Thursday, March 06, 2008

This Is News?

Good Morning America did a feature today about how Spencer's Gifts sells sexually explicit items such as sex toys and other adult items next to otherwise legit mall tenants like Penneys and Toys r Us. Polycarp will be happy to know that the store they targeted for their investigation was located in the mall in Durham, NC just down the road from him. I know he will want to stock up.

Now THERE'S a newsflash. I am no Spring chicken. But when I was a callow youth I used to go to Spencer's at McCain Mall precisely for that reason. I also liked to go into a faux deli called Dunderback's over there because they would sell me beer illegally. Anyway, I used to go to Spencer's and marvel at the decks of cards with "naked ladies" on them, the "spanish fly," the day-glo nude posters and other stuff that in retrospect seems pretty stupid to me now in my dotage.

Besides I now know that Spanish fly does not work. I know this because experience teaches me that nothing "works" except the stars lining up correctly.

But Spencer's has been selling this stupid junk for 30 years. Why is this news? Do they lead sheltered lives at GMA? Or does this mean that Dianne Sawyer gets her ben-wa balls off the Internet?

Now THAT would be a story!

10 comments:

Polycarp said...

Perhaps the Piedmont Triangle area is just highly-sexed. The Harris Teeter grocery store where I shop carries Astroglide and KY Warming Liquid personal lubricant and about thirty brands of condom.

Anonymous said...

Whats ben wa balls?

tmfw said...

As I am made to understand, primarily from a former female acquaintance of mine, they are steel balls that one might put in one's highly personal orifices in order to enhance sexual pleasure.

She used to wear them around to, I guess, well, I don't know why she had those damn things rolling around down there.

I never carried on w/her or anything. I just heard about it and thought it..interesting.

Anonymous said...

Ben wa balls.... think of them as pleaasant exercise, muscle strengthening exercise, for women, ancient asian traditional muscle strenghtening exercise for women. Ahhh...

I thought the exact same thing when I saw that segement on GMA.

tmfw said...

Hey Sophmom....

Will you marry me?

Anonymous said...

GMA ought to come down to Alabama where it's illegal to sell do-dads for "stimulation/sexual gratification."

The proprietress of a store called Pleasures, right here in my beloved Huntsville, took her fight to sell all the way to the Supreme Court in February. The Court declined to hear the case.

Happy Valentine's Day.

As with lottery tickets, the gadget business is thriving in Tennessee and Georgia.

By the way, the Alabama legislature justified the ban on sex toys as "promoting prostitution and incest." On second thought, I'd just as soon the national media not get wind of another fine display of judicial prudence in my adopted state. From Huntsville to the Tennessee state line's not that far :-)

Lucy

Anonymous said...

A couple of years ago my co-worker came in with a t-shirt of George W. and Cheney with the I'm with Stupid saying and finger pointing to one another. She bought it at Spencer's. That should be enough to keep them open.
BTW I am not the ex with the ben wa balls. Never heard of them.
And I loved those pretzels at Mr. Dunderbacks.

tmfw said...

None of my exes ever fooled with ben wa balls. Or if any of them did they never bothered to tell me about it.

I did have one who thought it would be great fun to tie me up once. If anybody in my past ever packed ben wa balls, it would have been her. And a buddy of mine talked his way into a faculty party once during graduate school by holding himself out as "Dr. Benois" which I thought was pretty funny. That's as close as I ever came to any until I met the woman described in the comment at a reception years ago.

And in case you are wondering, I declined the offer to be bound. Not only did I find the notion silly to the extreme, I also didn't fully trust my putative captor not to set the bed on fire.

You just can't be too careful about these things.

Anonymous said...

Awwww, darlin'! You asked.

Thanks so much for the lovely, er, response. Perhaps we should get to know each other a little better first. :)

tmfw said...

OK sweetie...we'll take it slow...