p.s. pirro composed a haiku poem about taking time off from blogging.

Simon Callow wrote a witty and surprisingly moving piece in the Guardian about the awkwardness of on-screen sex.

One of my favorite authors has a new biography out, and I’m itching to read it!

Guest-blogging at feministing, Jos wrote a piece about the folly of trying to make spaces ‘safe’.

indexed provides a succinct diagram of the relationship between cultural standards of ‘beauty’ and the real world.

Which brings me to the next link: we are all ‘plus-sized’ now. As Hanna pointed out, this proves we aren’t crazy when nothing in the clothing store seems made to fit real women’s real bodies.

News flash from the UK: teenagers love sex. whodathunkit?

This has been out there for a while, but Bonk author Mary Roach gave a great talk at TED: ideas worth spreading called 10 things you didn’t know about orgasm.

Thank you, Senator Barney Frank.

Via Adventures of a Young Feminist, I really like this post about the way the word ‘privilege’ has evolved into a cavalier way to shut down discussion about issues important to us all.

Via Amanda Marcotte’s podcast at RhRealityCheck, I give you Deflowered Memoirs, an ongoing project collecting personal narratives of sexual awakening.

One of my alma maters, the University of Aberdeen, has just received £600,000 in donations toward the funding of a new university library. As a librarian-in-training, may I say there are few ways in which money can be better spent than on libraries.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville has a piece up at the Guardian about her experience dealing with misogyny in personal relationships.

via Amanda Marcotte (whose analysis of the original post is worth the read) comes a piece by Will Wilkinson on one common conservative gripe with the left: “liberal equality is just too confusing!”

And finally, second image, third definition down: an 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue finds it necessary to use no less than three foreign languages, two asterisks, and self-referentially vague phrases to define a certain word for female genitalia. The reader is left wondering whether the compiler of the dictionary knew what, in fact, the word meant! (thanks to Hanna for the link)

image above by dakokichidekalb @ Flickr.