Thursday, October 27, 2005

the sweetest thing

people might be wondering after yesterday's penetrating post, when i might be talking about lovely lady-parts. well someday i hope to complete the entire section of my website dedicated to my womb, in the meantime it remains a gaping hole. that part of my website. i used to think i was going to do my doctoral thesis on the va- sound (think vagina, vacuum, vacant, vapid, etc.), counterbalancing its negative association with emptiness in western culture by cross-referencing it with eastern theories of sacred sounds all while furthering my feminist agenda. i haven't gotten around to getting a phd in etymology yet, but in the meantime i suggest you read this column on the linguistics of love [dave franzese, i want your job or maybe i just want you].



before laying my hands on it, i must wait until i can give this subject matter the fullest of my attention (and serious academic study). hence in lieu of a discussion of my anatomy, i'm opting to share how i put this baby to use.

i am vanilla

in case you're not from this planet, let me explain that the term vanilla refers to what a society regards as standard sexual behavior. according to that wiki, vanilla sex is "often interpreted as sex that does not involve such elements as BDSM, kink, or fetish". this is indeed how i interpret it. the term derives from the use of vanilla extract as the basic or most popular flavouring for ice cream, and by extension meaning "plain" or "conventional". thus, the term "vanilla" is sometimes used as an insult to describe someone who is overly conventional or unwilling to take risks. a few things:

1. vanilla was made for sex (much like me).
it's really, really sexy so let me ennumerate its charms. vanilla flavors ice cream and ice cream is good, you can also if you so desire spread ice cream over every inch of your body. depending on your mood, you can simply enjoy the pleasurable sensation of its melting, or you can invite a friend to lick you clean. vanilla in its pure form is known as vanillin, derived from orchids in the genus Vanilla. the name came from the Spanish word "vainilla", diminutive form of "vaina" (meaning sheath), which is in turn derived from Latin "vagina". in case you don't know what a vagina looks like, please scroll up, and scroll down for an orchid:


notice the dew. are you hot yet? in old medicinal literature, vanilla is described as an aphrodisiac and a remedy for fevers, but these purported uses are now obsolete. vanilla is not boring, we've just forgotten how to use it.

2. vanilla is complicated and versatile.
raw or pure, what's your preference? natural vanilla is an extremely complicated mixture of several hundred different compounds, versus synthetic vanillin which is derived from phenol and is of high purity. however, it may be difficult to determine the difference between natural and synthetic vanilla flavoring. vanilla flavor in creams, cakes and other foodstuff may be achieved by adding some vanilla essence or by cooking vanilla beans in the liquid preparation. a stronger aroma may be attained if the beans are split in two; in this case, the innards of the beans (the seeds), consisting of flavorful tiny black grains, are mixed into the preparation. good quality vanilla has a strong aromatic flavour, but foodstuffs with small amounts of low quality vanilla or artificial vanilla-like flavorings are far more common, since true vanilla is much more expensive. if you ask me, either way you slice it, vanilla has its merits.

3. vanilla offers a world of possibilities and supports your lifestyle.
did you know that the Coca-Cola Corporation is the world's largest customer of natural vanilla extract? when New Coke was introduced in 1985, the economy of Madagascar crashed, and only recovered after New Coke flopped. the reason was that New Coke uses vanillin, a less expensive synthetic substitute, and purchases of vanilla more than halved during this period. so how did they fix the problem? they went back to coca-cola classic (and created vanilla coke, now with even more vanilla). vanilla can support whole countries, save an industrial giant and please the taste buds!

or in my case, it supports a wide range of pleasing sexual encounters that will afford me a greater range of experiences over a lifetime. think about it this way: if only mint chocolate chip gets you off, you'll never be satisfied with anything else and you'll be eating mint chocolate chip for the rest of your life. dear god, what if later in life they invent a new flavor and you've conditioned your palate so that you can't even give it a chance. what if your local store doesn't supply mint chocolate chip? i mean i rarely just eat my plain old vanilla, on any given night i can add fudge and nuts but i don't need them to enjoy my tasty treat. so if you come along offering me fudge and nuts and more fudge and nuts the next time and more fudge and nuts, i'll soon be feeling like i have an ice cream headache. plus, that fudge and nuts gets expensive. i don't mind if you like your fudge and nuts, dear friends, it just doesn't make my orchid dewy.

9 comments:

evandebacle said...

I am struck by how artlessly the penis gets off in such descriptions (and other places) when compared to the dewy orchid of the fairer sex. It shouldn't be a surprise that, even in the age of the sensitive guy, we should be saddled with such brutish manly metaphors. It reminds of me of some "erotica" I once read which described a man's...tumescence as a "turgid invader." C'mon. Senuality has to equal brutishness when your dealing with a turgid invaded. Granted that's particularly bad writing, but where is my orchid?

Nevertheless, I am delighted (or now I can rightly say, tittilated) that my love for vanilla has been vindicated. And sexily vindicated at that.

WendyBuckWild said...

well now i know what i want to rent tonight. that would have been a most brilliant title, and quite fitting since a friend in the intellectual freedom world helped me arrive at "go ask phallus"...the two just seem to go together.

Anonymous said...

Boy oh boy, I didn't expect this level of quality from a post on vanilla (still my least favorite all-time flavor). I'm in shock, really. I will positively cream myself when you finally get around to inducting chocolate.

Anonymous said...

Franzese lost me on the "vagina" part. While I agree that "penis" is a lousy word, I think "vagina" works just fine-a. (and honestly, while I dont like "penis", it could be much worse. Imagine if the words "penis" and "vagina" were swapped. "Ooo, baby. Stick your rigid vagina into my warm, wet penis." THAT WOULD BE AWFUL. So really things arent as bad as they may seem.)

"Vagina" is certainly better than "dojo". Anyone who thinks that straight men should be turned on by the insides of a moist dojo hasnt watched much mixed martial arts.

(Then again, I did date a sexy practitioner of Brazilian jiu-jitsu for a while, and it was kind of fun to have her teach me some moves. "rear naked choke", eh? Hubba hubba.)

Finally, dont diss the va- sound. It's essentially the same sound as in "voluminous" or "voluptuous" (the vo- sound there is more similar to "vagina" than "vagina" is to "vapid" or "vacant", fer criminey's sake). And there's also "vulva", which has the same sound and is an absolutely delightful word (and object). Not to mention va-va-voom. Gotta love that multiple-v rhythm; Vs are totally sexy. Vulva. Velvet. Joie de vivre. Vesuvius. Velveeta. Vovchanchin. Wait... now we're back to the unsexiness of dojos. Oopsie. And "vivisection" doesnt exactly get my motor runnin, either. Oh well, as much as we all like "hard and fast" when it comes to sex (ahem), the rules surrounding the language of sex do not seem to come in that variety.

todd
(yes, I used the word "come" twice in that last sentence. I'm spent.)

WendyBuckWild said...

i love my vagina, and my va-. this proposed thesis would not in any way be an attack on the sound but a critique of cultural fears of the void and of the idea of equating feminitity with emptiness or lacking.

more on this later...

Anonymous said...

Just to be clear, are you talking about the letters "va-" or the /v+schwa/ sound? Cuz I think there's plenty of good v-schwas in Western culture. Velocity. Veracity. Virility. And such.

I like your newly-stated thesis, but I dont see a connection to the sound.

I thought of another double-V word.

INTO MY HYPERCUBE~!

todd

thatbob said...

I'm not with Todd in equating the va- sounds of vagina and vanilla with the vo- or ve- sounds of voluptuos or velocity. Frankly, my friend, I think you are mispronouncing these words.

Wendy, go on with your thesis, I'd love to hear more. Whenever I come across the latin-derived words for cow ("vaca") - as feminine a word as any - I too get a sensation of the void. But cows are, if anything, a massive presence. How else to explain?

Anonymous said...

Sorry, man. They're all v-schwas according to dictionary.com:

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=vagina

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=vanilla

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=voluptuous

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=velocity

All this talk of v-schwas is making me hungry.

todd

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