.  
 
Oh wait, this is hilarious, on how she got started doing this (cos you know you wanna know!) Tatiana says: 'After I had a child, my intimate muscles got unbelievably weak. I read books and learned that ancient women used to deal with this problem using wooden balls,' she said. 'I looked around, saw a Murano glass ball and inserted it in my vagina. It took me ages to get it out!'
 

Bwahahahahaha how to turn a potentially embarrassing trip to the emergency room into a life-long career.

 

 

 

In another article Tatiana kindly explains how she does it, 'You insert one of the balls in your vagina, and it has a string attached to it with a little hook at the very end. You fix a second ball onto this hook.' etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, alright, I think I've painted enough of a picture.

Tatiana recommends vaginal exercises to all women who want to improve their sex lives. She says; 'It’s enough to exercise your vagina five minutes a day, ladies, and in just one week you’ll be able to give yourself and your man unforgettable pleasure in bed,' she says.

Now that I see the point of!

 

You go girl.  

Wozela

So what do you think of when you think of The Soccer World Cup?

Ummm Soccer.

No, what else?

Bafana Bafana?

No, something else.

High prices?

No another thing.

Those SA flag side mirrors and cool arm sock things that you love?

No man, not those (although you're right, I do love them), something else.

Okay I give up, you're starting to irritate me now. What?

The Vuvuzela!

Oh yes, that.

A pair of clever clogs have come up with a very cool idea. They got to worrying about all those post world cup Vuvuzela's lying around gathering dust, and wondering what could become of them, other than land fill.

So they started this website, called Wozela.

Make a difference, not just a noise.

So i'm a little late on the uptake, because the competition is already finished, but there were some gem entries i wanted to show you. (I've since learned that if you still have an idea you want to submit, they're still accepting ideas, because there are plans afoot to extend the project.)

They challenged people to come up with bright ideas of what we could do with all our left over vuvu's. And people sent in dozens, hundreds and millions of cute ideas. Here are a few:



The Mel Gibson Shutter Upper Zela



The Hooter-Zela

The Doggie Diner-Zela

The Fire Extinguishela

Ah look at that. someone's put a lot of thought into that. I'd like to get me one of those Zela-Armour thingys. Stylish.

The perfect kitchen aid thingy stuff type invention.



The Menorha-Zela, the perfect gift for the Jew who has everything.



Yeah, let's leave it at that shall we.

A handy jewelry holder.

The Vuvu-Fence-Zela. You know what they say, good fences make good neighbours.
And Vuvuzela fences make loud neighbours.

This is one of my favourite suggestions. It's a cricket wicket!

The Vuvu-Tinkle Protector. No more spray on the toilet seats. Or out the window! WTF?

Candlesticks. Tame, but usefull.

Or fun adults who wish they were still children. Or high adults.

Cheesy, but good.

This one's clever, it's a dustbin. I like that. Very Ikea meets Weylandts, meets diski.

Watering Can.

And the winning entry.... drum roll please.... ladies and gentlemen.... i bring you....

Vuvu-Earrings



And here's a finished sample pair.



And their inventor, Megan Bernstein:



The Wozela project will be getting these made by community crafters who will hopefully be able to make a living from the project. Awesome fun times. Love it.

and here's a last cute one, for the vuvu-road: 

he he he he he.

Stunt Doubles from a Parallel Universe

Okay, here's some Thursday morning madness and lunacy for you.

Photographer Achim Lippoth has brought out a series called:
Kids and their Dolls - like twins from a parallel universe.

In his doll series, Achim shows how children merge with their dolls. He was inspired by dogs and their owners, who tend to grow similar over time and adopt specific traits from one another. (I got that off his website)

Please click on the pics if you want to see them bigger.

How gorgeous?

But yet somehow tinged with a bit of madness and with some creepiness thrown in for good measure.



 What if these dolls come alive in the middle of the night, and then take over your life, and your bank account, like Single White Female, and nobody believes you're the actual you, because your identical dollie takes over your life?

What? It could happen!

As always the genius is in the details.

Do you think Achim has issues? Peter Pan Syndrome perhaps? or Mommy Issues? Or maybe he's just a grown up boy who likes to play with dolls. No harm in that.

The necklace on that one is my favourite.



And the crazy hair on that one. Love love love.

Thank you Achim, too wonderful. Plus, I'm especially grateful to you for these wonderful pics, because I've always wanted to write a blog post called 'Stunt Doubles from a Parallel Universe'. Tick!

Okay, now I'm begging.

Dear friends and followers,

This is not a post about tits or dicks or vaginas or dildos. Sorry.

This is a very quick post in which I drop to my hands and knees and beg you for three clicks.

Yes, just three clicks, that's all I ask.

FIRST CLICK: go here. (http://blog.pricecheck.co.za/2010/11/paige-nick/)

SECOND CLICK:  Click on this little icon that you will find on the top right hand side of the screen:

THIRD CLICK: That's just a click to get you out of there. (I didn't want to leave you stranded.)

Then come over here and get a big kiss and hug from me to say thank you.

For those of you who don't know, I'm entered in this charity blogging thingy, the person who gets the most thumbs up votes gets R20k for their charity. My charity is The Bookery (they build libraries in desperately needy schools).

See, so it's for a good cause.

Right now, I'm kind of neck and neck with one of the other contestants, so your vote could just push me into the lead, and for that i would be most grateful.

ps: If you have any friends or family members you could rope in to vote for me too, I'd really appreciate that. At this stage every vote counts.

While you're off doing that, i'll stay behind here and  fish around to find more stuff to entertain you with on the blog.

Thanks. *waves*

Now hippies can masturbate too.

Are you the type who is growing increasingly concerned about our planet? 

Perhaps you watched the movie on Mnet on Sunday night (2012 with John Cusack) and fear that we've treated our earth so badly that it may just explode one of these days, blowing us all to hell in a handbasket?

Well, fear not, because now you too can do your bit for the planet, while getting your rocks off!

Introducing the very first battery-free wind-up vibrator. It's so environmentally friendly it will give you a stiffy.

It's made from recycled materials and you never need to buy batteries for it. The planet will thank you for that.  

All you have to do is crank the handle for 4 minutes and you'll get 30 minutes of intensely orgasmic vibrating pleasure

Here's what it looks like:

True story. Fun sexy times. That is if you're willing to put in a little work up front.

So it's a vibrator, that's powered by your wrist.

What does that remind me of?

Oh yes, one of these:

More sex please, we're women.

This came from this clever chap on twitter.

It made me laugh, so thought i'd share, to help egg Tuesday on a little bit.

He he he, 'The sexiest sex to sex after sex' - that's got to be my favourite line. Classic.

Oh that and 'Sex again? What are you, an alley cat?'

Enjoy.

What A.S. Byatt said

Here's number four in the series of notes I took at the Cheltenham Literary Festival in October. So far we've covered what Salman Rushdie said, what Bernhard Schlink said and what James Ellroy had to say. So I thought it was about time we heard what a woman has to say.

I managed to do my homework and read both Possession and The Children's Book before I saw Byatt speak, so I was curious to hear what she had to say about them. She mainly discussed The Children's Book, as it's her most current book out.

She describes herself as 'a greedy reader', which I liked.

You don't have to read more than a hundred pages of any of her books to know that she's big into research, so she spoke a bit about that.

She says she grew up on childrens books, and they're very dear to her.

She speaks a bit about her parents. She says they were Utopian Socialists. And when she started to research The Fabians she realised that she hadn't known her parents at all. Writing the book became a process of understanding them after they were gone.

She says of her father: 'I didn't know the kind of mental manure that fertilised his plant.'

and 'Money always crops up, like muck, where humans are.'

She says of Olive, one of the main characters in The Children's Book; 'Women writers made money back then. Independence caused Olive to be generous.'

She says she was inspired to write The Childrens Book when she came upon the statistics of suicide in the children of children's book authors.

She said she feels 'it's because there is no room for the child in the house where the writing is going on.' and 'So much misery in these households. There's something intolerable in being the child of a children's writer.'

Kenneth Grahame, who wrote Wind in the Willow's had a son, Alastair, who committed suicide just before his twentieth birthday. So tragic. Byatt speaks of how Grahame had sent him The Wind in the Willows in letter form over the years while his son was at school.

She said, 'for example, Christopher Robin, it couldn't have been easy being him.'

'The children feel pressured to remain a child. But the author is childlike too, which leaves the space of adult open.' 'The parent is also the child, so it's harder for the children to remain children naturally. they have to grow up fast, while maintaining the muse of childhood for their parents.'

She also said of writing for children: 'The imaginary world belongs to the constructor, not the reader.'

She speaks at great length about fairy tales. She says she adores Hans Christian Anderson, but his work is different from fairy stories. As a child she figured out that he was hurting her. She says: 'He means his readers to be hurt. He is dangerous. For example if you are a girl who wanted red shoes, in the end you would get your feet cut off. That is the way it is with Hans Christian Anderson.'

She tells a story written by Hans Christian Anderson about a disobedient child who died and was buried, but then kept sticking his hand out of the ground. His mother would beat his hand with a broom until it went back into the ground again.

Charming tale.

On a different theme of the book she says that her ancesters were potters, which is why she always avoided it and wrote about glass in her books until now. 'Glass is much more transparent,' she said.


'Ironically', she said, 'the best clay comes out of the graveyard.'

She calls The Children's Book 'an ensemble book'. She says the characters grew out of the reading and research she did. She says it starts with ghostly whisps of characters and builds from there.

Of her writing process she says: 'For a moment the whole world hangs together in your head, that's what happens when you have a click moment.'

'I don't start with characters, I start with a world.'

'If you don't come to writing for pleasure, you might as well give up.'

'You imagine the room a scene is taking place in. That's not wisdom, that's pleasure.'

'And the more awful the things you write, the greater the pleasure.'

She says in The Children's Book, Dorothy is her very favourite character. She says she loved writing it because it was a time when women's lives and place were changing daily. She says Dorothy was based on DH Lawrence.

The house lights come on, and the audience are allowed to ask questions.

Someone asks her how she feels about illustrations in childrens stories.

She says: 'Well, think about Winnie the Pooh. Supposing there weren't illustrations? What would I think he looked like?'

Another audience member stands up to ask a question, which starts with: 'Hello, well I haven't read any of your books yet, but...'

The audience groans. Chop. There's one in every session.

How low would you go?

Here's yesterday's Sunday Times column, just in case you missed it.

My friend Jason is exhausted. But that’s what happens when you’re a 35 year old guy dating a 20 year old girl. After a while it starts to catch up with you. All those 21sts and parties to celebrate when they pass their driver’s license on the fifth try. No wonder he keeps falling asleep at his desk. I remember a few years ago he emailed me photos from her Matric Dance. He said it wasn’t that bad. And he wasn’t the only older guy there; most of the teachers were between 35 and 45.

Imagine going to a Matric Dance now? I suppose it’s easier for guys, you get to wear a tux. Exactly the same thing you wore to your Matric Dance 20 years ago. I definitely couldn’t fit into my Matric Dance dress from 1991. And even if I could, nobody’s still wearing brown velvet skirt suits, with big shoulder pads and oversized gold buttons. They say all fashions come back around eventually, let’s all hold thumbs this one misses the rotation.

I’ve been trying to imagine what it would be like going on a date with a 19 to 25 year old guy. What on earth would we talk about? My knowledge of action figures, hawking a loogie, skateboarding and X-boxes isn’t all that vast. I could probably make it comfortably through the first ten minutes, if I told him I liked his Justin Beiber hair style. But after that I’d be screwed. And more importantly I’d be terribly worried that when I met his divorced parents I might discover I already know his father. In the biblical sense. Hey, it could happen, the nineties were crazy times.

I’ve been with a couple younger guys over the years, but I remember always feeling very aware of the fact that I was the responsible adult in the relationship. So I can say with experience that while younger men usually have more energy and always have better abs, their lack of experience, conversation skills, charm and disposable cash is more often than not their downfall. That and their texting grammar.



There's a 15 year difference between these two.



Which is why I’ve been thinking more and more that perhaps these 20 year old girls dating older guys are onto something. Older men are generally more financially and emotionally secure. The sex may not be as acrobatic or exciting, but sometimes experience, compatibility, good conversation and stability make for better sex anyway. So once the decision to consider an older man has been made, the only question left is how old is too old? And how young is too young? I mean if you’re going to figure out how high the ceiling is, first you need to know how low the floor is.

After much research and debate amongst my girlfriends I can report back that opinions vary on how young we would go. There seems to be a big difference between shagging them and dating them. Some of the 35(ish) girls I know would quite happily shag a 24 or 25 year old guy, given half the chance. But the average lowest datability age sat somewhere around 30.

However when it comes to how old is too old, we all pretty much agreed that 49 or 50 is the average limit for a girl of around 35. Although a few girls clarified with an asterisk, saying that it’s less about the guy’s age, and more about his condition. Apparently there are the rare hot, eligible 50 or 60 year olds out there. They’re not unicorns, they do exist, but they’re seriously bumping their heads on the ceiling.

Unless you’re the kind of girl who’s specifically in the market for an 80-year-old man with a weak ticker, and a private jet. But that’s a whole other column.

For me any older than 50 and the gap just feels too wide, not to mention that over a certain age men start dealing with things like erectile dysfunction, hairy ears and dentures. And no amount of disposable cash, Viagra, sexy greying sideburns or worldly experience can make up for that.

So now we know what ages we’re after, the next trick is figuring out where to meet these guys. Hey, you could always go to a Matric Dance. If the students aren’t for you I’ve heard some of the teachers are kind of hot.

When adults play with Lego

I don't know what my obsession is with lego. I seem to blog about it a lot. I blogged about it here, and here.

I'm weirding myself out.

I don't remember ever having lego as a child. We were five sisters (my brother was much older) and so we didn't have toys like lego, as far as I recall.

My only other recollections of lego are playing with it as an adult, and standing on it as an adult. If you stand on a piece barefoot, it hurts like a bitch. And if you swear out loud it makes you feel only slightly better.

So why the obsession? Who knows? If you bump into Freud ask him, but otherwise I'm happy to go with it.

Check out this guy, Christoph Niemann.

He spends a fair amount of time tripping over lego in his son's room. And he re-imagines the stray pieces. Kind of cool, I think.

Makes me want to play.