After reading Vibrators Carry the Conversation in The New York Times on Wednesday it would seem that our battery operated friends are now officially mainstream news. Yup, it’s true. It started with The Rabbit on SATC and now you can hoof on down to Walgreens and nag yourself a self-stimulator in a lavender box. Lucky day!

What stuck with me about this article–other than the fact that while vibrators are becoming ubiquitous there’s still a cultural double standard for advertising them (Viagra, yes! Vibrators, heck no!)–was that for some reason masturbation has been renamed self-stimulation. That’s right: self-stiimuulaation.

Masturbation is an unfortunate word, to be sure. And whether that’s a case of chicken or egg, who knows. There’s too many dang syllables and it just smacks of awkward pubescent convos. Too bad replacing it with “self-stimulation,” or even worse, as verb: “I’m off to self-stimulate now!” isn’t any better.

Let me tell you, nobody is going to be carrying any conversations with that one.