So I wanted to know what kind of crystal could go in a wizard staff, right? so I googled “big crystal,” as one does, and got an Etsy ad for This
And as you all know I Am currently taking a geology class, so I am probably more emotionally invested in minerals than usual. But that is…very obviously not a natural crystal.
So I did some looking around on Etsy.
Now, these shops all seem to advertise to the “witchy”/“spiritual healing” type of person. And there are a lot of them. Crystals are a Big Thing on Etsy. And ALMOST ALL of them are obviously artificially cut into the same sort of prism with a triangular pyramid top, regardless of the actual sort of crystal it is supposed to be.
Even like, fucking, obsidian. Obsidian is volcanic glass, it doesn’t form crystals at all, it is not a crystal
I’m not throwing any shade at people who are into crystals for like witchy reasons, but it really seems like if crystals are spiritually important to you, you should know what a crystal is…right…?
So there I am. Caught in the helpless anger and distaste of looking at geologically inaccurate Etsy crystals.
And as I scroll, I start to see items in…interesting shapes:
“Oh,” I think to myself. “Oh no.”
But it is too late. I have heard the siren’s song, singing to me of knowledge that will destroy me, but that I cannot help but seek.
These…elongated objects are almost always ambiguously described as “massage wands,” “crystal healing wands,” and other such innocuous things. The egg-shaped objects are, um, “yoni eggs.”
…Right. Okay.
Maintain the youthfulness of my sacred organ.
IT’S A SEX TOY. SAY IT. BITCH, IT’S A SEX TOY, IT’S OKAY, SERIOUSLY, THERE’S NO SHAME IN IT, SAY IT WITH PRIDE, SAY IT WITH YOUR CHEST,
OKAY.
Okay. I’m good. I’m fine.
Actually, you know what, never mind. There is shame in this and I want it to be never acknowledged again.
Additionally, I am not fine.
Why the fuck are there so many of these—
At this point I stop and start googling.
Now, Selenite is the crystalline form of gypsum. It is also known as satin spar. Selenite is brittle and breaks easily, and has a Mohs hardness scale of 2.
For those unfamiliar with the Mohs hardness scale, a mineral with a hardness of 2 is soft enough that it can be easily scratched with a fingernail. It also is dissolved by moisture.
NO. DON’T PUT THAT IN YOUR BODY???? DON’T PUT THE GYPSUM, WHICH HAS A MOHS HARDNESS SCALE OF 2, IS BRITTLE AND BREAKS EASILY, AND IS WATER SOLUBLE, INSIDE YOUR LITERAL ACTUAL VAGINA??????????
I try to reassure myself with the fact that these things are probably not actually selenite, because making a dildo out of such a soft mineral in the first place would be very difficult. Having seen fluorite before, I feel pretty certain that the fluorite yoni eggs are probably actually just glass.
I google fluorite.
Okay.
Further exploring online shows me that fluorite is soluble in various strong acids.
Some guys on a forum in 2004 have strong contradictory opinions on this.
(I google the pH of the vagina.)
I don’t understand how pH works. I give up on the solubility question and google the toxicity of fluorite:
I now know at least one orifice fluorite does not go inside.
Science.
No, dear followers, my journey did not end here.
I have opened Pandora’s box, except Pandora’s box is filled with minerals God did not intend to be anywhere near the vagina carved into the shape of dildos. Etsy is advertising me sex toys I wish I could forget.
And vaginal steam herbs.
It seems that there is potentially a correlation between wanting to steam your vagina and wanting to put rocks in it. I know, groundbreaking discovery.
Okay, so we’re talking therapy substitute therapy substitute.
(I begin to think about how desperately we need universal health care. Maybe I just need someone, something, to blame.)
At this point, I realize that I haven’t done any googling on whether dildos made of rocks are a good idea at all. So, very tentatively, as if typing it more slowly will make it any less observed by the FBI, I google whether quartz should be used…internally.
First result that pops up:
That’s, uh. That’s reassuring.
I decide I’m incapable of unpacking this particular suitcase.
There are, of course, a small handful of articles debating the safety of rose quartz sex toys. But I’m getting the feeling that this is not a normal question to have in the first place. I close the tab with little relief.
Etsy is still enthusiastically recommending me things that hurt me psychologically.
…pleasure chalk?
How can I describe the fear that this image struck in me, reader?
Pleasure Chalk? What could that be?
Is knowing worse, or is not knowing? I scarcely have a choice:
I check in with my emotions.
Is this relief? Am I relieved that they are eating the dirt instead of fucking it? One review complains about the taste. I don’t know what they expected.
I try in vain to struggle against the tide, to return to the relatively normal side of Etsy. I begin to resent, no, hate, these deceptively aesthetically pleasing hippie shops eagerly spreading medical misinformation and things as yet unknown.
This, unlike the other “crystals” I have shown, appears to show naturally grown crystals. They are, of course, quartz crystals, and $45 comes off as extremely overpriced. I have a quartz crystal I got for a dollar at an Eastern Kentucky rock festival, about the size and quality of the ones in the photo.
Quartz is the most common mineral in the Earth’s crust. But at least this is regular levels of annoying.
Then I see this:
Well, I see the photo and the price, and I think, that looks like a regular quartz crystal. There’s no way a regular quartz crystal is $1,347.
I read the description:
I am crying. I don’t want to google any of this. I am beyond googling. I no longer desire knowledge.
THATS A QUARTZ CRYSTAL. MOTHERFUCKER THAT’S QUARTZ. SIO2, MOST COMMON MINERAL IN THE EARTH’S CRUST. ITS FUCKING QUARTZ IM—
I click on a malachite.
The malachite promises to protect me from emails. And at this, darkest hour, I want to be protected.
I have been broken. I have been lured to my demise.
Big Brother: loved.
Geology lab I’m supposed to be doing: incomplete.
God: unmerciful.
This post has everything. Price gouging quartz, eating dirt, and fucking poisonous rocks.
It doesn’t matter if American Christians in power are “doing it wrong” or if actually, Jesus said things that contradict their proclaimed values. What matters is that religious groups should not be in a position to legislate their religious beliefs such that it applies to people not beholden to that religion.
In other words, the argument that “Jesus would hate White Christian Nationalism because the Bible shows he was a radical etc etc” doesn’t matter because you are meeting them on their terms. If the Bible did say that Jesus hated abortion/poor people/socialism, it still would not be acceptable for Christians to legislate on that basis.
And yet cultural Christianity has brought us to a point where we’d rather pin the problem on a new subset of Christianity whose issue is that they’re misinterpreting original doctrine. Y'all have been saying, “Well, they’re not Real Christians” for centuries. This is not a problem of a new sect’s formation. This is an issue of separation of church & state. In political/legal contexts, it should not matter what the Bible says or doesn’t say, or how anyone interprets it, because the Bible has no place in a courtroom. It’s literally that simple.
It doesn’t matter if American Christians in power are “doing it wrong” or if actually, Jesus said things that contradict their proclaimed values. What matters is that religious groups should not be in a position to legislate their religious beliefs such that it applies to people not beholden to that religion.
In other words, the argument that “Jesus would hate White Christian Nationalism because the Bible shows he was a radical etc etc” doesn’t matter because you are meeting them on their terms. If the Bible did say that Jesus hated abortion/poor people/socialism, it still would not be acceptable for Christians to legislate on that basis.
And yet cultural Christianity has brought us to a point where we’d rather pin the problem on a new subset of Christianity whose issue is that they’re misinterpreting original doctrine. Y'all have been saying, “Well, they’re not Real Christians” for centuries. This is not a problem of a new sect’s formation. This is an issue of separation of church & state. In political/legal contexts, it should not matter what the Bible says or doesn’t say, or how anyone interprets it, because the Bible has no place in a courtroom. It’s literally that simple.
[image id: a four-page comic. it is titled “immortality” after the poem by clare harner (more popularly known as “do not stand at my grave and weep”). the first page shows paleontologists digging up fossils at a dig. it reads, “do not stand at my grave and weep. i am not there. i do not sleep.” page two features several prehistoric creatures living in the wild. not featured but notable, each have modern descendants: horses, cetaceans, horsetail plants, and crocodilians. it reads, “i am a thousand winds that blow. i am the diamond glints on snow. i am the sunlight on ripened grain. i am the gentle autumn rain.” the third page shows archaeopteryx in the treetops and the skies, then a modern museum-goer reading the placard on a fossil display. it reads, “when you awaken in the morning’s hush, i am the swift uplifting rush, of quiet birds in circled flight. i am the soft stars that shine at night. do not stand at my grave and cry.” the fourth page shows a chicken in a field. it reads, “i am not there. i did not die” / end id]
a comic i made in about 15 hours for my school’s comic anthology. the theme was “evolution”
[image id: a four-page comic. it is titled “immortality” after the poem by clare harner (more popularly known as “do not stand at my grave and weep”). the first page shows paleontologists digging up fossils at a dig. it reads, “do not stand at my grave and weep. i am not there. i do not sleep.” page two features several prehistoric creatures living in the wild. not featured but notable, each have modern descendants: horses, cetaceans, horsetail plants, and crocodilians. it reads, “i am a thousand winds that blow. i am the diamond glints on snow. i am the sunlight on ripened grain. i am the gentle autumn rain.” the third page shows archaeopteryx in the treetops and the skies, then a modern museum-goer reading the placard on a fossil display. it reads, “when you awaken in the morning’s hush, i am the swift uplifting rush, of quiet birds in circled flight. i am the soft stars that shine at night. do not stand at my grave and cry.” the fourth page shows a chicken in a field. it reads, “i am not there. i did not die” / end id]
a comic i made in about 15 hours for my school’s comic anthology. the theme was “evolution”
I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before, a stone on the riverbed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees. All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me, the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness. All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with a luminous doom. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better.
HB 1069, like several other
proposed pieces of legislation in the state, also stipulates how
instructors can define sex and reproduction to their students, adding
that reproductive roles are “unchangeable.”
The bill’s suggested
version of sex education would “teach that sex is determined by biology
and reproductive function at birth; that biological males impregnate
biological females by fertilizing the female egg with male sperm; that
the female then gestates the offspring; and that these reproductive
roles are binary, stable, and unchangeable.”
