"Damn, that ass!" (The last can be favorable commentary about your own ass, or as a means of drawing your attention to another fine, fine ass. Either way it's a win.)

Another point where commas are crucial! "Damn that ass" without a comma would say to me you are wishing hellfire on a jackass...

Also in the bible iirc.

Although maybe that was just a talking donkey who was not damned. There was a cursed fig tree, I'm pretty sure.

Didn't Balaam's Ass run into some trouble?

I read Judy Blume's Forever when I was in 4th grade, with Mom's full knowledge. The older girls in the class (it was mixed 4th/5th/6th grade) had been taunting me that I was "too little" to read such things. Little did they know I had been reading racy and questionable sci-fi and horror for a few years. And Flowers in the Attic, of course.

A lot of stuff in adult books went right over my head at that age, because I had no frame of reference. I remember re-reading some romantic mysteries many years later and being boggled at what I'd completely glossed over as a kid.

Same here. I understood it in an academic sort of way, but didn't have any real idea what I was reading. And I'm a big hypocrite, because I would be alarmed and scandalized if I knew Tickybox was reading the same sort of stuff now.

1. Has anyone purchased SLate Plus? I listen to podcasts ALL DAY, and I need more! I also pretty much prefer the format of something like Culture Gabfest or Pop Culture Happy Hour-- I like discussions. Is there enough extra podcast content?

I did. It's not a ton more content than the free ones, although now every single podcast is automatically going into my iTunes, so if you just want to listen to EVERYTHING (the Gist, the Better Call Saul recaps, the sports show, the politics show, the parenting show, etc., etc.), it's easier, at least?

re: not getting the point at a young age.

One scene in particular, the heroine is hiding in an attic while bad guys converse below. One of the bad guys boasts about his bed, and his companion encourages him. I paused when I read that, wondered why they were getting so interested in furniture--was it carved in a particularly elaborate way?--then shrugged and continued reading.

Extreme multi-tasking. I'm attending a webinar and doing a training/certification course on two different subjects right now. And coming here to tell you people about it.

There was a cursed fig tree, I'm pretty sure.

That's one of my favorite bible stories, because while God doesn't hate fags, he apparently canonically hates figs.

Bad ass, brenda!

I went from never-been-kissed to 3rd base in about 15 minutes at 17...but I'd been reading quite explicit stuff since I was about 7 or 8. But theory is different than practice, yanno? And they say how you imprint on the first person you have your first consensual sexual experience with, and to this day, I looove getting my neck bitten. Man, I had to hide a LOT of hickeys from my parents!

Oh, and masturbating since, I dunno, 10 or 11? I don't even remember. I had read how to do it, and that it was normal and healthy so I was all "Hey! Science says I can do it! Let's see what this thing really is!" And I did it, and it was good.

Although I was terribly private and embarrassed to talk about sex with my parents, I was was extremely liberal in my own mind. And I knew SO MUCH MORE than my friends and classmates who WERE sexually experienced.

When I was a teacher the Health teacher, a guy, was teribly embarrassedr to do the sexuality lectures, so I offered to do them. And these were tough kids, lots of teen pregnancies, mostly Latino kids, so lots of machismo and adolescent sex hormones running hot and heavy, so I got a LOT of questions intended to freak the white female teacher out. Heh. Even in the anonymous written note section of the lecture, I didn't bat an eye at anything.

I got mad street cred from that. And better yet, kids started coming to me with relationship questions and issues they were embarrassed to talk to anyone else about, and that...that felt good. I was able to help.