RazzyBlog

I don't read the funny pages much these days, and one reason why is the worst comic strip ever created: "Cathy." Fuck "Cathy." It's this not-funny comic strip about a fat, ugly, insecure bitch named Cathy. Usually the strip involves four panels that progress as follows:

1. Cathy laments lifelong body image/weight problem.
2. Cathy gets on scale, observes her mammoth weight, and cries "Aack!"
3. Cathy goes to gym but leaves before exercising.
4. Cathy contemplates suicide while eating a gallon of rocky road in bed.

Or:

1. Cathy agonizes over what to wear on date with some bald, ugly hobbit of a man named "Irving" or something.
2. Cathy puts on miniskirt, observes her thunder thighs, and cries "Aack!"
3. Cathy dons sack-like dress reminiscent of Laura Ingalls Wilder 1870s plains attire with signature Six from "Blossom" circa 1991 daisy hat and goes on date with Irving, who does not talk.
4. Cathy contemplates suicide while eating a gallon of rocky road in bed.

Or:

1. Cathy agonizes over telling her pushy mother that she is still single while frantically cleaning her apartment to meet said mother's impossibly high standards.
2. Cathy sees sinkful of dirty dishes, observes the domestic evidence of her miserable solitary existence, and cries "Aack!"
3. Cathy tells her mother that she is dating a mystery doctor/lawyer/successful businessman who doesn't exist.
4. Cathy contemplates suicide while eating a gallon of rocky road in bed.

Guess what? A window into the life of a pathetic, socially retarded tub of lard who never gets laid isn't funny. Maybe it would be funny if there were a fifth panel featuring me killing Cathy in some way ripped off from a Road Runner cartoon (by lighting her on fire and sending her into a fireworks factory, tricking her into the LaBrea tar pits, or the classic dropping an anvil on her head). However, sadly that part of the comic always gets edited out. It really pisses me off that Cathy is (I presume) intended to appeal to single women. Bullshit. I don't relate to this bitch at all. If I react to my physical appearance with "Aack!" my immediate reaction would NOT be to hit the sheets with a bucket of ice cream. Go to the gym, dump that vapid asshole Irving, get a new haircut, get laid, and go be fucking ridiculously fabulous, you stupid bitch! Who wants to hang out with some dimple-assed heifer that does nothing but whine and freak out about her own easily rectifiable problems? Get a fucking life, Cathy!

I am amazed that people still read "Cathy," but apparently they do, because today I got a postcard from the U.S. Postal Service featuring a USPS-specific Cathy comic strip. What the fuck?! Who thought it would be a good idea to advertise flat-rate priority mail shipping boxes by featuring this fatass bitching about her weight? Why are American tax dollars paying for this? Surely the Postmaster General couldn't have believed this was a good idea that would sell more Priority Mail postage.

The premise of the postcard comic is that Cathy is glad she no longer has to subtract her weight from her weight plus her package to calculate postage, because this obsessive self-hating whale can't even mail her return size 14 mumu back to Chicos.com without getting on the scale and screaming "Aack!" Wow, thanks, U.S. Postal Service, for inventing your flat-rate priority mail boxes! Now Cathy has one less daily task in which she is confronted with her obesity problem, so she can just skip the "Aack!" and go straight to the Haagen Dazs. That's a product I know I want to consume. Where's the nearest post office...I feel like mailing something without weighing it right now!

This ad campaign is a fucking disaster. Next time I want a package shipped, it's FedEx all the way.

I'm not sure if this is a joke or not (I'm leaning toward not)...but it's hilarious.

This guy is amazing.

People always seem to think that graduate school is the same as any other school: you get summers off, there are ample week-long breaks, and national holidays are actually observed. I love it when people ask me things like, "How long is your program?" and "What are you doing this summer?" I'm working as a lifeguard at Jones Beach...I'm spending July in the Hamptons...I'm going to backpack through Europe...what do you think I'm doing, asshole?! I'm in GRADUATE SCHOOL! I'll be in lab. The agricultural academic calendar that gives you summers off for the harvest/some pointless internship does not apply here.

I think that many people reflect back to their undergraduate days and assume that my schooling now proceeds the same way. Believe me, I WISH it did. However, my undergraduate years seem like Pleasure Island in terms of the potential for sloth inherent in the curriculum. As an undergrad, skipping class is cool, drunken and uncouth behavior is laughed off, and the lowest standards for effort apply. However, if you are foolish enough to continue on to graduate school, you've grown a pair of donkey ears and are on a one-way trip to the motherfucking salt mines. Since many people seem to be confused about the differences between the undergraduate experience and my situation as a fake doctor-in training, let me clarify. Compare my average day as an undergraduate with my average day now:

*7:00 a.m.*

Undergrad: I hit the snooze button, the first of many times.

Grad: I struggle out of bed and turn on NY1 and/or last night's "Sportscenter."

*8:00 a.m.*

Undergrad: I finally turn off the alarm and immediately flip on the TV and switch to the FX Network, where the first of four "Beverly Hills, 90210" reruns is beginning. My boyfriend tries to steal the remote, and I tell him to get dressed, so he can drive me to my 9:00 a.m. physics class. Then we probably have sex.

Grad: I walk the dogs, indisputably the highlight of my morning.

*8:30 a.m.*

Undergrad: I smoke a cigarette, run downstairs to the Jordan House kitchen for a cup of coffee, and probably take a bong hit or two. I decide to earn that D and not attend physics class, and tell my boyfriend to have a nice day as he gets dressed to leave. I stay on my righteously uncomfortable futon and watch "90210," because Donna's virginity is being threatened by the campus rapist, David Silver is playing backup keyboards for Babyface, Brandon is having a moral dilemma and/or affair, Steve Sanders is wreaking good-natured havoc with his brothers at the KEG house, Valerie is faking pregnancies and extorting money out of sleazy businessmen, Dylan's back on the bottle, Nat might lose the Peach Pit, Better Than Ezra is playing a gig at the After Dark, and Kelly is getting raped/joining a cult/getting burned in a fire/doing mountains of cocaine/being stalked by a crack-addled lesbian/dodging unwanted sexual advances from her boss/deciding between Brandon and Dylan. In other words, way more compelling material than deriving Maxwell's equations.

Grad: I am on my way to lab. I grab a newspaper on my way into the subway station, leap a puddle of urine, and dodge an aggressive mob of Jehovah's Witnesses in my attempts to reach the A train uptown platform.

*9:00 a.m.*

Undergrad: The second episode of "90210" is beginning. I am wholly enthralled, without a worry in the world about the possibility of missing class. In fact, I might just skip whatever bullshit humanities class comes after physics. "Philosophy of Religion"?? That has "winging the final paper" written all over it!

Grad: I arrive at 168th Street, and purchase a muffin, juice, and coffee. I then walk to work, wearing an angry face while darting hordes of homeless people, ambulance drivers, and uptight medical students.

*10.00 a.m.*

Undergrad: I take a leisurely shower.

Grad: I finish my covert breakfast in lab (eating at the bench is discouraged for safety reasons, but whatever...I've had my polio vaccine). I've spent the last hour reading the "eTOCs" (e-mailed table of contents) from such riveting publications as The Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences, Journal of Virology, Cell, Journal of Immunology, and Nature Reviews in Microbiology. I then pull on my latex gloves and get to work. Today is an extra special, super fantastic, overwhelmingly fun day of mouse killing. I prepare my bench for the massacre of Mus musculus.

*11:00 a.m.*

Undergrad: I wander downstairs for a leisurely brunch.

Grad: I anesthetize my first mouse. Today I am seeing if their serum (the liquid component of blood) inhibits rhinovirus replication in the mouse respiratory tract, which might explain why my mice haven't gotten the cold yet and I haven't graduated. To collect serum, I have to exsanguinate the mice by a technique called "terminal cardiac puncture." This is one of my least favorite mouse-killing procedures. I have to deeply anesthetize the mice, which is tricky. There's a reason why anesthesiologists are the highest-paid doctors. It's tough to figure out how to knock them fully out without killing them by overdose. Once I have them unconscious, I have to palpate them (feel their chest for their heartbeat), and blindly try to stick a 26-gauge needle into their left ventricle to suck out as much blood as possible before either they die of blood loss, my needle slips out of the heart chamber, or their cardiovascular system decides to collapse entirely. I've actually gotten pretty good at doing this efficiently, but there's really not much blood to get out of a mouse, and I have to kill several to get enough serum for my experiment. This is because, as I just stated, anesthesia is a fine art. If the mice O.D., they are useless to me because their hearts stop beating. I rely on the mouse's systolic pressure to pump my syringe full of mouse blood, so I unfortunately tend to err on the side of not killing them. That means I get a mouse waking up in the middle of bleeding it to death via cardiac puncture, so in the interest of being humane, I have to flip the mouse over rapidly, and kill it by cervical dislocation (breaking its neck). I feel really bad when this happens. Even though I hate mice and as far as I'm concerned they are almost on par with cockroaches, I would hate to wake up with a fucking needle being clumsily jabbed at my heart, and I feel some compassion towards them. Plus, when they wake up, they jerk, I lose the sweet spot for blood collection, and I end up with way less serum.

*12:45 p.m.*

Undergrad: I go to my afternoon class, "Literary Anti-Semitism," because my friends LL Cool Jew and Wmania are also in it, and the professor is a frightening German man who once shouted at me for passing notes in class. We make classless jokes about Hitler's sanguine love for Richard Wagner and get a vigorous scolding for disrespectful cracks about the dialogue in Parsifal.

Grad: I've finally finished bleeding all the mice, which took extra long, because I'm also extracting their tibias. I am using these mice for two different experiments, so I'm taking their bone marrow as well as their serum. You would think that a big leg bone like the tibia would just pop right out, but it's really like trying to extract a splinter out of a chewed up piece of gum. There's tendons, muscles, and sticky shit everywhere. It takes forever, and it annoys me.

*2:00 p.m.*

Undergrad: I finally go to the lab that I'm doing my "special studies" project in. I turn off my advisor's Alternapop radio station and listen to a Guns 'n' Roses CD. I dick around on the computer for awhile, then streak out a few plates of bacteria. Then I dick around on the computer some more, and boss the underclassmen in lab around because I can. I mean, I'm lazy, but I'm still Razzy, and they are mousey Smith girls hesitant to contradict my iron will.

Grad: I run to the gym because otherwise I don't know when I will have time to go. The bone marrow extraction can wait an hour, and I have to wait for the blood to clot in order to get the serum. I sweat my tits off on the Gauntlet, because it's approximately 100 degrees in the non-air conditioned gym.

*2:30 p.m.*

Undergrad: I throw some shit into the autoclave and get ready to T.A. the immunology class. That involves walking around and showing people how pipets work and teaching them to multiply by a factor of 10. I shoot my mouth off about antibody agglutination or some bullshit and impress anal-retentive Smith bitches who would otherwise hate me. I secretly hope the labrats taking immunology finish early, so I can get back to Jordan House for afternoon "90210" and Pabst Blue Ribbon with the girls on my floor.

Grad: I return from the gym, spin my serum for 20 minutes in a centrifuge to remove clotted blood cells and other solid debris, and prepare the tissue culture hood for a big serum-incubating, cell-extracting-stravaganza.

*4:15 p.m.*

Undergrad: I arrive back at Jordan House, grab beer from my minifridge, and head to watch "90210" with Martindale, a neighbor who actually attends less class than me. She is an English major, and has mastered the fine art of writing a solid C-worthy paper about The Canterbury Tales the night before it is due. She can't be bothered with class because much of her time is spent drinking, fucking, and fighting. I like her style. Usually when I get to her place for afternoon 9-er, she is just waking up. Today is no exception. She rolls a joint and we make fun of Tori Spelling's hair color, then debate the eternal question: who was a bigger bitch, Shannen Doherty/Brenda or Tiffani-Amber Thiessen/Valerie? I always go with Valerie...that girl was conniving!

Grad: I finish diluting serum and begin pipetting virus into it. The ultra cold freezer where we keep frozen cells begins to alarm incessantly. I go check it out and realize that this is because the liquid nitrogen tank connected to it is empty. I leave my experiments for 20 minutes to embark on a fruitless quest to tell my boss (because he might be able to fix the problem), but he has disappeared. I finally give up the hunt and return to my experiments. I'm pissed because I have to get up periodically to silence the alarm, which is an incredibly loud, high-pitched beep that makes me murderously irritated.

*6:00 p.m.*

Undergrad: "90210" is finally over for the day, so Martindale and I go downstairs to get dinner.

Grad: I finally get my serum/virus set up and leave it to incubate. Now I start extracting bone marrow from mouse tibias. This isn't that hard, but you have to be careful or you'll wind up with a pathetic cell yield, or contaminating your culture with yeast, mold, and/or bacteria. So I have to sterilize scissors and tweezers (or forceps, to use their science name) with alcohol, hold the tibia with the tweezers, clip off the ends of the bone (the epiphyses), insert a needle, and flush out the marrow with a few mLs of culture medium. Bits of bone fragment and remaining connective tissue fly everywhere as I clip off the epiphyses, and as usual I manage to spray RPMI 1640 medium all over the tissue culture hood. I snap a bone in half by grabbing it too forcefully with the tweezers, and curse mice for evolving such pitiful tiny limbs in the first place. Then I curse Charles Darwin, for discovering evolution. Then I curse God, for inventing all of the above. Then I wallow in grad school hatred for several minutes.

*7:00 p.m.*

Undergrad: Dinner is over and I am sitting in the hallway of my dorm, smoking cigarettes with my neighbors in the bay window at the end of the hall. We aren't supposed to smoke in public spaces, but we do anyway, and tell the uptight girl who moved in at the end of the hall to fuck off when she asks us to stop. Several of us then go off to my room to smoke more pot. We realize there is some sort of feminist rally happening in the Quad outside. (I never understood the point of these demonstrations at Smith, since obviously most people are pro-woman at a women's college, but it happened all the time). I put my speakers up to the window and blast "Bitches Ain't Shit but Hos and Tricks", "Ain't No Fun (if the Homies Can't Have None)" and/or any Too $hort song. The demonstrators shake their fists angrily at us and shout at us to be quiet. We turn the volume up. My friends and I all have a laugh at their expense. Stupid Smith girls!

Grad: I finish with the bone marrow and get back to my virus/serum experiment. I set up plaque assays, annoyed because they will take at least another hour. I am starving and cranky, and it occurs to me that I'm missing "Jeopardy!" Fuck!

*8:00 p.m.*

Undergrad: My boyfriend picks me up and we go to Packard's for drinks. Benzo tells me his latest theory on why this is the year the Red Sox will finally win the World Series (always a variation of the "Two words: Pedro Martinez" theme), and his similar theories on why his rotisserie baseball league team, Chin Music, will triumph as well. Then we gossip, argue good-naturedly about politics, and make fun of people.

Grad: I'm really starving now but I have to wait for the agar to harden on my plaque assays before I can go home. I remember that I can't go right home, because I have to go to the bank and grocery store first. I reflect on how pissed the dogs must be that they haven't been walked yet.

*9:00 p.m.*

Undergrad: I'm still drinking at Packard's and having a grand time.

Grad: I am finally heading into the subway to go home. As I'm going down the stairs to the turnstile, I can hear the sound of a train pulling into the station. Despite running, I am burdened with groceries and my gym bag. I fumble with my MetroCard trying to get through the turnstile, clamor through, and run to the downtown platform, only to see the tail lights of a departing A train, mocking me as they disappear down the subway tunnel. FUCK! I wait for the next train and try to calm down by reading my book about football.

*10:00 p.m.*

Undergrad: Still drinking.

Grad: After changing into comfortable clothes, walking the dogs, and eating, I finally open my first sweet Heineken. Then I remember with alarm that I forgot to take care of a few e-mail and supply ordering issues at lab, so I sit down at my computer and get back into science mode. I realize as I'm shopping for protein gels at the Invitrogen website that I missed tonight's all-new episode of "Deadliest Catch." Dammit! Someone was supposed to get injured this episode, and the Cornelia Marie's Opilio crab quotas could be in jeopardy if they are a deckhand short! I wonder what happened. I curse graduate school for interrupting my eminently important television routine.

*11:00 p.m.*

Undergrad: Still drinking, and possibly ordering nachos before the kitchen closes.

Grad: I realize that I haven't caught up with my parents in awhile, so I call my mother. She sends me to voicemail! Are you kidding, Mom? Voicemail?! I'm your fucking firstborn!

*12:00 a.m.*

Undergrad: Since bars in Assachussetts close at 1 (goddamned Puritan blue laws), Benzo and I settle our bar tab and go back to my crib at Jordan House, where we have sex. Then I smoke a cigarette, we watch a little "Sportscenter," and we go to sleep.

Grad: I attempt a blog entry chronicling the pitiful exercise in tedium that is my life. I decide I feel too exhausted to be inspired, and go to bed. I'm too tired to even masturbate. You know things have hit rock bottom when you can't summon the mental energy or concentration required to rub one off. I then try to read several passages from my Fagles translation of The Iliad, but the words blur together. I resign myself to just sleep without thrilling tales of war heroics, fickle Olympian god drama, and the bastardly ways of Agamemnon.

I hope this makes the distinction between the workloads and general atmosphere of undergraduate education versus grad school. Better put, this is why graduate school SUCKS a thousand times harder. Sure, I had to go to classes back in the day at Smith, but they were pretty much optional. I did about three hours of "work" each day, as opposed to the backbreaking 10-12 hour days I pull now. I enjoyed regular breaks, and three months off each summer. Granted, I usually did some kind of bogus internship or research fellowship during the summer months, but that was when I actually thought benchwork was fun and I'd spend the summer working on experiment that now I'm expected to do in two days. Also due to my intern status, there would always be someone else in charge of killing mice, working with radiation, or otherwise performing thankless and dangerous tasks for me. If you can avoid it, don't go to graduate school. It's not the keg parties, the daily routine of sleeping late, or the regular hanging out/loitering you remember. It's (given our meager stipend) very nearly slave labor. Save yourself and just get a job, because that's WAY more fun, the pay is much better, and it's way less work.

Since putting up the Razzy MySpace page, I've rapidly amassed many "friends" I've never met before. Out of all my 50-something "friends", I only actually know like 15 of them. As I mentioned before, I did this to promote RAZZY.org, so I add everyone who wants to e-befriend me, and fortunately that has worked in terms of generating increased traffic at my site. However, every time I log on, one of these new "friends" of mine has written some incredibly stupid bulletin board entry.

For example, today I logged on and saw that some guy wanted a critique of his writing. I took one look and (while his writing was thankfully free of LOLs and alots), my first response was "Are you fucking kidding me?" This brilliant essay was this dude's thesis on why he is now an atheist, and I'm almost completely certain that the whole time he was writing it, he was thinking, "God, I'm so smart. This is, like, going to blow everybody's minds." Well, mine was not blown.

Journey to Freedom: My Escape from the Prison of Faith to the Independence of Free-thought

The greatest day of my life was one, nearly three years ago, when I decided that this life is my own. A day when, in a moment of astonishing clarity, I realized there are no supernatural forces, angels or demons, acting as a compass to steer me in either a safe or perilous course through the turbulent waves of the world we live in, a world rife with tremendous beauty and terrible heartache. There is no God in heaven to thank for my astounding successes, no Devil in hell to blame for my personal failures, and no cushy failsafe in the will of the Almighty to fall back on as a crutch in times of difficulty. The only intervention I can expect is the kind that I create; the only being who has the power to shape my future is me. It is my responsibility, and mine alone, to carve a niche into this world that I can stand in and proudly call my own. After decades of struggling with my childhood beliefs in such fallacious concepts like the immortality of the soul and the raging hellfire of eternal damnation, in one fell swoop, I tore away the shackles of my religious convictions to finally escape the prison that held me in bondage for nearly twenty years of my life. It was on this day that, fleeing from the hypocrisies and inadequacies of my old faith, I took my first step on a journey of self-discovery as a freethinker and professed atheist. Within the blink of an eye my conceptions of everything, from my opinion of homosexuals to my general outlook on life, changed forever in an unbelievably dramatic fashion. I was a person reborn in the golden light of intellectual reason and who, after a decade of battling the teachings instilled within me by my long history as a devoted Christian, triumphantly discarded my old values, old rituals, and old religion. And, though the road has been hard and the journey long since my transformation, I have absolutely no regret for making this incredible trek that defied the sacred traditions of my friends, my family, and my God. It was on this day, despite all of the opposition warring against me, that my life really began.

If Hallmark devoted a section to selling cards or stationery extolling the trite renunciation of cherished religious values, this would undoubtedly be the signature piece of the collection. Clearly this brilliant philosopher just finished reading The Da Vinci Code and decide to bite Dan Brown's writing style to share the story of his rebirth in "the golden light of intellectual reason." Nothing piques my interest more than first-person accounts of renouncing Christianity inspired by the music of Korn. I get the feeling he thinks people will read this cliche-fest and say, "Wow, look at the staggering genius on this dude! This guy is DEEP!" (This guy is a sophomore at some shitty backwoods college I've never heard of in North Carolina, and on his profile says he wants to meet Nietzsche. Yawn.) When I was in high school I declared myself an atheist, too. I also started smoking, dressing in the most heinous corduroy pants sold by the Salvation Army, reading Simone De Beauvoir, and listening to entirely too much Team Dresch and Bikini Kill. Then I turned 18, and with the wisdom that comes with age, decided that I wasn't being a "freethinker" unfettered by the "shackles of my religious convictions," I was just being an obnoxious tool who wasn't very much fun to party with.

This sagacious philosopher impressed the hell out of me with his keen insights in his last bulletin board posting, where he asked if anyone in North Carolina would be interested in having a threesome with him and his fat girlfriend. Since he's one of these MySpace friend collectors with 600 friends, I'm sure the ladies will be beating down his door to get it on with Tubby and this "5'9"/slim/slender" master of the tired "fuck Christianity" essay with no paragraph breaks. I'm sure that with so many friends, he'll be able to dig up some desperate country bitches unaware that this motherfucker's deep God-spurning convictions shamelessly plagiarize every interview Marilyn Manson has ever given on the subject that will gladly drop trou for him and his porky lady.

Over the weekend, I went out for drinks with my ex-boyfriend Benzo and the Gossman, another old friend from my Smith/Northampton days. We were reminiscing about the restaurant where Benzo used to work, this burrito place where guys like Mr. I-Want-To-Meet-Nietzsche would come in all the time and try to buy ridiculous amounts of food for spare change. I mockingly said something like, "Hey Benzo, what can I get for 75 cents that's vegan?" and he responded, "My scorn." That's exactly how I feel about this assclown. He gets nothing but my contemptuous disdain.

This is why I didn't want to join MySpace. Because people are fucking morons, and just as I suspected, they are on MySpace in droves. Seriously, I would rather read some James Blunt wannabe's postings about what an original sound he has compared to every other whiny emo-bitch than this idiot's musings about his journey from faith. Save it for your philosophizing class at your unaccredited college, you dumbass.

Summertime came to Harlem this weekend. In addition to the miserable NYC summer-esque weather (80 degrees, 75% humidity), sidewalk barbecues and popped fire-hydrants were in abundance. I enjoy taking in the sights and sounds of my neighborhood when it's so busy, but I hate walking my dogs through it.

For one thing, the number of available discarded chicken bones increases exponentially, as both dogs will dart off for a prize piece of garbage food, requiring advanced and often mechanically challenging leash management skills. When they dart off to consume said edible refuse, they do so unexpectedly, often causing me to experience the sensation of one or both arms being yanked from their sockets. Also, the park gets really crowded, and a lot of the people populating it seem to be scared of Caesar. I can't understand this, because Caesar is the silliest (albeit most devastatingly handsome) dog in the world. He loves going to the park, and when we're there he always has his tongue (which is on par with Gene Simmons's in terms of length) hanging out the side of his mouth, a big doggity grin on his face, and his tail wagging frenziedly. He's a curious fetch aficionado, not a freaking pit fighter. Does this goofball look scary to you?



Because he is a 110-pound German Shepherd-Rottie mix, I think that people are prejudiced towards him because of his appearance as such. The dogophobes see his massive frame come trotting toward them, and presumably envision the encounter proceeding something like this:

Despite my assurances to frightened bystanders that Caesar is not trained in Abu Ghraib prisoner of war interrogation techniques, the dogophobes always stare at me reproachfully and alarmedly until we pass. I usually have to find some out-of-the-way corner of the park populated only by sleeping bums to let him off the leash so he can chase sticks and squirrels without eliciting ire and/or stark terror from my fellow parkgoers.

Tonight, all the dogophobes at the park were provided with ample evidence that Caesar is not only a gentle giant, but is in fact a huge wimp. Thunderstorms were blowing in, and the second we walked outside I knew it was going to be a short walk. As we got to the park, several huge bolts of lightning rent the sky, followed by several incredibly loud, booming peals of thunder. Caesar immediately turned tail and tried to run back to the apartment building. I gave him a sharp correction on the leash, and resolved to finish our walk, so at least he and Chingy! would get a chance to piss. As the thunderstorm grew more intense and it started to drizzle, Caesar started whining really loudly. By "really loudly" I mean it sounded like audio feedback played through the speakers at Giant Stadium. While we walked past the playground where a group of die-hard BBQ-ers were huddling out of the rain, one woman observed, "That dog sounds like he's in pain." I tried to explain about his fear of thunder and loud, startling noises, but all I got was a look of communal reproach from the people watching us. Great. The only way I can make people not be scared of Caesar is to have them suspect that I'm somehow abusing him.

My dog is a total wuss, and people should just recognize that and stop freaking out whenever they see him. In fact, just now Caesar got scared by another thunderclap and jumped under my desk, because hiding under my feet is the only way he can stay safe from the loud scary noises. So to all my neighbors: stop discriminating against him for his appearance. He's the biggest pussy this side of Convent Ave.

On Kate and Camilla's nerve.com blog, they just posted a photo of another jerker. These whackers (guys who pay them to professionally photograph them jacking off) started off being the bread and butter of their small business, but KatieScarlett said now that they're getting more fashion and gashion (naked pictures of me)-type work, they can get out of the jerker game. I think they're getting rather sick of it.

Anyway, to spice up their most recent money shot with some verse, BloodyTosser wrote some of her famous porn poetry to accompany it. I found her latest masterpiece something I could especially identify with, given my recent run-in with Facial Boy at a downtown Dunkin Donuts:

Take a Load Off
By Camilla AKA BloodyTosser

"Here's mud in your eye".
Said the girl to the guy
After wiping his giz from her occulum.

"I'm not any prude,
But I think it quite rude
That you blind me with your steaming load of cum!"

"I'll swallow your load
Like the horniest of toad
But I ask you, quite simply, to aim it."

Now I can't see a thing
And for Christ it does sting,
And this Visine does nothing to tame it."

I can SOOOO relate. Man, I'm lucky to have such clever bitches for friends!

When I returned from my vacation in the P-N-Dub earlier this month, I had a week's worth of mail to go through. One particular piece caught my eye and made me say, "Son of a bitch bastard!" I pulled out the very official-looking mail to confirm that my greatest dread with regard to living in a democratic society had finally been realized: I was summoned for jury duty.

I've never wanted to fulfill this civic obligation, because there's one thing serving on a jury is famous for: a LOT of sitting around, doing nothing, and not having phone, television, or computer access. Granted, I am an enthusiastic and voracious reader, but how many books am I going to have to tote around? In eight hours of nonstop reading, I can probably get through 1-2 books. I anticipated today with the greatest loathing, figured it would be the first of a minimum of three days where I'd be restless, fidgety, and bored out of my mind. Instead, my day was like a fucking "Seinfeld" episode. Well, except probably less funny, but it was hilarious to me. I had no idea that today was going to be out-of-control randomly absurd, complete with multiple celebrity sightings, an appearance on the local news, and to start the morning off right, a jarring walk down the memory lane that is my little black book.

I woke up with the sun because my summons indicated in extremely imperative legalese that failure to appear in the jury room at precisely 8:45 a.m. would result in severe penalties to the tune of $1000 and/or a night at the Tombs. My criminal record is limited to a non-arrestworthy $250 citation for getting caught with a half-smoked joint, and a Smith College judicial board hearing in 1998 where I was prosecuted by a tribunal of uptight transgendered bitches for possession of candles and a class D substance, found guilty on both counts, and punished by loss of seniority in the spring housing lottery. I'm pleasantly amazed that my record is so spare and relatively untarnished. Therefore, I'm not looking to round out my criminal resume with a contempt charge or whatever happens when you skip out on jury duty, and figured that I had better heed the strong language of the summons and get up at the cock's crow, which in NYC is the sound of garbage trucks. Rising early would give me ample time to walk the dogs, get dressed in a manner "respectful to the court" (my shirt had a respectfully deep neckline, because that's how I roll), get all the way downtown, get some coffee, possibly get lost, get through security, and find the jury room.

I was tired from waking up so early, and the commute from Sugar Hill to Tribeca is very long. I spent the whole ride fantasizing about the gigantic cup of coffee I was going to chug as soon as I got off the train. As I emerged from the subway at Chambers Street, a wonderful sight more miraculous than Mary at Medjugorie appeared to me: a gleaming Dunkin Donuts, on the other side of the street. Score! I marched promptly over there and purchased the largest coffee they had. I was almost to the door when I heard my name being called.

I turned around and saw a generally unremarkable guy in a suit standing there, and for a second I wondered who the fuck he was. He obviously knew me, as he was looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to greet him in return. He seemed vaguely familiar, so I spent a few seconds trying to figure out how I knew him. Suddenly recognition hit me with chilling horror: I was standing face to face with Facial Boy! Of all the ways I could have POSSIBLY started the day off, I end up in the unlikely scenario of being caught off-guard by a discarded trick before I've had the opportunity to ingest any caffeine. I was not at the top of my game in terms of scathing repartee. All I could manage was, "Uh....(how do I get out of here...think, Razzy, think!)...hi."

"You never called me back," he said. I inwardly groaned, and almost referred him to this website for an explanation. Then I thought that might be a longer conversation than I wanted to have. So I kept it terse and uninviting.

"No, I didn't." I said in a curt tone, and there was an awkward pause. Maybe he wanted an apology or something...well, I'm not sorry, so tough shit, bitch! I then turned around to go, and we exchanged some insincere "take cares," and I immediately cut over to City Hall Park to smoke a cigarette and internally freak out for a second. I figured that running into Facial Boy was a very bad omen. The likelihood of running into a random one-night stand on an island of 1.5 million people (3 million on a work day) in a city of 8 million people in a Dunkin Donuts I'd never been to before on the day I just happened to be summoned to jury duty while in a slow-witted state was surely very low. Even though I suck at math, I realize that there are a lot of variables in that probability equation that make this run-in on par oddswise with winning the Powerball jackpot. Except instead of becoming an overnight millionaire, I won a perturbed mental state. After I'd had a little more coffee, I started to get pissed at myself for not coming up with something more snappy that would have left Facial Boy with proverbial egg on his face, much as he once left his demon seed on mine. I finally consoled myself with the fact that at least he got my meaning that he wasn't repeat material, and prepared myself for Jurorpalooza '06.

I tried to get psyched up for jury service by thinking of that narrative at the beginning of "Law and Order" episodes. "In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crimes, and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories. Dun-DUNT." My attempts at getting excited were slightly bolstered when I walked past the federal courthouse where both Lil' Kim AND Martha Stewart received their prison sentences. Plus, the courthouse seemed appropriately courthouse-y, what with lots of columns and poor lighting and all.

However, as soon as I got inside the hall of justice at 60 Centre Street, I realized that I was in the civil court, and would thus not get to see the real-life equivalent of A.D.A. Jack McCoy tear a defendant's story to shreds on the stand. I also quickly realized that my paranoia about being on time was unfounded. The jury clerks didn't even show up until 9:15, and the jurors themselves filtered in leisurely throughout the hour-long orientation.

The orientation consisted of a hilarious video entitled "Your Turn!" First, Ed Bradley from "60 Minutes" came on and gave us the world history of different justice systems, including awesome reenactments of Moors chopping off various thieves' hands, Spanish Inquisitors weighing guilt versus innocence via the "trial by fire" method, and a mob of toothless medieval villagers drowning witches. Ed Bradley then asked, "Was this fair and impartial? They thought so." Next, the video showed a bunch of modern jurors echoing my sentiments about being called to jury duty. One man said, "When I got my summons, my heart sank," a sentiment to which I could entirely relate. In an attempt to convince annoyed prospective jurors that they are doing an extremely important service, Bradley provided more history about why juries are important. After dropping numerous Aristotle quotes, he attempted to rally prospective jurors' patriotism by attributing the success of the American Revolution to the jury trial. I mean, fuck the Minutemen...it was a jury of some rebel colonist's peers that really stuck it to the Crown! Then Diane Sawyer appeared to explain what we should expect from jury service, namely that it is the "theater in which a democratic society administers justice." She characterizes the trial as "a final showdown" between the people of the state of New York and a criminal, or, as in my situation, two assholes suing each other. "You are not just sitting and waiting, but playing an indispensable role in our justice system," Sawyer crowed, then added, "And you're most likely going to find it fascinating." After this pump-up, the Chief Justice of New York's State Supreme Court started explaining why jury service is more fun than Disneyland, and not at all a pain in the ass. In fact, even rich people, doctors, and judges are required to show up for jury duty nowadays, and they don't mind because JURY DUTY RULES! And with recent improvements in summonsing, it's "now more convenient than ever" (less sequestering!). After this video and despite my best efforts to convince myself that I was in for a thrilling treat, I remained unconvinced that jury duty was going to be better than sex, so I sighed and sunk into my chair for three hours of reading. I finished one book before it was even lunch, and wasn't even called to the selection room.

By the time lunch rolled around, I was overly ready to get the fuck out of the courthouse. So I hit a nearby deli, and crushed a turkey sandwich while sitting in the sun. After lunch (which was thankfully 2 hours long), I started feeling uncomfortably stuffy and sleepy, so I decided to take a nice, long stroll around the hood. Chinatown was just a few blocks away, and there's always lots of exciting things to see there, so I headed up Centre Street. As I passed 100 Centre Street, the criminal courthouse, I noticed there was a big commotion. In fact, an impromptu press conference was just starting, so I decided to watch. Some bouncer shot up a nightclub in Chelsea last night, and today was his arraignment. Bouncers have been a much-maligned group in recent weeks on account of another, totally different bouncer allegedly kidnapping, raping, and strangling a woman, then duct-taping her head and dumping her in a ditch in some shitty, obscure part of Brooklyn. Therefore, the local media was eager to get the scoop on the latest murderous bouncer. And because of my close proximity to the defense attorney giving the press conference, I ended up on NY1 tonight for like 0.05 seconds (well, the camera blurred past me as the cameraman focused in on the lawyer speaking)! I'm famous!

After that, I just walked around for about an hour. I walked up to Little Italy, then cruised through Chinatown, and finally around City Hall. As I passed City Hall, I swear I saw Gloria Steinem (Smith '56). I'm positive that it was her because I've seen her before...she was always running around Smith's campus since she is their most visible obnoxious alumna and the college was always giving her pointless awards for whatever the hell it is that she does these days. I noticed that girlfriend wasn't looking so hot. Granted, Gloria's always managed to rock some of the most unflattering corduroy-trimmed denim jacket/batik wraparound combos in the history of bad womynist fashion, but now she's REALLY looking haggard. It's time to shelve that bra-burning pride and hit the Botox, sister!

Between Facial Boy, the press conference, and Gloria, I figured my quota for weird stochastic eventfulness was filled, and I went back to the courthouse. I was about to go in, except I noticed some tents erected there. At first I thought it might be some sort of gum and newspaper vendor who might be able to sell me an Economist to spice up my afternoon reading. However, when I peered in the tent, I only saw a bunch of video equipment and...Billy Bob Thornton and Susan Sarandon?! What are they doing here? And Christ on a cross, Billy Bob is skinny! Mary-Kate Olsen looks like a tanker truck coated with lard in comparison. That dude needs to EAT. How does the cracker equivalent of a Somali refugee end up banging a sickeningly hot piece of ass like Angelina Jolie? They were married for 2 years, for God's sake! Life isn't fair.

Anyway, after my brief taste of bystander stardom and basking in the presence of the many "celebrities" hanging around the courthouse district, I reported for my afternoon session of jury duty only to get the best news of the day. On account of the holiday weekend, none of the judges were scheduling any jury selections until next Tuesday, when another sorry crop of jurors are due to report. Therefore, we were relieved from service with the thanks of the court, and were guaranteed to not receive a summons for FOUR YEARS! Hot. As much as I suspected jury duty was going to blow, and as much as it got off on the wrong fucking foot due to the Facial Boy run-in, jury duty was the most entertaining crappy chore/day off from lab in a long while, and I got to be a responsible citizen. It's way more fun than voting!

Jodie Foster was slated to speak at my commencement ceremony at Smith. However, after rampant rumors of her lesbish ways, she decided that speaking at Smith commencement double-ought would not be the optimal way of maintaining her in-the-closet status. So the bitch backed out, and to replace her Smith brought in Judy Chicago, an obscure femi-nazi artist most famous for her 1970s collection of vagina-shaped ashtrays named for prominent feminist icons, entitled "The Dinner Party":

Seriously, have you ever seen anything more stupid? Smith claimed that Jodie Foster's sudden departure from the much-touted celebri-commencement was due to "scheduling conflicts," and then they hired this last-minute bitch instead. Judy Chicago's commencement speech was essentially a tirade about how "the most pernicious lie" told to my generation is that we could have a family and a career (not both, consistent with the pucker-faced, undersexed bitterness characterizing the good old days of womyn's lib). So we better choose which path we're taking now, because Judy Chicago got shafted by the man, and therefore my class would benefit immensely from her transition lens-wearing voice of experience. This entirely fruitless advice blizzard was followed by an hour of ranting about her mortgage payments. Why did she bother? There's no way I'm heeding the sage wisdom of a bitch with teeth so bad that I've seen better on British people:I was consoled only by the fact that I'd smuggled four bottles of champagne (fringe benefit of shapeless graduation attire) under my robe, and was thus drunkenly able to ignore our commencement speaker's pointless attempts to alter the myth that she is a social outcast who never gets laid. Plus, the day previously, I'd won an award for "excellence in research in microbiology/immunology" (a shoo-in, since I was the only one studying said subjects) to the tune of $600, and I immediately cashed the prize money check and purchased a keg. Since I'd spent the last 24 hours guzzling Natty Light from that keg, and upon hearing the first notes of "Pomp and Circumstance" I cracked the first bottle of communal champers, the message of my commencement speech was the last thing on my mind. Smith could have hired Weird Al Yankovic to provide us with graduation day words of wisdom, and I wouldn't have given a fuck. I certainly wasn't missing Jodie Foster, since I spent this major event getting absolutely plastered.

Now I know what I missed out on in terms of semi-famous, semi-smart commencement speakers. This year, Jodie Foster was able to fulfill her obligations to speak at U-Penn, since she hasn't been getting much well-lauded movie work lately. I finally found out how badly Smith got shafted by Clarice Starling at my graduation ceremony. To my family: I'm sorry that you flew all the way to Assachusetts, only to not witness Hodie Foster sing the lyrics to Eminem's "Lose Yourself."

All the bitches complaining about how Judy Chicago couldn't step to Jodie Foster in terms of unattractive Sapphic iconography should just watch this. For the first time in my life, I'm saying, thank you, Vagina Ashtray! You gave a GREAT speech, and you seemed really smart. By comparison, anyway.

Usually I don't take requests, but today I figured I'd make an exception after I received the following e-mail:

RazzMaTazz,
Would you kindly post a blog entry ripping on people with HORRIBLE FUCKING GRAMMAR and/or SPELLING. I'm sick to death of these "your a asshole" type comments I keep seeing. The problem, as you might suspect, is ENDEMIC. Bust on them for me.
HotLawyer

Good call, not only because I most certainly suspect that this problem exists, but it has bothered me for some time (if you think some of the comments I get on my blog are bad, you should see some of the e-mails I've received). In fact this phenomenon is so prevalent, HotLawyer, as you would say, that it is as American as methamphetamine. Did everyone capable of operating an internet browser drop out of school in the second fucking grade? Because as I recall, that's where the distinction between the possessive "your" and the contraction "you're" was elucidated. I also recall being warned numerous times throughout my education that poor communication skills are the quickest route to the bottom of the socioeconomic food chain. This must be correct, because I can only assume that people with nothing better to do but post "ur a dumass;,, i think u r rong razzy!; u stoopid hore, lol!?!" messages on mine or anyone else's blog/message board all day is not only jobless, but also severely unemployable. Most professional employers require the ability to communicate in more sophisticated terms than Neanderthal-esque grunting, hooting, head-scratching, and checking oneself for ticks. Shit, even if you're a register jockey at Mickey D's you have to say "Welcome to McDonald's, how may I help you?" which is light years beyond the average "u r hott en ur nekid pics,. wass yer number, wanna hook up ;)p !"

I've already denigrated the moron who called me a "hore" and wished "herrpes" upon me, so I'm not going to keep harping on that sorry sucker. However, I've been annoyed with this phenomenon for some time, and overwhelmingly ready to rant about idiot web jargon. There are several distinct styles that these e-degenerates use, and they often use more than one. I'd like to describe each of these unique (but by no means mutually exclusive) styles on what I call the "Ur A Looser List of Piss-Poor Riting":

1. Replacing coherent text with internet acronyms. For example: "that's funny LOL!" If something is funny, asshole, I will decide on my own whether or not to laugh out loud without your input. Furthermore, if I see something like "FTBWIFMBSIASBDHANILY!!!! LOL!," you might as well be writing in fucking Egyptian hieroglyphs, because I have no idea what that means. I'm not terribly picky about colloquialisms, nor am I implying that I'm some sort of superior writer. I am the author of a website devoted to useless bullshit. I'm not trying to suggest that my chronicles about dudes who sucked at fucking me, my opinions about trashy TV shows, or my ranting about the problems in my apartment are tantamount to The Grapes of Wrath in terms of literary mastery. However, at least I give my twelve readers the option of laughing or not, without telling them that they should. Writing "LOL" is the internet literary equivalent of a laugh track on a sitcom like "Everybody Loves Raymond:" the material sucks already to the point of murdering the nearest innocent bystander, but the canned laughter at all the dumb not-funny jokes are just icing on the homicidal-anger-at-being-patronized cake.

2. Despite proficiency at double-clicking the Firefox icon and typing "www.myspace.com", complete inability to press the "ABC-check mark" button on the toolbar. The "ABC-check mark" button (or some variation of said theme) is the one that usually operates the spell-checker in various pieces of software, including those used to send e-mail. Some people have not yet figured this out. Here's an example I received a couple months ago via e-mail from a reader in Seattle:

Hey, I'm from P-N-Dub. In fact I work at the U-Dub. You can kill mice hear. Why leave home for the over crowded full of themselves east coasters?
So you've got great T&A you say. We have seen the "T". . . how about some "A"? You are great with words. I don't read your site because you are hot, but maybe I'll check it more often if you show us your best butt-floss. Make sure your sensative aunte doesn't read FQA.
I'm gald you didn't disrespect that Marine beyond the general discharge. Anyone who is still in uniform after three years of this thankless war has my respect. Do you care to weight-in on politics or are you all about pop culture and scottch?
BTW, its late and I don't have a spell checker, so If you find a miss spelled word, I'm sure you'll figure out what I meant to say anyway.

I did find a few "miss spelled words." In fact, I also found some improper capitalization, omission of implicitly necessary pronouns, homonym misuse, and comma fault. However, as the writer notes, I am great with words, so fortunately I did figure out what he meant to say ("Razzy, put up naked pictures"...done and done, dude). However, I am extremely skeptical that any piece of e-mail software capable of functioning on a modern computer lacks a spell-checking function. Even if it's true that his Qwest DSL account e-mail interface for some reason doesn't provide this perk, he could go old-school and break out the goddamned dictionary. There's no way I'm going to "weight-in on politics" with someone who can't even spell a frequently-used acronym. Furthermore, if I ever needed any validation regarding my decision to pursue a graduate degree at Columbia versus U-Dub, I just received it. I didn't realize the University of Washington's standards were so low, but then again, it is a state school, so perhaps they have no problem admitting people with exceptionally low scores on the GRE Verbal section. Instead of matching wits with a man who can spell "butt-floss" but not "aunt," I would rather just go drink some "scottch."

3. Egregious omission of punctuation mark (and/or the letter e). Your/you're, its/it's, were/we're...these are all examples of words that are frequently confused. Someone who liked my naked pictures left a comment reading "Your a russian whore i'd pay mad rubels for." How does this guy know the currency used in the former Soviet Union, but not the fact that the word "your" is possessive? It seems that a lot of people are confused by this, as this is one of the most prevalent grammatical errors I see online. Therefore, I'll provide some examples of "your" used in the appropriate context: your I.Q. is lower than mine, your brain is underdeveloped, and your prospects for success are grim. To all comment-posting enthusiasts: please brush up on your grammar skills, lest you further erode the already pitiful collective intellect of the web-surfing community.

4. I before E, except after C, motherfucker. Here's an example from an e-mail to razzy@razzy.org from a reader who found my site via a link on Wonkette last year. I have like 30 e-mails of this nature correcting the content of the Hot Jews list, so I had no problem finding one that made the precise error I was looking for:

I found a couple errors on your hot heebs list. I beleive that Gregory Peck and Vanity are both not jews, and Buffy is only half jew. Gwyneth Paltrow doesnt practice so she doesn't count either-I'm beleive she is budhist. Who is Rena Sofer? Is s/he even hot? Thought you wouldn't mind recieving some feedback to make your page better!

First, Rena Sofer played the crazy cheerleader Eve on "Melrose Place," and anyone who participated in 1990s-era Aaron Spelling TV productions is hot in my book, which is why Ian "Steve Sanders" Ziering is also on the list. When last seen (by me), Rena Sofer was playing someone's battered wife in a Lifetime original movie. Second, while I do appreciate feedback to make my site better, I'm not turning to an editor who "beleives" that I am wrong, and I don't know how to "recieve" anything since THAT'S NOT A WORD!

5. Assumption that spelling the phonetic pronunciation of a word is an acceptable alternative means of spelling a word itself. Andrea Lowell, late of Playboy TV and "The Surreal Life" wrote a comment scolding me for calling her a "skank" when she is actually a "TV host and MODEL." In said comment, she used the term "tho." Is it really so difficult to type "u-g-h" afterward? Perhaps she's just extremely prescient, since that's my first thought when I see someone spell the word "though" that way...ugh.

I've also received numerous comments with the extraordinarily aggravating use of "ur." As far as I am concerned, and at the risk of revealing my EXTREME nerdiness, Ur refers to the ancient Babylonian kingdom in southern Mesopotamia (AKA Iraq, and in case you were wondering, since Gulf War Uno tourists have NOT had the opportunity to climb the archaeologically important ziggurat there) once ruled by the infamous Nebuchadnezzar II, not the pronunciation of "you are." So when someone leaves me a comment regarding my cutting in line to get to Easter mass that reads simply "ur going to hell," I'm not going to run frantically to a confessional and get about the business of saving my soul. Even my Aunt Jesus was more eloquent than this. Nor am I going to invite a guy to tap my fine ass when he comes on to me with "ur sexy, u want some cock?" or something along those lines (although the naked pictures of me have solicited several comments in this vein, this is really prevalent in the veritable avalanche of Friendster messages I get that inspired the Rejects page.) For the record, if you are trying to bang me, you'd better not be so lazy as to omit typing "y, o, an apostrophe, and e."

6. Due to either slothful typing or general illiteracy, writing "a lot" as one word. My all-time most-hated error is writing "alot." An executive at the company where I worked used to do this all the time, and his memos used to make my blood boil: "Please ensure that lab spaces are well-lighted and busy, and lab personnel are wearing their personal protective equipment (read: lab coat), as alot of prospective investors will be touring the facilities tomorrow." He is a very smart man, and that doubled my frustration regarding his chronic use of "alot." When you can put the letters "M.D." behind your name and you're a god of immunotherapy, you should know how to spell "a lot" properly. Clearly, the people who write the questions for the MCAT should consider throwing prospective doctors a curveball like this:

What is the correct spelling of this commonly used phrase?
A. al ot
B. a lot
C. alot
D. none of the above

And if you get that wrong, you shouldn't gain admission to medical school, because I don't want any motherfucker who can't be bothered with the space bar operating on me. "A lot" is TWO WORDS, people! It's TWO WORDS WITH A SPACE IN BETWEEN THEM!

7. Excessive or incorrect use of punctuation marks. I do realize that I sometimes throw in a couple extra exclamation points to indicate emphasis on a certain point I am making, so I am slightly guilty of this. Despite all my criticisms up to this point, I feel permitted to take certain stylistic liberties on the internet because it's a more informal forum for expressing my thoughts. In scientific papers, I wouldn't even use a single exclamation point or question mark. I try to keep my writing style appropriate for its medium. Here is the distinction:

Journal of Virology/doctoral dissertation style: Human rhinovirus is the etiologic agent causing most common colds.
RAZZY.org style: Human motherfucking rhinovirus got famous laying the smackdown on your upper respiratory tracts, bitches!

At least in my informal blog writing style, I practice consistency. I use exclamation points to indicate excitement, and question marks to indicate a query, and both to indicate an excited query. Many people on the internet do not stick to such a program in terms of their punctuating, and the result is a total shitshow that renders any salient points they might have made virtually unreadable. For example, I got this e-mail a while back from a guy who must have read my RazzyBio page and decided to contact me, because I think it's clear that I love e-mail from backwoods folks who ramble crazily about their dogs, life in rural New Jersey, and their anger at city officials for passing animal control laws.

MiCrobiology??& you still insist on drinking"light"beer???If you valued life&beer at all you be a brewmaster&make some psychodelic hopped up brew&then I' d hang around with you,,,till the beer ran out.need I remind you that if you figured out how to make really great beer,,,you could afford more dogs!!&they wouldhave more friends .Actually if you don't make much this is the town for you to live in.after my dad died ,I got this house here 9yrs ago for$15,000.7then I paid $300/amonth for 5yrs.&now its paid. &then I found out later that there are row house s around here for around $10,000. &we're right near the river&everything is pretty close by so you don't need a car to too much.just to go get dog food w/&to take em to the vet. vets are prettyy cheap too$20,per visit. Eh!!!Jersey is where REAL PEOPLE LIVE!!! tHIS TOWN IS SO COOL ..THE SCUMBAGS WHO RULE IT.PASSED A LAW MAKING IT ILLEGAL TO OWN MORE THAN 4 ANIMALS?. they will be dealt w/ by watching&waiting,,,&then reporting their activities to the the US atty general,the are really dirty&greedy&their greed will send them to fed.prison

Apart from the Timothy McVeigh-meets-Zacarias Moussaoui psychotic ranting about city ordinances preventing him from starting a farm of feral mutts, and the threateningly Unabomber-esque "they will be dealt w/ by watching&waiting," this guy couldn't properly punctuate a sentence if his life depended on it. His excessive use of the "&" and "/" characters, the inappropriate periods, the misused question marks, and the comma ellipses render this tirade virtually unintelligible. People who follow a completely incomprehensible set of rules for using punctuation should consider that whatever their opinion, it always ends up leaving the same point with the reader: you're a moderately frightening yokel incapable of scribbling even a moderately legible note in your native language. Learn where to put a fucking comma, you idiot.

I suppose that I could rage indefinitely on the illiteracy of the computer literate, but I actually have to get some real work done now. So for all of you Mensa rejects, please don't grace your fellow bloggers/blog-readers/online jerk-offs with the unimaginably crappy thoughts that emerge from your feeble brains. Because there's enough of you on the internet already, and frankly, one "alot" slinger and LOL-ing loser is too many.

I just got this e-mail from CorporateCard, who is well-aware of my near-psychotic fanatical obsession with Chi-town's finest R&B thug, R. Kelly:

R. Kelly previewed an unreleased song called "The Zoo" that featured the following lyrics:

"It's like Jurassic Park, but I'm your Sexasaurus."

"You and me hoppin like two kangaroos"

"You got me locked in your cage of ecstasy and I don't want to be free"

"I'm your Tarzan and you my Jane"

Once again, R. Kelly has woven a web of intricate metaphors that smarmy sons-a-bitches like Jamie Foxx can only dream of crafting. To write an entire song about sexing it to the break of dawn while sticking rigidly to a zoo theme requires gifts beyond those of the average asshole with a microphone, a pair of sunglasses, and a Kanye West producer credit. Indeed, what would R&B be without the R-uh???? Kells rules so hard it's not even funny.

I was just getting ready for work and watching NY1, which is the local news channel here. I mainly watch NY1 to get the "Weather on the 1s" so I know how to dress. However, in between weather reports, NY1 is usually entertaining. One might think that since NYC is a big, happening city with a brisk broadcast news industry that NY1 would be more sleek and sassy than local news channels for other smaller markets. However, it's just as low-budget as the local news anywhere else I've lived, like Tacoma or western Assachusetts...cheesy graphics, Casio keyboard soundtrack, helmet-haired people in cheap suits reporting the news, beat reporters with amazing native accents, and shamelessly editorializing coverage of local political intrigue. I love NY1. It's like the RAZZY.org of news coverage: it's all useless bullshit, but you just can't stop consuming it because it is SO AWESOME.

They actually have a section called "In the Papers" where the anchor just reads headlines aloud out of the Times, Post, and Daily News, and occasionally makes priceless commentary on it. NY1 is always sending their intrepid reporters to these obscure locations in the outer boroughs (where the fuck is Neponsit or Dutch Kills?! Sounds like Queens or Staten Island to me) where they report on breaking news. Much of this breaking news is along the lines of "Students at P.S. Whatever in Crown Heights had their cell phones confiscated by a concerned principal", "A new Fairway supermarket opened in Red Hook," "A robbery on the Upper West Side is the latest in a crime spree targeting FreshDirect delivery men," or my favorite, "An elderly woman and/or small child was hit by a stray bullet last night in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem." Today, a similar piece of breaking news caught my eye: tree-killing beetles from Asia are getting ready for their annual summer orgy of destruction!

I am interested in this because on principle, I staunchly advocate the killing of trees. Not because I have a problem with trees, but because I hate smug environmentalists, and cutting down trees pisses them off. Therefore, it's unfortunate that the trees are caught in the crossfire, but I have to support anything that upsets obnoxious Greenpeace hippies. Besides, if there's one thing New York needs less of, it's trees. This place is like the Amazon rainforest, there are so many damn trees around, providing shade and making breathable air. Stupid asshole trees! I thought, therefore, that the arrival of these exotic tree-devouring beetles would be embraced by the city on account of their clearing up our horrible tree problem.

As it turns out, the City surprisingly sided with the trees, and is attacking the beetle problem with all guns blazing. NY1 notes that local officials are "looking to Washington" to stave off this "major threat." Apparently, once a tree is infested, it's pretty much fucked, and has to be poisoned, ground down to sawdust, and burned. Arrival of the rapacious beetle, which is native to China (the undisputed global masters of anti-environmental asskickery), spells total doom and decimation for the tree. Then, NY1 cuts to a clip of Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Queens/Brooklyn) engaging in some inflamed oratory regarding the many trees that the beetles have already destroyed and shaking a beetle-devoured log over his head for emphasis. "When it spots a tree it's hungry for, it swarms in and bores right into it like a DRILL!" Weiner then takes this opportunity to blast Bush for apparently re-allocating funds earmarked for beeticidal measures, and shows off some complicated charts to hammer the point home:

Apparently Bush has shafted the beetle eradication effort to the tune of $63 million. The congressman is righteously pissed about this, but I have to wonder, is he really that surprised that the Bush administration isn't financially prioritizing his tree conservation efforts? Come on, Weiner! Bush hates trees even more than I do! Of course, the Bush administration in classic form has not cut money devoted to killing trees already infested by the beetle, but money intended to replant new trees or inject existing trees with a chemical that wards off infestation by making them "unpalatable" to the insects. I am constantly impressed by Bush's ability to incorporate evil genius into everything that he does, right down to the beetle-related minutiae of the federal NYC money allocations. Funding it this way not only maximizes the killing of trees via exploitation of illegal immigrant beetles, but prevents future pesky trees from even being planted!

Weiner should just give it up rather than use trite talking points like, "without these funds, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn will be nothing but a book title." Bush doesn't give a fuck. He's not going to suddenly have a change of heart and give $63 million to fight Weiner's beetles, especially since that money is now probably re-allocated to Halliburton subcontracts for the eradication of Sunni insurgents, or as it's also called, the reconstruction of Iraq. Weiner can bitch all he wants, but regardless the beetles will be tearing through Brooklyn and Queens with impunity this summer. Unless Weiner comes up with a plan to replace beetle-demolished trees with oil derricks, Bush isn't giving him a cent.

In movies or TV shows, young(ish), single women living in New York City seem to have a pretty great living situation. They always live in these chic art deco apartments with a doorman and a view of the park, or if they're supposed to be poor, they'll have some sort of fabulous 1500+ square foot loft with a shit-ton of exposed brick in some astronomically expensive neighborhood, like the Meat-Packing District or that part of Brooklyn where Heath Ledger lives with his baby mama. This is not the reality of a single graduate student income household in Manhattan.

My apartment building is like something out of a Redman video. There's all sorts of Rocawear-clad young men smoking blunts in the elevator, nosy old women in mumus that are always getting in my business, panhandling tenants (this one woman is ALWAYS trying to scam a few bucks off me because she's perpetually "waiting to get her check"), and a super who wears head-to-toe camo and a gold chain with a Suffering Christ pendant. It's just ghetto goofy all the time, and something's always going wrong. Apart from the chronic vermin problem and the slow shower drain that was nearly the death of me, the whole building is subject to numerous problems.

Since I moved into this apartment last August, the building has caught fire TWICE. One time, an entire apartment on the fourth floor went up in flames when the tenant fell asleep with a lit cigarette that subsequently ignited what was apparently a ceiling-high stack of old Black Tail magazines (according to one of the nosy old ladies). I was unsure what to do when I realized the hallway was filled with smoke (I mean, do I need to evacuate or start crawling or something? I've never been in a structure fire before). So I peeked out my door and saw a bunch of studly firefighters (New York's Bravest are also some of New York's Hottest) breaking down my neighbors' doors with their axes to determine if the fire had spread, and Chingy! decided to take that opportunity to waddle out into the hallway. "Get that dog out of our way, now, lady, get inside your apartment, and shut your door!" shouted one of the firemen. I grabbed Chingy!, scolded him for cockblocking me with the FDNY, and did as instructed. My carbon monoxide detector then started alarming, so I had to drag the dogs out onto my rickety fire escape (Caesar did not enjoy that one bit...I had to literally push his whimpering ass out the window) and wait for my apartment to contain breathable air again. For weeks afterward, the whole building smelled like a fireplace. Man, I love living in the ghetto.

Today, I decided not to go to lab on account of being hung over from KatieScarlett's birthday party last night. Since I had been running around the West Village drinking red wine and scotch until 3 a.m., I slept until noon, took the dogs for a leisurely walk, and then decided to recuperate enough to tear all over the Lower East Side for Francophile's birthday party tonight. However, to avoid being a complete waste of space, I figured I'd do some laundry as well, since I never have time to get to it during the week. The laundry facilities are located in the utterly frightening basement, and they consist of two very shady washers and dryers, one of which is notorious for eating quarters. The laundry room is always full of wild cats (I saw four tomcats in there today), which annoys me because it explains why the upper floors of the building (like my floor) are so infested with mice: they've moved up to escape the cats. My super (I assume) also has the most bizarre taste in decorations imaginable, since the laundry room is decked out with posters of Marilyn Monroe, Paris Hilton, LeBron James, and a paint-by-number of the Blessed Virgin standing guard over the Christ child's manger.

Anyway, I threw two loads into the washers without incident. When I went back down to the basement, I opened up one of the washers to put the clothes in the dryer, and the moment I opened the lid, soapy water *exploded* all over me, soaking my entire upper body. I'm not even sure how this was physically possible, but it happened. Since I was classing it up in a t-shirt with no bra, I looked like a competitor in some sort of dripping redneck slut-off. At that moment, the super's mother (who lives in the basement apartment next to the laundry room), hobbles in, takes one very disapproving look at me, and tells me that this particular washer had been "acting up." Yes, I would say that the washer projectile vomiting water all over me constitutes "acting up." Living in the ghetto is awesome. I recommend it to everyone.

There is a fly buzzing around my apartment right now, and I don't have the Mr. Miyagi chopstick skills to catch it. Neither does Caesar, and he's jumping all over the furniture, snapping at it and being generally tormented. This fly is pissing me off more than usual, and I know that it's because at work, all the seminar time this week has been taken up by lame-ass fly lectures. Even the microbiology seminar tomorrow, which is usually blissfully pathogen-related and fly-free, is about Notch, a stupid gene that was first discovered in a stupid fucking fly.

In the world of G&D (genetics and development), the model systems of choice are either a microscopic nematode (worm) called Caenorhabditis elegans, a frog called Xenopus laevis, or, the worst of them all, the black-bellied fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. Flies are the worst. I have NO IDEA why motherfuckers decide to spend 5-7 years in grad school studying genetics using these bogus organisms, but a lot of people do.

First, flies stink. You wouldn't think that they would smell like anything, but in reality they smell like a homeless guy's ass crack. Working with them also sucks. My only experience with fly work was during my freshman year of college, in Intro Bio. In lab, we had to do some bullshit experiment where we bred these flies to witness Mendelian genetics in action (remember Gregor Mendel, that Austrian monk with his peas and corn? Come on, you know you vaguely remember that bullshit about dominant and recessive genes from high school biology! XX-homozygous dominant, Xx-heterozygous, xx-homozygous recessive...remember?) In order to do the experiment, we had to knock the flies out with the Carolina Biological equivalent of modeling glue fumes, then SEPARATE THEM BY SEX under a dissecting microscope. Flies do not have obviously different sex organs, so I would have to sit there for what seemed like hours squinting at their nether regions, trying to figure out if they had "claspers" or "sex combs". I was horribly inept at fly-napping them, so I'd be trying to figure out whether the fly genitalia was male or female, and all of a sudden, the fly would be gone. I'd look up from the microscope, and there would be a bastard fly zooming around the lab. To make things worse, I was a lazy pothead in college, and I didn't get into lab in time to separate the maggots from their parents before they hatched. After the larvae hatched, they promptly mated with their parents, and there was no way I could distinguish which fly originally had the recessive gene for the vestigial wing, or white eyes, or whatever who-gives-a-fuck mutant phenotype we were looking for. Needless to say, my uptight Smith girl lab partner wanted to kill me for prioritizing bong hits and UMass frat parties before my bullshit Intro Bio lab, and the entire presentation of said data was spent discussing sources of error rather than cogent experimental results.

What makes me hate flies even more are the dumb names that the Drosophila people give to the genes they discover. They do experiments by mutagenizing fly genes, then naming the gene after whatever dumb phenotype (the way the fly looks) the mutant fly has. There is actually a fucking gene that some dipshit named "Hedgehog", on account of the developing fly looking all spiky. Unfortunately, it turns out that mammals have some genes that are pretty similar (homologous) to the genes in the fly. So some other dipshit decided to name the mammalian homolog "Sonic hedgehog" after the fucking Sega Genesis game, and if you can believe it, a couple of assholes actually won the Nobel prize for this. In the course of my work, I'm always screwing around with the Toll-like receptors (TLRs), genes that encode proteins which cells use to recognize that there are pathogens around. They are sort of like a cellular burglar alarm. If a virus like my nemesis rhinovirus gets into a cell, TLR3 basically announces, "holy shit, I'm detecting some double-stranded RNA! Looks like a virus! Immune response is a go." TLRs are so named because the same German Nobel laureate douchebags that named Hedgehog discovered a gene they called "Toll" in the fly that is homologous to the TLRs. Apparently in German, "Toll" means "cool," "mad," or "amazing" (depending on who you ask), so now I have to deal with the TLRs knowing that they are the "cool in German-like receptors." That just doesn't seem very science-y to me, and as difficult as it is to convince people of the importance of my work, it makes it harder when the genes of relevance have such stupid names.

Now I still have this fly zooming around and I can only sit here, still hung over from last night's "Top Model" festivities, fuming about how much I hate flies. And tomorrow I have to listen to an hour of more dumb fly gene-talk with regard to sexy-ass dendritic cells. The Drosophila torture never ends. Both as mere nuisances and as model systems for studying signaling pathways in embryonic development, flies suck.

Against my better judgment, I finally did something I've been refusing to do for a long while: I put up a MySpace page. I'd like to add the disclaimer that this is NOT to get dates or meet new rejects or--God forbid--"network." This is strictly a vehicle for promoting RAZZY.org. I'm just a whore for website traffic. Right now it's pretty rudimentary, but I'm sure I'll eventually get around to improving it with stupid quizzes or whatever.

So if you know what's good for you, you'll immediately go add me as a friend:

http://www.myspace.com/razzyorg

Tonight, I had planned on a very uneventful night. I went to KatieScarlett's and Bienvenido-a-Miami's lesbish love nest to watch the finale of "America's Next Top Model" (I can't believe that super COUNTRY Danielle won!! It was a triumph for fine honeys with diastemas--spaces between the front teeth--everywhere). Indeed, nothing ridiculous happened besides scintillating conversation with KatieScarlett, B-a-M, and CorporateCard. We then watched "Lost", which is getting more convoluted and confusing by the week (is the villain/head Other-in-Charge really named "Miss Cleo"--as in the identity-thieving fake psychic--or did we hear that wrong?) , and finished off our six-packs/bottles of "Vino Verde"/Pinot Grigio, and chatted for awhile. Really, nothing of incidence to report apart from hanging out with clever, hilarious bitches. Since my hosts were cohabiting lesbians with an 11 o'clock bedtime, I hit the subway relatively early, around 11:15 or so.

After I got off the A train, I was walking down St. Nick to my crib expecting to kick it with the dogs and hit the hay. I noticed that my neighborhood bar, the Jenzi Lounge, was what the locals would call "crunk." I had been to this watering hole once last summer after I first moved to Sugar Hill. It was not the kind of place I would frequent. For starters, the moment that LL Cool Jew, Rack, J-Sexy, and myself walked in, they appeared to be closed, given the garbage strewn everywhere inside the bar. The "bartender"/hang-about in charge told us not to worry about that. Then, when we attempted to order drinks, we were informed that the ONLY drink worth having was a beverage called "the nutcracker." This was basically red-flavored Kool-Aid with grain alcohol, and was served in a plastic cup. Not one of those opaque red Solo cups preferred by white baseball cap-wearing frat boys, but one of the super cheap off-white cups that in grade school, they used to distribute fluoride in. After a couple nutcrackers, some random guy off the street came in and attempted to spark up a conversation with LL Cool Jew, who wasn't having it AT ALL. For one thing, he was rocking the most heinous textured Bill Cosby sweater ever. For another thing, he eschewed calling her "Rachel" in favor of "Sexy on the Rocks". We departed for the greener pastures of my apartment shortly thereafter.

Anyway, tonight the Jenzi Lounge was packed and the clientele seemed to be having a great time. In fact, they were having such a fabulous drunken time that they had spilled out onto the street. One gentleman, clearly influenced by the many nutcrackers he had undoubtedly consumed, was relieving himself on the security door of the closed Famous Fish Market next door to the Jenzi. As I walked by (in a decidedly UNsexy ensemble of t-shirt, jeans, and beat-up sneakers), he noticed me.

"Hey, what you doin'?" he called.

I didn't realize he was talking to me. There are usually so many people around anywhere in Manhattan that you just ignore people unless they specifically mention your name. Since I didn't respond, this guy decided to do the Harlem equivalent of calling me by name.

"Hey, blondie!"

I turned, and saw this guy doing that shake-off thing that guys do when they have just finished pissing.

"What you doin'?"

I was astounded. Getting randomly heckled by guys on the street is one thing, but being hit on by a guy who is actually engaged in pissing on the storefront of a local business is another. In this case, I decided not to respond, and to continue walking, but I couldn't stop thinking about how often this works for this guy. Does he usually find a taker in a random stranger who is like, "Damn, that drunken public urination is hot...want to buy me a nutcracker, stud?" I've certainly urinated in public on New York streets (not something I'm proud of, but it's definitely happened), but I've never had the cojones to try and get some ass while doing it! Maybe I should go to the Jenzi Lounge more often. I might just learn something.

Is me! "Professional" (ie: being paid what is apparently a pittance in the economy of nude posing) modeling was fun. Not only because I'm fond of being what my new boyfriend T.I. would call being "bomb-ass nekkid," but also because I got to spend the day drinking beer and hanging out with these foxy ladies:



Yep, that's BloodyTosser, me, and KatieScarlett. This was at the end of the day, so we were all a little on the tipsy side, hence the ridiculous expressions on all our faces (and why I'm still drinking...after this KatieScarlett and I went to Chinatown and killed an inordinate number of Tsingtaos, and probably looked even more ridiculous than this. Too bad we didn't have a camera then).

Before we got drunk in the studio, however, they made me look H-O-T! Here's me looking really girl-next-door, if you happen to live next door to a meth lab in Spanaway, WA:



And here's me channeling my inner Russian whore, Razzy Slutskaya:




Am I a sexy bitch or WHAT?!

Yesterday KatieScarlett sent me some of the naked pictures she and BloodyTosser took of me, and I was going to put them promptly up. However, I had my thesis committee meeting, so I had to focus instead on what the Beastie Boys once called "droppin' science like Galileo dropped the orange." Of course, my thesis committee was blown away, and told me that it's reasonable I might graduate in 2 years! Thank fucking God, because there's NO WAY I'm going to be a goddamned grad student when I'm 30. However, then they suggested about 3 years worth of experiments to do, so looks like it's a seven day workweek for me here on out. On the plus side, though, is that there's this new guy in the Radiation Safety office who is HOT, so even if I'm stuck doing Northern blots for the remainder of my tenure here, at least I get to mack it to a potential honey when I'm picking up my P32-dCTP.

After this meeting, I went to put the pics up on my blog, and was showing them to J-Sexy on my lab computer. Unbeknownst to me, at that moment my graduate mentor walked into the lab and said, "Razzy! Quit looking at porn on your work computer!" (He's well aware of my website, and on account of the decibel level of my voice, is usually aware of what I'm up to--including naked modeling. I guess he draws the line at me showing them off to the whole lab on my 21" monitor). Despite my arguing that it's not porn, it's an artistic interpretation of the female form, I was (believe it or not) a little embarrassed. So I figured that I would post the pictures from home.

Imagine my anger when, for some reason, Blogger wasn't uploading them correctly! At first I thought there might be some bullshit censorship thing going on, but after a lot of tinkering around, I realized that Blogger wasn't uploading pictures of R. Kelly or electron micrographs of influenza virions either, so there must be something wrong with their whole photo schtick. I even gave them time to fix it, and it still wasn't working this morning. That means I'll have to upload the pictures to my razzy.org server and link to them. Because I'm too technologically retarded to figure out FTPing through any other interface except the "uploading for dummies" one on my GoLive web design software, which is only on my Mac at lab, I'll have to wait until I get to lab and my boss isn't around. Seriously, I must be the most fucking inept website administrator in the history of the internet. If you don't believe me, check out the RAZZY.org main page. The content might be good, but the layout is a complete shitshow. The only reason this blog looks sort of good is that it's totally a Blogger template that I had nothing to do with. You might think that because I'm a scientist, I would be good at these kinds of techy things, but in reality, I went into biology because the labwork is like cooking (the only domestic skill I excel at) and the most difficult math is y=mx+b or calculating percentages. I got the first D of my academic career in undergraduate calculus-based physics (in fairness, class was during reruns of "90210," so I didn't always go) and despite taking two full fucking years of chemistry, I can't even balance an equation. J-Sexy and I joke that I'm Science Barbie, and there should be a thought bubble above my head saying "math is hard!" In terms of computer science, as soon as the bioinformatics class I took my first year in grad school taught me that there is an easily typo-d three character command in UNIX that will erase your entire hard drive, I was like, "Fuck this...if I can't right-click and figure it out, ain't no way I'm going to work shit out at the command-line interface. Computers are scary." Therefore, if Microsoft Excel doesn't have an equation for something, I'm fucked regarding any type of computation. I was going to take a web design class this summer in hopes of making my site look like it wasn't coded by a cageful of whooping macaques, but I've prioritized conversational Spanish so as to deliver snappy responses en espanol to all the Dominican dudes who sexually harass me on the street. Thus, I don't think RAZZY.org will look all sleek and sexy unless I start fucking a computer programmer or something, and even then, given my fickle nature, I probably wouldn't keep them around long enough to revamp the site.

So patience, friends. I'll be up here doing the Full Monty later today for you all to salivate over.

Someone took issue with me being called a "hore" and not only called "anonymous" out on my comments page for "Lousiest Lays, Vol. 2", but left this awesome link to this awesome limerick regarding Chapstick Dick:

Tiny Dick
by Bubba

I have to admit I'm quite Small
You'd think I had no Dick at all
It's almost so teenie
You can't call it a weenie
I'm waiting for Ripley's to call

I love it. Smart, slutty bitches unite!

When I was in high school, I was a femi-nazi of the worst variety. I was the type who would hear someone say "mankind" instead of "humankind" and proceed to tear them a new one for being a mindless subject of the patriarchy. I would raise hell when my brother Lil' Tevie would egg me on at the dinner table ("Hey, Razzy, what do you do when the dishwasher breaks down?", "I don't know, Tevie, what?" , "Slap her! Hahaha!", "Mom, Tevie's making sexist jokes again!"). I even made a point of rocking a personal style so asexual I think I was trying to imitate a budding yeast (wait, bad analogy, because they can actually mate). Anyway, this is what I looked like in high school:

Sexy, right? I'm loving that ill-fitting earth toned sweater/scarf ensemble. It goes great with the shit-brown thrift store cords, and the Birkenstock clogs I was undoubtedly sporting for footwear. With regard to my hairstyle, I was apparently striving to look like Macaulay Culkin's mugshot. And sweet Jesus, is that a BEADED NECKLACE I'm wearing? Uff da. Anyway, I dressed like this on purpose because at the time, my ridiculous the-man-is-keeping-us-down ideology dictated that I should hide all my voluptuous feminine assets. This was supposedly so I'd be treated with parity by the nefarious men, who were always trying to keep a good woman down, pay her seventy cents for every dollar earned by a man, and generally oppress and belittle her. In reality, my male compatriots just thought I had bad style, and, as I found out during a drunken hookup during my senior year, they were still trying to figure out how big my breasts were anyway.

I might have continued on this unfortunate path permanently and achieved my womynist goals of being a social leper, but two pivotal things happened: 1. I discovered Lil' Kim, and, for that matter, rap music in general, and 2. I discovered penis. Granted, I'd had a couple boyfriends in high school after a brief, miserable detour via the Isle of Lesbos, but it wasn't really until college that I learned something very important about myself: I like fucking men. A lot. So I scrapped the whole obnoxious Gloria Steinem routine and decided to start sticking my tits out. It sure was a lot more fun to be drinking with people instead of arguing gender politics with them, and I certainly got a lot more ass.

Since then, I've turned into one hell of a promiscuous broad. Since I don't live in Victorian England, or subscribe to Puritanism, I don't feel there is any reason I should have to explain being a human being, complete with a healthy sexual appetite. I am not ashamed of having a normal, natural libido. However, certain prudish motherfuckers who have stumbled across this blog seem to think I should be. When I enabled comments on my blog, I was actually a bit surprised to see that, in response to the Facial Boy story, someone had left me this chivalrous remark:

Anonymous said...
So you met this guy in a bar, and in a few hours he was using your body like a crumpled-up T-shirt he found lying next to his bed. Why are you surprised he thought he could hook-up with you moths later? He thinks you're a slut. I wonder what gave him that idea?

You are SO cool for not calling him back. You really got the better of him!

I responded by leaving a comment clarifying my position...you can go to that post and read it if you like. Basically, I explained that I AM a slut, and that's not a problem for me, so go fuck yourself, Anonymous. I figured, well, not everyone is going to like my stories or opinions, and I don't really give a good goddamn. I don't work on my website to be liked...I do it because I enjoy it, and I find it a constructive and fulfilling way of expressing myself. Then today, I saw that another anonymous pussy left me this remark regarding "The Lousiest Lays, Vol. 2":

Anonymous said...
ur a fucking slut, dont u think u shouldnt blame a guy when its not his fault! he probably just didnt want 2 work it out 4u! i hope u get herrpes u stupid hore!

I left another comment there, too, but that didn't do the job in making me feel better. These comments kept eating at me. These comments really piss me off, and not because someone doesn't like me or my opinions. I write about my personal life on the internet, so I'd better be able to take it as well as dish it out. I also don't take it to heart that a person who can't properly spell "whore" wants to call me one. I don't lose sleep over the opinions of someone whose command of punctuation and grammatical nuances (such as proper use of a question mark, or actually typing out "you are") is so pathetically limited. What pisses me off is the larger issue: that there are people out there who are so resentful of my (or any other bitch's) sexual freedom that they are willing to wish genital ulcer-causing viruses on me.

As much as I hate to revert to the old me, I am angry that just because I have the audacity to seek sexual gratification (and then hold those who can't gratify me accountable), these morons are implying that I should be ashamed about this. All of the stories I have related so far on this blog have been complaints about men who were unable to satisfy me, but that's not why I've shared them with the e-masses. I put them on my blog because they are funny stories that I've told many times to great effect in social settings. The idiots who have commented negatively have responded with the unoriginal "you're a slut" (or, more accurately, "ur a slut"), apparently thinking that this will make me feel bad about myself, or change my depraved ways. I can only assume that for some reason, these negaters can't fathom why a woman would dare have sex to--God forbid--actually have an orgasm.

I despise the implication that it's not socially acceptable for women to enjoy sex. Guys have sex all the time strictly for the gratification, and they get high-fived for their conquests. If you pick up a magazine like Maxim or FHM, almost the entire content is devoted to aiding men in their pursuit of willing, casual pussy. However, if a chick does the same thing, she must have some sort of ulterior motive, because there's no way she might actually just like fucking. One popular motive which I often hear slutty behavior ascribed to is a misguided quest for self-esteem, like filling your vagina with a random penis is a way to fill the empty places in your heart, or some bullshit like that. Another is that women use sex as a means of manipulating men, either to gain affection, attention, or money. These might be true for some women, but not for me. Most of the time people don't blink at the other "manly" things I do because I enjoy them, like drinking scotch or watching football, so why is it so fucking hard for people to understand that I might actually want to have sex for no other reason except I LIKE TO HAVE SEX?

Maybe I've just been bothered about this because I was told by some female colleagues/friends that I was "brave" to do a naked photo shoot. Well, I didn't do it to prove my courage, but because I'm proud of my body. I have worked damn hard in the gym to get it, and if given the opportunity, I love to show it off. However, these women told me that they'd never do such a thing on account of it possibly hampering their career. When I argued that it shouldn't be that way, they responded that no, it shouldn't, but that's the way it is. I hate that this is "the way it is." If someone wants to say that because I have a hot body and am not afraid to show it off, I'm not an exceptional scientist, then I don't want to work for them anyway. I not only sweat my tits off in the gym, I work incredibly fucking hard in the lab, and if I'll be damned if I let someone take away my intellectual achievements because I had the impudence to be seen naked by the general public, or at least the nerve.com/uberbelle.com/razzy.org audiences. It is straight up unfair that women have to labor so goddamn hard to be taken seriously in the workplace that they have to sacrifice their sexuality to do so. I refuse to do this, and I'm willing to put my own ass on the line to change things by example. Whether I'm sleeping around or dropping trou, I will not bow to some antiquated idea that I am only deserving of respect if I conform to some bullshit standard for how women should be.

I'm not going to spend any more time ranting about double standards, and I'm not placing blame on either men or women for harboring them. I am simply suggesting that in these modern times, it is ridiculous to apply yesteryear's criteria for what women should aspire to. Men and women may be different, but that doesn't mean that in the 21st century, they should be subject to different sexual rules. I'm not trying to find self-worth in a cheap encounter, nor am I trying to find a husband, a boyfriend, or a fucking paycheck. I'm trying to get off. Period. And I won't apologize for it. So before you leave me a comment intended to induce shame, embarrassment, or some other variation of appropriate female humility, you should stop and think about what the fuck you are assuming about bitches before you waste pixels on my comment page. Because when it comes down to it, I really am just trying to get laid. And I probably do, more than you. So bite me, you sexist shitheads.

Yesterday I opened my email to find this very informative and incredibly ego-boosting piece of fan mail from a friend of mine at grad school. He is from Jamaica, Queens (where Fitty is from!) and wanted to tell me he loves my website, as well as make some corrections regarding the glossary at the end of my Young Jeezy review. As it turns out, my knowledge of urban drug-related slang terms needs a little tweaking. However, as much as I hate being told I'm wrong about something, in this case I was glad for information that would enhance my "down-ness". This email made my fucking day:

Dear Razzy,
Your site is hilarious and deliciously naughty. I went by to catch up on any updates and ended up spending almost three hours in the Razzy universe.

There are one or two corrections I wanted forward to you as your friend and ex-denizen of the hood on your glossary attached to the review of Young Jeezy's latest album:

Bird- (noun) a kilo of cocaine

Birdman- (noun) high level cocaine dealer, as in only sells kilos of cocaine and better
I have never heard the word 'bird' used to describe a cocaine user

Note:-the word 'bird' in older northeastern American slang used to be used to describe a silly woman, or chickenhead-don't confuse this with the Dip Set's use of the term/moniker Byrdgang. They're referring to a powerful crime syndicate by the same name that used to control Harlem's Underworld

Slang- (verb) to sell (anything), especially contraband

Yam- (noun) pieces of crack/cocaine, or at least that is what the word means in Queensbridge Projects where I received my first lessons on the particulars of the urban cocaine trade

O- (noun) an ounce (of any drug)

Despite these few minor mistakes in nuanced slang semantics I must congratulate you on your very accurate definitions for 'chopper' and 'trap' proving, as I already know, that you are the downest white girl science geek this side of the Mason-Dixon!

Love I$, the science geek/down brother

This is why I have a website, because I'm like a dog: I live for being praised, even if it's in the context of being corrected. I plan to revise the Young Jizzle glossary immediately. Fan mail rules.

But it was worth it. Damn, I look hot!


Many thanks to Kate and Camilla for taking this sexy picture and then letting me shamelessly steal it from their nerve.com blog to promote myself. As incentive for you to go to their blog, there's a pretty fucking hilarious picture of Camilla exuberantly grabbing my left breast on it, while I am wearing possibly the most ridiculous expression on my face ever captured on film. Oh, right, and I guess thanks to uberbelle.com, the artsy naked girl website client for whom I modeled, for paying me! Shortly there will apparently be many pics of me there getting my disrobed pose on. KatieScarlett and BloodyTosser also took some RAZZY.org-specific pictures of the three of us, and I'll put those up just as soon as they finish "post-production" on them. However, since KatieScarlett had to rush off to her hometown of Bethlehem, PA (incidentally, BloodyTosser informed me that "Bethlehem" means "Meat House" in Arabic), I'll just have to wait for the pictures of the three of us until she gets back. In the meantime, I'm sure you'll all have fun masturbating to this picture of me.

It's not often that a completely undeserving wretch manages to scam both myself and one of my hot friends into spending more time than deserved in his company in two consecutive nights, but it did happen to me at least once. Naturally, this occurred while I was living in Tacoma.

My friend and roommate at the time, Miss Corbutt, is an artist. She's also probably the hottest friend I have (no offense to all my other ladies, but those who know Miss Corbutt would most likely agree). She's a six-foot-tall Amazon with a killer body (she's packing much back, in the best possible way), legs to her chin, perfect skin, and an incredible face. She's just freaking gorgeous. Because of her beauty, she gets hit on a lot, and in Tacoma this was often by guys who were nowhere near in her league. Because many of these dudes know she's way out of their league, they employ a ruse to get her to hang out with them. This particular guy asked her if she wanted to go to art classes with him in Seattle on Saturday mornings. He assured her that he was only interested in her as an artist and as a friend, and he would drive. She accepted.

In terms of appearance, he was so far out of her league they weren't even playing the same sport. He was very short (only slightly taller than me, and I'm 5'3"), and his face was, for lack of a better term, a little off. He looked like a cross between Betty Friedan and Frodo Baggins. He also was majorly lacking in the personal style department. Apart from rocking the classic awful lame Tacoma band t-shirt with ill-fitting pants and wallet chain, he'd hit up his thinning hair with a bottle of industrial-strength peroxide, and had that sort of sickly orange shade resulting from attempting to make black hair blonde. However, he initially came across as a pretty nice guy, and he could speak artfag with Miss Corbutt, so she figured they could just be friends. After a few weeks of classes, it seemed that he was actually telling the truth, and was only interested in her work. So, one Saturday, she invited him into our apartment for a glass of wine. I had spent the day over at my grandmother's house, because she was doing the home hospice care thing (dying). It was not fun. When I arrived home that evening, I was ready for a drink. Miss Corbutt and this guy were already on the same page, and in fact, were WAY ahead of me. They had exhausted three bottles of merlot, and were working on a bottle of Shih Wu Chih, which is this gross alcoholic Chinese herbal elixir that makes you CRAZY. Tequila and Jaegermeister have nothing on Shih Wu Chih in terms of liquor-induced madness and insanity. There was no way I was going to catch up with them, but I felt like having a drink nonetheless. So we piled into my car and met MillerTime at Hank's Tavern, a place that looks just like it sounds: decorated largely with beer advertisements and frequented by grizzled old individuals with emphysema, a fixed income, and a burning addiction to pull tabs. Once there, we drank about four pitchers of Kilt Lifter, this beer with a high alcohol content (like 9%). I was tipsy, but they were EXTREMELY drunk. So we went back to the crib, where Miss Corbutt decided she wanted to get physical, and not in a sexy way.

"Let's wrassle!" she shouted. Neither MillerTime nor myself were drunk enough to be feeling that, but the guy sure was. However, it was obvious he didn't want to hit or otherwise manhandle a girl, because he was holding back. To egg him on, Miss Corbutt TURNED OVER OUR COFFEE TABLE, smashing glasses and spilling Shih Wu Chih (which is black) all over the carpet. Then, she punched the guy in the nose, causing him to bleed everywhere. We lost part of our deposit on account of that night. After watching the entertaining spectacle, MillerTime and I went to bed and the guy presumably crashed on our couch.

The next morning, we went out to breakfast on Miss Corbutt's way to work. At his request, we went to this place called Wow's, because they had some taco omelette that he loved. Wow's is next to this other bar called Magoo's that I went to all the time, but I had never been to Wow's because every time I'd look in the window, the bar was largely populated with morose-looking elderly people in USS Indianapolis hats staring sadly into their glasses of Cutty Sark. I haven't been back to Wow's since that morning, because their food was disgusting and our waitress suggested that we come back at 10 on Monday morning to watch "The Price is Right" with the regulars...apparently, this is such an event at Wow's that they have Plinko drink specials. I gave the waitress my regrets, explaining that I had a 9-to-5 job, and thus would be unavailable for Monday morning drinking/estimating the value of shitty prizes during the showcase showdown with old folks. However I was more than happy to start my Sunday morning off right, and started drinking Bloody Marys. I had two while at Wow's, and they pour their drinks stiff. Art class guy was thinking like me, so he ordered a couple as well.

Then, I took MillerTime home and Miss Corbutt to work. Since she worked at a restaurant called Rock Pasta, and they had a bar, art class guy wanted to know if I was interested in going inside and having another Bloody Mary. I had nothing better to do, so I said, "What the hell? Why not?" Three more vodka cocktails later, we decided to switch to beer, so we went next door to the Swiss. After several more high alcohol content microbrews, it was three p.m., and I was shitfaced. Suddenly he seemed a lot better looking, and a lot funnier. Plus, he thought I was a riot, so I was having fun. However, I wasn't trying to be a waste at work the next day, so I wisely decided that it was time to go home. However, art class guy and I unwisely decided on the way home to stop by the Stadium Thriftway and EACH buy a case of Vitamin R, the official watered-down swill of Pierce County. Because drinking Rainier at home is definitely a good way to sober up. That's the kind of smart thinking that got me into an Ivy League graduate school.

We got back to my apartment, cracked open our Rainiers, and the next thing I know, we're making out. At this point I completely forgot that I found him physically repugnant, and decided that I was going to get laid. Being the pushy, libidinous bitch that I am, I dragged him to my bedroom and commenced disrobing. Once we'd both gotten our clothes off, I realize that something was amiss. More specifically, something was missing. His dick. Where was it???

I checked it out more closely and realized that he did, in fact, have a penis, but it's the smallest one I've EVER seen. It was literally the size of my thumb. I was momentarily dumbfounded by this, and thought he must be having some kind of alcohol-related problem with his erection. So I grabbed his dick, and realized that it was HARD.

I was confused. I'd never seen an erect dick that small before. But I'm a trooper, and at that point I didn't realize it was feasible to have such a tiny weiner that it's mechanically impossible to get it to stay in your cooch. So I shrugged and proceeded to attempt to mount it. Attempt is the key word here, because I literally could not figure out how to fuck him. I've put bigger tampons in my vagina. So I start trying different positions. Still, I couldn't get it to stay in. Finally, I said, "Oh fuck it, this isn't going to work." I figured he would get dressed and slink away in shame with his pitiful member between his legs. I would, if I were rocking a cock the size of a Chapstick. No wonder he spent the previous night going down on my roommate...it seems that's the only sexual act he's anatomically capable of.

Normally, I wouldn't have subjected this poor sucker to internet ignonimy for having a physical problem beyond his control. However, what happened next was INEXCUSABLE. He started talking to me about my DYING GRANDMOTHER. I don't know why he thought this was the appropriate topic for conversation after a failed attempt at intercourse with a pro ho like myself, but whatever his reasoning, I was not amused. I most certainly did not want to discuss that in my drunken state with his sorry ass, and told him so. He persisted, giving me all this bullshit about understanding my situation and trying to process with me like a damn Smith girl. I grew progressively more and more pissed off. Eventually I must have said something really bitchy (I don't remember what), because he started crying and told me he loved me. I have no patience for insincere motherfuckers casually tossing around the L word, so I lost my drunken temper.

"That's it!" I said. "Get out!"

He couldn't really believe that I was kicking him out, and kept trying to talk about feelings or whatever, so I was like, "I really need to be alone. You really need to leave. I'm not kidding. Go. Get out."

Then, he got dressed, and since it was dark, I failed to realize that he was committing one of the greatest crimes possible against a girl from Puyallup: this audacious motherfucker put on my authentic 1987 Def Leppard Hysteria tour t-shirt and STOLE IT! Since it was dark, and I was drunk, and having a difficult time mentally grappling with the outrageous events that had transpired, I didn't realize that he had switched up his crappy Severus shirt or whatever for my priceless buttrock relic. When I saw his shirt and didn't see my shirt about an hour later, I put two and two together and was RIPSHIT PISSED. Miss Corbutt came home from work, saw that I was distraught, and proceeded to comfort me. We both wondered how an ugly tool who drives a Ford Ranger with flame accents (really hot, by the way) was able to insidiously sneak his toothpick cock into both of our bedrooms in a single weekend. We didn't wonder long, since obviously it was on account of the magical effects of consuming ethyl alcohol.

Because we blamed it on the booze, Miss Corbutt gave him one more chance and went to art class with him the next weekend. When they came back, I was on the couch watching the first round of March Madness, and this fucker actually started complaining about me watching sports on MY television in MY apartment, because he had rented some horrible indie movie in an attempt to enhance his artfag street cred with Miss Corbutt. I was like, "Fuck you, I'm trying to see whether or not Kansas will beat Syracuse," and he said that sports were for the "simple minded" and made fun of my brackets! I grew outraged all over again, and asked, "What's your major malfunction? Did you get beat up by the quarterback one too many times in high school or something?" I secretly hoped so, because he went to Lincoln, and my cousin was their QB. To further insult his manhood, I added, "I thought all men appreciated sports." Then I said menacingly, "By the way, the next time you come over, you damn well better bring my fucking Def Leppard shirt."

The next time he came over, he did so uninvited, which was the last straw for Miss Corbutt. He was out of the circle at that point, and when we'd see him at Magoo's he would pretend not to know us and slink away like the tiny-dicked pussy that he is. I never thought much about him after that except to tell the story of the smallest penis I'd ever seen, and to lament the loss of my irreplacable shirt. However, last Christmas, I was visiting my friend G-Boner and noticed that her house had a lot of paintings signed with his last name. I inquired, and found out to my horror that Chapstick Dick is G-Boner's roommate and landlord! She assured me that he was never around, so I wouldn't have to worry about running into him. Famous last words. We went to open another bottle of wine, and there he was, skulking around her kitchen. He took one look at me and fled down the stairs to the safety of his basement lair. The next time I am in the P-N-Dub, I'm going to make G-Boner let me into her house when he's not home so that I can rummage through his shit and get my damn shirt back. I'm like an elephant when I've been wronged: I NEVER forget it. And while a lot of bastards have gotten away with not fucking me properly, it will be a cold day in hell before I let some dickless SOB make off with my Def Leppard paraphernalia. Mark my words: I will get that shirt back if it's the last fucking thing I ever do. Be warned, Chapstick Dick. You will pay.

Labels: alcoholism, assholes, Miss Corbutt, oh the horror, overcompensation, real-life rejects, retard rage, scathing indictments, small penises

Usually I don't shower in the mornings, because I just throw on my gym clothes, walk the dogs, set up a couple things in lab, and then head to the gym. Besides, I hate my shower. In addition to my apartment being infested with mice, another charming ghetto feature of my crib is the slow shower drain. My showers don't last longer than 10 minutes, but invariably I'll be standing in three inches of soapy water by the time I'm done. I've hit this bitch up with every variety of Liquid Plumr imaginable, and even poured straight pellets of sodium hydroxide I snagged from lab down the drain, and it still doesn't improve. I've also mentioned it to my super, but since he's usually busy dusting our elevator with copious amounts of lemon Pledge (not sure why, since the interior of the elevator is stainless steel), he hasn't bothered to deal with it yet, and since I'm never home during the day, I can't harass him. So I just have to suck it up and deal.

This morning, I had to take a shower on account of the fact that I'm not going to the gym today. I am leaving work early because I got hired to do a MODELING job, which is fucking hilarious to me. Said job is actually paying me, but there's one catch: it's naked modeling. Of course, I have zero problem with this, and I'm always down for money, and I don't have to do anything except channel my inner Andrea Lowell. Since I want to look good, I made sure to catch up on my shaving while in the shower.

I don't shave very often, because I don't really have to. My leg hair is so blonde that it's practically transparent, and it's very sparse (I discovered as a high school lesbian that, much to my chagrin, I was unable to get a thick butch coat of hair on my legs...oh well, it wasn't for me anyway). Therefore, I can get away with not shaving my legs for two weeks or more, if I'm really feeling lazy. I shave my armpits every day, but I don't bother with my legs or my "bikini line" unless I think I'm getting laid or, as in this case, I'm going to be scrutinized naked. So this morning I did the legs and the pits with my trusty Schick Intuition, then switched up to the more precise Mach 3 for the detail work.

I typically keep my pubic hair trimmed into a neat racing stripe, and always make sure to get rid of any stray hairs in my nether regions. I could go get waxed and do this less often, but that shit HURTS. You don't know pain until you've had hair ripped out of your perineum by the root, so I stick to the old school but less painful razor. To do this poor man's Brazilian properly, I have to stand on one leg and prop my other leg up on the tile ledge in my shower, which is about waist-high. I was doing just this when, thanks to the puddle of diluted shampoo and conditioner I was standing in, I slipped.

As I tumbled backwards out of the shower, my only thought was, "Oh my God, what if I die this way?" I threw out my hands and managed to break my landing on the bathroom floor. I looked up and realized I only barely missed hitting my head on the sink. I had visions of suffering a closed head injury and dying in naked, soapy convulsions on the tile, then being found days later, with a half-shaved pussy and a Mach 3 clutched in my hand. The only more embarrassing way to die I can think of is to go out like Elvis. I don't put much thought into how I want to die (because I don't want to, so I'm not going to waste my valuable life worrying about my death), but I can say unequivocally that when I go, I do NOT want it to be the result of a freak crotch-shaving accident. Thank God I escaped that terrible fate this morning. Thank God I will live another day to pose nude in a Brooklyn warehouse, and put the pictures on my website if I can convince KatieScarlett and BloodyTosser to take some extras for RAZZY.org.

A friend sent me a link to this UNBELIEVABLY AWESOME David Hasselhoff music video for his remake of the classic "Hooked on a Feeling" several years ago, and I'd forgotten about it until someone else sent it to me just today. Since it's been doing the viral video thing, most people with cable internet and nothing better to do have probably seen it, but just in case you haven't, definitely watch this:



If you are pissed off, sad, depressed, enraged, morose, or otherwise having a bad day, I guarantee this will lift your spirits immediately. And it's got to make you wonder, what the hell is up with Germany? Da Hoff is like Elvis to them! I guess it's just one of those weird cultural discrepancies that you're never really meant to understand...

Oops...I thought that nobody who reads my blog ever left any comments. I know people read it because my counters say so, but I was like, "God, does nobody else have an opinion? Is everyone just too scared to step to me or something? Or are the only hits I get from my friends and myself reading my own archives because I'm so goddamned funny?"

Turns out, that's not the case. As further evidence of my techno-retardation, I set up my idiot-proof settings on Blogger incorrectly and it turns out I had the "comment moderation" setting on, requiring me to approve all comments. Since I didn't even know about this, I clicked the "moderate comments" button for fun and saw that I had all these comments awaiting approval. As it turns out, I have readers in Australia, and lots of people count on me for their daily dose of useless bullshit. Awesome!

So I turned comment moderation off...that way, people can comment freely.

Some of the best comments left "unmoderated" until now:

Someone claiming to be Andrea Lowell from the "Surreal Life" stepped to me for calling her a professional skank, claimed that her tits ARE real, and said that the picture I put of her isn't her. Well, sorry, but Google and Wikipedia said it was her, it certainly looks like her, and I watch "The Surreal Life" religiously. Then she gets angry that I denigrate her education at UC Irvine and gives me a real guilt trip about it. I'm thinking, "Holy shit, do F-list celebrities read RAZZY.org???" (And Andrea, it that's really you, send me a picture at razzy@razzy.org you like that you think proves your tits are real, and I'll put it up unedited...promise. By the way, I think Florence Henderson was a super uptight bitch when she accused you of "building a prison of pornography" on last week's episode!) Trust me, honey, I'm not hating on you. For one thing, I'm a skank too, although I am certain Playboy pays better than grad school.

Regarding my indictment of Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas: "Your a f#$@%^g tool,,who cares what you think.. Youve never been caught short and pissed your pants???? I bet you have!!Mal......." (As a matter of fact, Mal, I have, but that's another story. One I'll probably share on this blog when I get around to it. Then again, I never did it on stage while singing about "My Humps," so at least I'm not as much of a f$%@^g tool as Fergie.)

A friend left a comment pointing out a blog of some dork named Neal Dooley, and then made fun of pictures of a snorkel-clad "Doolester" rocking Lake Chelan (semi-popular vacay destination in eastern WA) posted on it. Then "Anonymous" left this comment: "Actually, Neal Dooley is an awesome guy. His blog was created as a way to communicate with his family and girl friend at the time, so really could care less what YOU think of his life. Hopefully you have something better to do with your life than rip apart a great guy who is obviously more educated than yourself. His Chelan pics were of him and his nephew that adores him, so who cares what you think about those as well." Gee, "Anonymous", you sound a lot like you know a lot about the "Doolester"...could it be you ARE the Doolester? You don't even have the balls to defend yourself without hiding behind a cloak of anonymity. You must be from Seattle. Man up and leave your name on the comment, you passive-aggressive pussy!

Anyway, I won't erase comments or, as some other hostile comment-leavers have suggested, "hide behind comment moderation." I'm no coward, and certainly am ready to see what kind of vitriolic shit the ranks of anti-Razzy bitches have to say. Have at it, haters. And if you feel like praising me...well, fuck, I'm a narcissist, so worship away.

Today I was reading this week's selections in the absolutely scintillating journal known as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or "Pe-NAS" as J-Sexy and I call it, when I came across this article. Not that the paper was particularly exciting. In fact, like most signal transduction-related biochemistry, it was a fucking snorefest...it certainly was no "In Vitro Engagement of CD3 and CD28 Corrects T Cell Defects in Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia" by Razzy et al, but that wasn't what caught my eye. I just about fell out of my chair when I saw the authors:

Stat3 activation of NF-kappaB p100 processing involves CBP/p300-mediated acetylation

Nagalakshmi Nadiminty*, Wei Lou*, Soo Ok Lee*, Xin Lin, Donald L. Trump*, and Allen C. Gao

DONALD TRUMP?! Did he decide to take a break from real-estate development and reality TV to do a postdoc dissecting signaling pathways regulating the activation of transcription factors? If so, that's good news, because I'd love to be on reality television, and I know the world is desperately wanting to see a science-based incarnation of "The Apprentice," if only to see more of me in my lab coat. Nothing would be more compelling in prime-time than watching a bunch of sexy grad students competing over who does the hottest western blot, or who can tear shit up the hardest with a flow cytometer (obviously that would be me...you can't step to my skills with three-color FACS, son!) Certainly that would be way better than watching a bunch of ex-stockbrokers trying to refurbish some shitty motel on the Jersey shore. Or not. Whatever, I'm sure the Donald will find some way to make it semi-compelling.

This puts me in a good mood, because it means there's hope for me and reality TV stardom yet. Watch out, Bill Nye, because you're about to be usurped by Razzy the Science Bitch. For real.

When I started doing this blog, I did not intend to write about my sex life. Part of it was out of concern that my parents would read it, but that's no longer an issue since they pretend my site doesn't exist, and wince when I even mention it in passing. Also, I really do not want to be known as a "sex blogger", since there's already plenty of people working this genre on the internet, and I strive for more originality than the average asshole with a LiveJournal page. Furthermore, I don't want to start talking about everyone I sleep with because if I do, I worry that I will never get laid again, at least not with the caliber of guys to which I am accustomed. However, I've been told that some of my stories are pretty priceless, and it would be funny to see them chronicled on RAZZY.org. In particular, people seemed to really enjoy my recent post about Facial Boy, as I've gotten a variety of requests for re-tellings, more detail, and other similar stories. Since I'm not trying to be Tucker Max or someone who specializes in these kinds of stories, I'm not going to make a separate section on my site for it. However, I do have a few good (and by good, I mean unbelievably awful) tales after a decade of skanky behavior, so I may as well take up some space on my blog with it. I don't plan on sharing any stories from guys who rocked my world, or at least were mediocre, or were even shitty in an average way. Like I said, I'm not trying to deter prospective hot guys from getting in my pants by exposing them on the internet. So 95% of the dudes I've ever screwed can rest easy. These stories concern guys who represent the absolute dregs of my roster. These were the ho'ses in my stable that I'd gladly send off to the fucking glue factory. So without further ado, here is the first account:

Shortly before I moved to New York from Tacoma, I stopped by a party thrown by this guy who was a professional piercer. Normally I wouldn't go to events featuring a string of live Tacoma punk bands, but I knew the guy having the party and it was some sort of special occasion that I can't remember now, so I felt obligated to make an appearance. I felt confident that since it was a Sunday night, and I had to work the next day, I'd only stop in for a beer or two and be home in time for a good night's sleep.

After arriving at the party, I realized that in my knee-length skirt and strappy heels, I was sticking out like a sore thumb compared to the other heavily pierced and tattooed people wearing ripped-up Ramones shirts accessorized with safety pins (really punk, by the way...I think I've seen Avril Lavigne in the same outfit). Therefore, I promptly knocked back enough keg beer to make me more socially comfortable.

I started talking to this guy I knew from this bar I used to work at, and he introduced me to this other guy, who, despite being covered in piercings and having dreadlocks (he was white), seemed friendly enough. I gave him a break for the piercings since he was a piercing apprentice (loving the artisan guild format that elective mutilation service providers like tattooists and piercers utilize, by the way), and I figured it was his job to have a few too many piercings. A few beers later, the party was ending, and instead of going home like a good girl, I foolishly decided to go to a bar with the two of them. Why we went to Jillian's (incredibly lame chain pool hall), I have no idea, but we decided once we got there that the drink of choice for the night was the Irish car bomb. For those of you non-alcoholics, an Irish car bomb involves drinking a 3/4 pint of Guiness after dropping a shot of Jameson's with a Bailey's floater into it. Since the Bailey's will curdle rapidly once it's in the beer, the car bomb must be chugged immediately, before it can acquire an objectionable texture. It is not wise to sit at a horrible bar in Tacoma with weirdos and pound three of these beverages in less than an hour, particularly when you are interspersing said car bombs with a palate-cleanser like a well gin and tonic.

When the bar closed, I had completely forgotten about the fact that I had to work the next day, and decided to continue partying. We went to the guy I used to work with's "practice space," which was this weird storage locker turned into Tacoma punk party space. The guy's "studio" was stocked with a selection of crappy-looking amps with Misfits stickers on them, as well as the other random detritus that intermittently employed line cooks turned Hell's Kitchen's regular Wednesday night gig leave behind: dirty partnerless socks, spray paint cans, grungy hooded sweatshirts, crumpled beer and soda cans, empty ketchup packets, and coffee cups reinvented as overflowing ashtrays. Fortunately, it was equipped with a case of room temperature Milwaukee's Best beer. After getting a few cans of Beast deep, the piercing guy started talking about his efforts at self-mutilation. He had two tongue piercings, and I naturally wanted to know why anyone would want two, when one is bad enough. I pointed out that in my experience, tongue rings never did ANYTHING for me, except manage to make oral sex an unpleasant and irritating experience. Maybe it works on men, but tongue piercings never did shit for me beside annoy the hell out of me and dramatically increase my risk of urinary tract infection. You can't even kiss a guy with a tongue piercing normally, because it's like kissing someone with a piece of over-chewed, ossified gum in his mouth. In other words, gross, and not very sexy.

Piercing guy attributed this to the guys I'd been with "not knowing how to use it." Then he told me he had ELEVEN penis piercings...ten going up the shaft, like a zipper, and a Prince Albert through the head. He claimed that this was the ultimate in sexual experiences for women, that it "drives them wild." I was very skeptical, and challenged him as to the validity of this statement. He claimed that the women he'd been with found it fulfilling and enjoyable. I still doubted this, but I was also somewhat intrigued. I began to contemplate whether or not I'd be willing to bang him just to find out. I was drunk and horny, and wearing a serious pair of beer goggles with Coke-bottle lenses.

Now, I'd like to mention that I don't like guys (or any person, for that matter) with lots of piercings or tattoos. I have a particular hatred for people with excess facial piercings, because they are so distracting. Why people want to ruin their faces with all that Frankenpunk jewelry is beyond me. Apart from decorative self-mutilation, it is also most certainly my policy to flee from white people rocking dreads when sober. However, it was 3:30 a.m., I wanted to get some ass, and I was curious about the guy's dick. And you know what they say about curiosity...in this case, it definitely killed the fucking pussycat.

Prince Albert and I went back to my house, and promptly began getting it on. First, he attempted to shatter my perceptions of oral sex with tandem 10-gauge tongue studs. And guess what? He didn't shatter anything, except possibly my pelvic floor with his clumsy attentions. With regard to his claim of "knowing how to use it," he should find out where a woman's clitoris actually is before engaging in such braggadocio. I finally had to tell him to stop because my shit was feeling chafed. So we got down to actual fucking. With a lot of fanfare, he whipped it out.

I checked out his equipment, and while the size was fine, I remember thinking how ugly it looked. It looked like something that belonged in Mistress Whoever's pleasure dungeon, but with less artistic panache. Based on appearances, I wasn't remotely convinced that this was going to get me off, but as long as I had him at my place, I might as well go through with it. Bad move.

I felt like that prostitute from the movie Seven who was fucked to death with a bayonet strap-on. I suppose that studding your cock with cold, sharp metal is satisfying for women who love excruciating vagina pain, but I am not one of those bitches. I guess he also thought that slobbering all over a woman's neck is a winning move, because he wouldn't stop licking and sucking on my throat. With regard to technique, he was what I call a Jackhammerer. These are the guys who think they are literally trying to break concrete with their dicks, and just rapid-fire slam away at you without any sense of placement or rhythm. The jackhammer moves definitely did NOT combine with his penis jewelry to make this anything besides utterly torturous. To avoid further bodily trauma, I told him I was done with the cooch impaling, informed him that he was wrong about his dick bling being the sure-fire path to female pleasure, and then passed out.

When my alarm went off for work FORTY-FIVE MINUTES later, I looked like Aileen Wuornos and felt like I had just been shit out by one of the demons in a Bosch painting. I staggered into the shower (where I realized I was bleeding, and it was not that time of the month), cleaned up, and got dressed. Because my eyes were too bloodshot and irritated for contacts, I decided to wear my glasses to work, an unprecedented event. Also, I noticed with appalled horror as I went to do my makeup that this asshole gave me a fucking HICKEY in addition to a wrecked twat. I had to wear a FUCKING SCARF AROUND MY NECK to work to cover it up, because I certainly wasn't doing any good for my reputation as a skank at the office showing up on a Monday morning with a gigantic strawberry on my neck. It was so severe (probably exacerbated by his fucking mouth jewelry) that I looked like I'd been brutally battered. I was pissed. Is he in the seventh fucking grade? Who gives hickeys to professional adults?! I knew I should have told him to quit his drooling attentions from my decolletage area!

I had to get to work, and there was no way I was letting this motherfucker let himself out. I wanted him out of my house. So I stormed into my room and shook Prince Albert's shoulder urgently. He continued to sleep, with his stank-ass white-boy dreadlocks all over my pillow. I took a mental note that tonight was laundry night for polluted sheets, and that made me even angrier. I shook him again, and he didn't respond. Frustrated, I jumped on the bed, and kicked him fairly hard in the ribs. He did not wake up. To put the proverbial cherry on top of my rage sundae, he rolled onto his stomach and FARTED at me.

Standing above him, hungover/still drunk, wearing a horrible outfit, with a hematoma the size of Texas on my neck, I almost became homicidal. I went all Full Metal Jacket on his ass, shouting, "Wake the fuck up, you cocksucker! WAKE THE FUCK UP, you piece of shit!" I then pummeled his back and sides with my fists until he sleepily sat up and said "What's up?"

"What is up," I said. "Is you. I'm going to work, so I'm giving you a ride home. Get up. Get dressed. NOW."

I got him dressed in his heinous Portrait of Poverty shirt or whatever, found his wallet (with chain attached) for him, and took him home, which was totally out of my way. The whole way he tried to make feeble small talk, while I fumed. At his house, I practically threw him out of my car while it was still moving. Then I went to work, and just prayed that I'd get through an uneventful day so I could get back home and recover. Alas, it was not to be. My co-workers took about 5 minutes to figure out why I was rocking a silk choker and proceeded to rib me about it all day. One guy kept humming "Ride of the Valkyries" at me whenever I walked by, as on account of my scarf, glasses, and the red shirt I was wearing, he thought I looked like the Red Baron. I actually bought a tube of Preparation H because the receptionist said that would improve the hickey instantly (a myth...it did nothing but get me all greasy). That was nothing compared to the main event, though. The agony had only begun.

When I arrived at my desk, my Microsoft Outlook calendar informed me that--joy of all joys--I had a gynecologist appointment in thirty minutes. I had forgotten entirely that I had scheduled the kickoff to my week with a Pap smear and pelvic exam. Though I was certain that my ravaged shit couldn't tolerate a speculum, it was hard to get in with my gyno, so attendance was mandatory. I braced myself for the worst, and hobbled bow-legged over to her office.

Once I had my feet up in the stirrups, my gynecologist took one look and inquired, "Rough night?"

"You can say that again," I said.

"Was it...okay with you?" she asked, seeming concerned. Apparently, my situation gave a whole new meaning to "liking it rough," and I think she found it difficult to believe that a woman would consent to such injury.

"Unfortunately," I replied. Then I explained about his piercings, and my doctor, a middle-aged lady who claimed to have a daughter about my age, just shook her head in disbelief. All she could muster was, "I don't think that's very healthy for women."

You said it, girlfriend. If guys contemplating piercing their johnsons are reading, take it from both an expert at random penises (me) and an expert at healthy vaginas (my doctor): the only way piercing your dick will "drive women wild" is in the sense that being stretched on the rack drives women wild. Don't do it, you dumbasses.

My week's vacay in the P-N-Dub was great, but I was definitely ready to get back to New York by the time I packed up my shit and went to the airport yesterday. This became apparent to me on my flight from Seattle, when I was seated next to an extremely chatty computer programmer-turned-grass roots organizer for the Sierra Club and WashPIRG. In addition to his career path, this guy scored 100% on the fruity Seattle Guy checklist. Long hair contained in an unkempt braid? Check. Long sleeved t-shirt paired with fleece vest, despite the unseasonably warm weather warranting cargo shorts? Check. Teva sandals with socks? Check. Brews stout for a hobby? Check. Vegetarian? You fucking know it. For the first two hours of the flight, I listened to him yammer on about his kayaking/canoeing-related injuries, avoiding avalanches while backcountry snowboarding, his preferred genre of reading material ("military sci-fi"), and the hilarity of Delta's relying on Linux for the operation of their seatback TV consoles. I started thinking a litany of "Land the plane already, I am dying to get back to Harlem"-type thoughts. After he invited me on a scenic cruise of the San Juans with him next fall (um...no thanks, I don't fuck REI-philes who brag about writing poetry in Perl, or "the camel" as it's affectionately known in tech geek circles), he started ranting about how "ugly" Microsoft Visual Basic is as a programming language, and I literally fell asleep while he was talking. As much fun as I had visiting, relaxing, and driving drunk around the south Sound, I was all ready for a big dose of city folk.

When my cab dropped me at my apartment a couple of hours later, and I stepped over empty King Cobra 24-ounce cans and a freshly graffitied tag for someone named "G-Boogie" on the sidewalk in front of my building, I took a deep breath and let out a sigh of satisfaction. Nothing makes you love New York like leaving it for a little while. And I'm not even here a full 24 hours before a ridiculous exchange occurs with some locals.

Today, I got up and went to Washington Heights to pick up the d-o-double g's. Caesar went into a state of leaping, wagging rapture when he saw me, and if I had a tail to wag, I would have done so right back at him. It's good to be reunited with your pack. Neo, Caesar's dogsitter, suggested that we take Caese and her puppy, a really adorable Jack Russell-Pug-Beagle mix named Ilse to the nearby dog run for a session of Kong chasing while we waited to meet up with Chingy!. It was a beautiful day, and I figured that a strenuous trip to the dog run would make Caesar much easier to wrangle during our mile walk back to Sugar Hill from the Heights. So I called my other dogsitter and arranged for her to drop off Chingy! at the dog run, and began looking forward to some quality dog time followed by a pleasant walk down scenic St. Nicholas Avenue.

By the time we were done playing at the park and embarked on this walk, both dogs were exhausted. Chingy! was acting like he was about to die, since he definitely didn't lose any weight while I was away. In fact, he consumed so many rawhides and treats from the Petco cookie bar in my absence that he looks like he should have an apple in his mouth while being slow-roasted on a spit. Caesar was also very tired from an hour of vigorous fetch, and was well-behaved on the walk. Because he'd been playing so hard, he was too tired to dart unexpectedly after feral tomcats and discarded chicken bones like he normally does. However, as usual, the walk through the Heights and Harlem was filled with lots of dog-prompted commentary from the many hang-abouts on the street.

We passed a group of teenagers on 152nd and St. Nick minding their pit bull (on a chain leash, obviously), one of whom said something like "oh shit, look-a that big-ass Rock-weiler." I corrected him amiably, explaining that Caesar's actually a Rottie-German Shepherd mix. Despite Caesar's heavy panting, askew tongue, and generally peaceable demeanor, the kid observed, "That dog don't play around." I decided not to explain that all Caesar does is play around, and kept walking. I thought about how much I love my neighborhood, because it has so much character, and culturally is so delightfully different than where I grew up.

Less than a block later, I was hailed by four 20-something guys sitting on a stoop. Judging by the smell, they'd just finished passing around a blunt. "Excuse me, miss? Is that one of those Men in Black dogs?" I hear this all the time about Chingy!, so I said, "Yes, he's a Pug." I guess a week in Pierce County softened up my standard bitch face, because I appeared as though I wanted to chat for awhile. Plus, I was moving slowly on account of being burdened with Chingy!'s carrier on my back, which appropriately is manufactured by a company called "Sherpa." The bag was heavy on account of being stuffed with leftover bags of Beneful, doggie treats and toys, food bowls, and other canine paraphernalia, and since I was practically dragging the worn-out dogs, I wasn't walking at my usual brisk clip.

One guy, in a shirt that read "Fuck Snitches," asked about Caesar. "That dog's badass, but he looks tired, yo." I mentioned that he'd had lots of exercise at the park, followed by a long walk.

"You live around here, ma?" queried a guy clad head-to-toe in UNC Tarheels logo gear.

"Yeah, a few blocks away on the other side of 145th," I replied. Then for no good reason, I explained why I was passing by their corner. "I was out of town for a week, and I just got back last night, so I had to go uptown to pick up my dogs and walk them back to my place."

"Shit," said the Tarheel. "Welcome back."

"Thanks," I said, and continued to walk. The dogs looked overheated, and I was anxious to get home and drink a cold beverage, since the boys consumed my entire bottle of Poland Spring at the park.

"Hey, why don't you come in for a minute? We're having a party," said one of the other guys, clad in a classic Harlem wife beater-Yankees hat backwards-chain with dollar sign pendant ensemble.

"Oh?" I said. "What's the occasion?"

"The 'casion is meeting you, boo. Welcome home, sump-in like that. Come on in, it'll be a private party. "

"Straight VIP," added Fuck Snitches.

I thought for a moment. While it is nice to be described as a very important person, I imagined what precisely would go on between me and these four dudes while my thoroughly weary dogs slumbered. I surmised that this "private party" would end with me in a situation that is hilarious to me when described in rap songs, but not something I intend to actually participate in myself. Despite my sluttiness and penchant for hot black guys, I'm not Superhead, and I'm certainly not trying to spend my Sunday afternoon getting my shit to' up by a crew of random loiterers. I advised them that I really needed to get my dogs home, but thanks for the invite.

"Come on, baby. You beautiful. Just come chill with us for a couple minutes."

Again I reiterated my regrets (this time in a much firmer tone of voice), and quickened my pace to get out of talking range with them. They didn't pursue me, since heckling women is a favorite pasttime of stoop-sitters and I'm sure they were accustomed to being turned down. However, I spent the rest of the walk chuckling to myself. As silly as the lines I've heard in Pierce County often are, nothing compares to the way random dudes in New York will proposition you simply for passing within earshot, even when you're not wearing any makeup and sporting jeans and sneakers covered with dust from the dog run. Nobody in Puyallup has ever gone from "what kind of dog is that?" to essentially proposing some sort of dirty encounter with four strange men in three sentences. God bless New York. It's fucking funny as hell to be back.

So many of my five rabid readers are probably like, "I thought she was on vacation, so why is the RazzyBlog being updated on the daily?" Well, I'm on vacation, but unfortunately, all my friends and family have these annoying things called jobs that they have to go to, so during the day I have to occupy myself otherwise. Since even with hundreds of channels of digital cable, there's nothing really good to watch during the day (and unlike my brother, I can get enough of Giada De Laurentiis on "Everyday Italian"), I spend a great deal of time dicking around on the internet. It's kind of nice, because normally I don't have this much time to devote to my blog, and it keeps me out of trouble. Plus, with the extra time to reflect, I think of all the entertaining things that I've been meaning to put up here. This morning, I was driving around, and flipped on KUBE 93, which reminded me of a story I've been meaning to tell.

KUBE 93 is the Seattle hip-hop station, and it's hilarious. For one thing, it has the whitest DJs on the planet, who all try to sound like they're from the streets. I'd like to know where these "streets" are, because they sound like they're the rough and tumble streets of Queen Anne, or possibly Belltown. Yesterday I heard Shelley Hart, host of the "Old School Lunch", refer to Puyallup as the "dirrty South." Ridiculous. Anyway, KUBE's morning show DJ is this Howard Stern wannabe shock jock named the T-Man. As I heard his grating voice blabbing about rim jobs or whatever the hell he was talking about this morning, it brought back memories of days of yore, when I resided in the classy North End of Tacoma and had recently gotten my first real job as a T cell farmer at a Seattle biotech startup. I managed to really impress the hell out of my colleagues with a stunt that I pulled involving the T-Man, a sliding glass door, and no pants. As far as absurd Razzy antics go, this one is a classic.

At the age of 21, with my big expensive Smith degree, I managed to get hired at this cell therapy company, joining a team of intrepid scientists "harnessing the power of the body's own immune system to cure cancer and infectious disease." (Ultimately, all we managed to do was harness the power of the tanking economy to pull off a disappointing IPO and get kicked off the NASDAQ for our stock's woeful performance...good thing I only bought the cheap options.) Of course, it wasn't really my Smith degree that got me the interview for this job, but the fact that I was temping in the same building for another organization, and the guy who became my boss saw me in the elevator, checked out my tits, liked what he saw, and asked if I knew sterile technique. I was hired the next week.

Several months later, I had already made friends with the numerous other twenty-something Research Associates and was regularly attending happy hours with them. One night, only myself and the guy from Shipping and Receiving felt like hitting the bar, and without chaperones, we naturally wound up drunk and screwing. This then became a regular thing, which would have been fine, except before me he had been involved with a married woman from upper management (that's how he got his job), so in the interest of preventing work drama, we kept our office romance on the down low. Ultimately, the dirty drunken sex turned into a pseudo-relationship, but I wasn't trying to get too serious since I was juggling a couple of other randoms at the time. I had also just broken up with my boyfriend of three years and was thoroughly enjoying my recently-single spree. I thought he was on the same page. At least, he told me he was.

One of the shitty things about living in Tacoma and working in Seattle was the commute. I'd spend hours on I-5 stuck in traffic, drinking my coffee, smoking cigarettes, and listening to whatever bullshit was on the radio on my way to and from work. Sometimes, I would listen to the T-Man show. One morning, the T-Man was taking calls from people who had sex at work. Since I was bored, and I felt that this topic applied to me, I decided to call up the show, proving that idle hands and a cell phone are indeed the devil's workshop. I ended up on the air impressing the T-Man with my masterful ability to combine large vocabulary words with crude euphemisms for sex. I believe that I said something along the lines of "I'm surreptitiously banging my co-worker." The T-Man and his cohorts of guffawing sycophants loved this, and extended me and Shipping and Receiving guy invitations to the T-Man Christmas party. Apparently, a lot of people want to go to this event, because people were always calling in trying to get invites to it, and usually were turned down unless they could bring some personality. So the producer got on the phone with me, took down my mailing address, and said he'd be sending the invites in the mail. S&R guy was thrilled, because like I said, for some reason there are an inordinate number of idiots in Seattle who want to go to the Westlake Jillian's at 7 a.m. to see the T-Man do his thing live, and he was one of them. He sang my praises for scoring a spot on the guest list of such a choice event.

A few weeks passed, and still the invitations had not arrived, but I wasn't worried, because I didn't really care if we went or not. I was also distracted by a separate incident that shocked me and subsequently caused some friction between me and S&R Guy. My boss, the guy who hired me on the basis of my ability to do tissue culture while equipped with a hot rack, decided to abruptly quit to go work for a direct competitor. This did not go over well with upper management, so he decided to finish out his tenure working mostly from home. He and I also used to hang out, drink, and smoke cigarettes together. As you might imagine, smoking while in the employ of a cancer therapy company is not exactly embraced (despite my assertion that it was an incentive to cure cancer sooner), so we would sneak out to the loading dock behind the building and that smoker exile created a rapport between us beyond the typical boss-employee relationship. One morning on my way to work, he asked me to swing by his apartment. I figured he just wanted me to bring something into the office for him. I arrive, and he asks me to sit down, because he has something important to tell me.

He says, "I REALLY like you, Miss Ang. I want to be with you. I want to take you to Cabo with me next week and make love to you and be with you." That is what he said verbatim. I was floored, since not only was he involved with another woman, but I didn't see this coming AT ALL. When I seemed hesitant, he really laid on the sales pitch (this guy was a total wheeler-dealer type). Regarding our prospective sex life: "we'd have the CRAZIEST sex ever." Regarding our prospective relationship: "we'd be a POWER couple." Regarding my relationship with S&R Guy (which he knew about): "he can't appreciate you like I do...he doesn't UNDERSTAND people like us, and besides, you're not serious about him anyway." Regarding his girlfriend (who he is now married to): "she's just keeping my bed warm. She doesn't compare to a woman like you." Regarding the proferred trip to Mexico: "even if you're not ready to sleep with me, we can go as friends. You should still come with, and I'll pay." (Because guys love buying exotic vacations for women who aren't putting out...did he think I was born fucking yesterday???) I made him give me the day off work to think about it, even though I already knew the answer was a definitive NO. This guy was fine to kill Budweisers and watch Seahawks games with, but he was NOT an attractive man. He had an excess of back hair (it stuck out of his collar), the most heinous fashion sense imaginable (seersucker polo shirts with zippers on the sleeve?! Are you kidding, dude?!) and a terrible sweating/body odor problem. Furthermore, I wasn't about to publicly run off to Mexico with a dude who was the pariah of the company for selling out to the competition.

The next day, I declined my boss's offer, and went out to lunch with S&R Guy. Since I'm honest to a fault, I opened my big mouth and told him about my boss, stupidly thinking he might find it funny. Apparently, S&R Guy had a much different notion of our relationship status, in terms of its exclusivity and level of emotional commitment. He was super pissed, very jealous, and ranting in grandiose language like "betrayal", "deception", etc. He even threatened to go over to my boss's apartment and have words with him. I calmed him down, told him that if he made this an issue I would dump his ass, and convinced him to spend that night at my place. I reminded him that the T-Man Christmas party he was so psyched about was in two days, and I wasn't running off to Mexico, so I could placate him with a blowjob and a couple of beers and the whole thing would be forgotten. Besides, I said, our company holiday party was the next night, and it was this big formal affair, and we had to put on our "we're colleagues" faces. If he showed up in hysterics, people would start to gossip about it, and we had our professional reputations to uphold.

He finally accepted how reasonable this was, and came home with me that night. The next morning on our way to work, he reminded me that we still hadn't received the T-Man Christmas party invitations, and that he very much wanted to go. Being the persistent go-getter that I am, and the good "girlfriend" or whatever, I called up the T-Man show, talked my way onto the air again, and said that I wanted my invitations. The T-Man said he didn't remember me, and if I really wanted to get the invitations, we would have to stop by the studio and go on the air in person. S&R Guy and I agreed that this was doable. After all, he wanted to go to that party, and I wanted to keep getting laid.

When we got to the studio, S&R Guy went to park my car and I ran in. Once I got in, they asked in the "green room" if I was very shy. "Hell no!" I said. So once they put me in front of a microphone, they talked to me a little about my relationship with S&R Guy. Feeling a little cocky, I then also shot my mouth off about his previous relationship with the married executive, and the proposition I got from my boss. Then I was asked if we ever got busy at work, and I said no, because I work in a lab, and it's not a good idea to start exchanging bodily fluids in a place where diseased human blood samples are routinely manipulated. Then T-Man started asking questions about where I work, what I do, and the like. Fortunately I didn't actually drop the name of my company, but there aren't a lot of T cell companies in the Seattle biotech scene, and I failed to realize how distinctive my voice is. You can see where this is going.

After completely incriminating myself by describing many of the specific points of my job, T-Man said that in order to get the tickets, I was going to have to pretend to have sex with a sliding glass door with no pants on. He called this "sex under glass." Since I'm not shy, I obliged, and made sure to give one hell of a performance. I was the best that sliding glass door ever had. I figured this would never come back to haunt me, since it's on the radio, and nobody can see me...right?

Well, after we got our names on the invite list, S&R Guy and I headed to work. He was a little disappointed that he didn't get to meet the T-Man, but applauded me for saving the day with regard to the T-Man Christmas party. As usual, we took different routes from the parking lot to the office to disguise the fact that we arrived together. I figured everything was A-okay, because nothing seemed amiss. I got my cell processing on, then went to my desk to take care of some paperwork.

Later that day, the Director of H.R. asks to speak with me privately. Uh oh. She pulls me into her office and says, "Can you please confirm what I've been hearing, that you went on the radio and discussed some very personal matters about yourself and some of your co-workers?" Clearly she knows all about it, so I confirm that this is true. I explained to her that I thought it was more anonymous than it obviously was, and was very embarrassed about it. At least I didn't say the name of the company I worked for...I think I would have been fired for sure if I had. However, I was bracing myself for the worst. Instead of being canned, I received what may be the most unprofessional reprimand for unprofessional behavior ever. This bitch sits me down and says, "You know, S&R Guy is a really sweet, caring person, and I think it's really unfair for you to be cheating on him. I think the only right thing for you to do is be honest with him about your involvement with (soon-to-be-ex-boss), because he doesn't deserve to be treated that way." WHAT?! I'm not in trouble for talking about my job and pretending to fuck a sliding glass door naked from the waist down, but H.R.'s main concern is that I might hurt my secret boyfriend's feelings?!

Apparently, the director of manufacturing heard my performance because her staff was listening to the T-Man show, and they all were like, "Whoa, that's Razzy!" So the D of M went to her boss, the COO, who went to the CEO, who called an emergency executive meeting to discuss my performance. Of course, since I wasn't present at this meeting, what I said on the radio was *wildly* exaggerrated. They thought I was fucking half the company, and their only concern was to make sure I came clean with S&R Guy who I was "cheating on"?

I set the H.R. Director straight, and explained that while my boss had propositioned me, I had turned him down. Furthermore, I was a fool for discussing my personal life in such a public forum, particularly concerning my co-workers. I apologized profusely, assured her that nothing like this would ever happen again, and weathered a stern lecture about appropriate conduct in the workplace. I was then instructed again to do right by S&R Guy.

That was hard to do, because he got his own dressing-down from his ex-girlfriend the married executive, who got to sit through the meeting in which my slutty on-air antics were discussed, and she was pissed as hell both that I'd gone on the radio talking about this and that he was now "dating" someone else. She was also pissed because ultimately the executives decided to just lecture me, since although I was young and stupid, my aptitude at applied immunology warranted giving me another chance. Therefore, I was not getting fired. She absolutely wanted me gone, but couldn't bring it up in the meeting since it would mean copping to an extramarital affair with a subordinate.

When we met up to go to his place in order to get dressed for that evening's company holiday party, he was VERY upset, said that he regretted ever meeting me, and he was going to have to think long and hard about continuing our relationship. I then got pissed, because I was like, "I fucked a sliding glass door for all of Seattle to hear, so you could get your fucking T-Man tickets, and you're DUMPING me? As I recall, you were waiting outside the studio for me and you thought the whole thing was hilarious! You thanked me afterward for going the extra mile! So what if your ex is pissed...at least you're not the goddamned company whore!" So he finally agreed to go to the company holiday party with me, although that was not so much a party as an exercise in sheer awkwardness. Unfortunately, before this whole debacle, I had selected a dress for the party that wasn't exactly what one would describe as conservative. It wasn't like something a hooker would rock in 1980s-era Times Square, but it also wasn't something that Laura Bush would wear to greet a visiting foreign dignitary. Parts of it were very sheer, and it definitely showcased the fabled tits that got me my job. However, since I didn't have any extra formalwear laying around and I didn't have time to go back to Tacoma for something more appropriate, I had to wear it as best as I could and just keep my chin up.

I walked into that company party trying to radiate cool confidence, but EVERYONE was staring at me like I was Jezebel incarnate. The CEO didn't even respond when I wished him a Happy Hanukkah. For once, I went to a party with an open bar and didn't get drunk, because I figured that acting like an outrageous lush wasn't going to help my image any. And even though I stayed at S&R Guy's place that night, I definitely did not get laid.

The great part was that I ended up at the T-Man Christmas party the next morning alone, because S&R Guy refused to go with me. I wasn't going to let those tickets go to waste after what I did to earn them, though, so I spent the morning at Jillian's pounding Bloody Marys and telling some assistant producer from the T-Man show all about how this bullshit almost cost me my job. It didn't cost me my job, but it definitely cost me my open access ass pass with S&R Guy. He later told me that we could get past the whole sordid affair if I was willing to make a commitment, drop the other hos in my stable, agree to be his official card-carrying girlfriend, and start throwing the L word around. I was not, so we parted somewhat amicably and remained on decent terms until he sexually harassed my 19-year-old intern with his foot in a hot tub after the Fremont Solstice parade.

Years later, when I quit to go to grad school, the CEO told the whole story (well, at least the parts he knew) to great effect at my company-sponsored going away drink up. He was practically in tears with laughter about it, and he also wrote me several kick-ass letters of recommendation, so it didn't leave a lasting mark on my reputation as a scientist. However, whenever I am back in the P-N-Dub and happen to hear the T-Man, I can't help but chuckle fondly about my youthful stupidity and arrogance, and how prior to Razzy.org, my only experience with mass media exposure was me simulating sex with a method of egress. Ah, to be 21 again.

In 1985, Nancy Reagan was in her "Just Say No" heyday, and an all-star '80s cast (including Kim Fields, the cast of Fame, and Patrick Swayze) got together to chip in and help with her anti-drug crusade by creating an *amazing* music video/public service announcement called "Stop the Madness" that was funded by the Reagan White House. DEFINITELY watch this...it is awesome.


In particular, I love the Herb Alpert sexy trumpet music juxtaposed with people cutting up a veritable mountain of coke. If I had seen this as a kid, I don't think this PSA would have been so effective, because watching that many people in sexy '80s gear like legwarmers and acid washed denim snorting lines really just inspires one to go do a shit-ton of blow. Apparently most of the "Stop the Madness" cast felt the same way. Look at all the fucking celebri-druggies in this video! You gotta love the irony:

Whitney Houston: If watching "Being Bobby Brown" during it's short and incredibly disturbing stint on Bravo! wasn't enough to convince you that this bitch is a crackhead the caliber of Chris Rock's character in New Jack City, then you should be reminded that she was actually (allegedly) kicked out of a crackhouse in the ATL, and this is what her bathroom looks like:

Nothing says "clean and sober" like a countertop full of crack pipes, spent roaches, and discarded cans of Budweiser. Look who else is in "Stop the Madness"...

New Edition, featuring one Mr. Bobby Brown! Of course I don't even need to detail Bobby Brown's long and storied history of substance abuse/random acts of violence, because this is common knowledge.

LaToya Jackson: Okay, I'm not sure that she ever did drugs, but she certainly is addicted to plastic surgery much like her brother Michael. And I'm pretty sure that drugs are mandatory in the Jackson household. That would at least explain the family tradition of being child abusing freaks.

Holy shit, is that Lyle Alzado?! The late Jewish all-pro defensive end made the Broncos "Orange Crush" defense stomp the NFL in the '70s thanks to the help of anabolic steroids, which he later blamed the brain tumor that killed him on. And speaking of steroids...

It's the Governator! And he's inexplicably dressed as a garbage man. A garbage man on steroids. This was just post-Mr. Universe Ahnold, so you know he had shriveled balls, bacne, and a major case of roid rage.

David Hasselhoff: In 2004, Da Hoff was busted for DUI, went to rehab, and supposedly cleaned up after his court-mandated 50 AA meetings. More importantly, he indirectly encourages drug use, as you have to be either high or German to enjoy his musical stylings.

Way to go, Nancy Reagan, because putting together an all-star cast of future drug addicts is a great way to inspire kids to just say no. I'm strongly considering telling MillerTime that we should swing by a bar after the jog we are about to go on, just because watching this definitely makes me want to ingest some type of mind-altering substance.

Dear friends back in the big city,

My vacation is going great so far. Since escaping from Nieuw Amsterdam to the quieter, more verdant clime of the P-N-Dub, my email has been blowing up with warm wishes and congratulations from my peers at school with regard to my seminar (which blew everyone's minds, of course). All these emails ask how my vacation is going, and I have to say, thus far, it couldn't be better. Of course, P-town and T-town can't remotely compete with New York in terms of places to go and crazy people to see, but when your hectic Manhattan rat race life has caused you to be on the verge of a psychotic episode, I can't imagine a better place to relax and recover than unincorporated Pierce County. Want to know why? Here are 10 reasons:

1. Hilarious yet inexpensive bar scene. A beer is $3, and that's for a decent beer. PBR, Rainier (aka "Vitamin R"), or Olympia are like $1.00. Cigarettes cost less than $5, which is beautiful compared to the $7.50 you pay in NYC. Also, approximately 50% of the bars here have pull tabs, which may be the most degenerate form of gambling ever conceived. You pay $0.50-$1.00 for a piece of cardboard that has three tabs, which you pull to reveal if you've won. In each bucket of pull tabs, there are a given number of winners, so people will fork over obscene amounts of cash pulling these from a given game until they win. The awesomest thing is that even though there are only a given number of winning cards from each pull tab game, when someone has won all the big prizes, bars will put a sign on the game that says "This game is HOT!" or something like that, and people will still fork over $50 for a plastic basket of chances to win $5. Pull tabs are so popular that you can reserve a game if you think that you'll get lucky on it, so that you can come back to the bar and throw your money away at your leisure. This place by my parents' house, the Roadhouse, has such a large contingent of pull-tab connoisseurs that you can not only win money, but a large selection of crappy microwaves, unofficial Seahawks merchandise, and numerous name-brand (ie: John Deere, Caterpiller, Stihl) beer cozies. You don't even have to talk to the people in these bars to be amused. Also, my mother told me that last week, the Roadhouse was written up for violating the state's strict new anti-smoking legislation, which mandates that smokers have to stay at least 25 feet from any given business's door. Therefore, they COMMISSIONED A CRANE to literally lift the Roadhouse's plywood smoking hut and move it EXACTLY 25 feet away. You can't make this shit up.

2. Stupid people abound for mocking. On Friday, after MillerTime picked me up at the airport, we went to this place in Tacoma called the West End, where we sat and drank scotch (me) and rum-and-diets (her), and I eventually performed my karaoke masterpiece "Take It on the Run" by REO Speedwagon to the outspoken delight of the people at the pull tab counter. My drunken crooning of a commercial buttrock classic combined with the low-cut shirts MillerTime and I were sporting (and she has a way bigger rack than I do) to attract a gaggle of semi-employed ne'er-do-wells who decided to impress us with their knowledge of competitive bass fishing. At one point, one of these knuckle-draggers condescendingly explained that since we seemed like a couple of city broads, we couldn't possibly understand the complex nuances of selecting tackle and dropping it into a lake. When I argued that I grew up plugging herring for salmon leaders with my old man and reading Hemingway's numerous fly-fishing-based accounts of coming to terms with life's bullshit, I was told that I'm "really east coast" (translation: a bitch). I said that I'd just have to comfort myself with the knowledge that at 5'3", I'm taller than him, and I've probably scored more pussy in my time, as well. Unbelievably, he still wanted to know what MillerTime and I were doing after the bar closed, and if he could join us doing it. Obviously we told him we planned to jump off the Narrows Bridge, and if he got there first, he should just get started without us.

3. Trite sexual harassment/borderline sexual assault in abundance. On Saturday, I ended up at the West End again after the crab feed, this high school benefit I attended which was the official justification for my trip home (apart from the unofficial reason, which was to ensure that I didn't have a complete fucking meltdown). I was seated at the bar, talking to a former classmate about his impending move to the Dominican Republic to construct new shanties and schools for the impoverished of Santo Domingo, and generally ignoring the mob of Tacoma riff-raff milling about me. That night I was audaciously slutting it up in a pair of low-rise jeans, which, when seated at a bar stool, are not quite capable of covering my pride-and-joy ghetto booty. Some illiterate drywall hanger decided this was an open invitation to come up behind me and stick several digits into my ass cleavage. Since I'd chased the inordinate amount of all-you-can-drink Miller Lite I'd consumed at the crab feed with a couple Johnnie Walkers, I promptly stood up and started shouting "who the fuck do you think you are, asshole! Keep your fucking hands to your motherfucking self!" and similar sentiments. The dude responded with a classic "I didn't do nothing" excuse for unwanted manhandling. However, only guys I plan on doing (and this motherfucker was NOT in that category) are permitted to make contact with my fine ass, so I continued to make such a scene that a trio of NASCAR-esque bouncers came up and dragged the sorry sucker out the door kicking and screaming and accusing me of making shit up. Fucking Tacoma, man. As Morrisey'sHair aptly quoted his idol the other day, "it's the town they forgot to bomb." In fucking deed.

4. My parents have a giant flatscreen TV with numerous complicated speakers. Enough said. There's nothing like watching "Deadliest Catch" in hi-def. I also totally watched "LOTR: Return of the King" with my madre and did a lot of geeking out about how awesome the battle for Minas Tirith is in surround sound. Not much compares to seeing SUPER sexy Eomer, Third Marshal of the Mark, join Theoden King, Aragorn son of Arathorn, and the armies of Gondor in mustering the Rohirrim and laying waste to the hordes of Mordor on a big screen.

5. My brother Lil' Tevie got a puppy named Kylee, and she's pretty much the cutest freaking German Shepherd-Blue Heeler mix that's ever existed. Unfortunately, she's sort of terrified by me and my father, who both are equipped with booming voices, so it's difficult for me to pet her since she flees in terror when she sees me approach. However, I've resorted to bribing her with the Costco-sized contained of Pup Corn that Lil' Tevie purchased to assist in her training, and she seems to be coming around. I can't wait until Christmas when she gets to be sexually terrorized by a certain overweight Pug who goes by the name of Chingy!

6. White trash everywhere. I am fascinated by white trash, because I sort of am, albeit overly educated white trash without the large bangs or fondness for double negatives. On account of my brother's new dog, my parents elected to build a kennel for her to stay in when the family is out, so she doesn't trash the house or landscaping as puppies are wont to do. To make space for it, my dad finally dismantled the swing set in our backyard, which for about ten years has had no swings, and was pretty much a duct-taped, dented monstrosity of monkey bars and galvanized steel that really gave our backyard a nice trailer park ambience. I mentioned to Lil' Tevie that since my pops finally got the old swingset down, our backyard is looking a lot less P.W.T. Lil' Tevie dryly remarked, "Yeah, and we're replacing it with a chain link kennel. That will really class the place up."

The Razzy clan's trashiness is nothing compared to our neighbors, though. Apart from our neighborhood Roadhouse, there are also several mobile home dealerships in walking distance, and much to my chagrin, a Wal-Mart being built across Meridian (the main road). The locals who consume these products are priceless. For example, MillerTime and I had breakfast at this really chic place called the Hangar Inn that is down Meridian from my parents' place, on the border between Puyallup/South Hill and Graham (ample selection of pull tabs there, obviously). While we were putting away our bacon and eggs, I saw a truly amazing mullet. Unfortunately I wasn't quick enough to snap a picture of him with my camera phone, so I went to mulletsgalore.com (one of my favorite websites of all time, by the way), and found a similar specimen. Mulletsgalore describes this as the "cokemullet", and describes the hobbies of people sporting it as "gettin a BJ from the ol' bitch, shooting up whiskey, and amputee porn."

While the guy we saw had traded in his autumn plaid flannel for a Hawaiian-print short-sleeved number, he was sporting the same hair and essentially the same expression. He staggered through the restaurant, loudly informing anyone who would listen that he was on his way to take a piss and smoke one of his GPCs outside, and then returned to the bar where undoubtedly his tenth Bud Light (at 11 a.m.) was waiting for him. Since most of the people in NYC with mullets are asshole hipsters trying to be "retro" or whatever, this guy was a shocking jolt of Puyallup reality. Man, Puyallup rules.

7. Conquest of previously unattainable high school ass. Apparently I'm all growed up into a most pimpinest player capable of hauling in catches I never would have dreamed of back when I was a Birkenstock-rocking lesbian. It's been a good year for me and the men of the class of '96. I actually got lucky at the crab feed, something I never in a million years expected would happen, with someone who I never in a million years thought it would happen with. But hey, life is full of surprises. One year you're idolizing Courtney Love and writing piss-poor poetry about your ill-advised forays into boob-mashing and other amateurish same-sex experimentation, and a decade later you're getting slammed doggystyle by a former football stud on MillerTime's couch. You never know what's going to happen. I'm actually even considering attending my ten-year-reunion because my vacations home thus far have resulted in so much hot high school ass that I might as well keep the streak alive.

8. Taco Time. There is no Taco Time in NYC, or really anywhere but the P-N-Dub, and it is the most kickass fast food on the planet. I don't eat fast food as a rule. I actually hate it. I don't like eating food that's hecho en Mexico in some fucking roach-infested factory, then frozen, shipped here, and reconstituted in a fryer of molten hydrogenated palm oil or whatever. However, I LA-LA-LOVE Taco Time. The Crispy Beef Burrito, which is basically a tube of deep-fried meat, sounds disgusting but it is SUBLIME. And don't even get me started on the culinary marvel known as the Mexi-Fry. I went out to our family's beach cabin with my parents to see the renovations they've done, and although the place looks great, the entire time my dad was talking about the paint colors he selected and how he spider-proofed the bathroom for me, I was fantasizing about getting to Taco Time ASAP.

9. Exercise minus saggy old skanks who want to step to me on hygiene or my body shape. Since I don't want to pack on any weight as a consequence of massive beer drinking, my father's excellent cooking, and lack of Gauntlet access, I have been joining MillerTime for her workouts. The other day we went for a three-mile jog in the park, and not only were stank middle-aged bitches with unreserved judgment and diseased vaginas blissfully absent, but the park was crawling with adorable dogs and I was able to spend the entire time gossiping about celebrities with my best girl.

10. NO LAB. No Northern blots, radioactive nucleotides, or noxious chemicals. No mice. No goddamned HeLa cells or bone marrow cultures or freaking magnetic bead separations. No three hour dates with the FACSCalibur or epic interferon ELISAs. No fucking rhinovirus, poliovirus, simian virus 40, Coxsackievirus A24, or any other fucking bullshit intracellular obligate parasite to frustrate me, infect me, or otherwise piss me off. I haven't been anywhere near a tissue culture hood, I haven't used ethanol for anything except a means to get drunk, and I haven't touched latex in a week (well, at least not on my hands in the form of gloves). And that right there is why my vacation thus far fucking RULES harder than Caesar Augustus.

Anyway, I'm even a little sad that I have only a few more days here before it's back to the concrete jungle and my responsibilities. But before I have to start stressing about my thesis committee meeting and whatever bullshit will be waiting for me upon my return, I plan to throw back a few more brewskis at the local watering holes and enjoy this simple life, with its pretty scenery, inexpensive food and drink, and colorful characters. To all my peeps in New York struggling through the daily bullshit of super-urban life: wish you were here.