I often connect my posts to blog link-ups that limit themselves to family friendly posts (or in one case, reasonably family friendly posts), so this post comes with a warning: Nothing here is pornographic, and I respect it if people don’t want to read anything that’ll yuckify their brains for weeks. I’m pretty sure that nothing here will, but no two people’s definition of yuckification will be 603% identical. So whether or not the post is family friendly will depend on whose family we’re talking about. I use the word vagina. Most families have at least one and some have several–presumably not all on the same family member. So I don’t think I’m pushing the limits too far. I wouldn’t recommend the post to a three-year-old, but your average three-year-old is illiterate, so I think we’re okay.

Later on, there’s a bit about the Bad Sex Awards. This isn’t awarded for anything anyone did–the competition would be too (no pun intended, honestly) stiff. It’s a literary award that no one wants to win. The write-up contains a quote that’s bizarre, and–maybe ill informed is the best way to describe it, not to mention physically impossible. Still, I wouldn’t say it’s pornographic, just very damn strange.

You be the judge. Or if you prefer, bail out now. 

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A vagina museum has opened in London. But this isn’t just your garden variety vagina museum that we’re talking about. This is the world’s first (and probably its only) vagina museum. 

Why does the world need such a thing? Well, Sarah Creed, who curated its first exhibition, says that “half of people surveyed did not know where the vagina was.” 

The vagina? Is there only one? Or are we talking about the Great Vagina–the one that created the template for all the vaginas that came after?

Clearly, there’s a lot about this that I don’t know, but I do know where my own personal vagina is: It’s in Cornwall. If any of you are having trouble locating yours, an old-fashioned map or one of the apps on your smart phone (it knows where you are) would be a good place to start.

If you don’t have one of your own (that’s a vagina, not a smart phone), you’ll have to settle for more abstract information. The museum might be a good place to start.

You’re welcome. 

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Mysterious bundles of cash have been appearing in the town of Blackhall Colliery, in Northern Ireland. The bundles almost always add up to £2,000 and they’re left in plain sight on the high street (translation: the main street; it won’t necessarily be any higher than any other street and you don’t have to be under the influence of mind-altering substances to go there). 

What’s going on? No one knows. Or no one who’s talking knows. A police spokesperson said, “This could be the work of a good Samaritan but . . . the circumstances remain a mystery.”

Twelve bundles have been handed in to the police since 2014. If any have been found but not turned it, no one’s saying. But anyone handing the cash in can make a claim to keep it if the owner doesn’t show up.

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This next item has nothing to do with Britain, but I just have to include it: When the Harriet Tubman biopic was first pitched in Hollywood, back in the dark ages of nineteen-ninety-something-or-other, the head of the Whatever Studio said the script was fantastic and he wanted Julia Roberts to play Tubman.

The writer pointed out, with I have no idea what degree of tact, that Tubman was black and Roberts was white and that the discrepancy might, um, present a problem. I don’t think he said that since the story was about slavery in the US race was a central issue, but he probably should have. In some situations, no point is too obvious to skip over.

“It was so long ago,” the Sage of the Whatever Studio said. “No one is going to know the difference.”

My friends, I despair. 

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And this next bit has nothing to do with Britain either (we’ll come back home in a minute), but when the $39,900 armored electric Cybertruck was unveiled, Tesla wanted to prove it was “bulletproof to a 9mm handgun,” so after having people attack it with sledgehammers (they barely made a dent), they threw a metal ball at a window. Which smashed. 

To see if that was a fluke, they threw one at another window. Which also smashed.

The exact quote from the Sage of Tesla, Elon Musk, was “Oh my fucking god.” 

The $39,900 price that I quoted is for the basic model. If you really want to–and I just know you do–you can pay $76,900.

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You’ve probably heard somewhere along the line that accents are important in Britain. They mark your class and your region (unless you learn a new accent, in which case they mark how well or badly you’ve slipped into someone else’s) and they mark everybody else’s attitude toward you. So it’s worth mentioning that a man was charged with being drunk because of his accent.

The story is this: A man named–yes–Shakespeare (Anthony, not Bill) was reported to the Brighton police because he was slurring his words and had a three-year-old with him. The cops appeared, questioned him, and arrested him.

I’m not sure what happened to the three-year-old at this point. She’s probably still traumatized.

Shakespeare’s lawyer (whose name is less interesting than his client’s, so we’ll skip it) said in court, “No offence to people with Scouse accent, but the nature of the accent itself is that it can make people appear drunk.”

Shakespeare was acquitted. And the scouse accent is from Merseyside. That’s Liverpool, give or take a bit of ground around it. 

The word scouse, if WikiWhatsia is right, comes from the name for a stew that was common thereabouts. 

My thanks to Separated by a Common Language, which had a link to the article.

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The judges of the Bad Sex Awards couldn’t pick a winner this year so they chose two. The idea is to find “the year’s most outstandingly awful scene of sexual description in an otherwise good novel.” 

But never mind who won, because this is from a runner-up, Mary Costello’s The River Capture: “She begged him to go deeper and, no longer afraid of injuring her, he went deep in mind and body, among crowded organ cavities, past the contours of her lungs and liver, and, shimmying past her heart, he felt her perfection.”

And you wonder why I’m not straight?

Okay, that’s not the only reason. And even though it’s been a long time, my memory’s good enough for me to know that passage doesn’t describe a typical encounter. Still, it could put a suggestible person off.

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On a more uplifting note, the four artists who were finalists for this year’s Turner Prize appealed to the judges not to pick a single winner but to let them share the prize equally. All four works deal with immediate social and political issues, and in their letter the finalists said these issues “differ greatly, and for us it would feel problematic if they were pitted against each other, with the implication that one was more important . . . than the others.”

The judges agreed unanimously.

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In November, the Central Library Scotland hosted an event where people could borrow a human book for half an hour.

The Human Library is a group of “volunteers that are available to be published as open books on topics that can help us better understand our diversity. The Human Library is a safe space for conversations, where difficult questions are answered by people with personal experience that volunteered to share their knowledge.” 

Can I translate that? You go in and talk to someone knowledgeable who’s agreed to be an open book on some topic. The events started in the U.S. and are about prejudices and stigmas the people / books have faced.

The founder, librarian Allison McFadden-Keesling, talks about the volunteers as books, as in “the books are excited to see one another” and her events have grown from 8 or 10 books at the first event to 35.

My thanks to Deb C. for letting me know about this. 

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Oh, and happy holidays to you all. If this isn’t the strangest holiday post you’ve seen this year, at least tell me it’s close.