THERE WILL BE SPOILERS IN COMMENTS I BETCHA!

Re: Project Runway Canada

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm so blitheringly, idiotically PLEASED. If only the American version were half as good this season! But still! GUESS WHO WON ZOMG!!!!

I need an icon for this, really

HAPPY BIRTHDAY feiran!

She knows she's the shit, and I'll leave it at that (there's more, but I already gave myself a hand-cramp getting it into her birthday card). Have a happy, happy one and we'll par-tay later tonight!

****

And HAPPY BIRTHDAY to kent_allard_jr! It's a big'un this year, no? Live it up! Go nuts! See you tomorrow!

WHALE BIOLOGIST

I dunno why I am still reading the comments about this.

Background info: Britney Spears' 16-year-old sister is pregnant. She's having the baby, and no, she's not married (nor rumored to be especially close to the sperm donor). If you didn't already know this...well, I don't believe that anyone hasn't had this news shoved in their face, but if you managed to escape it until now, I apologize for ruining your hot streak.

The question that is being commented on in the link above is when parents should give the "sex talk." Predictably, no one agrees with anyone else; the religious conservatives accuse people of making their kids want sex by bringing sex up at all (there's even one "L1BRu7 M3d1A C0NSP1R4CY" post in there for good measure; and everyone's obviously embarrassed.

Which, pardon me, is the fucking problem. Because of whatever trauma these people had inflicted on them as kids when they got the sex talk, they remain embarrassed. To me, that's a sure sign that, however sex was brought up (if it was), it was too late and too shame-laden when it was. Am I a crazy liberal? Yeah, probably. Am I wrong? Nope.

Like it or lump it, kids are going to ask questions. How prepared you are to answer them will affect them more than the information itself. It's like with babies and how we coo and aww at them. The communication is meaningless, but the vocalization is key. Telling a five-year-old that sex is when a boy puts his penis into a vagina (or mouth or anus or real doll) is an answer that is really beyond his understanding of cause/effect/omgwhy? But the fact that mommy/daddy can't say that while making eye contact or have to think about it for a while opens a real can of worms. Associations are key.

And embarrassment is a self-fulfilling prophecy, unlike, say, the accusations that telling kids about contraception makes them have sex more (which is, in a statistically significant fashion, patently not true; whereas "abstinence" programs do nothing but leave teenagers uneducated about means to protect themselves when they go ahead and have sex anyway).