@applestoapples Wark wark WARK.

@applestoapples thank you for giving me my first of many silent convulsing laughs at my desk. On a Monday!

@applestoapples I said GENTLE, not GENTOO!

@Mingus_Thurber His best man told him to Netflix a copy of Body Heat in preparation for the wedding night, but he mistakenly heard Happy Feet.

@applestoapples I am laughing insanely.

@Chiara Atik@twitter I love the juxtaposition of your comment and the expression on the face of your avatar, and will now be looking at that all day.

@Chiara Atik@twitter Little did we realize that one day we would look back fondly on the all-day marathons of A Wedding Story as a time when TLC had quality programming.

@SuperGogo What is like is that TLC used to stand for "The Learning Channel"... an accurate acronym if there ever was one.

@Chiara Atik@twitter We call it The Freak Channel now. It will never be for learning again.

@Chiara Atik@twitter I LOVE TLC TOO. I'm already planning what snacks I'll be making for this special television event.

@emilylouise The Leering Channel.

@parallel-lines He had to pull back every ten seconds or so and slowly oscillate his jaws between 30% and 60% of his gape in order to breathe?

@wharrgarbl I'm picturing what happened in the hotel room later that night and I'm guessing it resulted in more bruises than Bella and Edward's coupling.

@parallel-lines When an eel swimming by/Takes a chunk from your thigh/That's a moray. . .

@wharrgarbl I'm so pleased that I learned this today. Thank you!

@Mingus_Thurber I wish I could like this more than once.

@Mingus_Thurber What's that thing in the reef/With the big glistening teeth/That's a moray...

@Mingus_Thurber YES. So good.

@wharrgarbl When the eels start to drool/As the fish start to school/That's a moray...

@The Everpresent Wordsnatcher Stick your hand in the crack/And you won't get it back/From a moray...

@parallel-lines why would you even write that

@wharrgarbl Though you scream and you shout/as you're thrashing about/that's a moray. . .

I could do this all day.

PS: I love your name from my favorite book of all time oh my god please be my friend.

@Mingus_Thurber Now there's blood in the sea/just like roobioos tea/that's a moray...

All you people are brilliant, and I need to be friends with every one of you.

@parallel-lines I wouldn't be surprised if that lovely bride turned out to be a succubus who kills groom after groom by feeding on their life essence.

@D.@twitter I just want to let it be known that I Liked every single post in this thread, because cracked song lyrics are the greatest.

@thornbek Hey now.

@melis I'd just like to make note that you were the one who drew the comparison between K.Stew and a head of lettuce, not us. :)

@thornbek More like eager beavers, amirite? (There is a double meaning in that, I think.)

@The Everpresent Wordsnatcher I'd also like to point out that KStew makes me think of stew.
I don't really see how that can be a good thing, for anyone involved.

@rayuela HEY! I have a big pot of stew on the stove as I type. Stew is always a good thing, especially if you brown all the meat before you put it into the broth.

@Mingus_Thurber Mmmmm. Stew.

@Awesomely Nonfunctional Yeah, I still have not heard a compelling argument for "waiting."

@Third Wave Housewife As someone who was an older than average virgin, I think it actually is important to wait for the right time/right partner combination. But waiting until after having made a life long commitment to someone...

@Third Wave Housewife Look no further.

@melis Ah, the classic. Oddly enough, a piece of packing tape covered in skinflakes, once torn off, will not stick to the arm of the original skin-flake provider anymore either.

And another good one. --> http://youtu.be/IoIeXgCfwNI

@melis I always knew my vagina had a strange resemblance to packing tape. This explains all the frisky feelings in the office supply store too.

@Awesomely Nonfunctional I was probably older than average too and I think the same thing- right time and right partner! of course! wedding night? prob not. Not to mention that since much of the wait-til-marriage rhetoric is bound up with religion, you may not be supported if you realize, after getting married, that you and your partner are absolutely not sexually compatible and yes, it is an unsurmountable issue- divorce probably isn't an option for some of these couples. And ah, sex, you don't know how important or unimportant it will be in your relationship until it happens...one might guess that the types of people who take these no-sex-til-marriage-vows do it because they don't care about sex but I really don't think you can know that until you're having it.

@Third Wave Housewife Agreed! I also don't like the subtle assertion that sex is only special if you are married. I may never get married, but I have had, and plan to have, very special and awesome sex.

@Awesomely Nonfunctional Fuck yes. Ooooh, I also worry if the grooms in these unions have been raised on the same diet of gonzo porn as the rest of the boys of today :( Awful all around.

@Third Wave Housewife I hope not! Hopefully the religious viewpoint that made them wait for marriage, would also have kept them from looking at what is basically a caricature of sex.

@Awesomely Nonfunctional Yeah, waiting until after you have to get the state's permission to officially split up is generally not going to actually be "the right time" for anyone to figure out how they're going to relate physically and sexually to their partner. That seems up there with "Just have the kid, and if it turns out you don't want them, just leave them at a fire station" in terms of life advice.

@wharrgarbl This.

I think people automatically assume "You're in love! Of course the sex will be great! Because you're in love!" But some things are just hard-wired in (Thanks, Dan Savage!) and they're never even faced with the option that things Might Not Work (For You Both) until it's way too late.

@Awesomely Nonfunctional - Nothing, not even the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, can keep teenage boys from looking at pornography. It'd be like trying to teach a dog to whistle.

@Awesomely Nonfunctional If the yearly confessional at church summer camp is to be believed ("You guys, I have this burden on my heart that I really need to share with you...I think I'm addicted to pornography. I'm attracted to female human beings and enjoy looking at pictures of them naked. It's a dark and disgusting habit and I'm SO ASHAMED I WANT TO DIE"), I'm guessing it didn't keep them from looking at it AT ALL, nope, not even a little bit, thanks for making the bus ride home super awkward, Doug.

@melis I am so proud that my packing tape revelation has made an impact on the minds of Hairpinners. At least it led to something good.

Hint: It did not lead to me waiting until marriage to start doing the sex. Sorry, Packing Tape Abstinence Woman.

@Awesomely Nonfunctional That is a horrifying point. I literally cannot imagine how awful it would be to be a sheltered young woman who marries a dude really young without ever even kissing him first, and then it turns out he expects you to be OK with constant blowjobs, banging in 16 different positions, jizz shots, and anal, because porn stars do it.

Eesh.

@Awesomely Nonfunctional: Unlikely given that "States where a majority of residents agreed with the statement "I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage," bought 3.6 more subscriptions [for online porn] per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed. A similar difference emerged for the statement "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behavior."

@laurel As a porn clerk...it's always the country boys who buy the really scary stuff.

@laurel Going along with this, apparently Utah has the highest per-capita porn consumption in the country.

@The Everpresent Wordsnatcher Yep, by far. The article I linked to goes into Utah's use compared to other states in some detail.

Give it up, sex-shamers. We're mammals. We were designed for snuggling.

@laurel Awww! "Designed for snuggling" sounds so much better than "designed for raunchy fucking."

@The Lady of Shalott Sometimes I think there is something to be said for the kitten-pile, a la the Where the Wild Things Are movie. Mammals want to be touched.

Except when I made my boyfriend sleep in another room on the weekend because I didn't want to be touched...

Nothing wrong with a little (or a lot of) raunchy fucking! We mammals were made for it.

Think about it: mammals are called that because as infants we nurse cradled in our mother's embrace. We're soft-bodied and warm and lightly or heavily furred, but not enough that most of us can stand the cold by ourselves. We need insulation, preferably that of other well-fed warm bodies for spooning and snuggling.

Reptiles don't do this. Nor do fish or insects. Birds may perch side by side on cold nights or fluff their feathers around their young, but the adults don't embrace. Pretty much only mammals, with our remarkably consistent arm bones, hold each other.

@laurel Remarkably consistent arm bones are a quality I look for in a man.

@DandelionTacy I know! That's got to be absolutely terrifying. Not to mention sex almost automatically results in babies in the Duggars' cases...way to take all the fun out it, you know?

@The Everpresent Wordsnatcher A friend of mine went to college, became very involved with evangelical Christians, met a guy and married him right after graduation -- we were all 21. I was in the wedding, and everyone else at the girls' party the night before was from her church group or a future in-law of some kind, and it was a really fascinating view into the world of people who actually wait and how this stuff is handled.

In some ways, it was a crazy bizarre experience, in part because this friend was a prude and found lacy cotton bikini underwear at Gap to be as scandalous (true story). You could tell just thinking about/talking about sex made her incredibly uncomfortable -- as far as I know, all they'd done was hold hands, kiss, and maybe some heavy making out. (There is definitely a subset of people waiting for marriage who still manage to be pro-sex in the "I am going to have so many orgasms when I'm married!!!1!!!" sense, but my friend was just really freaked out.)

But the friends who were already married and the future sisters-in-law (+ me! because in their eyes I was super scandalous for having slept with all of two boyfriends) put together kind of "practical sex 101" kit with lube, hand towels, a couple of mild/Christian sex advice books, etc, and talked about the stuff that no one really tells you (including both the dichotomy between "SEX IS EVIL" and "OK, you're married, sex is great!" and some practical stuff I kind of wish someone had told me). I actually think it was handled really well and it would have been nice to have that talk with people before I had sex the first time, rather than relying on a human sexuality textbook and Cosmo. (I do wish I'd been able to pull her aside and give her some advice from my more-whorish perspective. Especially since I was very much like her when I was still a virgin. But I just felt way too uncomfortable with the entire situation.)

Still, I have NO idea how she handled the wedding night -- hopefully she was less awkward about it all when she was with her now-husband vs. with us, because yikes, it was like she was a 12-year-old. (I think that was a combination of personality and circumstance, because one of the other bridesmaids was a now-married lady who'd waited, and to hear her tell it she and her husband were about to run away and do it during the reception because they were that excited.)

So anyway, I guess my point is don't pity them too much? There is a whole network of women for this stuff, so it's not like virgin brides are like lambs being led to slaughter... But still, it was one of the most bizarre experiences of my life.

@Emma Peel That's good to hear, in a strange sort of way. I tend to forget about these sorts of things because they're just not talked about. Very glad that it was/is actually addressed in some manner...although I'm wondering if talking about sex with your future in-laws is better or worse than not talking about it at all? (Obvs better to talk about it, with anyone, but yowza, that is some varsity-league awkward.)

@The Everpresent Wordsnatcher They were the groom's brothers' wives -- so maybe even a degree away from in-laws? I never know how that works... they weren't blood relations to anyone doing the sexing, thankfully. Anyway, they were actually some pretty awesome ladies in their mid-20s. (I get the feeling from pre-bachelorette discussion that the "wedding night kit" and the "talk" are pretty much par for the course at these occasions.)

It was so weird, though. SO WEIRD.

@Becca I just watched it again to look for that and I regret this decision. Actually nauseous now. I just want to bat in front of my face all day to deter anything like this from ever happening. Despite the fact that there is no danger of it...

@elizabeast There will be alcohol, right? Abundant, abundant alcohol?
(Qream, even?)

@The Everpresent Wordsnatcher Clearly. Obviously. A bottle of Qream and a bottle of wine for every guest! Served in doll head goblets!

@elizabeast Oh God I just thought of red wine mixed with Qream and gagged a little.

@Nutmeg How good were the glowsticks involved?
If "awesome!", see: Heaven.
If "meh", see: Hell.

@Craftastrophies Instead of on your meatball sub.