Cute Coworker Continues to Confuse.

So now there's hugging. Hugging has to be beyond the pale, right? I mean, you don't just come up with flimsy excuses to hug a girl unless you're attracted, right?

He even smells good.

On Fat.

I am not a goddess. I am not a porker.

[All links are NWS images.]
Fat belly.

I am not less a person or less sexual than a thin woman. I can get laid. My pussy isn't loose or dirty or hard to get to. I'm also not more sensual, horny, hedonistic, kinky, masochistic, or inclined to give blowjobs than a thin woman. Fat doesn't make me more orgasmic, better able to take a beating, more in touch with my body, or in any way more of a real woman.

I don't like the term "BBW" because I think packaging "beautiful" into the term is kind of egotistical. Some fat girls are BBWs and some are just BWs, you know?

Fat tits.

I am not as healthy, as strong, as fast, or as flexible as I'd be if I were thin. I'm not teetering on the edge of diabetes and heart failure either. I can run, hike, lift weights, and do martial arts--but not as well as I could if I were thin.

I don't stuff my face with Twinkies and Big Macs all day. I don't obsess about food. But I did get fat by overeating, and when I consistently eat less food than I burn, I lose weight like anyone else.

Fat hips.

I didn't consciously choose to be fat. My fat is not a form of self-expression. It doesn't say "I made myself ugly because I want to be ignored." It also doesn't say "I enjoy pleasure to the fullest because I'm so free."

I'm repulsed by fat hate, but I worry that fat acceptance amounts to sticking my head in the sand. Being fat does crud up my life in some ways and it's easier to change my body than change the tide of society (or the laws of physics).

Fat ass.

I'm on a diet now and it seems to be going better than average (calorie counting with normal food, making a conscious effort not to try to overachieve by starving, and over the last three months I've dropped about 18 pounds), but I've seen a few diets come and go so I'm not going to announce "Hallelujah, I'm cured" just yet.

The funny thing is, if I were cured, if I woke up tomorrow at 110 pounds, I think it would be amazing just how many of my problems and insecurities weren't changed a bit.

Twilight.

(Spoilers. If you care, stop reading this blog, it's for people over 18.)

Last night, (for shits and giggles with a couple of hard-core horror fans who mocked and howled the whole way through) I saw Twilight. It's a terrible movie in so many ways--if Our Vampires Are so Different that the sun just makes them sparkly and they don't hurt people, why is it even a bad thing to be super-strong and immortal?--okay, and why the fuck are they attending high school?--but I really just want to talk about the sexual politics.

I had heard that Twilight was "the one with the abstinence vampires," but that's not painfully explicit in the movie. It's true Edward and Bella don't fuck, but they don't make a big deal about "hey look at us we're not fucking" so whatever, it's not objectionable. There is one scene where they're making out on her bed and he suddenly leaps back with a horrified "I can't control myself," but it's not clear whether he's talking about sex or vamping out so, again, okay.

(Perhaps he was afraid of turning into Edwardus. Man, Buffy did it all so much better.)

Following in the grand tradition of vampire literature since... pretty much always, biting is the real sex. And a good 75% of the movie is Edward either saying or twitchily emoting that he really really wants to bite Bella. In fact, he straight up says that the reason he's attracted to Bella is that he wants to bite her. (It sure ain't her personality. The high school is full of people being friendly and accepting to her and she invariably grunts at them and wanders away mid-conversation.) Oh, but he mustn't.

Which is where the metaphor breaks down. Biting is a one-sided pleasure that destroys the passive partner. There's no safe biting, no consensual biting, no maturing and becoming ready for biting. Most importantly, there's no mutual biting. "Boys/vampires have to exercise restraint so that they don't selfishly take advantage of girls/victims by biting/fucking them" is a problematic message in so many ways.

Creepily, I think Edward's agonizing self-restraint is what's supposed to make him so dreamy. The movie sure plays all the scenes of him going "want... mustn't... ngghh... want... but I won't!" as money shots--the film climaxes with him denying yet another blood-drinking temptation--and I have a feeling that this is where teenage girls are meant to swoon. "Oooh, he's so repressed! There's a man who'd never allow himself to enjoy the things he desires! So romantic!"

I guess, in some bizarre way, the idea is to make abstinence--metaphorical and literal--sexy. To make a sex symbol out of a guy who won't fuck you. "I wish my boyfriend tormentedly refused to touch me!"

My only hope is that whatever Stephanie Meyer intended, the teenage fans' real motivation is "I'd totally crack that nut."



Also, Edward is just a plain ol' creep. He's supposed to be about 108 years old, but apparently he hasn't done anything with the last 107 of them. He's still attending high school classes, for Chrissakes, and he seems to have all the life experience and emotional maturity you'd expect of a 15-year-old. He falls in love with Bella about a week after meeting her and is teenagerishly obsessive and dramatic about it. You'd think a 108-year-old would've been around the block a bit more than that.

At one point quite early in their relationship, Bella wakes up and Edward is in her bedroom watching her sleep. Um, creeeepy. (Also, how'd he get in without an invitation? DAMMIT STEPHANIE MEYER WHAT KIND OF CRAPPY VAMPIRES ARE THESE ANYWAY.) Several times he follows her around for no damn reason, and several times he more or less kidnaps her. I don't require all my fictional characters to be moral paragons, but nonetheless I'm disturbed by the idea that Edward is being held up as the ideal teenage boyfriend.

Girls, girls! The awkward, broody older guy who follows you around and starts saying "I can't live without you" stuff in the first week is not dreamy! He is a Level III Offender. Don't get in the van.




P.S.: An unnamed accomplice who is a Pacific Northwest Native would like to add that he is not "descended from wolves," does not have a wolf or any other "totem spirit," that American Indian mythology does not consist of "anything you want to make up as long as it sounds naturey," and that American Indians are not, in fact, adorable woodland creatures that exist for your amusement.

Picture time!

Still not Officially Awesome, but considerable improvement on a 1-inch circle at 10 yards:




(More fun image removed because someone was a poophead about it and/or it really was ill-advised, I can't tell, but anyway if you don't like it you won't get it. Hmph. poophead.)

Safe!

Two things I encounter every workday:

1) Extremely violent mentally ill and/or intoxicated people, most of them much bigger than me.

2) Signs reading "no weapons allowed on premises." (These signs don't have the force of law in Washington State, but they do have the force of lose-your-job. They have no force whatsoever on said crazies, on whom I've found shivs that could butcher a bison.) Not just guns; knives, pepper spray, and tasers are all forbidden.

I really don't want to hurt or kill someone who isn't in control of their own actions. But I want it more than I want them to hurt or kill me.

What're the odds I'll ever truly need a weapon? Eh, maybe not that high. I can't think of an incident yet in my career where it would've been justified. (Although I know the staff at one psychiatric facility in the area have an average of more than one assault per day. Obviously they aren't all life-threatening as we're counting spitting and arm-grabbing here, but still, Jesus.) I just don't like living with rules that make healthcare workers confront violent possibly-armed people with some nylon straps and a "pretty please."



(Also: I'm sick. I had to go home early today because my tummy was so hurty. Wahhh.)

It's right there!

Add to my list of things I just don't understand: the apparent running cultural joke about "finding the clitoris." Isn't that like "finding the nose"? It's neither hard to see nor unpredictably placed. It's, y'know, at the top, in the middle. What's to find?

Does Twisty Faster Advocate The Violent Overthrow of the United States Government?

Okay, I'm still doing this post, but as promised, I've gotten to the comments. There are 155 of the damn things and most of them are crazy so I'm only scratching the surface here. Bear in mind, Twisty's quite liberal about deleting comments she finds offensive.

Instead of pandering to those who choose ignorance, of listening to how he thinks and feels “as a man,” (as if I haven’t learned how men think and feel my entire life) I now try to remind myself of all of the deliberate, consciously motivated, cruel acts of misogyny that I and the women I know have survived. I think about those who do not survive.
T-shirts kill millions each year. While you were reading these words, three women have died of t-shirt.

We won’t change things concerning the patriarchy when the power and the money is with a VERY small group of male (or male-ish- which is what I call women who wind up in that tiny subset of our wealthiest individuals and make a lot of money from bowing to the patriarchy) group of people in this country.
So when a woman becomes powerful, she's no longer a woman to you? Well, gosh, that's one way to continue whining "women can't be powerful" in the face of reality. No true Scotsman...

Haha, Eurosabra is commenting on this post. Jeepers.

With all the evidence out there to support the conclusion, I am continuously shocked beyond measure that there are both people who cannot see that men hate women, and/or cannot understand why women fear/hate men. Seriously, it’s like a sky-sized industrial halogen lightbulb being shined directly into our forcibly-opened eyes. It’s the view.
Because most men don't say or do anything bad to me! If there's an entire gender out to get me or any women I know, they're being awful damn subtle about it.

I guess a major difference between me and the Twisty bunch is that on the whole, I'm happy. I have no desire to look around for the reason for my misery and blame men, because I'm just not miserable. If there is a vast male-wing conspiracy keeping me down, well, they've done a piss-poor job of it.

I once heard that the thing men fear most about women is that we will laugh at them, while the thing women fear most about men is that they will kill us.
Oh come on. Not on a daily, ordinary basis. Not unless you're in a seriously abusive relationship (in which case you need to know that this is not the normal order of things, not hear someone go "sigh, such is the world"!) Maybe sometimes alone on the street, unfortunately. But at work, at home, with friends, of course I don't fear for my life! That would be insane.

[Twisty herself:]Misogynist behavior is consistent with the global accords governing fair use of women (I’ve been using that phrase a lot lately. Maybe it’s time for a timesaving blogular acronym. GAGFUW!). In other words: men hate you. Patriarchy hates you. The megatheocorporatocracy hates you.
I wish I could ask--do you mean this literally? Do you mean some men actually physically met and discussed or wrote down how they'd treat women and distributed this information to actual corporations and governments? In the real world? Do you believe in an actual conspiracy against women?

I assume the answer is no, and it's all just taking place in a sort of collective unconsciousness, but sometimes the language really makes me curious.

(Ooh, another question I need to ask: are gay men part of this? Since they're oppressed themselves and have no desire to use women for sex or marriage, are they cool by us, or do their Y chromosomes still supersede all that?)

So the next time T-shirt boy wears his T-shirt, make him pay. Seriously. Do what any number of guys would do if they were deeply offended by another man; hit him. But given what I suspect may be a size and weight differential, don’t use your fists. You want to really make sure he feels it.
VIOLENCE AS AN ANSWER TO FREE SPEECH! Gosh, y'know, I happen to disagree with you, ma'am, so you wouldn't mind if I hit you, would ya?

When you are told what a stupid idiot you are, how you have no common sense, how everyone thinks you’re horrible and ugly and worthless, how you can’t navigate life on your own, how your perceptions are wrong, over and over again, you begin to doubt yourself to the extent that you become PARALYZED, not believing that you can do ANYTHING, not even tie your shoes right. And patriarchy does it to us in so many ways every day.
Uh... it does? I must've been missing those broadcasts. I don't have any dental fillings, so my reception is probably worse.

(Then again, I do wear zipper boots. Hm...)

[Twisty herself:]“So the solution is what?”
Women’s revolt. Women’s revolt. The solution is women’s revolt.
My failure to get it across that women’s revolt is the solution plagues me sorely.
I understand your reluctance to grasp that anything short of revolt is merely a bandaid, I really do, but there is no other solution, girls. Seriously. I mean it. I don’t know how to express it any more clearly. Revolt. Revolt. Revolt is how oppressed populations get rid of occupying forces. It’s not my fault; that’s just how things are done.
Again, I'm desperate to ask: literally? In the actual physical world? What, in non-metaphorical non-ironic words directly describing physical reality, would this revolt consist of? Are you talking about real violence? Are you willing to kill people? Are you planning to kill people?

These last questions aren't sarcastic; I'd really like to know.

The most significant stupid goth t-shirt EVER.

I always get the most interesting comments and mail when I'm a snarky bitch to someone else's writing. You guys are such jerks. This is all your fault.

Twisty Faster on why a dumb T-shirt means the entire world is against you!

A reader writes in that she was at a bar and saw a guy wearing a shirt reading "Dead Girls Don't Say No." Retarded "edgy" bullshit? Yeah. A literal murder/rape threat? Um, yeaaaah.

She leapt to inform him that his t-shirt was disgusting, that he ought to be ashamed of himself, and instructed him to either turn it inside out or leave the pub.
Well, that wasn't obnoxious at all, controlling the clothing and actions of other people on a third party's property is like, a human right, man.

Of course, he laughed, play-acted that he was adoring the attention she was pouring on him, then used his advantage of size and privilege to completely dismiss her once he’d had enough.
"Advantage of size"? Does this mean that if he'd been a little guy and she'd been with a bunch of tough girls they would've taken him down? Wow. (I'm sure it doesn't really mean that, but maybe she should consider that since he wasn't going to make it physical either, the "advantage of size" really just means that he disagreed with her while being large.)

Let’s imagine for a moment that you are like most Western women, and have been assured that you are entitled to certain human rights under the law. Let us further imagine that — although, sure, you’re aware that women do more housework than men, and get paid less, and are less likely to hold public office, and stuff like that — you have more or less believed that you’ve got it pretty good compared to women living under other regimes. Let us then imagine your surprise when, one fine day, you discover that it is all a lie.
But, um, it's not. I am entitled to human rights, and a damn t-shirt doesn't change that. I have free speech and freedom of association and a vote and a right to property no matter what t-shirt someone wears or how much of a tool they are about it. Hell, I even have the right to wear my own douchey t-shirts if I so choose. It's pretty awesome really, and I don't think if I lived in 1850 or in Saudi Arabia I'd be taking any of it for granted.

I might go that far on accounta the big problem with patriarchy is that it is already functionally invisible, and it is this invisibility that is women’s worst enemy.
"It's all around you, you just can't see it!" (I can, coz I'm better. Smarter. Listen to me.)

Likewise, you are a human being, and should be able to drink a beer in a room where nobody is sporting the raiment of a death-rape cultist.
Oh, you can! You just have to get your own damn room. Because if female freedom means being the boss of men, well, I see some minor logical and ethical problems with your plans.

In the case of women vs patriarchy, there is no resistance. There are a few professional feminists, a few “Save Roe!” campaigns, a few sexual harrassment suits, a few spinster aunts, but these are a drop in the ocean compared to the overwhelming popularity of the dominant culture.
This is the really weird thing about radical feminism: they're oddly dismissive of ordinary useful feminism. No real progress can be made before La Révolution, so feh to your little sexual harassment suits, they're meaningless Ewok slingshots in the face of the giant Death Star of Patriarchy. Never mind the rather significant number of women who now have safer workplaces in the meantime.

(This is also ridiculously classist; if you were pregnant with a child you couldn't care for or your boss was telling you how the good girls earn their wages, you wouldn't be quite so dismissive of these things. You need to be rather comfy yourself to ignore pragmatic progress that might occur before your ridiculous hero-fantasy "revolution.")

Women who elude capture in that manner are taken into custody by consumer rape culture; the occupying forces keep them at heel by using them as receptacles and rewarding them for internalizing such messages as “I need big boobs to feel good about myself.”
And you're pretty sexist if you think women actually fall for that shit. It's true, a lot of us do want big boobs for very silly reasons. But what you're missing is that we manage to live and work and express ourselves even with boob-insecurity. The fundamental humanity of women is simply not that easily taken down.

The interests of both groups of women are thereby aligned with those of the dominant culture, which contingency not only ensures the patriarchy’s continued self-replication, but discourages women — whom the system pits against each other — from fomenting civil disobedience, let alone riots and insurrections.
A) Saying "women should stick together above all else" is denying women's humanity, because like any group of humans, women are different. I'm not being pitted against Twisty and her pals, I actually disagree with them.

B) "Riots and insurrections?" Literally? Against whom? What are we going to burn? Our own houses? Who are we going to fight? Any man we see, regardless of what he does or thinks? How will we even know if we've won?

If I seriously believed these dainty armchair-general milquetoasts were ever going to step away from their computer screens, I'd actually worry.

The occupying forces have neutralized your personal sovereignty. You have no right to object to behavior that is consistent with the global accords governing fair use of women.
And this is the single weirdest tenet of radical feminism: that men believing women are inferior makes women actually inferior. That a man wearing a douchey t-shirt makes you somehow physically incapable of saying "dude, your shirt's all retarded and shit." It's true you can't make him obey you, but... that's the price you pay for not obeying him.

The truth about patriarchy is this: insurrection will require, as its first step, copping to the one thing that no woman with either a family or a Nigel or a successful career as a hottie or an empowerful-grrl investment in the patriarchal canon can bear to admit: that men hate them.
Gosh, really? Guys?

I've gotten men to admit some awfully personal things to me. I've had a guy tell me about how as a teenager he once fucked a chinchilla. I think that if he hated me and all my kind, that might've slipped out at some point. From someone. You'd think one guy in my life would've gotten drunk enough. I mean, some people just can't keep a secret. But other than a small minority of visible and widely despised exceptions, this one is ironclad.



I want to do a "Twisty Faster's Commenters Are Fucking Insaner," but this post is Tolstoy-long already, so that'll be the next one unless I get distracted by a shiny object or my coworker takes his shirt off.

Full Circle.

I saw Benny today. And somehow, we enacted the exact reverse of how we started out. In the beginning, I was needy and he was rejecting--I was the one who wanted him to be a boyfriend and he kept insisting nothing could mean anything. Now... I was kind of a jerk to him. He kept cuddling up to me and I kept saying "I don't even like you" stuff.

Maybe it's just timing. He was just coming out of a relationship then, and he's been single for years now. I was living with my parents and quite unsure of myself then, and I'm a lot more independent now.

Maybe it's revenge.

We didn't fuck. We haven't fucked, technically, in something like a year. Instead we screwed asynchronously; he did me good with his hands and mouth and a dildo, then I strapped him up and teased him with a vibrator (and clothespins, and a knife, and a dildo in his mouth, good times) until he came all over himself.

It's weird, I don't generally think of myself as a switch, but lately I like topping Benny far more than I want to bottom to him. I think some of it might be carryover energy from my job, where I've been bossing/mommying some male trainees a lot lately. (Perhaps the whole "I bottom because in my real life I'm just too strong" thing is not always true.) Most of it's probably just the chemistry that we have. I also have a good idea how to top now, which I didn't when I was a younger pervert.

It's not like "ooh, I'm Mistress Holly now." I'm still fundamentally a submissive. But I'm a submissive who can--when the mood is right--shove you to your knees, slap your face, make you suck my cock, and tell you to call me Ma'am.

FYI.

I can tie a cherry stem in a knot with my tongue.


...I never actually gathered what that has to do with oral sex, but anyway.

Ooh, I'll play along!

Sometimes I feel so good, it feels strange to be grouchy. Today was so beautiful; the sun was glorious, the earth smelled fresh, the seeds on my windowsill are sprouting, work flew by and I had a song on my lips all day. (Well, a Marylin Manson song. Still counts.)

But grouchiness is its own reward and also one of the major themes of this blog, so I present my answers to Twisty Faster's Snarky Little Survey. (It's long and repetitive so there's some skipping.)

On special occasions, or when he’s seeking your approval, does your boyfriend or husband dance provocatively in lacy satin lingerie and a pair of Christian Louboutin pumps, the price of which would shock you?
No. Then again, neither do I, for chrissakes. But sometimes I dance filthily in sexy clothes just for the fun of it, and so do a lot of guys I like.

In school, were most of the assigned books written by poor women of color?
Most? I spose we should've had more (although frankly some of the high-school writing by disenfranchised authors didn't have much else to recommend it as literature and was clearly thrown in for that reason alone), but most doesn't even make sense.

When you go deer hunting, does your boyfriend or husband visit the spa for an herbal wrap, a facial, and a pedi?
No, but for shit's sake, neither does the reverse happen. I'm not Carrie Fucking Bradshaw, and you know what? Neither are most women. I don't understand why this feminist blog is assuming that most women are shallow enough--or privileged enough--to actually do this stereotypical nonsense.

Is your boyfriend, husband, or father afraid to walk alone at night?
Unarmed? In this neighborhood? Yeah.

Would your boyfriend or husband continue to raise your kids and keep house for you if you stopped putting out?
Yeah, it's called marriage.

[joke removed for being beneath even me, but too funny to actually remove]

After the presidential inauguration, when your boyfriend, husband, or father had a light lunch with the girls, did the subject of Michelle Obama’s outfit come up?
Jesus, Twisty, where did you get your fucking image of women from? The last time I had a light lunch with the girls, we were talking about hiking, guns, Medicaid, and heavy metal. We're people, yanno, Twisty.

Does your boyfriend, husband, or father take steps to eliminate his “feminine odor”?
No, that would be silly. But they do have to take some serious steps about that masculine odor.

Does your boyfriend, husband, or father ever try to appease you by tilting his head and giggling?
Come on, Twist, do you seriously fucking think women do this? Have you ever met a woman?

Is your boyfriend, husband, or father expected to wear makeup and heels to work?
Hangon, lemme unzip my hi-viz bomber jacket and kick off my steel-toes and I'll answer this.

Does your boyfriend, husband, or father carry a can of pepper spray in his purse?
Nah, just a Glock 19.

When your boyfriend or husband buys a cute new bag, is he crestfallen when you fail to notice?
Hmm, maybe she doesn't think we're all Carrie Bradshaw, maybe Twisty just thinks all women except her (and some "short-sighted privileged exceptions assuming the whole world is like them," amiright?) are fourteen fucking years old.

Are you OK with it if your boyfriend or husband gains a little weight, because curvy men turn you on?
Yep. :)

Does your boyfriend, husband, or father clean the toilets with harsh chemicals?
Oh noes, not "harsh chemicals"! After the Femynist Revylution, rose water and happy thoughts will be sufficient to remove caked-on bacteria-covered grime!

Is your boyfriend, husband, or father a primary school teacher, a nanny, a maid, or a stay-at-home mom because he finds it so gratifying to make personal sacrifices for others that he doesn’t mind the low or non-existent pay?
Yeah, fuck teachers and caregivers, freakin' suckers don't know what's good for 'em.

Do you send your boyfriend, husband, or father email forwards describing rape avoidance techniques?
Well, sometimes, if they're funny.

Does lipstick scientifically formulated with ginkgo biloba, licorice, and tea tree oil give your boyfriend’s or husband’s lips a fuller, plumper, more kissable look?
Yes. I have pictures.



The main point of this doofy-ass "survey" seems to be that women (because of the Patriarchy!) are all silly little hens that flutter about preening and clucking. That's very feminist.

"The Paramedics."

Hooray, my gay ambulance porn is here! Y'know, I've never really watched much gay porn before this. There's something sweetly egalitarian about it; the actors, the director, and the presumed audience are all gay men and so there's a sense of "hey, we're all on equal footing here" that you'd be hard-pressed to find in straight or girl-girl porn. You can still have domination and submission in the sex, but it comes off a lot more playful and respectful when top and bottom are both fundamentally coming from the same place.

(In fact, this movie seems to be set in an alternate universe where every man, even if he's not involved in the nudity or sex, is gay. It's almost a utopian fantasy...)

Also, maybe it's just this movie, but the actors seem a lot more genuinely attracted to each other than most straight-porn couples. They're even kissing and cuddling and stuff!

Some of the actors claim to be "straight." They are not convincing. I'm okay with that, though; better than girl-girl porn where the claim to be enjoying themselves is the dubious part.

(Hee, one of the "straight" guy's girlfriends just showed up and she's a drag queen. I appreciate this kind of honesty.)

An ambulance is an awfully uncomfortable place for sex. That might make it sexier though. (It's also not somewhere I'd want to expose my nice clean naked body, but let's not think about that. Nothing kills a buzz like getting MRSA on your ass.)

Some of the non-fucking acting in this movie actually isn't terrible. I'm impressed.

What is terrible: during plot segments, the screen freezes, and titles come up explaining exactly what's going on. Then the movie unfreezes and the actors tell you exactly what's going on. It's like this:

A uniformed MAN walks into frame.
FREEZE
TITLE: This is Kevin, the senior paramedic with the hots for Jason.
UNFREEZE
MAN: Hi, I'm Kevin and I'm the senior paramedic. I'm so horny for Jason!

Since the plot is hardly complex or crucial to begin with, I'm not sure why it needs to be beaten in with a sledgehammer.

The paramedics are horrible at their job. I understand that's not really the point of the movie, but geez, the poor bastards don't even know how to lower the stretcher. (Also, real paramedics generally wear undershirts. :p )

Man, blowjobs are boring. I mean, they're not boring to give, and I understand that time just flies when you're receiving one, but I hate watching them. Up, down, up, down, slobber slobber, I get it. Fast forward. I can empathize enjoyably with the buttsex, but not the blowjobs. Dunno why.

OH JESUS CHRIST THAT MAN JUST STUCK HIS DICK IN HIS OWN BUTT. I... I learned something new today.

He doesn't look very comfy though.

Is it some sort of rule that gay porn actors must have retarded tattoos? I guess porn actors in general have bad tattoos, but this movie is a goddamn cornucopia of scrawly pot leaves and lopsided Celtic knots and incoherent swirly things.

Man, these guys are good-looking. Straight porn actors are never this cute. Even the guy who stuck his dick in his butt was freakin' gorgeous.

Whoa, they just stuck two dicks in one guy's butt! It makes for a very visually confusing picture. All you can see is testicles. It looks kind of difficult, and kind of wrong, but... really really fucking hot.

The ambulance pretty much goes away after the first scene. By halfway through the paramedic theme gets kind of forgotten too. This is disappointing; I was hoping it would be sort of a uniform or medical fetish thing but it's really just generic. Feh.

But damn, those are some sweaty sexy naked men. Damn.

Math.

Yesterday Cute Coworker and I mathematically worked out that in any group with equal numbers of heterosexual men and women, both sexes must have the same average number of sexual partners.

(This may be incredibly obvious to those fancy educated members of the audience who passed math classes. Hush, it took us like two hours and five scribble-covered pages to work this out. Math is hard, guys.)

I realize that the median number can be different, and a handful of super-prolific bedhoppers can give you a skewed image of the group as a whole, but still, this seems like a blow to both the old "men should be studs, but women shouldn't be sluts" double standard, and its whinier more recent cousin "women can get laid and men can't."

Cosmocking: April '09!

Orange cover! Ashley Tisdale! In orange clothing, so she's kind of a floating head!

Okay, I think I finally have conclusive proof that the "embarrassing stories" are fictional. I've always known it, but I consider this story to be absolute proof:
One morning, the wire from my bra was bothering me, so I ripped it out and left it on my desk. When I got back from lunch, my boss was sitting at my desk with the underwire in his mouth, using it as a toothpick. I was too embarrassed to tell him what it actually ways, so I didn't say a word.
No. That did not happen. For once, this isn't just a suspicion; I'm sure.

This one hits a bit close to home:
I came down with a terrible sore throat, and it got so bad that I had to go to the ER. After hours of waiting, I ended up with the hottest young doctor. I was embarrassed enough that I sounded like a man, but then he asked me to pull up my dress so he could feel my spleen. I had on the rattiest pair of full-bottom briefs that came up so high, they covered my belly-button, and they were this beige color that looked like they had been white but yellowed with time. I swear I caught him holding back his laughter at the sight of them.
Okay, so you just got molested, because there is nothing in the exam for a sore throat that involves feeling your freakin' spleen. The spleen's not even palpable in 97% of people.

(Also, considering that the patient before you probably had a potato in her vagina for three weeks, there's no way mere granny panties are going to faze an ER doctor.)

(Oh, and by the way, you waited hours because you went to the ER with a goddamn sore throat.)

[On how to find your G-spot. The article first gives some instructions on how to root around in your vagina for it, then:] If after several minutes you're still coming up empty-handed, think of a sexual fantasy--seriously. When you aroused, the G-spot fills with fluid, making it swell and become larger.
So previous to this I was wrist-deep in my vagina looking for amazing orgasms--and not even aroused? Well, uh... there's yer problem.

Don't let him see you peeing, plucking your eyebrows, or doing an at-home bikini wax. You can be "real" in ways that don't chip away at romance.
Yes, because being "real" is all right, but god forbid you actually be real. Romance requires that you be a bodiless creature of light and air, flitting weightlessly through the mortal world.

(Also, the kind of guys I like tend to want to see me pee...)

Guys have less oxytocin, the brain's bonding chemical, than women do, but it can be boosted with frequent touch.
Just don't overdo it, or he'll start lactating.

Be unpredictable! Guys want variety, but they don't require it from other girls. While reading the paper, say "You know, I've always wanted you to do me on the stairs," then nonchalantly get back to the headlines.
I was kinda with this until the ending, because that's not the time to get back to the headlines, it's time to get back to the staircase. Otherwise it's just your mouth writing checks your body can't cash.

In Tantra, it is believed that gazing left eye to left eye opens up the "feeling" side of your brain and subconsciously makes you more vulnerable with your partner. Try this technique: during sex, angle your head slightly to the right so the left side of your face is aligned with the left side of his, and look him in the eye.
Huh.

"While having dinner at a fast-food place, I was subjected to this couple hard-core making out after eating greasy burgers and fries. Unbelievable!"
Um... what exactly is the problem here? I mean, you were eating there too, honey. I guess burgers are shameful things that must be eaten but only with disgust and in hiding?

[things not to wear on a date] Flats. I get that you wear them because they're comfortable, but so are sweatpants, and you wouldn't wear those on a date, I hope. Put on some heels.
If you saw how I walk in heels, you wouldn't be saying this. (In fact, I knew Alan was a keeper when I showed up for my first date tottering awkwardly in heels, he spotted the sensible shoes on the floor of my car, and told me to change to something I could walk in, for chrissakes.) I know some people have developed a bit more nimbleness than me, but no one can run or hack rough terrain in the damn things. As far as I'm concerned, heels are a form of bondage.

A man, you see, would like to think he wears the pants--whether he really does or not--so help him feel confident. On the first couple of dates, agree to agree. Be available. Be up for going anywhere. His responsibility is to make the date as fun, cool, and entertaining as possible. Your responsibility is to make it easy for him to do that.
The funny part here is the little "whether he really does or not" aside. If I'm agreeing with everything he suggests, he's not feeling like he's in charge; he is.

And hey, that's not always a bad thing. Sometimes the guy is in charge of the date. I don't always want to take the dominant role; I just don't want it to be pre-assigned based on genitals.

Pubic Irony.

It's kinda funny to me when people talk about shaved pubes being suggestive of prepubescence, because I've shaved mine since about age 16. I was hairy when I was innocent and just growing into my womanhood, then as an adult I was bare.

I can't help but associate childhood (well, jailbaithood, at least) with having pubes.

Nothing to hide.

I've finally gotten to the point in my life where it's okay for me to be sexual. My roommate doesn't mind if I have random dudes over; hell, we've gone shopping for porn and sex toys together. My parents have no way of knowing, don't try to find out, and don't really care in any case. And no one else even potentially cares.

Frustrating, isn't it? I'm coming out of a teenagerhood where sex had to be furtively sneaked around like nuclear secrets, into an adulthood where I could be doing donkeys in here and all anyone would say is "hey, make sure his hooves don't wreck the carpet."

I kinda miss sex being wrong. I've tried so hard to at least have wrong kinds of sex, but nobody seems interested in persecuting me for it. Sometimes I seek out people in the media or blogosphere who are against sex just so I can be reassured that someone disapproves of me.

Of course this is all playacting, because I don't want my sex to be so wrong that there'd actually be consequences for it. And it's egotistical as well; imagining oneself as a member of La Résistance always is. As if I were the only person on Earth who realized that orgasms feel kinda nice and I was standing against an army of prudish Miss Wormwoods by valiantly fucking random dudes.

The sad truth is, I'm within one standard deviation of totally ordinary. That's okay though. Forbidden fruit is overrated. The mindful, loving cultivation of perfectly ordinary fruit is vastly underrated.

Obsession.

Being with Cute Coworker is making me insane with stifled lust, but I don't want to ask for a reassignment or even ask him to tone it down because it's also making me love my job. Rrrrrgh.

He likes me back. He's gotta. I think. I'm doing a very high-schoolish covert analysis of behavior patterns here.



-Has outright said that he likes me as a coworker. So that's nice for starters.

-Constantly, constantly talking about sex. Is this "hey, it's more interesting than talking about bacterial cultures" talking about sex, or is it sexy talking about sex? I can't tell. But the boy--and he's not the expansively lecherous type, if anything he's a little shy and it took weeks for him to stop prefixing every dirty joke with with "don't sue me for sexual harassment, ha ha, but..."--just manages to turn every conversation back to penises and vaginas.

-Touches me more than is strictly necessary. Not sexy touches, just hands and wrists, very safe, but still, way more than any other coworkers do.

-Has made it quite clear that he's single, straight, and open to kinky premarital sex. No "with you" appended of course, but I notice that I didn't have to pry to find these things out.

-Has more than once remarked of female celebrities "I don't like her, she's too skinny," which in my experience is sometimes an offhand remark and sometimes a "now you, you've got curves" mating call.

-Wouldn't go around being so goddamn attractive if he didn't mean something by it, by God.



Rrrrgh. I'm so shy with people I actually like. I'll jump on strangers, but when I get all invested and I have something to lose, I freeze like a bunny. And I can't tell if he's also freezing like a bunny (he's definitely the type who would) or if he's actually just uninterested and happens to have a potty mouth.

The problem is that right now I'm 50% happy with the idea that I might get to fuck him. If I made an unambiguous advance, the waveform would collapse and I'd be either 100% or 0% happy. I just can't bring myself to risk that zero.

Mystery porn.

Someone mailed me an enormous catalog of gay porn. Not emailed, physically mailed to my house. I'm really hoping this was unrelated to the blog and is just a mysterious gift from the Porn Fairy. Thank you, Porn Fairy! Unless you're stalking me or something. In which case: this house contains a pitbull and a lot of guns, Porn Fairy!

But it was awesome, because if I didn't have a Porn Fairy I would never have found out that yes, there is paramedic porn.

I'm ordering this.

*the noise the dog makes when you throw a treat on the floor but tell her to stay*

Cute Coworker: "I think everyone's got some kind of secret fetish, right?"
Me: "Well, apparently you do."

So we laughed it off and sort of awkwardly changed subjects, but dammit.

Want.

But timid! Rrrgh. And maybe with good reason since yes or no it would create an awkward situation, but... waaaant. I'm spending eight hours a day in an enclosed space talking about sex with an attractive single man and I can't figure out how to make the move! I'm going to explode.

Maybe I should just, I dunno, fuck someone who looks just like him. Maybe that would help. "SWF seeks 5'10"ish, 220ish blondish male with squarish face, slightly neurotic personality, and self-deprecating sense of humor for projection, displacement, hawt sex. Must be willing to answer to a slightly different name, wear loaned clothes. NSA."



EDIT: Shit... that description fits a couple people. Maybe I have a type.

Articles people sent me.

[previous post deleted because upon further consideration, I was wrong]


George Will: Prudes at Dinner, Gluttons in Bed
The gist of this article is that Americans are getting more uptight about food as we get sluttier. It's not actually true--most people I know (and let's face it, in the absence of an actual study or survey all of these type of articles are really just about people the author knows) eat processed goo and have monogamous relationships--but let's not trouble ourselves too much with that.

I'm more bothered by the implication that this would be a bad thing. Will seems to be writing as if food and sex are equally evil. I'd say that neither is evil at all, but as far as physical harm, well... there's no way to have safe cake.

In 1965, the Moynihan Report sounded an alarm about 23.6 percent of African American children born out of wedlock. Today the figure for the entire American population is 38.5 percent, and 70.7 percent for African Americans.
So? I was born out of wedlock. My parents lived together and raised me jointly for eighteen years, but they weren't married. My roommate was also born out of wedlock, and her dad didn't stick around--her mom did a great job raising her and she's turned out just fine. "Out of wedlock" doesn't always mean unwanted, neglected, or on welfare; and it doesn't ever mean doomed.

(Also, psst, your racism is showing.)

Alas, expiration is written into the leases we have on our bodies, so bon appetit.
Well jeez, if we're playing the "you're gonna die anyway" game, I might as well have some fun on my way to the grave, so bonne baise!



BitchBuzz: Gamestop Thinks Women Know Nothing About Gaming
Honestly, this one would bother me more if Gamestop showed any particular care for their male customers either. But it's just a shitty store that combines horrible selection with gouge prices and obnoxious marketing no matter what gender you are. Thirty bucks for a scratched used disk with no case and then the cashier does three mandatory upsell attempts...

That said, even allowing for some sarcasm, a "safari" theme is perhaps not the wisest way to discuss female customers. I mean, cripes, there've gotta be some female Gamestop employees, and they must've felt awkward as hell watching this.



Brown Sugar: Pussy is Not the Greatest Gift You Can Give a Man
Preach it, sister.

There's only one sentence in the article I'd quibble with:
No one knows what’s best for you and your sex life then you do.
(Hmm, that's not very grammatical. Two quibbles.) I agree that no one else knows better than me, but frankly: I don't know what the hell I'm doing! There's no grand master plan to this shit! I don't know that I'd be happier monogamous or polyamorous or married or 90-day-ruling or virginal! I just... do things. I mean, things that seem okay at the time, but it's really some insane combination of what I want, what various guys want, my mood at the microsecond, whether I had chili for lunch, the confluence of random influences and opportunities, and eeny meeny miney moe.

I'm in charge of my own sex life, no question about that, but just because I can steer this thing doesn't mean I have any damn idea where I'm driving it.