Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Attention old women with rotten vaginas: I'm no longer your gym whipping bitch
Recently there was another incident in the ladies' locker room. About a month or so ago, this 50-something skank (AKA "Treadmill Bitch") whose body was ravaged by the pernicious force of gravity told me that my workout routine was giving me a big "rear" (as planned). I was really angry when this occurred, but she hasn't talked to me since, and with the passage of time, I had almost found peace regarding this incident. "She's just player hating because she's jealous," I thought. I very nearly let the whole thing go.
I should have known that my peace was fleeting and temporal. Last Friday I was getting dressed following my post-medicine ball/compound row/leg press/Gauntlet shower per usual. A different woman, but one of the same demographic and fashion sense as my previous harbinger of insecure, judgmental girl-drama bullshit, was also dressing at the locker next to mine. As with all other female gym patrons I don't personally know, I ignored her, because polite people avert their eyes in the ladies locker room, not watch the other naked strangers dress hoping for an opportunity to drop a little self-important superiority in the form of unsolicited advice. Besides, most women at the gym (myself included) are primarily concerned about how their bodies look as a result of their exercise routine. I am interested in seeing the fruits of MY labors, not somebody else's. So any confident, self-assured woman with a sense of objectivity and realism regarding her goals is not squandering her precious ATP thinking critically about whether or not her neighbor is exercising, eating, dressing, or otherwise existing to her standards.
Unfortunately, I do not deserve the same basic courtesies, as I learned when I went to do the routine task of putting my pants on. Today marks the 16th consecutive day that I've been in lab for at least 8 hours, and pursuant to my workload, I've neglected the housework, including the laundry. That means I've had no clean underwear for the past week. This doesn't bother me, though. I'm like a camel when it comes to washing my clothes: I can still recycle worn-but-not-dirty jeans, break out my collection of skirts and dresses, and otherwise subsist for quite some time without doing laundry with minimal detriment to my cleanliness or appearance. However, while I can go a month or more without doing laundry, I definitely run out of panties by week 2. This is not a problem, because I'm accustomed to going al fresco anyway if I am wearing a thin and/or tight skirt or pair of pants, to avoid an unsightly panty line (necessary because people will undoubtedly be checking out my aforementioned fine ass). So when I run out of clean underwear, rather than violate a cardinal rule of personal hygiene and wear dirty panties, I just omit them altogether. I am not alone in doing this. Many of my friends have admitted to doing it too (this is the kind of shit that girls talk about), and I think that most busy women have to do so, at least once in a while. There sometimes just isn't enough time in the day to do a fucking load of delicates, and sometimes there isn't enough time in a week.
Anyway, this bitch sees me pulling on my pants, and decides to start some shit: "Aren't you going to put on underwear?" she asks me, frowning in a motherly, disapproving sort of way.
After the incident with Treadmill Bitch, I have been on guard about bullshit in the gym, and I wasn't going to sit around stammering in the face of this latest offense. Furthermore, I'm almost thirty fucking years old, so one would think I can independently decide whether I'm going to put a thin layer (and since I usually wear thong underwear, a very thin layer) of cloth between my goodies and my goddamned britches. My own mother doesn't pester me about my underwear-wearing habits, so where does this leathery old crone get off doing so? I assumed a combative stance. I stood up straight (topless, but since my tits were considerably firmer and higher than hers, I figured this was Advantage Razzy), zipped up my pants, placed my hands on my hips, and said in my bitchiest, most unapologetic tone, "No, I am not. I don't even have any. Do you have a problem with that?"
Intimidated by my aggressive posture and response, she backed off (because most women, especially ugly, flabby, insecure ones, flee from confrontation), muttered "no, no", and returned to pulling on her high-waisted, poly-blend slacks over ill-fitting, full-coverage, elastic-waistband-equipped Jockey granny pants. She finished drying her practical-not-stylish pageboy under the hand dryer, donned her hospital ID with an overcompensating flourish, and marched out. I was annoyed, but pleased that I stood my ground without resorting to behavior that would get my gym privileges revoked.
I don't know why these horrid old skanks at the gym are always getting into my business. Despite the fact that I seem like a total asshole on this website, in real life I am actually fairly socially adjusted and generally courteous. If I went around saying "Fuck you, you fucking fuck" every time I wanted to, I probably would be waitressing at a TGIFriday's, stripping at the Parkland, WA Lipstixxx, being some tweeker's baby mama, enlisting in the armed forces (see "tweeker's baby mama"), or otherwise languishing in a state of perpetual underachieving ineptitude somewhere. Believe it or not, I am capable of reining in the Razzy. For example, I don't begin lab meetings with, "Hey, assholes, my bastard mice aren't susceptible to bitch-ass rhinovirus because the little cocksuckers aren't expressing the motherfucking receptor transgene efficiently in their shitty respiratory tracts. I think it's because the dumbass who made the construct cloned it under the wrong fucking promoter." Since many people (like my parents, for example) find such behavior and language offensive, I've realized that I can't express my inner Razzy all the time. In fact, sometimes I have to behave myself, curtail my near-constant litany of profanities, answer to the name Angela, and generally act like a professional. Because I understand this, I am able to function in polite society. When I go to the gym, I'm not trying to do anything except quietly read my book about scientists in the Third Reich or whatever I'm nerding out on this week while enduring the agony of the stairmaster. I do not go to work out thinking that it's time to trade body-image insults with overbearing baby boomers. Yet, these middle-aged cows continue to try my patience on a regular basis. Maybe it's because they see me as young and they think that I will benefit from their sage wisdom. Maybe it's because the collective nakedness in a women's locker room gives them a false sense of intimacy that makes them feel it's okay to overstep normal boundaries. Maybe it's because there's something in the Palmer's Cocoa Butter Formula I always seem to be applying during these incidents that sends saggy-titted hags into a jealous frenzy. Whatever the reason, I seem to be one of the favorite targets for their misguided rage.
I was pissed off enough about what happened Friday, but after today, I became even more infuriated that these cellulite-ridden bitches are regularly in my face about my lifestyle. After today's TOTALLY inexcusable events, I am amazed that any of these baggy women have the audacity to imply that wanting a round ass and/or going commando is something I should be ashamed of. This woman did the most revolting thing I have EVER seen in a public forum. And I've been around a lot of naked chicks doing gross things. In fact, I've been a naked chick doing gross things. However, I have NEVER seen a more blatant violation of good taste or (I'm sure) public health regulations.
As I was finishing dressing, this woman came in who reminded me of Bette Midler. In other words, she's the type who has always annoyed you, but now she's lost most of the elasticity in her midsection and the best thing you can do is pretend she's not there and hope she goes away. She had obviously just finished her workout, because she was very sweaty. She went to her locker, stripped down, grabbed a towel, and headed toward the stairs to the showers. Since I perservere in my attempts to mind my own fucking business, I ignored her. However, she did not go to the showers. She stopped at the sinks by the makeup mirror. Since the scale is right by there, and I usually weigh myself while naked, I figured she was doing the same. I continued ignoring her and went up to the makeup mirror at the other end of the sink bay and commenced eyeliner application. What happened next, however, could not be ignored.
I heard sounds that could only be described as squelching noises. I looked to my left, and saw that this bitch had stuck one foot onto the counter where the sinks were, and was *vigorously* scrubbing her cooch! In the sink! In the public sink! I have seen people brush their teeth in this sink. I was relieved that I have never done so. I vowed to never use those sinks for anything AT ALL. I then noticed that she is doing everything with her gym-issued towel. I silently thanked myself for adhering to a BYO towel policy. Since her fervent ablutions surrounded her with a mist of vaginally contaminated soap bubbles, I was glad that I was at the farthest point down the row of sinks as possible. Puddles of this noxious liquid surrounded her, and I silently thanked myself again for my prudent purchase of locker room flip flops. Given my recent experiences, I'd come to expect a lot of bullshit at the gym, but I certainly never anticipated having to ford rivers of stank pussy graywater.
She literally scoured her nether regions for at least 5 minutes. I cannot possibly imagine how revolting this woman's crotch must have been to warrant a scrubbing of this ardor. From a physiological perspective, the female reproductive tract is like an oven: it's self-cleaning unless you have some heinous infectious disease. Even when a girl is on the rag, that whole area doesn't usually require any more attention with your shower puff than the back of your knee, your armpit, your hair, or any other part of your body. I usually spend more time cleaning my face than my snatch, and of those who have had the opportunity to examine it closely (from my boyfriends to my one-night stands to my GYN), nobody has complained. This bitch clearly needs to see her gynecologist...stat. Once she finally finished lathering up, she started rinsing off the soap by splashing herself with cupped handfuls of water. Biohazardous spatter flew everywhere in a three-foot radius, and I didn't bother finishing my eye makeup, because I wanted to get out of the line of fire. At this point, she was like a Typhoid Dick Cheney: instead of indiscriminately shooting a thirty-ought full of birdshot, she was packing a twat full of potentially infectious aersolized fluid droplets. I wanted to abandon ship before that liquid started to evaporate, hence making whatever pathogen she undoubtedly has airborne.
How did this woman decided that this was an acceptable thing to do? While I can't fathom exactly why this woman abraded her cunt like she was scrubbing baked-on cheese off a lasagna pan, I do know that at the very least she should have done it in private and NOT IN A FUCKING PUBLIC SINK IN FRONT OF EVERYONE! If you get a not-so-fresh feeling, take a shower, for God's sake. At the very least, the showers at the gym are equipped with opaque curtains and nobody else has to witness the nauseating sight of a floppy old broad pressure cleaning her tunnel of love. Nobody wants to see that. There was one other woman in the locker room at the time, and even though I couldn't gauge her immediate reaction as she was obscured from my view by a bank of lockers when I first noticed the revolting events unfold, she eventually busted out like satan himself was on her tail, and gave twat-washer a look that would wither crabgrass in terms of its combined enmity and disgust.
I could have stuck around to harangue this woman regarding her egregious lack of hygiene, decency, and concern for public health. However, I decided that from an epidemiological standpoint, it would be better to go back to my lab full of infectious viruses than to possibly get shot on a mucosal surface with even a microscopic droplet of her stank cooties. I said "fuck it" to finishing my clown face and got the hell out of the Hot Zone as fast my stiletto heels would carry me. As far as I am concerned, if women of this age-group who see fit to lecture me and bombard me with passive-aggressive disapproval want any credibility, they should stop cleaning the schmegma from their cooters while in the company of strangers. Because Brillo padding your rank punani in the makeup mirror sink is absolutely NOT what to do if you want me to respect you and think you're in ANY kind of position of power, authority, or experience.
Next time some nosy old busybody sporting an ass the consistency and texture of a slice of Wonder Bread wants to give me a hard time about my lifestyle, I can forever cite the fact that one of her peers is in the habit of lavaging her clap-ridden vagina in a community space. That's considerably more inappropriate than anything I've ever done in the women's locker room, whether it be having a big ass or forgoing underwear. I cannot comprehend how women like this can step to me without invitation, and tell me what to do. Old bitches at the gym should be advised to stop butting into my shit when one of your ranks is rocking a gangrenous pussy and dares to share it with the rest of us. As a group, their credibility is shot.
I should have known that my peace was fleeting and temporal. Last Friday I was getting dressed following my post-medicine ball/compound row/leg press/Gauntlet shower per usual. A different woman, but one of the same demographic and fashion sense as my previous harbinger of insecure, judgmental girl-drama bullshit, was also dressing at the locker next to mine. As with all other female gym patrons I don't personally know, I ignored her, because polite people avert their eyes in the ladies locker room, not watch the other naked strangers dress hoping for an opportunity to drop a little self-important superiority in the form of unsolicited advice. Besides, most women at the gym (myself included) are primarily concerned about how their bodies look as a result of their exercise routine. I am interested in seeing the fruits of MY labors, not somebody else's. So any confident, self-assured woman with a sense of objectivity and realism regarding her goals is not squandering her precious ATP thinking critically about whether or not her neighbor is exercising, eating, dressing, or otherwise existing to her standards.
Unfortunately, I do not deserve the same basic courtesies, as I learned when I went to do the routine task of putting my pants on. Today marks the 16th consecutive day that I've been in lab for at least 8 hours, and pursuant to my workload, I've neglected the housework, including the laundry. That means I've had no clean underwear for the past week. This doesn't bother me, though. I'm like a camel when it comes to washing my clothes: I can still recycle worn-but-not-dirty jeans, break out my collection of skirts and dresses, and otherwise subsist for quite some time without doing laundry with minimal detriment to my cleanliness or appearance. However, while I can go a month or more without doing laundry, I definitely run out of panties by week 2. This is not a problem, because I'm accustomed to going al fresco anyway if I am wearing a thin and/or tight skirt or pair of pants, to avoid an unsightly panty line (necessary because people will undoubtedly be checking out my aforementioned fine ass). So when I run out of clean underwear, rather than violate a cardinal rule of personal hygiene and wear dirty panties, I just omit them altogether. I am not alone in doing this. Many of my friends have admitted to doing it too (this is the kind of shit that girls talk about), and I think that most busy women have to do so, at least once in a while. There sometimes just isn't enough time in the day to do a fucking load of delicates, and sometimes there isn't enough time in a week.
Anyway, this bitch sees me pulling on my pants, and decides to start some shit: "Aren't you going to put on underwear?" she asks me, frowning in a motherly, disapproving sort of way.
After the incident with Treadmill Bitch, I have been on guard about bullshit in the gym, and I wasn't going to sit around stammering in the face of this latest offense. Furthermore, I'm almost thirty fucking years old, so one would think I can independently decide whether I'm going to put a thin layer (and since I usually wear thong underwear, a very thin layer) of cloth between my goodies and my goddamned britches. My own mother doesn't pester me about my underwear-wearing habits, so where does this leathery old crone get off doing so? I assumed a combative stance. I stood up straight (topless, but since my tits were considerably firmer and higher than hers, I figured this was Advantage Razzy), zipped up my pants, placed my hands on my hips, and said in my bitchiest, most unapologetic tone, "No, I am not. I don't even have any. Do you have a problem with that?"
Intimidated by my aggressive posture and response, she backed off (because most women, especially ugly, flabby, insecure ones, flee from confrontation), muttered "no, no", and returned to pulling on her high-waisted, poly-blend slacks over ill-fitting, full-coverage, elastic-waistband-equipped Jockey granny pants. She finished drying her practical-not-stylish pageboy under the hand dryer, donned her hospital ID with an overcompensating flourish, and marched out. I was annoyed, but pleased that I stood my ground without resorting to behavior that would get my gym privileges revoked.
I don't know why these horrid old skanks at the gym are always getting into my business. Despite the fact that I seem like a total asshole on this website, in real life I am actually fairly socially adjusted and generally courteous. If I went around saying "Fuck you, you fucking fuck" every time I wanted to, I probably would be waitressing at a TGIFriday's, stripping at the Parkland, WA Lipstixxx, being some tweeker's baby mama, enlisting in the armed forces (see "tweeker's baby mama"), or otherwise languishing in a state of perpetual underachieving ineptitude somewhere. Believe it or not, I am capable of reining in the Razzy. For example, I don't begin lab meetings with, "Hey, assholes, my bastard mice aren't susceptible to bitch-ass rhinovirus because the little cocksuckers aren't expressing the motherfucking receptor transgene efficiently in their shitty respiratory tracts. I think it's because the dumbass who made the construct cloned it under the wrong fucking promoter." Since many people (like my parents, for example) find such behavior and language offensive, I've realized that I can't express my inner Razzy all the time. In fact, sometimes I have to behave myself, curtail my near-constant litany of profanities, answer to the name Angela, and generally act like a professional. Because I understand this, I am able to function in polite society. When I go to the gym, I'm not trying to do anything except quietly read my book about scientists in the Third Reich or whatever I'm nerding out on this week while enduring the agony of the stairmaster. I do not go to work out thinking that it's time to trade body-image insults with overbearing baby boomers. Yet, these middle-aged cows continue to try my patience on a regular basis. Maybe it's because they see me as young and they think that I will benefit from their sage wisdom. Maybe it's because the collective nakedness in a women's locker room gives them a false sense of intimacy that makes them feel it's okay to overstep normal boundaries. Maybe it's because there's something in the Palmer's Cocoa Butter Formula I always seem to be applying during these incidents that sends saggy-titted hags into a jealous frenzy. Whatever the reason, I seem to be one of the favorite targets for their misguided rage.
I was pissed off enough about what happened Friday, but after today, I became even more infuriated that these cellulite-ridden bitches are regularly in my face about my lifestyle. After today's TOTALLY inexcusable events, I am amazed that any of these baggy women have the audacity to imply that wanting a round ass and/or going commando is something I should be ashamed of. This woman did the most revolting thing I have EVER seen in a public forum. And I've been around a lot of naked chicks doing gross things. In fact, I've been a naked chick doing gross things. However, I have NEVER seen a more blatant violation of good taste or (I'm sure) public health regulations.
As I was finishing dressing, this woman came in who reminded me of Bette Midler. In other words, she's the type who has always annoyed you, but now she's lost most of the elasticity in her midsection and the best thing you can do is pretend she's not there and hope she goes away. She had obviously just finished her workout, because she was very sweaty. She went to her locker, stripped down, grabbed a towel, and headed toward the stairs to the showers. Since I perservere in my attempts to mind my own fucking business, I ignored her. However, she did not go to the showers. She stopped at the sinks by the makeup mirror. Since the scale is right by there, and I usually weigh myself while naked, I figured she was doing the same. I continued ignoring her and went up to the makeup mirror at the other end of the sink bay and commenced eyeliner application. What happened next, however, could not be ignored.
I heard sounds that could only be described as squelching noises. I looked to my left, and saw that this bitch had stuck one foot onto the counter where the sinks were, and was *vigorously* scrubbing her cooch! In the sink! In the public sink! I have seen people brush their teeth in this sink. I was relieved that I have never done so. I vowed to never use those sinks for anything AT ALL. I then noticed that she is doing everything with her gym-issued towel. I silently thanked myself for adhering to a BYO towel policy. Since her fervent ablutions surrounded her with a mist of vaginally contaminated soap bubbles, I was glad that I was at the farthest point down the row of sinks as possible. Puddles of this noxious liquid surrounded her, and I silently thanked myself again for my prudent purchase of locker room flip flops. Given my recent experiences, I'd come to expect a lot of bullshit at the gym, but I certainly never anticipated having to ford rivers of stank pussy graywater.
She literally scoured her nether regions for at least 5 minutes. I cannot possibly imagine how revolting this woman's crotch must have been to warrant a scrubbing of this ardor. From a physiological perspective, the female reproductive tract is like an oven: it's self-cleaning unless you have some heinous infectious disease. Even when a girl is on the rag, that whole area doesn't usually require any more attention with your shower puff than the back of your knee, your armpit, your hair, or any other part of your body. I usually spend more time cleaning my face than my snatch, and of those who have had the opportunity to examine it closely (from my boyfriends to my one-night stands to my GYN), nobody has complained. This bitch clearly needs to see her gynecologist...stat. Once she finally finished lathering up, she started rinsing off the soap by splashing herself with cupped handfuls of water. Biohazardous spatter flew everywhere in a three-foot radius, and I didn't bother finishing my eye makeup, because I wanted to get out of the line of fire. At this point, she was like a Typhoid Dick Cheney: instead of indiscriminately shooting a thirty-ought full of birdshot, she was packing a twat full of potentially infectious aersolized fluid droplets. I wanted to abandon ship before that liquid started to evaporate, hence making whatever pathogen she undoubtedly has airborne.
How did this woman decided that this was an acceptable thing to do? While I can't fathom exactly why this woman abraded her cunt like she was scrubbing baked-on cheese off a lasagna pan, I do know that at the very least she should have done it in private and NOT IN A FUCKING PUBLIC SINK IN FRONT OF EVERYONE! If you get a not-so-fresh feeling, take a shower, for God's sake. At the very least, the showers at the gym are equipped with opaque curtains and nobody else has to witness the nauseating sight of a floppy old broad pressure cleaning her tunnel of love. Nobody wants to see that. There was one other woman in the locker room at the time, and even though I couldn't gauge her immediate reaction as she was obscured from my view by a bank of lockers when I first noticed the revolting events unfold, she eventually busted out like satan himself was on her tail, and gave twat-washer a look that would wither crabgrass in terms of its combined enmity and disgust.
I could have stuck around to harangue this woman regarding her egregious lack of hygiene, decency, and concern for public health. However, I decided that from an epidemiological standpoint, it would be better to go back to my lab full of infectious viruses than to possibly get shot on a mucosal surface with even a microscopic droplet of her stank cooties. I said "fuck it" to finishing my clown face and got the hell out of the Hot Zone as fast my stiletto heels would carry me. As far as I am concerned, if women of this age-group who see fit to lecture me and bombard me with passive-aggressive disapproval want any credibility, they should stop cleaning the schmegma from their cooters while in the company of strangers. Because Brillo padding your rank punani in the makeup mirror sink is absolutely NOT what to do if you want me to respect you and think you're in ANY kind of position of power, authority, or experience.
Next time some nosy old busybody sporting an ass the consistency and texture of a slice of Wonder Bread wants to give me a hard time about my lifestyle, I can forever cite the fact that one of her peers is in the habit of lavaging her clap-ridden vagina in a community space. That's considerably more inappropriate than anything I've ever done in the women's locker room, whether it be having a big ass or forgoing underwear. I cannot comprehend how women like this can step to me without invitation, and tell me what to do. Old bitches at the gym should be advised to stop butting into my shit when one of your ranks is rocking a gangrenous pussy and dares to share it with the rest of us. As a group, their credibility is shot.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Tugirlz Hugging: A Social Experiment
Tonight KatieScarlett, Bienvenido-a-Miami, and I were throwing back a few Presidentes and discussing this week's flurry of Razzy Friendster popularity. For some reason, the freaks really came out of the e-woodwork and decided to assault me with poorly conceived attempts at wooing this past week or so. While my profile is a little on the suggestive side, I am continually surprised at the boldness of the lower species of hominid that Friendster messages/courts sexual favors from me in droves. This surge in losers attempting to score some USDA choice Razzy ass made us wonder: if a person like myself is such a Reject magnet, what would happen if these clowns got to scoping obviously overdone Friendsters with one agenda--getting as much ass licking and hugging as possible?
Thus, we decided to invent Friendster personas named "Tugirlz Hugging." They are probably the most mentally deficient Mount Holyoke sophomores ever. They love animals, butts, and Hoobastank, and they are open for Friendster business. In fact, Tugirlz Hugging already e-mailed many of KatieScarlett and my existing Friendsters an update or request for Friendstership or something, so Tugirlz are out there for the "extended network" to harass. I am so excited to see who emails Tugirlz Hugging looking to have their salad tossed, to laugh out loud, and talk unikorns. I know that if idiot motherfuckers think they can reel in a prize marlin like myself, the people trying to nail disturbed and debatably retarded characters like Tugirlz Hugging will be one short evolutionary step away from being primordial ooze. Obviously, updates about this will be posted as they unfold.
Seriously, check out their profile. Tugirlz Hugging are pioneers in the social sciences, and they don't even know it yet because they're too busy inventing new punctuation-based emoticons:
http://www.friendster.com/profiles/tugirlzhuggy
Thus, we decided to invent Friendster personas named "Tugirlz Hugging." They are probably the most mentally deficient Mount Holyoke sophomores ever. They love animals, butts, and Hoobastank, and they are open for Friendster business. In fact, Tugirlz Hugging already e-mailed many of KatieScarlett and my existing Friendsters an update or request for Friendstership or something, so Tugirlz are out there for the "extended network" to harass. I am so excited to see who emails Tugirlz Hugging looking to have their salad tossed, to laugh out loud, and talk unikorns. I know that if idiot motherfuckers think they can reel in a prize marlin like myself, the people trying to nail disturbed and debatably retarded characters like Tugirlz Hugging will be one short evolutionary step away from being primordial ooze. Obviously, updates about this will be posted as they unfold.
Seriously, check out their profile. Tugirlz Hugging are pioneers in the social sciences, and they don't even know it yet because they're too busy inventing new punctuation-based emoticons:
http://www.friendster.com/profiles/tugirlzhuggy
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Smith College hearkens back to its homo witch hunts of yesteryear
JerseyGirl sent me this obituary from the NY Times today. It's almost as awesome as when I found out that Amherst College down the road from Smith was named after the infamous British lord who said, "Hey, I have an idea as to how to deal with those pesky Indians who won't get out of our new territory! Let's give them all our used smallpox blankets." It appears that Smith's illustrious history of discriminating against gays by practicing so-called "sexual McCarthyism" is something the college conveniently omits from their "This Day in Smith History" column in the Smith Alumnae Quarterly:
Joel Dorius, 87, Victim in Celebrated Anti-Gay Case, Dies
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
Published: February 20, 2006
Joel Dorius, one of three gay professors of literature caught in a pornography scandal and forced out by Smith College in 1960 only to be exonerated in a celebrated case of sexual McCarthyism, died on Tuesday at his home in San Francisco. He was 87.
The cause was bone marrow cancer, said a friend, the Rev. Paul G. Crowley. In an academic career that spanned five decades, Mr. Dorius taught Shakespeare, Elizabethan drama and the classics of English literature at Harvard, Yale, Smith and other colleges; he retired in 1984 after 20 years on the faculty of San Francisco State University.
But his life at Smith, in Northampton, Mass., crashed on Sept. 2, 1960, when three state troopers, a local police officer and a United States postal inspector raided the home of a colleague, Newton Arvin, 60, and found boxes of "beefcake" magazines and pictures of men — illegal pornography then, but much of it like today's Calvin Klein underwear ads — and diaries detailing 20 years of his closeted gay life.
Under interrogation, Mr. Arvin — a professor of American literature at Smith, winner of the 1951 National Book Award for his biography of Herman Melville, a friend of the critics Edmund Wilson and Malcolm Crowley and a former lover of Truman Capote — named names, including those of Mr. Dorius and Edward Spofford, both untenured Smith professors. Their homes were raided, too — Mr. Dorius was away at the time — and more materials deemed pornographic were found.
The raids were part of a crackdown on obscenity in the mails by President Eisenhower's postmaster general, Arthur E. Summerfield, whose ban on "Lady Chatterley's Lover" was overturned by the courts. The authorities raided warehouses, seized publications and then went after people on the mailing lists.
In an era when homosexuality was widely viewed as an abomination — criminal, sinful and a mental disease — but accepted on many college campuses as long as it did not surface publicly, the arrests crossed the line, and Smith suspended the three professors. Mr. Arvin was later allowed to retire at half-pay, but, despite faculty protests, the contracts of Mr. Dorius and Mr. Spofford were not renewed.
All three, and four other men named by Mr. Arvin, were charged with possessing pornography, and Mr. Arvin was charged with being lewd and lascivious. Under pressure by the prosecution, Mr. Arvin testified against the others and received a one-year suspended sentence. He suffered a breakdown, committed himself to a mental hospital and died in 1963.
Mr. Dorius and Mr. Spofford, under a quirk of Massachusetts law, accepted the court's guilty verdict, without presentation of evidence, to preserve their right to appeal. In 1963, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court overturned the convictions of all three professors, ruling that search warrants for the raids were unconstitutional because they had failed to define obscene materials.
In 1964, Mr. Dorius, who had worked in New York as an editor and taught at Hamburg University in West Germany while his appeal was pending, joined the faculty of San Francisco State. After his retirement, he wrote a memoir, "My Four Lives," which appeared in 2004. Mr. Spofford, who taught for many years at Stanford University and retired in 1988, lives in Palo Alto.
Raymond Joel Dorius, who never used his first name, was born in Salt Lake City on Jan. 4, 1919, and graduated from the University of Utah. He taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during World War II and later earned a doctorate and taught at Harvard. He taught at Yale from 1949 to 1958, when he joined the Smith faculty.
He is survived by a sister-in-law, two nieces and a nephew.
While the scandal was all but forgotten for decades, interest was revived in recent years by a book, "The Scarlet Professor — Newton Arvin: A Literary Life Shattered by Scandal" (Doubleday, 2001), by Barry Werth; by a television documentary, "The Great Pink Scare," by Tug Yourgrau, a Boston writer, director and producer; and by articles in The New Yorker, Out and other publications.
In 2002, Smith, the nation's largest liberal arts college for women, acknowledged a wrong from four decades earlier by creating a lecture series and a small scholarship — the $100,000 Dorius/Spofford Fund for the Study of Civil Liberties and Freedom of Expression, and the Newton Arvin Prize in American Studies, a $500 annual stipend. But despite faculty appeals, there was no apology.
Mr. Dorius and Mr. Spofford did not return to Smith for the occasion. But Father Crowley, a Jesuit priest who is chairman of the religious studies department at Santa Clara University in California, said that both felt relieved and vindicated by the gesture. "Joel was deeply touched," he said. "It really did bring this whole ordeal to a close, and freed him to enter his final years."
The case also spoke much about a changing America, Father Crowley said, recalling an era when civil liberties were trampled and careers ruined by hard laws and public attitudes toward gay people. "Younger folks can't imagine how different the world was not so long ago, and the price people paid," he said. "Joel and his generation suffered ignominies, but have made life easier for those who follow after them."
Joel Dorius, 87, Victim in Celebrated Anti-Gay Case, Dies
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
Published: February 20, 2006
Joel Dorius, one of three gay professors of literature caught in a pornography scandal and forced out by Smith College in 1960 only to be exonerated in a celebrated case of sexual McCarthyism, died on Tuesday at his home in San Francisco. He was 87.
The cause was bone marrow cancer, said a friend, the Rev. Paul G. Crowley. In an academic career that spanned five decades, Mr. Dorius taught Shakespeare, Elizabethan drama and the classics of English literature at Harvard, Yale, Smith and other colleges; he retired in 1984 after 20 years on the faculty of San Francisco State University.
But his life at Smith, in Northampton, Mass., crashed on Sept. 2, 1960, when three state troopers, a local police officer and a United States postal inspector raided the home of a colleague, Newton Arvin, 60, and found boxes of "beefcake" magazines and pictures of men — illegal pornography then, but much of it like today's Calvin Klein underwear ads — and diaries detailing 20 years of his closeted gay life.
Under interrogation, Mr. Arvin — a professor of American literature at Smith, winner of the 1951 National Book Award for his biography of Herman Melville, a friend of the critics Edmund Wilson and Malcolm Crowley and a former lover of Truman Capote — named names, including those of Mr. Dorius and Edward Spofford, both untenured Smith professors. Their homes were raided, too — Mr. Dorius was away at the time — and more materials deemed pornographic were found.
The raids were part of a crackdown on obscenity in the mails by President Eisenhower's postmaster general, Arthur E. Summerfield, whose ban on "Lady Chatterley's Lover" was overturned by the courts. The authorities raided warehouses, seized publications and then went after people on the mailing lists.
In an era when homosexuality was widely viewed as an abomination — criminal, sinful and a mental disease — but accepted on many college campuses as long as it did not surface publicly, the arrests crossed the line, and Smith suspended the three professors. Mr. Arvin was later allowed to retire at half-pay, but, despite faculty protests, the contracts of Mr. Dorius and Mr. Spofford were not renewed.
All three, and four other men named by Mr. Arvin, were charged with possessing pornography, and Mr. Arvin was charged with being lewd and lascivious. Under pressure by the prosecution, Mr. Arvin testified against the others and received a one-year suspended sentence. He suffered a breakdown, committed himself to a mental hospital and died in 1963.
Mr. Dorius and Mr. Spofford, under a quirk of Massachusetts law, accepted the court's guilty verdict, without presentation of evidence, to preserve their right to appeal. In 1963, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court overturned the convictions of all three professors, ruling that search warrants for the raids were unconstitutional because they had failed to define obscene materials.
In 1964, Mr. Dorius, who had worked in New York as an editor and taught at Hamburg University in West Germany while his appeal was pending, joined the faculty of San Francisco State. After his retirement, he wrote a memoir, "My Four Lives," which appeared in 2004. Mr. Spofford, who taught for many years at Stanford University and retired in 1988, lives in Palo Alto.
Raymond Joel Dorius, who never used his first name, was born in Salt Lake City on Jan. 4, 1919, and graduated from the University of Utah. He taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during World War II and later earned a doctorate and taught at Harvard. He taught at Yale from 1949 to 1958, when he joined the Smith faculty.
He is survived by a sister-in-law, two nieces and a nephew.
While the scandal was all but forgotten for decades, interest was revived in recent years by a book, "The Scarlet Professor — Newton Arvin: A Literary Life Shattered by Scandal" (Doubleday, 2001), by Barry Werth; by a television documentary, "The Great Pink Scare," by Tug Yourgrau, a Boston writer, director and producer; and by articles in The New Yorker, Out and other publications.
In 2002, Smith, the nation's largest liberal arts college for women, acknowledged a wrong from four decades earlier by creating a lecture series and a small scholarship — the $100,000 Dorius/Spofford Fund for the Study of Civil Liberties and Freedom of Expression, and the Newton Arvin Prize in American Studies, a $500 annual stipend. But despite faculty appeals, there was no apology.
Mr. Dorius and Mr. Spofford did not return to Smith for the occasion. But Father Crowley, a Jesuit priest who is chairman of the religious studies department at Santa Clara University in California, said that both felt relieved and vindicated by the gesture. "Joel was deeply touched," he said. "It really did bring this whole ordeal to a close, and freed him to enter his final years."
The case also spoke much about a changing America, Father Crowley said, recalling an era when civil liberties were trampled and careers ruined by hard laws and public attitudes toward gay people. "Younger folks can't imagine how different the world was not so long ago, and the price people paid," he said. "Joel and his generation suffered ignominies, but have made life easier for those who follow after them."
Monday, February 20, 2006
The War of the Rodents
I am a graduate student, but my job is essentially doing experiments on mice. Well, it's not really a job since I'm technically a student, but it is a de facto job. I don't go to class. I just work my tits off trying to give mice the cold, and those little fucks still aren't sneezing. Not that it's the fault of the mice, or the fault of the scientist (me); this is the nature of graduate school. I work twelve-hour days, weekends, late nights, and some early-ass mornings, the pay blows, and free pizza on Fridays is the chief perk. Some people work with mice, some people with cell lines, some people with yeast, flies, frogs, or worms, but regardless of the model system, it goes the same way for almost everyone in grad school (at least in the biomedical sciences): nothing works for 5 years, then all of a sudden you cook up some bullshit plan that amazingly works and you graduate after another year of paper and thesis-writing. So I figure I have another 2.5-3 years before my soon-to-develop insights about immunity and pathogenesis and subsequent well-conceived, perfectly executed experiments rock the picornavirologist community to its core. I don't mean to sound like I'm whining about it. Obviously I could be in a worse place than getting a doctorate from an Ivy League school, studying under someone who is such a renowned virus expert that he wrote a fucking textbook. When I finally graduate, I will be highly employable, thoroughly trained, and have a sexy academic pedigree to boot, and I do appreciate that. It's just that the work itself gets extraordinarily frustrating and seemingly interminable, and even the most ambitious, perservering, goal-oriented, eyes-on-the-prize-type person can get worn down.
My last few days are a great example of exhausting typical grad school tedium: I spent both Saturday and Sunday in the lab from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m., with nothing to show for it but some new cancer-causing mutations in my breasts or lymph nodes from the extensive exposure to radioactive P-32 I received. Using dangerous 1970s era molecular biology methods is a small price to pay to prove that my transgenic mouse model is irreparably fucked. When I wasn't busy irradiating myself with beta emitters and performing unsuccessful Northern blots, I spent the majority of my time looking at mouse genitals to determine their gender, chopping their tails off, killing them, and harvesting their organs. If I had some super seductive data to show for it, I would be one step closer to getting my six-cornered Ph-Dizzle cap and getting the fuck out of grad school, and thus I wouldn't mind. However, that is not the current situation, and this is getting old. Even though I do gross things to mice that most people get squeamish thinking about, for me it's just another goddamned mouse I have to "humanely sacrifice" by carbon dioxide asphyxiation, cut up, and make trachea smoothies out of. In other words, just another day at the office. And even though my cleavage looks hot in this picture, if my face were in it I'm sure it would have a really bitchy expression, because I'm sick of killing legions of mice and not getting any closer to the brilliant scientific discoveries I plan to make:
My last few days are a great example of exhausting typical grad school tedium: I spent both Saturday and Sunday in the lab from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m., with nothing to show for it but some new cancer-causing mutations in my breasts or lymph nodes from the extensive exposure to radioactive P-32 I received. Using dangerous 1970s era molecular biology methods is a small price to pay to prove that my transgenic mouse model is irreparably fucked. When I wasn't busy irradiating myself with beta emitters and performing unsuccessful Northern blots, I spent the majority of my time looking at mouse genitals to determine their gender, chopping their tails off, killing them, and harvesting their organs. If I had some super seductive data to show for it, I would be one step closer to getting my six-cornered Ph-Dizzle cap and getting the fuck out of grad school, and thus I wouldn't mind. However, that is not the current situation, and this is getting old. Even though I do gross things to mice that most people get squeamish thinking about, for me it's just another goddamned mouse I have to "humanely sacrifice" by carbon dioxide asphyxiation, cut up, and make trachea smoothies out of. In other words, just another day at the office. And even though my cleavage looks hot in this picture, if my face were in it I'm sure it would have a really bitchy expression, because I'm sick of killing legions of mice and not getting any closer to the brilliant scientific discoveries I plan to make:
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After working my ass off on a "holiday" (wait, President's Day is a holiday?!) like today doing the above, the only thing I want to do when I get home is crack a beer, watch some bullshit Olympic event or reruns of "America's Next Top Model," and hang out with my dogs.
Unfortunately, I can't do that, because my work lives at home with me. I opened up the door tonight to find a fucking mouse, sitting dead center in Caesar's bowl, happily eating his "Healthy Radiance"-flavored Beneful. This is the latest offensive in an ongoing battle between myself and the colony of rodents residing in my apartment. The audacious little bastard didn't even run away when I unlocked my front door and spotted it, chewing brazenly on a piece of orange kibble and looking at me like, "Thanks for lunch, bitch. Now I'll have the energy to go father 8 more litters of mice with the females that nest behind your refrigerator."
I have attempted every form of rodent control I know. I approached this like one of my hero epidemiologist "virus cowboys" getting rid of the Lassa fever mice that are ubiquitous in undeveloped areas of rural Africa. Clearly, these cagey New York mice are more savvy than their developing nation counterparts, because for all my efforts, there seem to be more and more mice every day. I've even attempted to remedy my woeful housekeeping skills: I take out the garbage daily, keep up on my dishwashing, and strictly keep the dog food in a closed plastic container. Any former roommate of mine can confirm that this is a marked improvement in my level of tidiness. I have also put out old-school traps, fancy complicated traps (which lasted 5 minutes, until Chingy! orally disassembled them to get at the peanut butter bait inside), pet-safe mouse poison, and glue traps in strategic locations, and they still manage to elude me. I've had the most success with the glue traps, but the only mice I ever catch in there are, based on their size, 3-5 week old adolescent mice. I rarely catch sexually mature adults 6 weeks or older, who circumvent all my attempts at extermination, and then go reproduce with each other, thus ensuring that the epic struggle between rodent and Razzy sapien will continue indefinitely.
Even though at work I can catch and hold live mice easily, these ballsy city mice are VERY different from my inbred strains of genetically-tampered-with lab mice. My lab mice will try to bite me when I grab them, but they are slow, well-fed, and generally docile. They are easy to pick up, and even when one gets away, you can always catch it. I've only been bitten 2 or 3 times in that many years. These city mice in my apartment cut their oversized incisors fighting with New York City rats, scrounging up garbage, and surviving numerous attempts by the human population at rodenticide. They are scrappy, mangy, mean sons-a-bitches that aren't going to go quietly. In fact, they are kicking my ass in the Razzy v. Vermin battle. It's unbelievably galling to come home from dealing with uncooperative mice, and find a swarm of even more uncooperative, seemingly immortal mice. I spend all day in lab getting negative data from them, and I come home to mice mocking me, eating my dogs' food, and shitting under my sink.
Speaking of the dogs, they are useless allies in the mouse war. If Caesar sees a mouse, he growls, wags his tail, and maybe barks at it. If he does decide to get up and chase it around, the mouse is long gone before Caese manages to haul himself off the couch, or the bed, or wherever he is sleeping/shedding. If my house were infested with sticks, tennis balls, or Kongs, then I have no doubt that Caesar would take care of the problem in no time. However, he just can't be bothered with the mice unless he's feeling frisky, and then he's no match for their speed. I don't think Chingy! has ever noticed a mouse except the time he found a dead mouse in a trap and decided to drag it into the middle of my living room and chew on it, before discarding it on an antique rag rug that my great grandmother made.
I am at my wit's end with this mouse situation. Granted, I suppose that I should consider myself lucky that I wound up with mice in the NYC vermin lottery. Everyone here has some sort of pest living in their apartment, and I could have rats, bedbugs, or cockroaches. My friend J-Sexy had rats in her old place and she would wake up in the night to the sounds of vicious rat fights in her walls. However, this is little consolation. As a student of virology, I know all about the mouse-borne diseases that are floating around out there. At the least, I could get fleas. Or, those fleas could give me the bubonic plague. However, that would be okay, because you can treat Yersinia pestis with antibiotics. At the worst, I could end up with hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, also called the Four Corners virus, Sin Nombre virus, and Hantaan virus, after the area where it emerged during the Korean War. Hantavirus is classified by the CDC as a BL4 pathogen (same category as Ebola and smallpox...you have to wear a spacesuit to work with it in the lab), and typically presents as a hemorrhagic pneumonia that is 60% fatal and transmitted by inhaling aerosolized mouse shit. It's endemic in mouse populations nationwide, and the predominant risk factor for infection is excessive exposure to murine pests. So if I drop dead from unexplained respiratory failure, you all know who to blame: the fucking mice.
Friday, February 17, 2006
I heart NY
One of the things I love most about living in New York City is the veritable casserole of cultures this place is. The tiny island of Manhattan has over a million people from all over the world crammed on it, and that's not even counting the other boroughs. Because of this, you can't go anywhere without running into something interesting and different. Sometimes, the blend of people is a good thing: lots of amazing restaurants, all types of intriguing characters, languages you've never heard before, crazy outfits, new perspectives, wide, global selection of hot guys, etc. Just tonight I had to not call a random hot Kenyan back on the basis of the fact that his voicemail message pissed me off because it was lengthy, overcompensating, and full of pseudo-charming shit talk. However, I don't want to go off on a tangent about my fickle ways in terms of phone call returning. I'll get right to the point: I know that I'd never be rejecting would-be players spitting their Nairobian game anywhere but NYC. I don't like using cliches, but it is accurate to call this city a "melting pot." If Noah were to include two of every nationality, race, creed, religion, sexual orientation, or any other categorization of humanity in his fabled Ark, he would fare well recruiting sailors in New York. New York is like the Amazon delta of cities: ultimately, it's the point where all the different streams converge, and exposure to unprecedented experiences and interactions is a daily fact of life. Because everyone is so accustomed to the diversity here, people generally coexist pretty peacefully. On other occasions, however, cultures inevitably clash. Case in point: my stop at the Grapevine Deli on the corner of 145th and St. Nick on my way home from work.
As I brought my purchases up to pay for them, the guy in front of me was purchasing several "looseys" (for those of you who haven't seen the "I Know Black People" sketch on Chappelle's Show, that refers to cigarettes sold individually instead of by the pack). I don't exactly know what transpired between him and Ali, the tireless owner of the deli who I am convinced works there 24-7, but he called Ali a "chump." Ali asks another guy waiting for a sandwich, who is clearly a regular at the Grapevine, what this means (and how Ali knows what a "loosey" is but hasn't yet included "chump" in his vocabulary, I'll never know). Ali is Egyptian, and his accent is pretty thick, so at first the sandwich guy doesn't understand.
Sandwich guy: Chambers St? That's all the way downtown, man.
Ali: No, no. What is "chump"? What does it mean?
Sandwich guy: Oh, "chump." A chump, that's a bitch, a pussy...a chump, man!
Ali becomes enraged and wheels around to the loosey guy. "You are calling me a chump?! Get out of my store!"
Loosey guy stands his ground, clutching his cigarettes tightly, which Ali is now wrestling him for. Ali breaks them, and throws them dramatically to the ground. Loosey guy then sets in with his argument:
"Get on your motherfucking camel and go back to the desert! I want my money back, chump!"
Ali isn't going to stand for any of this. He grabs the guy's money (all change) and slaps it back into his hand, saying, "Do not come in my store and call me bad names and think I will not find out. Get out of my store!"
Loosey guy isn't done, though. He continues his tirade, saying "Why don't you go back to Iraq and open a store and see how much money you make there? This is my country. Go back to yours, you fuckin Iraqi motherfucker. I want my motherfucking Newports."
Ali shouts even louder, "Get out of my store, bitch!" (And if that's not American, I don't know what is.) Then--in one of the awesomest displays of New York-I'm-not-taking-any-bullshit-ness I've ever seen--Ali leans over the counter and spits in the guy's face. At this point, everyone in the deli is completely riveted. Loosey Guy makes as though he's about to attack Ali, but Sandwich Guy and several of the other neighborhood guys who obviously spend half their day hanging around the store (based on the fact that they were all with Sandwich Guy, and he had said, "Homes, give me one of them sandwiches." And the sandwich maker, whose name I don't know, but who is Ali's cousin, says, "Sure, Ezell. Ham and cheese again?") take a menacing step toward him, so he backs off and leaves, cursing Ali. As he's about to leave, he wipes the spit off his face and shouts one final dig: "Motherfuckin terrorist bitch, I'm calling the motherfuckin cops. Fuckin Muslim bullshit." That's especially hilarious because as he turned to deliver his parting shot, I noticed that he was wearing a Malcolm X shirt. I guess "fuckin Muslim bullshit" only applies to Islamic people of Arab descent.
As far as his threat to call the cops...that's a smart move. Because there's nothing dudes who loiter around in delis and street corners in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem love more than a snitch. To make the threat doubly impotent, there's nothing that New York's finest hate more than having their time wasted. I learned this firsthand one night when I tried to report one of my friends missing, and the cops laughed in my face and told me to sober up (fortunately, she did eventually turn up...she just went off and hooked up with some random guy without telling anyone). Ali shakes his head in disbelief, then is all business. "Next!"
I place my purchases on the counter and Ali, seeing that I am a woman, decides to start apologizing to me for offending my feminine sensitivities. "I am sorry you had to see that, miss." I shrug and tell him no worries, the guy had it coming, and I understand. Ali is very contrite, however, because, as he explained, "I do not like to use bad words." I tell him that I'm used to hearing bad words (I leave out that I am in fact so adept at using bad words that I have invented new ways of cussing articulately...I'd hate to spoil his impression of me as a delicate flower of a lady.) I also tell him that I've wanted to spit in someone's face like that for some time, and in this situation, it was completely warranted. Furthermore, he was now my hero for doing so. Ali looked like he was almost blushing. Then, the best part of the whole incident: Sandwich Guy punches Ali affectionately on the arm, and says, "Yo, Ali, she's cool. She's from the neighborhood. She's down."
And I just thought it was going to be a quick stop at the deli. I fucking love New York.
As I brought my purchases up to pay for them, the guy in front of me was purchasing several "looseys" (for those of you who haven't seen the "I Know Black People" sketch on Chappelle's Show, that refers to cigarettes sold individually instead of by the pack). I don't exactly know what transpired between him and Ali, the tireless owner of the deli who I am convinced works there 24-7, but he called Ali a "chump." Ali asks another guy waiting for a sandwich, who is clearly a regular at the Grapevine, what this means (and how Ali knows what a "loosey" is but hasn't yet included "chump" in his vocabulary, I'll never know). Ali is Egyptian, and his accent is pretty thick, so at first the sandwich guy doesn't understand.
Sandwich guy: Chambers St? That's all the way downtown, man.
Ali: No, no. What is "chump"? What does it mean?
Sandwich guy: Oh, "chump." A chump, that's a bitch, a pussy...a chump, man!
Ali becomes enraged and wheels around to the loosey guy. "You are calling me a chump?! Get out of my store!"
Loosey guy stands his ground, clutching his cigarettes tightly, which Ali is now wrestling him for. Ali breaks them, and throws them dramatically to the ground. Loosey guy then sets in with his argument:
"Get on your motherfucking camel and go back to the desert! I want my money back, chump!"
Ali isn't going to stand for any of this. He grabs the guy's money (all change) and slaps it back into his hand, saying, "Do not come in my store and call me bad names and think I will not find out. Get out of my store!"
Loosey guy isn't done, though. He continues his tirade, saying "Why don't you go back to Iraq and open a store and see how much money you make there? This is my country. Go back to yours, you fuckin Iraqi motherfucker. I want my motherfucking Newports."
Ali shouts even louder, "Get out of my store, bitch!" (And if that's not American, I don't know what is.) Then--in one of the awesomest displays of New York-I'm-not-taking-any-bullshit-ness I've ever seen--Ali leans over the counter and spits in the guy's face. At this point, everyone in the deli is completely riveted. Loosey Guy makes as though he's about to attack Ali, but Sandwich Guy and several of the other neighborhood guys who obviously spend half their day hanging around the store (based on the fact that they were all with Sandwich Guy, and he had said, "Homes, give me one of them sandwiches." And the sandwich maker, whose name I don't know, but who is Ali's cousin, says, "Sure, Ezell. Ham and cheese again?") take a menacing step toward him, so he backs off and leaves, cursing Ali. As he's about to leave, he wipes the spit off his face and shouts one final dig: "Motherfuckin terrorist bitch, I'm calling the motherfuckin cops. Fuckin Muslim bullshit." That's especially hilarious because as he turned to deliver his parting shot, I noticed that he was wearing a Malcolm X shirt. I guess "fuckin Muslim bullshit" only applies to Islamic people of Arab descent.
As far as his threat to call the cops...that's a smart move. Because there's nothing dudes who loiter around in delis and street corners in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem love more than a snitch. To make the threat doubly impotent, there's nothing that New York's finest hate more than having their time wasted. I learned this firsthand one night when I tried to report one of my friends missing, and the cops laughed in my face and told me to sober up (fortunately, she did eventually turn up...she just went off and hooked up with some random guy without telling anyone). Ali shakes his head in disbelief, then is all business. "Next!"
I place my purchases on the counter and Ali, seeing that I am a woman, decides to start apologizing to me for offending my feminine sensitivities. "I am sorry you had to see that, miss." I shrug and tell him no worries, the guy had it coming, and I understand. Ali is very contrite, however, because, as he explained, "I do not like to use bad words." I tell him that I'm used to hearing bad words (I leave out that I am in fact so adept at using bad words that I have invented new ways of cussing articulately...I'd hate to spoil his impression of me as a delicate flower of a lady.) I also tell him that I've wanted to spit in someone's face like that for some time, and in this situation, it was completely warranted. Furthermore, he was now my hero for doing so. Ali looked like he was almost blushing. Then, the best part of the whole incident: Sandwich Guy punches Ali affectionately on the arm, and says, "Yo, Ali, she's cool. She's from the neighborhood. She's down."
And I just thought it was going to be a quick stop at the deli. I fucking love New York.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Valentine's Day '06: Fiscal anal rape courtesy of my cell phone service provider
(EDIT: I started this yesterday on V-day, but realized that I wasn't going to be able to finish it on account of too much Coors light. Now I'm trying to finish it fast because the hot Iraqi guy on "Lost" is having his flashback of the season, and I want to watch. I don't really care what happens with the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 or whatever, I just watch this show to watch sexy Sayeed run around shirtless. And this episode, he's torturing someone, so I'm trying to watch it. Therefore, give me a break if this isn't the finely crafted work of hilarity it was intended to be. I'm distracted, and despite my obvious scientific brilliance, I haven't figured out how to clone myself yet. Give me a year or two more to play God with the mice, I'll figure something out).
I fucking hate Valentine's Day. And it's not because I'm a lonely, single, "dried-up" (according to certain concerned relatives) woman without someone to give me a crappy heart-shaped $99 flawed diamond pendant from Zales. On the contrary, I have two dogs, so it's impossible for me to come home and feel unloved or unappreciated. I'll take Caesar and Chingy!'s tail wagging over ugly jewelry any day. I like being single and having the freedom to do whatever I want to whoever I want whenever I want. Besides, I have a vibrator, and a hot body, so I guess I'm just lacking a husband in the bitch accoutrement contest. But since I have a career (or will, if I ever graduate) instead, and a ridiculous amount of self-esteem, fuck y'all married people!
I actually hate Valentine's Day on principle, because it's basically an excuse to commercially exploit people's insecurities about their relationships. I also personally hate V-day because shitty things always happen to me on Valentine's Day. I'm not surprised, since the last time I studied my catechism, St. Valentine himself didn't fare so well on his feast day. Granted, I've never gotten such a bad time on February 14th as to be martyrerd by a volley of arrows, but nonetheless I've never fared well on this Hallmark holiday of love and purchasing.
Today was no exception. First, I woke up before the sun (seriously) because I had to give a presentation today, and I never like to give any of the pimp-daddy virologists I work with a reason to think I'm anything but the shit and a half when it comes to rocking their world with my infection and immunity schtick. I give great PowerPoint, and I don't ever intend to let my reputation slide. Even though I ended up doing the presentation in my (form-fitting, deep-necked, and very Sporty Spice) gym clothes instead of my usual "business slutty" presentation attire, I still came off as polished and together. While my insightful thirty minutes of bullshit that made my ambiguous data sound awesome worked quite well, the rest of the day didn't exactly go as planned.
Chingy! got into a fight this morning at the park with another dog (who was what else? a fucking Pit Bull). Apparently, Chingy!'s lack of testicles does not deter him from starting trouble with vicious ghetto dogs four times his size and muscle mass. I can't really blame him, though, since I don't have a pair either and I engage in lots of mismatched combative behavior. He's obviously following the example that has been set. I tried to reassure him and distract him with petting and "who's a good boy?!" dog affirmations, and he started wagging his question mark (tail) at me, so I counted on his short attention span to erase the Pit Bull from his memory. Then, just as I thought I had him calmed down, he shook off his collar and went Ching!'in back for another helping of punishment. After profuse apology to the Pit Bull owner (and by the way, why am I apologizing that my Pug just attacked a Pit Bull with scars on his face and a fucking chain around his neck???), I managed to lasso Chingy! and drag him back to our "safe space"/vermin-infested apartment.
As I put the finishing touches on my morning routine, I thought that my annual Valentine's Day bullshit had already worked itself out, and counted my blessings. Apparently I did that a little too soon, because I casually dropped my cell phone on the floor as I was gathering my stuff up for the day. Now, one would think that when you purchase a $200 cell phone in December 2004, it would be able to cope with "daily wear-and-tear", which for a clumsy, slovenly drunk like me means regular dropping, jostling, losing in the couch cushions, and general physical abuse. Apparently, my Sanyo piece of shit is the exception. After this one drop, less than three feet to the floor, it decided to Kevorkian itself into oblivion. I was already annoyed that my cell phone was on the fritz before this, as several buttons were on the sticky side and I had problems just last night texting LL Cool Jew about the Pug that won the "Best in Toy Group" at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. However, I did not think that this was the last rattling breath of life in my cell phone. I was obviously wrong. I got to work and noticed that numerous buttons on my cell phone had ceased functioning, despite me pressing on them HARD with every laboratory instrument I could find. Then I borrowed J-Sexy's phone to call my phone, and instead of hearing the familiar chorus of my R. Kelly ringtone, I heard dead silence and eventually got my rather bitchy sounding voicemail message. At that point, I knew that the phone was gone, and I would get to cap my Valentine's Day off with a romantic trip to the Sprint store, because not having a cell phone for even one day is not an option.
I HATE going to the Sprint store, or talking on the phone to the Sprint people, or having to do anything with my account that involves interaction with any representative of Sprint. Sprint keeps fucking me over...saying they're going to do things they don't do, ripping me off for equipment, refusing to cancel my subscription to "PCS Vision", and conscripting me into two-year contract extensions. One time my phone got cloned and someone made $300 worth of calls to the Dominican Republic, and I had to pay every cent and argue on the daily with the knuckle-dragging mongoloids that provide "customer service" for THREE MONTHS before it finally dawned on them that I'd been a victim of cell phone identity theft. I hate Sprint and I would dump them, except the other cell phone carriers are just as bad, and now that Sprint has merged with Nextel I usually at least have a good signal. Besides, I still have ten months on my existing contract, since they craftily tricked me into a two-year contract extension when I bought my last phone by dangling 10 bucks off my bill and night minutes starting at 8 instead of 9 in front of me.
So I sucked it up, and went to the Sprint store, where I immediately commenced power shopping. I am not the type of shopper who has to look at everything and try everything out. I want to spend as few minutes of my life as possible at the Sprint store, because every moment there is a moment wasted, so I immediately seek out the phone I want: capable of sending text messages, compact, equipped with a camera, not a piece of shit Sanyo, and $200 or less. I tell a Sprint sales rep, a very large Puerto Rican woman named Esperanza, that I want that phone, and she immediately starts trying to sell me something else.
Esperanza: What about the Samsung A-900? We call it "the Blade." It's like the Razr, but it's made especially for Sprint customers.
Razzy: I don't want a "Blade." I'd probably drop it and break it. I want that other phone, because it has all the features I need, it's a provocative shade of red, and it's $150 after the rebate.
Esperanza: But the Blade is thinner than the Razr! And it's only $349.99!
Razzy: I don't care how thin it is. I carry my cell phone in my purse, not my back pocket, so it doesn't matter how thin it is. I wouldn't mess up the curvature of my ass with a cell phone of any size in my back pocket. And the phone I want is small enough anyway.
Esperanza: The Blade is really the hot thing right now. People can't help but notice you when you're talking on one of these.
Razzy: People are going to notice me for being on a cell phone? Are they also going to notice me for breathing, or drinking beer, or anything that EVERYONE ELSE DOES? That's not how I roll. Cell phones are tools, not fashion accessories. Besides, people notice me anyway, because I'm incredibly loud and uncouth, I have a huge vocabulary, and I frequently expose my breasts in public places. If I wanted to have an overpriced knockoff, I'd be rocking a counterfeit Louis Vuitton purse from Canal Street.
Esperanza: I think that a Blade would really suit you. You seem like the type who wants to look like you mean business. When you talk on the Blade, you look like you are all business. It really gives you that professional edge.
Razzy: I don't need a "professional edge," I'm a grad student in the sciences. There are people who wear pocket protectors where I work, so it's not like I'm trying to get my colleagues all worked up about my cell phone. I don't want a Blade. Do you understand? I'm not buying a fucking Blade under any circumstances. Is there another sales rep here who will sell me the phone I actually want to buy? I don't want to spend the night here arguing with you about why the Blade may or may not be right for me. I DON'T WANT THE FUCKING BLADE! So either sell me the phone I want, or send me to someone who will!
I almost threw in a "puta gorda" for good measure but decided better of it. Oh, I don't think I included all those "fucking"s either, but I was thinking it. In any event, this finally ended Esperanza's attempt to sell me a Blade: she sullenly grabbed the phone I wanted and walked me over to the register. She no longer would speak to me or acknowledge my presence. Instead, she spent the whole time tapping boredly on her computer keyboard with the tip of her three-inch bedazzled fake nail, and complaining about how she struck out selling me a Blade to her co-worker in Spanish. Even though I know she's brazenly talking shit about me right in front of me because she thinks I don't understand Spanish, I decide not to say anything because it will only prolong the torture of being in the Sprint store, and I hope not to see Esperanza ever again. Instead of calling her on it, I whipped out my credit card and prepared to give Esperanza hell about making sure I qualify for every conceivable rebate.
I did get a $75 rebate for being a "loyal customer" (translation: every time my contract was about to expire, I'd mysteriously need a new phone, thus giving Sprint the opportunity to badger me into a contract extension). I asked Esperanza why new customers get this particular phone for free, but someone like me who has been a Sprint PCS customer for 6 years has to pay for it. She gave me the most overdone look which plainly stated, "Are you kidding me? Because we own you, you cheap, non-Blade-buying bitch." Then she informed me that my eligibility for the rebate depended upon me signing ANOTHER two-year contract extension. And since they had me by the proverbial balls, I did sign, because I needed a new phone immediately, I wasn't going to let them get away with shafting me out of a rebate, and if I were to switch carriers now, I'd have to buy my freedom. The local Indians got a better deal when Peter Minuit traded them the 17th century Dutch guilder equivalent of $26 in exchange for Manhattan Island. I signed, and guaranteed another undoubtedly delightful two years of dealing with Sprint people. I haven't ever had a relationship nearly as long as 6 years. How is Sprint getting away with beguiling me into a constant state of indentured servitude? I decide, for the umpteenth time, that I hate Sprint and plan to wage a war of bad publicity against them.
An hour later, I was with my old Smith friend PraiseJah at a decidedly non-romantic spot: Brother Jimmy's BBQ, where they have three kinds of ribs, a flashing neon sign that says "Eat Meat," and Wake Forest v. Duke on all the TVs. Their slogan is "Put Some South in your Mouth," and it is the most un-Valentine's Day place imaginable. I was eating a huge plateful of ribs and collards, drinking Coors light, and still fuming about Sprint. I was distracted from my meat, beer, and socializing because I was trying to complete the laborious chore of transferring my phone address book to the new phone. As much of a pain in the ass as it is, it always ends up being a good thing because you get to take inventory of your social life and trim the fat, if needed. I was like "Carl? Carl? Who the fuck is Carl? Is he that loser with the shoulder-length hair who called himself a "writer/poet/philosopher trying to finish his first major work," or, as it's otherwise known, an unemployed intellectual snob who still lives in the apartment over his parents' garage in Yonkers? He asked me out for tea and open mic slam poetry. Clearly, I'm not hanging onto that phone number."
Not that I expected better service from the Sprint store, but I was decidedly pissed off and annoyed that I'd spent so much of my Valentine's day dealing with bullshit about my cell phone. Valentine's Day is for getting drunk, pigging out, and mocking couples, not getting screwed in negotiations with the idiots that Sprint employs. Fuck you, Sprint. I'll show your insidious asses in two years when my contract expires. Just you wait.
I fucking hate Valentine's Day. And it's not because I'm a lonely, single, "dried-up" (according to certain concerned relatives) woman without someone to give me a crappy heart-shaped $99 flawed diamond pendant from Zales. On the contrary, I have two dogs, so it's impossible for me to come home and feel unloved or unappreciated. I'll take Caesar and Chingy!'s tail wagging over ugly jewelry any day. I like being single and having the freedom to do whatever I want to whoever I want whenever I want. Besides, I have a vibrator, and a hot body, so I guess I'm just lacking a husband in the bitch accoutrement contest. But since I have a career (or will, if I ever graduate) instead, and a ridiculous amount of self-esteem, fuck y'all married people!
I actually hate Valentine's Day on principle, because it's basically an excuse to commercially exploit people's insecurities about their relationships. I also personally hate V-day because shitty things always happen to me on Valentine's Day. I'm not surprised, since the last time I studied my catechism, St. Valentine himself didn't fare so well on his feast day. Granted, I've never gotten such a bad time on February 14th as to be martyrerd by a volley of arrows, but nonetheless I've never fared well on this Hallmark holiday of love and purchasing.
Today was no exception. First, I woke up before the sun (seriously) because I had to give a presentation today, and I never like to give any of the pimp-daddy virologists I work with a reason to think I'm anything but the shit and a half when it comes to rocking their world with my infection and immunity schtick. I give great PowerPoint, and I don't ever intend to let my reputation slide. Even though I ended up doing the presentation in my (form-fitting, deep-necked, and very Sporty Spice) gym clothes instead of my usual "business slutty" presentation attire, I still came off as polished and together. While my insightful thirty minutes of bullshit that made my ambiguous data sound awesome worked quite well, the rest of the day didn't exactly go as planned.
Chingy! got into a fight this morning at the park with another dog (who was what else? a fucking Pit Bull). Apparently, Chingy!'s lack of testicles does not deter him from starting trouble with vicious ghetto dogs four times his size and muscle mass. I can't really blame him, though, since I don't have a pair either and I engage in lots of mismatched combative behavior. He's obviously following the example that has been set. I tried to reassure him and distract him with petting and "who's a good boy?!" dog affirmations, and he started wagging his question mark (tail) at me, so I counted on his short attention span to erase the Pit Bull from his memory. Then, just as I thought I had him calmed down, he shook off his collar and went Ching!'in back for another helping of punishment. After profuse apology to the Pit Bull owner (and by the way, why am I apologizing that my Pug just attacked a Pit Bull with scars on his face and a fucking chain around his neck???), I managed to lasso Chingy! and drag him back to our "safe space"/vermin-infested apartment.
As I put the finishing touches on my morning routine, I thought that my annual Valentine's Day bullshit had already worked itself out, and counted my blessings. Apparently I did that a little too soon, because I casually dropped my cell phone on the floor as I was gathering my stuff up for the day. Now, one would think that when you purchase a $200 cell phone in December 2004, it would be able to cope with "daily wear-and-tear", which for a clumsy, slovenly drunk like me means regular dropping, jostling, losing in the couch cushions, and general physical abuse. Apparently, my Sanyo piece of shit is the exception. After this one drop, less than three feet to the floor, it decided to Kevorkian itself into oblivion. I was already annoyed that my cell phone was on the fritz before this, as several buttons were on the sticky side and I had problems just last night texting LL Cool Jew about the Pug that won the "Best in Toy Group" at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. However, I did not think that this was the last rattling breath of life in my cell phone. I was obviously wrong. I got to work and noticed that numerous buttons on my cell phone had ceased functioning, despite me pressing on them HARD with every laboratory instrument I could find. Then I borrowed J-Sexy's phone to call my phone, and instead of hearing the familiar chorus of my R. Kelly ringtone, I heard dead silence and eventually got my rather bitchy sounding voicemail message. At that point, I knew that the phone was gone, and I would get to cap my Valentine's Day off with a romantic trip to the Sprint store, because not having a cell phone for even one day is not an option.
I HATE going to the Sprint store, or talking on the phone to the Sprint people, or having to do anything with my account that involves interaction with any representative of Sprint. Sprint keeps fucking me over...saying they're going to do things they don't do, ripping me off for equipment, refusing to cancel my subscription to "PCS Vision", and conscripting me into two-year contract extensions. One time my phone got cloned and someone made $300 worth of calls to the Dominican Republic, and I had to pay every cent and argue on the daily with the knuckle-dragging mongoloids that provide "customer service" for THREE MONTHS before it finally dawned on them that I'd been a victim of cell phone identity theft. I hate Sprint and I would dump them, except the other cell phone carriers are just as bad, and now that Sprint has merged with Nextel I usually at least have a good signal. Besides, I still have ten months on my existing contract, since they craftily tricked me into a two-year contract extension when I bought my last phone by dangling 10 bucks off my bill and night minutes starting at 8 instead of 9 in front of me.
So I sucked it up, and went to the Sprint store, where I immediately commenced power shopping. I am not the type of shopper who has to look at everything and try everything out. I want to spend as few minutes of my life as possible at the Sprint store, because every moment there is a moment wasted, so I immediately seek out the phone I want: capable of sending text messages, compact, equipped with a camera, not a piece of shit Sanyo, and $200 or less. I tell a Sprint sales rep, a very large Puerto Rican woman named Esperanza, that I want that phone, and she immediately starts trying to sell me something else.
Esperanza: What about the Samsung A-900? We call it "the Blade." It's like the Razr, but it's made especially for Sprint customers.
Razzy: I don't want a "Blade." I'd probably drop it and break it. I want that other phone, because it has all the features I need, it's a provocative shade of red, and it's $150 after the rebate.
Esperanza: But the Blade is thinner than the Razr! And it's only $349.99!
Razzy: I don't care how thin it is. I carry my cell phone in my purse, not my back pocket, so it doesn't matter how thin it is. I wouldn't mess up the curvature of my ass with a cell phone of any size in my back pocket. And the phone I want is small enough anyway.
Esperanza: The Blade is really the hot thing right now. People can't help but notice you when you're talking on one of these.
Razzy: People are going to notice me for being on a cell phone? Are they also going to notice me for breathing, or drinking beer, or anything that EVERYONE ELSE DOES? That's not how I roll. Cell phones are tools, not fashion accessories. Besides, people notice me anyway, because I'm incredibly loud and uncouth, I have a huge vocabulary, and I frequently expose my breasts in public places. If I wanted to have an overpriced knockoff, I'd be rocking a counterfeit Louis Vuitton purse from Canal Street.
Esperanza: I think that a Blade would really suit you. You seem like the type who wants to look like you mean business. When you talk on the Blade, you look like you are all business. It really gives you that professional edge.
Razzy: I don't need a "professional edge," I'm a grad student in the sciences. There are people who wear pocket protectors where I work, so it's not like I'm trying to get my colleagues all worked up about my cell phone. I don't want a Blade. Do you understand? I'm not buying a fucking Blade under any circumstances. Is there another sales rep here who will sell me the phone I actually want to buy? I don't want to spend the night here arguing with you about why the Blade may or may not be right for me. I DON'T WANT THE FUCKING BLADE! So either sell me the phone I want, or send me to someone who will!
I almost threw in a "puta gorda" for good measure but decided better of it. Oh, I don't think I included all those "fucking"s either, but I was thinking it. In any event, this finally ended Esperanza's attempt to sell me a Blade: she sullenly grabbed the phone I wanted and walked me over to the register. She no longer would speak to me or acknowledge my presence. Instead, she spent the whole time tapping boredly on her computer keyboard with the tip of her three-inch bedazzled fake nail, and complaining about how she struck out selling me a Blade to her co-worker in Spanish. Even though I know she's brazenly talking shit about me right in front of me because she thinks I don't understand Spanish, I decide not to say anything because it will only prolong the torture of being in the Sprint store, and I hope not to see Esperanza ever again. Instead of calling her on it, I whipped out my credit card and prepared to give Esperanza hell about making sure I qualify for every conceivable rebate.
I did get a $75 rebate for being a "loyal customer" (translation: every time my contract was about to expire, I'd mysteriously need a new phone, thus giving Sprint the opportunity to badger me into a contract extension). I asked Esperanza why new customers get this particular phone for free, but someone like me who has been a Sprint PCS customer for 6 years has to pay for it. She gave me the most overdone look which plainly stated, "Are you kidding me? Because we own you, you cheap, non-Blade-buying bitch." Then she informed me that my eligibility for the rebate depended upon me signing ANOTHER two-year contract extension. And since they had me by the proverbial balls, I did sign, because I needed a new phone immediately, I wasn't going to let them get away with shafting me out of a rebate, and if I were to switch carriers now, I'd have to buy my freedom. The local Indians got a better deal when Peter Minuit traded them the 17th century Dutch guilder equivalent of $26 in exchange for Manhattan Island. I signed, and guaranteed another undoubtedly delightful two years of dealing with Sprint people. I haven't ever had a relationship nearly as long as 6 years. How is Sprint getting away with beguiling me into a constant state of indentured servitude? I decide, for the umpteenth time, that I hate Sprint and plan to wage a war of bad publicity against them.
An hour later, I was with my old Smith friend PraiseJah at a decidedly non-romantic spot: Brother Jimmy's BBQ, where they have three kinds of ribs, a flashing neon sign that says "Eat Meat," and Wake Forest v. Duke on all the TVs. Their slogan is "Put Some South in your Mouth," and it is the most un-Valentine's Day place imaginable. I was eating a huge plateful of ribs and collards, drinking Coors light, and still fuming about Sprint. I was distracted from my meat, beer, and socializing because I was trying to complete the laborious chore of transferring my phone address book to the new phone. As much of a pain in the ass as it is, it always ends up being a good thing because you get to take inventory of your social life and trim the fat, if needed. I was like "Carl? Carl? Who the fuck is Carl? Is he that loser with the shoulder-length hair who called himself a "writer/poet/philosopher trying to finish his first major work," or, as it's otherwise known, an unemployed intellectual snob who still lives in the apartment over his parents' garage in Yonkers? He asked me out for tea and open mic slam poetry. Clearly, I'm not hanging onto that phone number."
Not that I expected better service from the Sprint store, but I was decidedly pissed off and annoyed that I'd spent so much of my Valentine's day dealing with bullshit about my cell phone. Valentine's Day is for getting drunk, pigging out, and mocking couples, not getting screwed in negotiations with the idiots that Sprint employs. Fuck you, Sprint. I'll show your insidious asses in two years when my contract expires. Just you wait.
Monday, February 13, 2006
Hey I wonder what's going on Torino? Oh right...more stupid ice dancing
Like most Americans with even the slightest patriotic desire in their hearts to say "Ha! In your face, other countries!", I have been watching the games of the XX'th Winter Olympiad. I have to confess that I'm frankly getting pretty bored. In years past, I've been much more excited about the Winter Olympics. Winter Olympic sports suck.
First, there are pointless sports that are just boring to watch, like the luge. In the past, I was impressed that the lugers go so fast. Now, instead of cheering on the Americans, I am thinking about how low the standards must be to make the Olympics luge team, because it seems like anyone can do it. They probably put people on Team USA just for showing up to the luge Olympic trials. To excel at luge, there are essentially two skills to master: pushing your sled, and then laying still. The only time I snapped out my torpor during a luge event was when this bitch crashed and got knocked unconscious. Luge is pretty much like NASCAR on ice: the only real reason to watch is because of the crashes. And don't get me started about curling. This is shuffleboard with brooms. I think it's amazing that the Olympics recognizes a "winter sport" based on a game largely dominated by elderly people in Florida.
Then there are events designed strictly for women and gay men, like figure skating and ice dancing. These are the most popular Olympic winter "sports." As far as I'm concerned, anything that involves sequins, heavy eye makeup, and piss-poor renderings of Ravel's "Bolero" is not a sport. I'm not disputing that these skating fruitcakes don't work hard or have great athletic ability, but watching these douchebags ice-prancing is only fun when they fall. At first, I perked up when I heard that this year a woman named "Slutskaya" is the top seed in women's figure skating, but then I realized she was just Russian and not actually a slut, or even a coked-up drunk like Oksana Baiul. The peak of my ice-skating interest occurred when Tonya Harding was Oregon-white-trashing it all over Lillehammer. Since I doubt any of these limp-wristed ninnies in Torino are going to be hiring thugs to break each other's knees with retractable nightsticks, I could really care less. And if I have to see any more "analysis" (read: feature fluff pieces to segue into any sort of skating event) from shafted Canadian ice dancers Jamie Sale and David Pelletier, I'm going to follow in the footsteps of fellow Smith alumna Sylvia Plath and stick my head in the goddamned oven.
I also hate Olympic "celebrities". These are the athletes who show up to be the hot shit for two weeks every four years, and who you know must be the most insufferable dickheads in the world to hang out with in between Olympics years. Like Megan Quann, who won a gold medal in swimming in Sydney '00. She is from my hometown, or rather, the unincorporated area of Pierce County known as South Hill. Now there's a sign on Meridian (main street through SH) that says "Welcome to South Hill. Home of Olympic Gold Medalist Megan Quann." Obviously it should say Home of Razzy, but it will one day, so I'm not worried. Megan Quann also goes to my parents' church and she's just obnoxious. I sat behind her one Christmas Eve at midnight mass and she talked to her boyfriend through the whole service. What a bitch. Anyway, one of these buzzworthy Winter Olympians this year is another native of the Pacific Northwest, speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno. Leave it to a Seattle native to make something as indescribably lame as a soul patch his trademark. That tired-ass tuft of fuzz on his chin is more dated than Ashton Kutcher's trucker hat. I can't really blame him for his bad sense of personal style, though, because if I had parents who couldn't properly spell "Apollo", I'd probably look like an idiot too.
Then, there's the sports that have only been added to the Olympics recently, like snowboarding. I have a hard time watching these stoners get psyched for fierce international competition. It doesn't seem very Olympic when some white guy with dreadlocks says that he's "hella stoked" about his chances. I just can't respect a sport where the training regimen depends upon an ample supply of Twinkies and Zig-Zag rolling papers. And if snowboarding is an Olympic sport, then why isn't half-pipe skateboarding a Summer Olympic sport? It's pretty much the same thing. It isn't fair! Tony Hawk deserves his shot at Olympic gold!
Maybe I'm just being too hard on the Winter Olympics because I'm hating on winter big time right now. After walking home through the melting remains of "Blizzard '06," my jeans were soaked to mid-shin with disgusting NYC half-frozen road slush. Going anywhere is like wading through a dirt Slurpee. Therefore, when I arrive home and change into dry clothes, the last thing I want to watch is four hours of coverage that reminds me how much I hate snow.
It's not like I'm not going to watch any more Olympics, but so far, this shit is killing me and getting painful to watch. However, there is one good thing about it: Norway is currently leading the medal count! Go, Razzy's ancestral Fatherland, go!
First, there are pointless sports that are just boring to watch, like the luge. In the past, I was impressed that the lugers go so fast. Now, instead of cheering on the Americans, I am thinking about how low the standards must be to make the Olympics luge team, because it seems like anyone can do it. They probably put people on Team USA just for showing up to the luge Olympic trials. To excel at luge, there are essentially two skills to master: pushing your sled, and then laying still. The only time I snapped out my torpor during a luge event was when this bitch crashed and got knocked unconscious. Luge is pretty much like NASCAR on ice: the only real reason to watch is because of the crashes. And don't get me started about curling. This is shuffleboard with brooms. I think it's amazing that the Olympics recognizes a "winter sport" based on a game largely dominated by elderly people in Florida.
Then there are events designed strictly for women and gay men, like figure skating and ice dancing. These are the most popular Olympic winter "sports." As far as I'm concerned, anything that involves sequins, heavy eye makeup, and piss-poor renderings of Ravel's "Bolero" is not a sport. I'm not disputing that these skating fruitcakes don't work hard or have great athletic ability, but watching these douchebags ice-prancing is only fun when they fall. At first, I perked up when I heard that this year a woman named "Slutskaya" is the top seed in women's figure skating, but then I realized she was just Russian and not actually a slut, or even a coked-up drunk like Oksana Baiul. The peak of my ice-skating interest occurred when Tonya Harding was Oregon-white-trashing it all over Lillehammer. Since I doubt any of these limp-wristed ninnies in Torino are going to be hiring thugs to break each other's knees with retractable nightsticks, I could really care less. And if I have to see any more "analysis" (read: feature fluff pieces to segue into any sort of skating event) from shafted Canadian ice dancers Jamie Sale and David Pelletier, I'm going to follow in the footsteps of fellow Smith alumna Sylvia Plath and stick my head in the goddamned oven.
I also hate Olympic "celebrities". These are the athletes who show up to be the hot shit for two weeks every four years, and who you know must be the most insufferable dickheads in the world to hang out with in between Olympics years. Like Megan Quann, who won a gold medal in swimming in Sydney '00. She is from my hometown, or rather, the unincorporated area of Pierce County known as South Hill. Now there's a sign on Meridian (main street through SH) that says "Welcome to South Hill. Home of Olympic Gold Medalist Megan Quann." Obviously it should say Home of Razzy, but it will one day, so I'm not worried. Megan Quann also goes to my parents' church and she's just obnoxious. I sat behind her one Christmas Eve at midnight mass and she talked to her boyfriend through the whole service. What a bitch. Anyway, one of these buzzworthy Winter Olympians this year is another native of the Pacific Northwest, speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno. Leave it to a Seattle native to make something as indescribably lame as a soul patch his trademark. That tired-ass tuft of fuzz on his chin is more dated than Ashton Kutcher's trucker hat. I can't really blame him for his bad sense of personal style, though, because if I had parents who couldn't properly spell "Apollo", I'd probably look like an idiot too.
Then, there's the sports that have only been added to the Olympics recently, like snowboarding. I have a hard time watching these stoners get psyched for fierce international competition. It doesn't seem very Olympic when some white guy with dreadlocks says that he's "hella stoked" about his chances. I just can't respect a sport where the training regimen depends upon an ample supply of Twinkies and Zig-Zag rolling papers. And if snowboarding is an Olympic sport, then why isn't half-pipe skateboarding a Summer Olympic sport? It's pretty much the same thing. It isn't fair! Tony Hawk deserves his shot at Olympic gold!
Maybe I'm just being too hard on the Winter Olympics because I'm hating on winter big time right now. After walking home through the melting remains of "Blizzard '06," my jeans were soaked to mid-shin with disgusting NYC half-frozen road slush. Going anywhere is like wading through a dirt Slurpee. Therefore, when I arrive home and change into dry clothes, the last thing I want to watch is four hours of coverage that reminds me how much I hate snow.
It's not like I'm not going to watch any more Olympics, but so far, this shit is killing me and getting painful to watch. However, there is one good thing about it: Norway is currently leading the medal count! Go, Razzy's ancestral Fatherland, go!
Sunday, February 12, 2006
As if I needed another reason to hate the French
As I mentioned in the last post, last Friday I took the grad school recruits out on the town. Too bad none of them wanted to do anything except eat a mediocre pan-Asian dinner and go back to their hotels. Therefore, J-Sexy, Francophile, and myself were left with a couple hundred bucks burning a hole in our pockets and nothing to do but drink and get into trouble.
These girls I was with are a lot of fun. J-Sexy is my partner in picornaviral crime in the lab I work in. She is Jamaican and hilarious, and almost as loud as myself. She gave me a 50 Cent calendar for Christmas, and translates dirty lyrics for me from all of the dancehall reggae she listens to. Francophile is the rotation student in our lab, and is this Costa Rican from L.A. with an enviable collection of high-heeled boots. She isn't too squeamish about mousework, she laughs at my jokes, and on her first day in lab she put on a Dr. Dre CD, so she's definitely on my "likable" list. Both girls love to go out drinking and having a good time, so whether we are in lab or at a bar, we are a pretty harmonious posse of bitches.
In the spirit of that harmony, after we were many drinks deep into our evening, we decided it would be a great idea to all start making out with each other. J-Sexy and I had gone from the stage of complaining about how there were no hot guys at the bar to the stage where we were brutally mocking every Dockers-wearing dumbass that attempted to bust some white boy moves on the dance floor. Francophile had called her boyfriend, this random French guy, and he was going to meet us there, but we weren't sure when. Anyway, I guess J-Sexy and I got tired of panning for gold in what was clearly a dry riverbed, and Francophile got tired of waiting for her BF, so we all took turns making out with each other on this couch. I can't remember exactly how it started, but it just did, and it never got too hot or heavy (there wasn't even any breast fondling-type action), so big deal, right?
Wrong. At some point during our three-way suckfest, Francophile's boyfriend came in. We stopped making out and attempted to be social, but he seemed in a hurry to go, so they took off. Since at this point it was approaching 4 a.m., J-Sexy and I decided to call it a night as well and cab back uptown. I didn't think much of it, and passed out.
Today, I braved a fucking blizzard to get to lab, where I get the news that Francophile's boyfriend almost dumped her for cheating on him! I could not believe it. Since when did kissing constitute cheating? Kissing doesn't count. Especially when it's kissing between three heterosexual girls who are also CO-WORKERS. I'm not going to fuck either one of those chicks...I'm not trying to cause dyke drama in the tissue culture hood, and plus, I'm not gay, so if there's no penis involved, then I'll pass. It also wasn't like he walked in like some dude in a porn, where Peter North the "plumber" comes over and finds a bunch of chicks with a clogged sink who just happen to get involved in a spontaneous frenzy of muff diving. In fact, it was so innocent, I had almost forgotten about it entirely. However, Francophile's BF thought it was some kind of sordid lesbian tryst worthy of not only dumping her, but flying back to fucking Paris to mend his broken coeur. Francophile is devastated, and so am I, because if they break up, I'm going to have to come up with a new name for her for my website, and with all the new names I've come up with this week, I'm tapped the fuck out.
What the hell is the matter with this guy? 99.9% of normal red-blooded American guys would probably not only condone it, but would approve wholeheartedly to the point of cheering it on. Monsieur, please...I'm sure it looked hot. Not only were all three of us tits-out skanked to the nines, but there's pretty much something for every taste in this menage: a Latina, a blonde, and a black chick. All we'd need is an Asian and we'd have pretty much every fetish covered.
What is wrong with French people? Every time I start to think, hey, maybe they're not so bad, something like this happens which is so egregiously wrong I just can't help but get pissed off. Go back to France, and wear a beret and eat baguettes or whatever is French people do. If you can't appreciate drunk chicks hooking up, you don't belong in America anyway.
These girls I was with are a lot of fun. J-Sexy is my partner in picornaviral crime in the lab I work in. She is Jamaican and hilarious, and almost as loud as myself. She gave me a 50 Cent calendar for Christmas, and translates dirty lyrics for me from all of the dancehall reggae she listens to. Francophile is the rotation student in our lab, and is this Costa Rican from L.A. with an enviable collection of high-heeled boots. She isn't too squeamish about mousework, she laughs at my jokes, and on her first day in lab she put on a Dr. Dre CD, so she's definitely on my "likable" list. Both girls love to go out drinking and having a good time, so whether we are in lab or at a bar, we are a pretty harmonious posse of bitches.
In the spirit of that harmony, after we were many drinks deep into our evening, we decided it would be a great idea to all start making out with each other. J-Sexy and I had gone from the stage of complaining about how there were no hot guys at the bar to the stage where we were brutally mocking every Dockers-wearing dumbass that attempted to bust some white boy moves on the dance floor. Francophile had called her boyfriend, this random French guy, and he was going to meet us there, but we weren't sure when. Anyway, I guess J-Sexy and I got tired of panning for gold in what was clearly a dry riverbed, and Francophile got tired of waiting for her BF, so we all took turns making out with each other on this couch. I can't remember exactly how it started, but it just did, and it never got too hot or heavy (there wasn't even any breast fondling-type action), so big deal, right?
Wrong. At some point during our three-way suckfest, Francophile's boyfriend came in. We stopped making out and attempted to be social, but he seemed in a hurry to go, so they took off. Since at this point it was approaching 4 a.m., J-Sexy and I decided to call it a night as well and cab back uptown. I didn't think much of it, and passed out.
Today, I braved a fucking blizzard to get to lab, where I get the news that Francophile's boyfriend almost dumped her for cheating on him! I could not believe it. Since when did kissing constitute cheating? Kissing doesn't count. Especially when it's kissing between three heterosexual girls who are also CO-WORKERS. I'm not going to fuck either one of those chicks...I'm not trying to cause dyke drama in the tissue culture hood, and plus, I'm not gay, so if there's no penis involved, then I'll pass. It also wasn't like he walked in like some dude in a porn, where Peter North the "plumber" comes over and finds a bunch of chicks with a clogged sink who just happen to get involved in a spontaneous frenzy of muff diving. In fact, it was so innocent, I had almost forgotten about it entirely. However, Francophile's BF thought it was some kind of sordid lesbian tryst worthy of not only dumping her, but flying back to fucking Paris to mend his broken coeur. Francophile is devastated, and so am I, because if they break up, I'm going to have to come up with a new name for her for my website, and with all the new names I've come up with this week, I'm tapped the fuck out.
What the hell is the matter with this guy? 99.9% of normal red-blooded American guys would probably not only condone it, but would approve wholeheartedly to the point of cheering it on. Monsieur, please...I'm sure it looked hot. Not only were all three of us tits-out skanked to the nines, but there's pretty much something for every taste in this menage: a Latina, a blonde, and a black chick. All we'd need is an Asian and we'd have pretty much every fetish covered.
What is wrong with French people? Every time I start to think, hey, maybe they're not so bad, something like this happens which is so egregiously wrong I just can't help but get pissed off. Go back to France, and wear a beret and eat baguettes or whatever is French people do. If you can't appreciate drunk chicks hooking up, you don't belong in America anyway.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Kate and Camilla: a long overdue hollering at my girls
This morning I woke up with a hangover, as for the second week in a row, I spent my Friday overindulging in Johnnie Walker. Unfortunately, in comparison to last weekend in inexpensive, hysterically funny Tacoma, the girls from my lab and I took out the grad school recruits to experience NYC nightlife, and we wound up at some stupid club called Boudoir. Apart from the fact that the humorless Teutonic bouncer outside almost didn't let us in despite the fact that there was no line and few people inside, we were literally forced to check our coats by said bouncer, and the bathrooms didn't have doors (possibly to combat rampant cocaine use), so you could see all the unattractive stockbrokers who hung out at this place lining up at the urinals in the men's room. Despite the lack of privacy, the place did offer the convenience of uncharacteristically chatty Dominican bathroom attendants. Capping off the night was the fact that as usual, there was a severe dearth of remotely attractive guys who pursue player hater degrees in Microbiology. Therefore, I had nothing to do but pound scotch and be occasionally forced to dance by J-Sexy and Francophile. As a result, I am pretty much immobilized today.
Although at this moment I should be in lab fucking with my viruses, I decided to dick around with my blog instead because I had a dream last night about my girl KatieScarlett (which I woke up laughing from, because it involved Kate reprising Russell Crowe's role from Master and Commander and engaging in 19th century naval warfare with a shipload of the old lady Jehovah's Witnesses that terrorize my apartment every Saturday morning). I realized that I haven't seen KatieScarlett in a couple of weeks since our well-laid plan to go see Hostel was aborted on account of my impromptu trek to the P-N-Dub, and I got to missing her because even though we live on the same fair isle of Mannahattas (and even on the same subway line, for God's sake), we don't see one another nearly enough. So I decided to check out what she's been up to lately on her internet blog, which is on nerve.com. As soon as I opened it up, I started chuckling because KatieScarlett's misspelling of "masterbate" is for some reason really adorable to me. Then I figured I should update my own blog, because I've been promising to pimp KatieScarlett's contribution to the repertoire of internet awesomeness for ages, and I figured I might as well write an entry while I was hung over, not going anywhere immediately, and remembering to do so. Also, I owe massive payback for KatieScarlett and her domestic partner Bienvenido-a-Miami's convincing everyone they know to read RAZZY.org on the regular. According to Bienvenido-a-Miami, I have quite a following in the various magazine offices she works in. Every time they invite me over for champagne-fueled brunches or lasagna feasts, they tell me that I'm a genius (obviously), compliment my piss-poor Spanish speaking skills, ask about my dogs, flatter me tremendously with their questions/comments/quips/etc. about whatever latest silly shit I've posted on RAZZY.org, then introduce me to interesting and smart Razzyphiles I've never met before who join in the orgy of Razzy worship. As a committed narcissist, this pleases me greatly. KatieScarlett and her business partner/artistic teammate/co-blogger BloodyTosser are my artfag heroes, and I'll do anything within my modest power to facilitate their success. A bit of background:
I met KatieScarlett in college when she moved into my house, and, despite her status as a rugby-playing BDOC (Big Dyke on Campus...the Smith equivalent of a division I quarterback in terms of the pussy-drawing power and social status), we quickly became BFFs on the based on our mutual love of Too $hort's "Cocktails" album, bizarre porn, and fried foods. We cemented our friendship that year on Coming Out Day (which is like Mardi Gras for Smith lesbians), when we pounded a jug of Carlo Rossi and ran around campus like madwomen drunkenly mocking all the LUGs (lesbian until graduation, also referred to as "The Four Year Plan") with freshly shaven heads who were chalking poorly drawn vaginas and trite yet aggressive pride sentiments (ie: "10% is not enough! We recruit!") all over campus. Although she initially was a sociology major, by our junior year she discovered her calling as an avant garde photographer, and got together with BloodyTosser, a witty and gorgeous triple citizen of the U.K., U.S.A., and Libya (and by the way, I worked that Libyan thing to the max. Every time they would walk into a room I would shout "It's the Labians!", an obscure takeoff on a scene from Back to the Future that still is hilarious to this day--to me, anyway). They became instant super collaborators, the visual arts equivalent of Michaels and Madden, and rocked the Northampton, MA art scene with a series of amazing self-portraits...I seem to recall a photo of them sitting on toilets with gaudy polyester pantsuits around their ankles, stuffing their faces with cheeseburgers and fries. I know at one point they definitely photographed my hirsute then-boyfriend shirtless in an orange hunting cap and camo pants, clenching the burnt stub of a Dutch Master between his teeth and me slung over his shoulder, naked (of course), with a bullet hole painted on my fine ass. Doing that sort of thing, they pretty much blew everyone's minds and guaranteed admission into a prestigious and competetive graduate program.
So KatieScarlett and BloodyTosser got their MFAs or something (sorry girls, but I'm not hip to art advanced degree acronyms and I'm not sure that's accurate) and emerged in NYC as a couple of genuine, card-carrying artistes. After a year or two working several bullshit jobs and relegating their art to spare time, they decided to say "fuck it" and start their own photography business. They did all the paperwork to become an honest-to-God corporation, hired lawyers and accountants, rented a sweet little studio space in Brooklyn, and immediately began advertising their services. Although they do normal stuff like portraits, weddings, and the like, they quickly discovered their true calling: erotic photography jobs solicited through craigslist. They have seriously cornered the market on taking highly stylized, and, dare I say, lovely pictures of random guys whacking off. In the course of their targeting this niche, the word got around about what a couple of pro hos they are, and they were approached by nerve.com to do a high-profile photo blog.
Now, for those of you who, like me, avoid internet socializing like herpes, you may not know about nerve.com, this website that is basically a vehicle for square-glasses-frame-wearing hipsters to hook up with each other when they're not reading Camus in some coffeehouse, rocking iPods as fashion accessories, shopping for $200 vintage t-shirts, or otherwise competing for the "edgiest motherfucker on the F train" award. It unites said messenger bag aficionados with analytical articles about things like the erotic short fiction of Anais Nin, intentionally ironic "news" features like "Where is John Wayne Bobbitt now: Cleared on domestic abuse charges in Las Vegas", and reviews of indie movies with titles like Kafka on the Shore (I don't even know where to begin making fun of this). They also have numerous collections of pictures of naked people in artsy sexual situations. Again, thanks to craigslist, the people at nerve heard about KatieScarlett and BloodyTosser, or Kate and Camilla, Inc., and they actually are paying them to do a blog about their adventures watching other people pleasure themselves.
The blog kicks ass, and you should check it out. I even actually signed up on nerve.com strictly to keep up with it. Not only does it feature the photos that Kate and Camilla take in the course of their work, but it includes their priceless commentary. For example, they drove to a town called Scrotum, PA or something like that and photographed some dude who calls himself "The Woodsman" running around on his rural property in nay but a pair of battered old workboots. A direct quote: "He comments on our punctuality and professionalism while double fisting his second pair of Coors Light biggie cans." Also, for those of you who like to live vicariously through other people's sex lives, they are both ENTIRELY forthcoming about theirs, including photographs, highly descriptive language, and Camilla's series of clever anal sex limericks. Both ladies are quite foxy and in capital physical shape, so you don't have to worry about being grossed out by their virually constant nudity either. Be warned, however, if your workplace frowns on using the company server to view creative shots of genitalia, masturbating trannies, hot Brits in various states of undress, or variations on a theme of Cuban-Pennsylvanian lesbian shenanigans, don't visit their blog at work. But if you want to see something brilliant, original, entertaining, and you have a privacy screen on your PC, then go immediately to nerve.com and click on the Kate and Camilla link on the left hand side. You'll know it's their link because there's a picture of the virtuosos themselves with a big string of spit between their mouths. I can't say enough good things about them. If you're not interested, then ask yourself what your problem is, because entries titled "We're thinking of making some cock obelisks" should at the very least pique your curiosity.
Go to their blog. Now.
Although at this moment I should be in lab fucking with my viruses, I decided to dick around with my blog instead because I had a dream last night about my girl KatieScarlett (which I woke up laughing from, because it involved Kate reprising Russell Crowe's role from Master and Commander and engaging in 19th century naval warfare with a shipload of the old lady Jehovah's Witnesses that terrorize my apartment every Saturday morning). I realized that I haven't seen KatieScarlett in a couple of weeks since our well-laid plan to go see Hostel was aborted on account of my impromptu trek to the P-N-Dub, and I got to missing her because even though we live on the same fair isle of Mannahattas (and even on the same subway line, for God's sake), we don't see one another nearly enough. So I decided to check out what she's been up to lately on her internet blog, which is on nerve.com. As soon as I opened it up, I started chuckling because KatieScarlett's misspelling of "masterbate" is for some reason really adorable to me. Then I figured I should update my own blog, because I've been promising to pimp KatieScarlett's contribution to the repertoire of internet awesomeness for ages, and I figured I might as well write an entry while I was hung over, not going anywhere immediately, and remembering to do so. Also, I owe massive payback for KatieScarlett and her domestic partner Bienvenido-a-Miami's convincing everyone they know to read RAZZY.org on the regular. According to Bienvenido-a-Miami, I have quite a following in the various magazine offices she works in. Every time they invite me over for champagne-fueled brunches or lasagna feasts, they tell me that I'm a genius (obviously), compliment my piss-poor Spanish speaking skills, ask about my dogs, flatter me tremendously with their questions/comments/quips/etc. about whatever latest silly shit I've posted on RAZZY.org, then introduce me to interesting and smart Razzyphiles I've never met before who join in the orgy of Razzy worship. As a committed narcissist, this pleases me greatly. KatieScarlett and her business partner/artistic teammate/co-blogger BloodyTosser are my artfag heroes, and I'll do anything within my modest power to facilitate their success. A bit of background:
I met KatieScarlett in college when she moved into my house, and, despite her status as a rugby-playing BDOC (Big Dyke on Campus...the Smith equivalent of a division I quarterback in terms of the pussy-drawing power and social status), we quickly became BFFs on the based on our mutual love of Too $hort's "Cocktails" album, bizarre porn, and fried foods. We cemented our friendship that year on Coming Out Day (which is like Mardi Gras for Smith lesbians), when we pounded a jug of Carlo Rossi and ran around campus like madwomen drunkenly mocking all the LUGs (lesbian until graduation, also referred to as "The Four Year Plan") with freshly shaven heads who were chalking poorly drawn vaginas and trite yet aggressive pride sentiments (ie: "10% is not enough! We recruit!") all over campus. Although she initially was a sociology major, by our junior year she discovered her calling as an avant garde photographer, and got together with BloodyTosser, a witty and gorgeous triple citizen of the U.K., U.S.A., and Libya (and by the way, I worked that Libyan thing to the max. Every time they would walk into a room I would shout "It's the Labians!", an obscure takeoff on a scene from Back to the Future that still is hilarious to this day--to me, anyway). They became instant super collaborators, the visual arts equivalent of Michaels and Madden, and rocked the Northampton, MA art scene with a series of amazing self-portraits...I seem to recall a photo of them sitting on toilets with gaudy polyester pantsuits around their ankles, stuffing their faces with cheeseburgers and fries. I know at one point they definitely photographed my hirsute then-boyfriend shirtless in an orange hunting cap and camo pants, clenching the burnt stub of a Dutch Master between his teeth and me slung over his shoulder, naked (of course), with a bullet hole painted on my fine ass. Doing that sort of thing, they pretty much blew everyone's minds and guaranteed admission into a prestigious and competetive graduate program.
So KatieScarlett and BloodyTosser got their MFAs or something (sorry girls, but I'm not hip to art advanced degree acronyms and I'm not sure that's accurate) and emerged in NYC as a couple of genuine, card-carrying artistes. After a year or two working several bullshit jobs and relegating their art to spare time, they decided to say "fuck it" and start their own photography business. They did all the paperwork to become an honest-to-God corporation, hired lawyers and accountants, rented a sweet little studio space in Brooklyn, and immediately began advertising their services. Although they do normal stuff like portraits, weddings, and the like, they quickly discovered their true calling: erotic photography jobs solicited through craigslist. They have seriously cornered the market on taking highly stylized, and, dare I say, lovely pictures of random guys whacking off. In the course of their targeting this niche, the word got around about what a couple of pro hos they are, and they were approached by nerve.com to do a high-profile photo blog.
Now, for those of you who, like me, avoid internet socializing like herpes, you may not know about nerve.com, this website that is basically a vehicle for square-glasses-frame-wearing hipsters to hook up with each other when they're not reading Camus in some coffeehouse, rocking iPods as fashion accessories, shopping for $200 vintage t-shirts, or otherwise competing for the "edgiest motherfucker on the F train" award. It unites said messenger bag aficionados with analytical articles about things like the erotic short fiction of Anais Nin, intentionally ironic "news" features like "Where is John Wayne Bobbitt now: Cleared on domestic abuse charges in Las Vegas", and reviews of indie movies with titles like Kafka on the Shore (I don't even know where to begin making fun of this). They also have numerous collections of pictures of naked people in artsy sexual situations. Again, thanks to craigslist, the people at nerve heard about KatieScarlett and BloodyTosser, or Kate and Camilla, Inc., and they actually are paying them to do a blog about their adventures watching other people pleasure themselves.
The blog kicks ass, and you should check it out. I even actually signed up on nerve.com strictly to keep up with it. Not only does it feature the photos that Kate and Camilla take in the course of their work, but it includes their priceless commentary. For example, they drove to a town called Scrotum, PA or something like that and photographed some dude who calls himself "The Woodsman" running around on his rural property in nay but a pair of battered old workboots. A direct quote: "He comments on our punctuality and professionalism while double fisting his second pair of Coors Light biggie cans." Also, for those of you who like to live vicariously through other people's sex lives, they are both ENTIRELY forthcoming about theirs, including photographs, highly descriptive language, and Camilla's series of clever anal sex limericks. Both ladies are quite foxy and in capital physical shape, so you don't have to worry about being grossed out by their virually constant nudity either. Be warned, however, if your workplace frowns on using the company server to view creative shots of genitalia, masturbating trannies, hot Brits in various states of undress, or variations on a theme of Cuban-Pennsylvanian lesbian shenanigans, don't visit their blog at work. But if you want to see something brilliant, original, entertaining, and you have a privacy screen on your PC, then go immediately to nerve.com and click on the Kate and Camilla link on the left hand side. You'll know it's their link because there's a picture of the virtuosos themselves with a big string of spit between their mouths. I can't say enough good things about them. If you're not interested, then ask yourself what your problem is, because entries titled "We're thinking of making some cock obelisks" should at the very least pique your curiosity.
Go to their blog. Now.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Why isn't human trafficking rampant in Pierce County?
Tonight I came home after drinks and dinner and, trying to console myself for missing "Survivor" the second week in a row, flipped on a "Primetime" special about teens who have been kidnapped from small-town malls and forced into prostitution. Despite the compelling subject matter, it was actually sort of boring, but I was struck by how much these girls look like the people who live in the place I grew up: Pierce County, WA in the great Pacific Northwest. Not that I like to make fun of seventeen-year-old rape survivors, but what the hell...I've already caused a Great Schism in the Razzy ranks this week, so I might as well earn that ticket to eternal damnation. Anyway, the girls who were kidnapped and conscripted into unwilling teen whoredom were majorly Pierce County all the way, right down to the layered and voluminous hair. Excessive teasing to make up for half-grown-out perm? Check. Unevenly applied DIY Herbal Instincts highlights? Check. Poorly tailored Mary Kate and Ashley brand peasant shirt purchased at Wal Mart? Check. Unnecessary wearing of cheap sunglasses while being interviewed by John Quinones? Double check.
This past weekend, I had the opportunity to go home. Why I went home is a very sensitive topic, but it had to do with the Seahawks, and I don't want to talk about it except to say we got robbed by piss-poor officiating. Also, I think Condoleeza Rice may have had something to do with it, because she was pulling for the Steelers, and we all know that, fair or not, when the Bush administration wants something, they always manage to get it regardless of fairness or objectivity. However, I'll save this tangent for my therapist. While I was home, I did have the chance to go out a couple of times and sample some of the local culture that I've missed since relocating to Nieuw Amsterdam. And now, watching this episode of "Primetime," I am reminded of many of the specimens I happened to witness back home in Pierce, both in terms of the sex traders and their unwilling whores. The dumb skankiness of the women there is precisely why the P-N-Dub has been a fertile ground for serial killers for the last fifty years. If forcible sex traffickers showed up, it would be a fucking free-for-all. Don't believe me? Consider the data I gathered myself:
1. On Friday night, I went out for drinks with HotLawyer, who probably knows way more about these sorts of seedy sex traffickers, because he ends up at work on Monday providing them with a vigorous defense. At the first bar where we elected to up the pathology score of our cirrhotic livers, we are immediately interrupted from our witty discourse by some super Spanaway bitch who had lost her cell phone. I allowed her to look under my chair for it, and despite the fact that she didn't see it, she was convinced that it would somehow miraculously appear. Over the course of the next half hour, this girl proceeded to pace back and forth determinedly along the length of the bar, telling everyone within earshot the melancholy tale of her lost cell phone, which had undoubtedly come off its belt clip on her patent pleather pants. She was so baleful yet overdone, she could have been rehearsing for her role as the chorus in a Baz Luhrmann retelling of an Aeschylus tragedy. And this bitch was SOOOOO Tacoma. She was wearing a bandana-style halter straight from the Pseudo-Biker/Retro Punk Flame Detail section of discount slutwear at the Tacoma Mall Hot Topic (you know, the same section where they sell the midriff-baring CBGB shirts). She definitely had a spiral perm teased to compete with some of the Amy Fishers I've seen running around on Long Island, but she had somehow corralled it into a ponytail. She fully had the body of a girl who uses diet drugs brewed in an empty gas can in someone's garage in Parkland with nail polish remover, Sudafed, and ammonia-based window cleaner. You can tell that this is one of those girls who think they are really badass and streetwise (and get away with it out at places like the Pub'N'Grub in Orting), but if they drunkenly drop their cell phone at the West End, it's a confounding mystery. Throw a three syllable word their way, and they are choking and sputtering like they do when they don't get a courtesy tap from their pimp/meth cooker. Throw a Bartles & Jaymes or a pinch of crank their way, or tell them that you're a roadie for Portrait of Poverty or whatever talentless band is rocking the Hell's Kitchen scene this week, and it's party time, cell phones be damned. I have no doubt that had I looked a little closer, she would have had little racing flames airbrushed on the $15 set of thick-ass acrylics she was sporting. However, I didn't bother to examine her manicure, because in the course of her searching for forensic evidence of her cell phone under our table, I also noticed that she had some of the most severe bacne I've ever seen, and from an epidemiological perspective, I was intrigued. It was so bad, it almost looked like the pictures of cutaneous anthrax that I show my classes of eighth grade microbiology geeks to gross them out. I wanted to shake her and say, "Fuck your cell phone...you should be looking for your topical antibiotics!" However, since I have not yet received a mandate to run around offering unsolicited instruction to the Typhoid Marys of the Tacoma bar scene, I decided to keep my opinion to myself, and just observe, or at least just make snide asides about it to HotLawyer. They say silence is golden (not that I would know anything about silence), and indeed, after some quick and quiet reflection, her gigantic ponytail made sense. If I detected a festering minefield of trapezial pox and still had either the cojones or the lack of decency to rock a backless halter, I'd make sure my hair was as distracting as possible as well. Either this bitch is incredibly dumb, or incredibly practical. I just can't decide which. Regardless, all a white slaver would have to do to suck this skank into his web of degradation would be to wave a random cell phone at her. She would bite for sure. Watch out, ditzy bitches at the West End.
2. Next, we went to another bar, where HotLawyer informed me there was a waitress who he thought was sexy, on the basis that she had a hot body. I guess her body was okay despite her otherwise forgettable looks, but it was awesome because she was obviously a lesbian. Tacoma is like the Ethiopia of hooking up: after you're hungry enough, even a spent mortar shell full of dirty gruel starts to look good (not that I'm criticizing...believe me, I've been there: I could write an epic poem replete with tragic tales of overcompensating tongue rings and inevitable urinary tract infections. And besides, HotLawyer ended up doing much better than E9 Lesbian that night anyhow). Anyway, this waitress validated my initial read on the situation, because when I invited her, she sat down and promptly started hitting on me. I mentioned that I used to work at another bar one street over in Tacoma...for about a month...three years prior...and she was still trying to seduce me with fantastical stories about her career ambition to work the party room at Stanley and Seafort's, a restaurant that is the gold standard for luxury in Tacoma strictly on the basis of geography and general big-fish-in-a-small-pondedness. They are located at the highest point in Tacoma (I don't know why that's a bragging point, it's not like it's the fucking Capitoline hill) and their double-negative-using waiters insult your intelligence with a highly sophisticated and refined degree of faux snobbery. Therefore, S&S is a sophisticated place, if only because you can pay $50 for an upsettingly overcooked steak (bitches, when I say rare, I mean that fucking piece of meat should be mooing and lowing at me like it is pissed the Christ child is taking up its valuable manger space, not prepared like the sterilized textured protein product that a Jack in the Crack grill jockey would give an inquisitive health inspector). Anyway, if a forcible sex trader were in the neighborhood, all he would have to do is introduce her to a hot chick, exhibit a slight interest in E9 Lesbian's waitressing goals, and the next thing she knows, she's owned by some dude named Yuri who may or may not be in the Red Mafiya and working the Reno strip giving $10 half-and-halfs. Again: watch yourself, ladies.
3. The next day, I realized to my chagrin that I had consumed entirely too much scotch the night before. For once, my behavior was thankfully not the problem. I didn't have regrettable sex, I didn't take my shirt off for the benefit of the Sanitation Workers Local #247, and I didn't drive drunk, at least not very far. However, I was trying to live up to my "I'm Razzy...who the fuck are you?" reputation, but as usual, Johnnie Walker decided that he was in charge of my ability to retain solid foods long after I had rolled out of his devilish embrace, smoked a cigarette, taken a shower, deleted his voicemails, and erased his number. Nonetheless, while I was trying to live up to my eminent reputation as a well of hilarity with HotLawyer and his twin brother Morrissey'sHair over lunch, I had to go suddenly vomit, courtesy of the world of hurt that the previous evening's drinking laid on me. I was thoroughly laid up by the weaning-off-of-scotch delirium tremens and after taking one look at my Mexican food, I had to run as fast as my stilettos would allow to the ladies room. I was trying to save face by vomiting quietly (shouldn't have tried, because I am incapable of doing anything quietly), and I noticed between dry heaves that a couple of women came in to change their screaming kids. They were busy ignoring said brats, while chatting aggressively with each other about which is better for "sexy" clothes, the Ross on 38th Street or the TJ Maxx across the street from where I went to high school. I almost ran out of there, as splashing my face and willing myself to maintain my coolness despite my hangover was about as successful as John Wayne Gacy's painting clowns to relieve his serial killer urges. These skanks in their silk-poly blend scarf/throw/shrugs with a heinous Miami Dolphins color schemes were talking about where they were going to take their boyfriend/baby daddies on their Mervyns-Sears-Penneys Tacoma Mall world tour. They are insecure, unattractive, and semi-literate type of bitches who bill their stretch marks as the hallmark of a hot body and leave their kids home alone on Saturday nights when they go out line dancing at McCabe's. Had I been a bottom-feeding woman-trader's teen-lurer I would have immediately commenced negotiating with these hos for the ownership rights to their already overweight children. Seriously, offer these bitches a lifetime supply of bootcut Arizona jeans, and they'll sell you whichever one of their accidental progeny you like. Beware, Tacoma. Not even your children are safe.
4. On Black Sunday (AKA the day of the Seahawks tragedy), I went to a classy establishment called "A's Place" in a town called Milton to watch the unfortunate football proceedings unfold with my friend MillerTime. This place is hilarious, because it's been open as long as I can remember, and it seems to be a revolving door for various owners, but they always retain some variation of the name "A's". I remember it being called "Mr. A's," "Wm. A's," "A's Steakhouse," and simply, "A's". Presently, it's "A's Place," and it's sufficiently casual for Sunday football, although they had some hilarious clip art of a wine bottle and a rose on their laminated menus as an attempt at classing up the joint. However, while their potato skins deserve a salute, it's no BB McGraw's, that's for sure. Adding to the check minus list was the fact that a girl I went to high school with worked there and, despite the fact that I probably never said two words to her while at B-Prep, she spent the fourth quarter bitching to MillerTime and myself about her ex-husband. Anyway, after hanging out with MillerTime pre-game and watching her curl her hair "really fast," which took approximately 45 minutes, involved three brushes, half a can of Sebastian shaping mist, a set of hot rollers, a straightening AND a curling iron (and girl, you know I love you and I think your hair always looks great, especially now that you've changed up your bangs, but for the last time, fixing your hair is NEVER a fast process and I'm never going to stop giving you shit about it), I needed to consume as many Coors Lights as rapidly as possible. Indeed, almost two hundred dollars' worth of Coors Light was consumed by five people including myself at our table (and at $8 a pitcher, that's a serious Rocky-tapping). After MillerTime and I managed to escape our fellow Bellarmine alumna and return our attention to the final moments of the travesty of justice that was Super Bowl XL, this haggard old drunk bitch came over and slurred at us, "Is this the table of asshole Steelers fans?" Wonderful observation skills, lady. Everyone at the table was wearing Hawks gear, including myself (and my vintage stretch Seahawks logo tee made my tits look HOT, by the way), so this was an incredibly stupid question. Considering I only saw one Steelers fan in the entire bar the whole day, and he was so overt about it he was wearing fake black-and-yellow dreadlocks and waving his Terrible Towel around, I don't know how she mistook us for him. I didn't want to get into it with her, though, because when drunk, I'm more lover than fighter, and my deft command of the English language would have been wasted on this woman. There's no sport in shooting fish in a barrel, anyway. She was wider than she was tall, was wearing a hideous blue-and-green track suit, and had a smeared Seahawk painted in drippy glitter on her jowly-ass cheek. Besides, I was so upset about staggering ratio of Seahawks-to-Steelers penalty flags in the game, I didn't really feel like speaking, so I just ignored her. MillerTime, however, was feeling her Irish, and says something along the lines of, "Are you a moron? Do we look like we're fucking Steelers fans?" This set old drunk hag off, and she starts in on us, calling us "punks," "assholes," and the like. MillerTime's boyfriend and I managed to settle her down, and the bar manager lured old drunk hag back to the bar with a domestic draft, and explained semi-apologetically that she was "a regular" (surprise, surprise) and that she'd overindulged in the drink. I thought that peace had resumed. WRONG. When MillerTime went to the bathroom, old drunk hag staggers over to me and goes, "So, who's the fucking bitch you're sitting with?" While I'm not going to fight just because some knuckle-dragging idiot annoys me, I'm also not going to sit around quietly and let said idiot brazenly insult one of my best girls without reprisal, either. So I stand up, summon all my magnificence, stick out my tits, and indicate that not only is the "fucking bitch" one of my best friends who I have known since CYO horse camp in the fifth grade, but if she knows what's good for her, she'll waddle back to her barstool before MillerTime gets back. Seeing that she was not going to find an ally in me, she did so. However, on our way out, she takes one last dig, proclaiming loudly and creatively that MillerTime is a "fucking bitch." I had to grab the back of MillerTime's Trufant away jersey to prevent a totally unnecessary exercise in bar pugilism. Clearly if this bitch could she would have sold MillerTime up the river.
The point here is that there is no shortage of dumb, unattractive twats to satisfy any possible fetish for conscripted prostitutes in my hometown. It's only a matter of time before the white slavers discover this hotbed of stank pussy ready to snatch off the street. God bless Pierce County. I'm homesick already.
This past weekend, I had the opportunity to go home. Why I went home is a very sensitive topic, but it had to do with the Seahawks, and I don't want to talk about it except to say we got robbed by piss-poor officiating. Also, I think Condoleeza Rice may have had something to do with it, because she was pulling for the Steelers, and we all know that, fair or not, when the Bush administration wants something, they always manage to get it regardless of fairness or objectivity. However, I'll save this tangent for my therapist. While I was home, I did have the chance to go out a couple of times and sample some of the local culture that I've missed since relocating to Nieuw Amsterdam. And now, watching this episode of "Primetime," I am reminded of many of the specimens I happened to witness back home in Pierce, both in terms of the sex traders and their unwilling whores. The dumb skankiness of the women there is precisely why the P-N-Dub has been a fertile ground for serial killers for the last fifty years. If forcible sex traffickers showed up, it would be a fucking free-for-all. Don't believe me? Consider the data I gathered myself:
1. On Friday night, I went out for drinks with HotLawyer, who probably knows way more about these sorts of seedy sex traffickers, because he ends up at work on Monday providing them with a vigorous defense. At the first bar where we elected to up the pathology score of our cirrhotic livers, we are immediately interrupted from our witty discourse by some super Spanaway bitch who had lost her cell phone. I allowed her to look under my chair for it, and despite the fact that she didn't see it, she was convinced that it would somehow miraculously appear. Over the course of the next half hour, this girl proceeded to pace back and forth determinedly along the length of the bar, telling everyone within earshot the melancholy tale of her lost cell phone, which had undoubtedly come off its belt clip on her patent pleather pants. She was so baleful yet overdone, she could have been rehearsing for her role as the chorus in a Baz Luhrmann retelling of an Aeschylus tragedy. And this bitch was SOOOOO Tacoma. She was wearing a bandana-style halter straight from the Pseudo-Biker/Retro Punk Flame Detail section of discount slutwear at the Tacoma Mall Hot Topic (you know, the same section where they sell the midriff-baring CBGB shirts). She definitely had a spiral perm teased to compete with some of the Amy Fishers I've seen running around on Long Island, but she had somehow corralled it into a ponytail. She fully had the body of a girl who uses diet drugs brewed in an empty gas can in someone's garage in Parkland with nail polish remover, Sudafed, and ammonia-based window cleaner. You can tell that this is one of those girls who think they are really badass and streetwise (and get away with it out at places like the Pub'N'Grub in Orting), but if they drunkenly drop their cell phone at the West End, it's a confounding mystery. Throw a three syllable word their way, and they are choking and sputtering like they do when they don't get a courtesy tap from their pimp/meth cooker. Throw a Bartles & Jaymes or a pinch of crank their way, or tell them that you're a roadie for Portrait of Poverty or whatever talentless band is rocking the Hell's Kitchen scene this week, and it's party time, cell phones be damned. I have no doubt that had I looked a little closer, she would have had little racing flames airbrushed on the $15 set of thick-ass acrylics she was sporting. However, I didn't bother to examine her manicure, because in the course of her searching for forensic evidence of her cell phone under our table, I also noticed that she had some of the most severe bacne I've ever seen, and from an epidemiological perspective, I was intrigued. It was so bad, it almost looked like the pictures of cutaneous anthrax that I show my classes of eighth grade microbiology geeks to gross them out. I wanted to shake her and say, "Fuck your cell phone...you should be looking for your topical antibiotics!" However, since I have not yet received a mandate to run around offering unsolicited instruction to the Typhoid Marys of the Tacoma bar scene, I decided to keep my opinion to myself, and just observe, or at least just make snide asides about it to HotLawyer. They say silence is golden (not that I would know anything about silence), and indeed, after some quick and quiet reflection, her gigantic ponytail made sense. If I detected a festering minefield of trapezial pox and still had either the cojones or the lack of decency to rock a backless halter, I'd make sure my hair was as distracting as possible as well. Either this bitch is incredibly dumb, or incredibly practical. I just can't decide which. Regardless, all a white slaver would have to do to suck this skank into his web of degradation would be to wave a random cell phone at her. She would bite for sure. Watch out, ditzy bitches at the West End.
2. Next, we went to another bar, where HotLawyer informed me there was a waitress who he thought was sexy, on the basis that she had a hot body. I guess her body was okay despite her otherwise forgettable looks, but it was awesome because she was obviously a lesbian. Tacoma is like the Ethiopia of hooking up: after you're hungry enough, even a spent mortar shell full of dirty gruel starts to look good (not that I'm criticizing...believe me, I've been there: I could write an epic poem replete with tragic tales of overcompensating tongue rings and inevitable urinary tract infections. And besides, HotLawyer ended up doing much better than E9 Lesbian that night anyhow). Anyway, this waitress validated my initial read on the situation, because when I invited her, she sat down and promptly started hitting on me. I mentioned that I used to work at another bar one street over in Tacoma...for about a month...three years prior...and she was still trying to seduce me with fantastical stories about her career ambition to work the party room at Stanley and Seafort's, a restaurant that is the gold standard for luxury in Tacoma strictly on the basis of geography and general big-fish-in-a-small-pondedness. They are located at the highest point in Tacoma (I don't know why that's a bragging point, it's not like it's the fucking Capitoline hill) and their double-negative-using waiters insult your intelligence with a highly sophisticated and refined degree of faux snobbery. Therefore, S&S is a sophisticated place, if only because you can pay $50 for an upsettingly overcooked steak (bitches, when I say rare, I mean that fucking piece of meat should be mooing and lowing at me like it is pissed the Christ child is taking up its valuable manger space, not prepared like the sterilized textured protein product that a Jack in the Crack grill jockey would give an inquisitive health inspector). Anyway, if a forcible sex trader were in the neighborhood, all he would have to do is introduce her to a hot chick, exhibit a slight interest in E9 Lesbian's waitressing goals, and the next thing she knows, she's owned by some dude named Yuri who may or may not be in the Red Mafiya and working the Reno strip giving $10 half-and-halfs. Again: watch yourself, ladies.
3. The next day, I realized to my chagrin that I had consumed entirely too much scotch the night before. For once, my behavior was thankfully not the problem. I didn't have regrettable sex, I didn't take my shirt off for the benefit of the Sanitation Workers Local #247, and I didn't drive drunk, at least not very far. However, I was trying to live up to my "I'm Razzy...who the fuck are you?" reputation, but as usual, Johnnie Walker decided that he was in charge of my ability to retain solid foods long after I had rolled out of his devilish embrace, smoked a cigarette, taken a shower, deleted his voicemails, and erased his number. Nonetheless, while I was trying to live up to my eminent reputation as a well of hilarity with HotLawyer and his twin brother Morrissey'sHair over lunch, I had to go suddenly vomit, courtesy of the world of hurt that the previous evening's drinking laid on me. I was thoroughly laid up by the weaning-off-of-scotch delirium tremens and after taking one look at my Mexican food, I had to run as fast as my stilettos would allow to the ladies room. I was trying to save face by vomiting quietly (shouldn't have tried, because I am incapable of doing anything quietly), and I noticed between dry heaves that a couple of women came in to change their screaming kids. They were busy ignoring said brats, while chatting aggressively with each other about which is better for "sexy" clothes, the Ross on 38th Street or the TJ Maxx across the street from where I went to high school. I almost ran out of there, as splashing my face and willing myself to maintain my coolness despite my hangover was about as successful as John Wayne Gacy's painting clowns to relieve his serial killer urges. These skanks in their silk-poly blend scarf/throw/shrugs with a heinous Miami Dolphins color schemes were talking about where they were going to take their boyfriend/baby daddies on their Mervyns-Sears-Penneys Tacoma Mall world tour. They are insecure, unattractive, and semi-literate type of bitches who bill their stretch marks as the hallmark of a hot body and leave their kids home alone on Saturday nights when they go out line dancing at McCabe's. Had I been a bottom-feeding woman-trader's teen-lurer I would have immediately commenced negotiating with these hos for the ownership rights to their already overweight children. Seriously, offer these bitches a lifetime supply of bootcut Arizona jeans, and they'll sell you whichever one of their accidental progeny you like. Beware, Tacoma. Not even your children are safe.
4. On Black Sunday (AKA the day of the Seahawks tragedy), I went to a classy establishment called "A's Place" in a town called Milton to watch the unfortunate football proceedings unfold with my friend MillerTime. This place is hilarious, because it's been open as long as I can remember, and it seems to be a revolving door for various owners, but they always retain some variation of the name "A's". I remember it being called "Mr. A's," "Wm. A's," "A's Steakhouse," and simply, "A's". Presently, it's "A's Place," and it's sufficiently casual for Sunday football, although they had some hilarious clip art of a wine bottle and a rose on their laminated menus as an attempt at classing up the joint. However, while their potato skins deserve a salute, it's no BB McGraw's, that's for sure. Adding to the check minus list was the fact that a girl I went to high school with worked there and, despite the fact that I probably never said two words to her while at B-Prep, she spent the fourth quarter bitching to MillerTime and myself about her ex-husband. Anyway, after hanging out with MillerTime pre-game and watching her curl her hair "really fast," which took approximately 45 minutes, involved three brushes, half a can of Sebastian shaping mist, a set of hot rollers, a straightening AND a curling iron (and girl, you know I love you and I think your hair always looks great, especially now that you've changed up your bangs, but for the last time, fixing your hair is NEVER a fast process and I'm never going to stop giving you shit about it), I needed to consume as many Coors Lights as rapidly as possible. Indeed, almost two hundred dollars' worth of Coors Light was consumed by five people including myself at our table (and at $8 a pitcher, that's a serious Rocky-tapping). After MillerTime and I managed to escape our fellow Bellarmine alumna and return our attention to the final moments of the travesty of justice that was Super Bowl XL, this haggard old drunk bitch came over and slurred at us, "Is this the table of asshole Steelers fans?" Wonderful observation skills, lady. Everyone at the table was wearing Hawks gear, including myself (and my vintage stretch Seahawks logo tee made my tits look HOT, by the way), so this was an incredibly stupid question. Considering I only saw one Steelers fan in the entire bar the whole day, and he was so overt about it he was wearing fake black-and-yellow dreadlocks and waving his Terrible Towel around, I don't know how she mistook us for him. I didn't want to get into it with her, though, because when drunk, I'm more lover than fighter, and my deft command of the English language would have been wasted on this woman. There's no sport in shooting fish in a barrel, anyway. She was wider than she was tall, was wearing a hideous blue-and-green track suit, and had a smeared Seahawk painted in drippy glitter on her jowly-ass cheek. Besides, I was so upset about staggering ratio of Seahawks-to-Steelers penalty flags in the game, I didn't really feel like speaking, so I just ignored her. MillerTime, however, was feeling her Irish, and says something along the lines of, "Are you a moron? Do we look like we're fucking Steelers fans?" This set old drunk hag off, and she starts in on us, calling us "punks," "assholes," and the like. MillerTime's boyfriend and I managed to settle her down, and the bar manager lured old drunk hag back to the bar with a domestic draft, and explained semi-apologetically that she was "a regular" (surprise, surprise) and that she'd overindulged in the drink. I thought that peace had resumed. WRONG. When MillerTime went to the bathroom, old drunk hag staggers over to me and goes, "So, who's the fucking bitch you're sitting with?" While I'm not going to fight just because some knuckle-dragging idiot annoys me, I'm also not going to sit around quietly and let said idiot brazenly insult one of my best girls without reprisal, either. So I stand up, summon all my magnificence, stick out my tits, and indicate that not only is the "fucking bitch" one of my best friends who I have known since CYO horse camp in the fifth grade, but if she knows what's good for her, she'll waddle back to her barstool before MillerTime gets back. Seeing that she was not going to find an ally in me, she did so. However, on our way out, she takes one last dig, proclaiming loudly and creatively that MillerTime is a "fucking bitch." I had to grab the back of MillerTime's Trufant away jersey to prevent a totally unnecessary exercise in bar pugilism. Clearly if this bitch could she would have sold MillerTime up the river.
The point here is that there is no shortage of dumb, unattractive twats to satisfy any possible fetish for conscripted prostitutes in my hometown. It's only a matter of time before the white slavers discover this hotbed of stank pussy ready to snatch off the street. God bless Pierce County. I'm homesick already.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
The Feminine Mystique is dead
I came into work today and checked my e-mail to see this gem from LL Cool Jew regarding the death of pioneering feminist and Smith alumna Betty Friedan:
"A brilliant student who had graduated summa cum laude from Smith College in 1942, Ms. Friedan* had trained as a psychologist but had never pursued a career in the field. When she wrote The Feminine Mystique, she was a suburban housewife and mother who supplemented her husband's income by writing freelance articles for women's magazines."
*...and one of the best preserved examples of the rare birth defect frogtoadwomanism - thereby permanently associating hideous deformity with feminism as she invented it. I always wonder why they don't put that achievement of hers in the headlines. At least Smith College, that factory of ugliness, gets a shout out...
"A brilliant student who had graduated summa cum laude from Smith College in 1942, Ms. Friedan* had trained as a psychologist but had never pursued a career in the field. When she wrote The Feminine Mystique, she was a suburban housewife and mother who supplemented her husband's income by writing freelance articles for women's magazines."
*...and one of the best preserved examples of the rare birth defect frogtoadwomanism - thereby permanently associating hideous deformity with feminism as she invented it. I always wonder why they don't put that achievement of hers in the headlines. At least Smith College, that factory of ugliness, gets a shout out...
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