Adventures Of Weirdness

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

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.

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.

The basic concept makes sense, I guess. Dirt has minerals in it, and when you have a dangerous deficiency and can’t get supplements in little pills, you’ve gotta do something, and sometimes the “something” your body comes up with is “crave dirt.”

The big problem with buying “edible clay” on Etsy is that this stuff is totally unregulated. (Most ‘alternative medicine’ is.) At the very least, you may or may not adequately address the dangerous nutritional deficiency you could likely have by eating random clay from Etsy. In a world where we do have supplements in little pills, there is no reason to just eat clay and hope it works. There’s no way of verifying what mineral content the clay has.

There’s also the fact that you could poison yourself with contaminants, since, again, this stuff is unregulated. I googled byproducts of kaolinite mining and quickly found results suggesting that it can absorb hazardous metals during the mining process and also that kaolinite deposits in Nigeria are also rich in radioactive thorium. In general, though, mining stuff out of the ground results in a lot of hazardous waste material.

Of course, the kaolinite pictured in the screenshot may indeed not be industrially mined kaolinite and may in fact instead be dried-up clay purchased at Hobby Lobby.

- Carlisle learns about the taste of blood on his tongue when he bites Edward. He can taste the fever rampaging his body, turning him weak, killing him. It tastes bitter and burns on the way down but Carlisle wants more. Esme is next and her blood is sweeter, with hints of honey in it and Carlisle has to stop himself from draining her dry, from gorging himself on her sweet blood. With every new edition to him family Carlisle drinks more of their blood before he finally pulls away. He tells them that it’s necessary and they blindly trust him. 

- Esme uses her sweetness, her beauty, her innocence, to her advantage. She persuades random human men to hand over their wallets, bats her pretty golden eyes and hands out pretty smiles to any man who looks at her. It makes her feel powerful. Some of them get handsy, try to grab at her, mistake her sweetness for weakness, and they learn that she is the opposite of weak fairly fast. The first time she breaks a mans bones, she feels a rush. She’s been searching for that high ever since. 

- Edward wanders the streets of Colorado at night, stalking the streets is more truthful really. He goes after the fathers that stay too late at work, that neglect their families in their perusal of a job raise. He watches men take woman home, watches them force themselves on the poor lady. Watches her stumble home, if she’s lucky enough to do so, and Edward hunts. He looks at his red eyes and tells himself that he’s saving humanity, one kill at a time. 

- Jasper looks at the dead bodies surrounding him, the bodies that follow his every waking moment. The poor souls, vampire and human, that he murdered, for sport and food. He looks at the new-born vampire in front of him, and his mouth waters. His ghosts might haunt him, but he’s the one that’s still living, that will continue to live. Jasper smiles and attacks, adding another ghost that will stay with him forever. 

- Alice tells false truths to humans that beg for their future. She tells one of them that he’ll meet the love of his life in three days, knowing he will die an awful death in four-hours. She tells the young woman that her husband does love her, he’s just busy with work while watching him fuck his young secretary. She knows it’s wrong but she can’t help but feel like a God when she hands out a false future. 

- Rosalie catches cheaters in the act, stops rapists and pedophiles and beaters before they can do more damage. She watches men stalk young woman in the streets, watches grown woman make young boys into victims. She takes her revenge on them. She rips them apart limb-by-limb and relishes in the feeling of their blood on her skin. She goes back home with the sound of their screams echoing in her ears. 

1. They look the way they did when they died: 

- Carlisle has a bite mark on his wrist and his arm hangs weirdly, like his shoulder was out of it’s socket, body still hunched over in pain. 

- Jasper has a bloody bite on the juncture between his shoulder and neck, another on the other side to match, always bleeding and always burning. 

- Edward looks like a living corpse, hectic spots of red on his cheeks from the fever, all skin and bones, a bloody bite on his wrist, his face and body gaunt. 

- Esme’s stomach is slightly swollen, her neck bent at an impossible angle and her spine all twisted and broken, dried tears on her cheeks, a bloody bite on her throat. 

- Alice is all skin and bones, hollow eyes and gaunt body, twitching periodically like she can still feel the electricity zipping through her body, a bite on her shoulder. 

- Rosalie is all bloody and beaten up, half dead, lips swollen and bitten raw, dried blood on the insides of her thighs, a broken collarbone, broken leg, and 4 bruised ribs, she hisses out in pain every time she moves, a bite on her throat. 

Carlisle is happily married. He loves his wife, loves his children - at least most of the times, and during the periods where he didn’t have to run away because they got bored and did some shenanigans, and since they were at college it had gotten easier but, they still tried to make him an alcoholic. He told himself, it’s a small town. The kids are away. He and Esme are going to have a normal life. A normal life in a normal town with normal people and no incidents besides the usual normal-town-stuff - a welcomed break at the moment. Nothing more unusual than the normal-town crimes, normal-town accidents and sometimes the normal-town drunks. He even would allow some normal-town murders if it meant he could have a few absolutely boring years around here. Fate didn’t like that plan obviously, so it sent him his blood singer. And even worse, Y/N was absolutely fucking annoying. The Reader made him understand why so many people used alcohol to cope with stress because, honestly, Reader made his life now so much more stressful. That was the day, Esme, Edward, Rosalie and Emmett wanted to surprise him at the hospital and got greeted by “Oh Esme, just, a moment. Is everything alright? I mean… he’s been smoking a whole pack today - I didn’t even know he smokes!” from a very concerned Nurse Jenny.

An AU in which Carlisle encounters his blood singer, Y/N, a pretty pragmatic photojournalist trying to make ends meet with a too-big heart but maybe a bit too engaged in her job, and makes the mistake of befriending her.

who thought of that idea? who thought “put davy jones in a bucket of water” and had the guts to suggest it aloud? and then who went “hey that sounds like a great idea!”

Some folks are asking “well, if he can avoid the no-dry-land curse simply by standing in a bucket, doesn’t that ruin his whole motivation?”, but he’s not on dry land here.

The parley takes place on a sandbar - which, for the unfamiliar, is a temporary “island” of sand deposited by breaking waves, unconnected with the shore, that spends most of its time submerged, being exposed only at low tide.

What Jones is doing here is rules-lawyering his curse. Can you imagine the trial and error he must have gone through in order to determine that this would actually work?

“Okay, do islands count as dry land? How about parts of the shore below the high tide mark? Reefs? Shoals? What if I stand in a pool of water on a shoal? Does it have to be seawater, or will any water do? Does it have to be a natural tidepool, or can it be something artificial, like a bucket?”

Watch: Carl Sagan schooled B.o.B. on his flat Earth theory more than 30 years ago