Let's bring back an age-blind labor system!

Just look at these happy, productive members of society!

Do they look exploited to you? Those chubby cheeks, those shoeless feet, those hollow, soulless eyes that know naught of childhood.

Age-appropriate productive labor has long been a vital part of practical education in every society around the world.

Idle childhood is a modern abberation that may just be destroying our society. Ridding cities of the social disease of slothful pre-adolescents may just solve one of the most troublesome paradoxes affecting american society.

I speak, of course, of the high cost of living in most large urban areas, leading to low-wage workers demanding living wages respective to the average rent and transportation cost in their metro area.

Gas station attendents, waiters, cashiers, bus boys, dishwashers- paying all of these people wages high enough to feed, clothe, and shelter an adult can't possibly be a solution. It might lead to raising prices for these services. And even if it didn't, pressuring businesses to do that would be socialism! (for those who've never studied economic systems, socialism=herpes)

And the solution certainly wouldn't be to change city zoning laws to encourage dense, affordable multi-family development. Single family homes on large lots are just so much more charming! And such a better use of city services! A big expensive house for 4 people uses less water and sewer and creates much less traffic than two triple-deckers on the same lot, and if it's real expensive, the owners would never send their kids to public schools! It just might raise property values, which might make the whole area bring in more taxes.

(And remember, kids, Kelo says: Government is in the business of increasing tax revenues!)

We certainly couldn't subsidize the building of affordable housing, and then sell those units to private management companies, with an agreement that they be rented below market, to the working poor. That would be communism. (communism=syphilis).

So who is it who are capable of performing menial, repetitive tasks, yet don't have to pay for housing, food or transportation?

Children. Middle and upper class children. Let's turn the tired, unstylish idea of child labor on its head, give it a zesty, modern twist. Instead of poor children working to help support their families, let's have middle class children work to keep poor families out of their community! Children don't have to support themselves. Anything they do earn can be set aside for their college expenses, or perhaps a car. They're always covered by their parent's health insurance, so they don't need benefits. They're years away from retirement, so no plans needed there. And what would solve the epidemic of childhood obesity like physical labor? They won't mind making the minimum wage, or even under. My coworker has a three year old niece who tried to buy a ten dollar stuffed bear with a quarter. It's obvious- children do not know the value of money.
Profits would soar.

People are always complaining about how the counter girl at Dunkin' Donuts doesn't speak english, how the surly guy at the oil change place scratches his crotch and leers. Wouldn't it be lovely to be served coffee by an eager, fresh-scrubbed eight-year old who grew up around the words "cream" and "sugar" and even "latte"? (remember, these won't be poor children. These will be Madisons and Dylans and Codys). What about to have your oil changed by a squeaky-clean boy, testicles tucked snugly away in his abdomen, out of reach until they drop at puberty.

They wouldn't have to spend their whole childhoods working. Perhaps from 8-12. Can you remember anything you learned between third and seventh grades? Thought not. You learn to read, to add, to multiply, and then nothing til high school. Then, exhausted, calloused, innoculated with a fine yankee work ethic, they would go off to high school full time. And they'd be glad to do it. What a vacation it would seem! What a privilege! There would be no cutting class, no spitting in the halls, no sass-mouth. Just maturity, hard work, and a few occupational injuries.

I know, I know, some people would whine that child labor is "exploitative". I'm not advocating returning to the mill days. There would be no 12 hour days, no squalid rooming houses, no physical punishment or nutritional deficiencies. The labor of a child would be no more exploited than that of an adult. They would work for wages set by their communities, in safe conditions, well-supervised. Just like I do. They could even take their little tips to the corner store and buy candy and bon bons and magazines. Just like I do.

And what could be more exploitative than deliberately driving up housing prices, co-opting the little remaining affordable housing stock for use by the upper class, while wages remain stagnant, perpetuating a situation where people cannot afford to live near the communities they serve, all in the name of "property values"?

What better solution is there to allay liberal guilt? It is a cherished dream of every blue-stater that the person who pumps their gas, pours their coffee, spackles their walls, washes their clothes, trims their trees- have a clean, safe place to live, adequate food and medical care, and a chance to have a quality education.

The only way to achieve that dream without actually having to compromise cheap coffee and high property values is child labor.

Dream big, kiddies.

The Muddy Concupiscence of the Flesh

A friend of mine doesn't want to watch sexualized violence anymore.
It's a stance shared by many.

Not the Japanese.

Or the Germans.

But many.
The sexual impulse, and the sexual act, is a biological one. It's also psychologically evocative. Sexual behavior is a product both of instinct and of culture, of drive and of pleasure. In that way, sex is like eating. It contains the potential to express all the positive and negative tendencies of humanity. Ascetics of all civilizations have sought to constrain their desires for both sex and food, in order to 'mortify the flesh'.

And sex (or can be, or often does) contain a violent component. Heterosexual sex either involves the penetration of on body by another (male superior position) or the consumption of one body by another (female superior position). People strive to maintain their bodily integrity in all other aspects of life. In sex, however, they do not only sacrifice bodily integrity, they rush to discard it. Normally scrupulous about hygiene and bodily fluids, in sex, an individual marinates in the juices (saliva, mucus, semen, sweat) of another. There's heavy breathing. There's grunting and lack of inhibition. It's a weird position for an adult to put themself in. It would not occur, if not for powerful biological urges. It's simply too dissonant to exist within a society of thinking individuals. Sex persists, however, because humans are primarily biological organisms with psychological capability, not the other way around.

So the potentiality for dehumanization of sex must be reconciled with humanity. And every so often, over the course of a civilization, the mechanism of reconciliation changes. Sexual/Fertility taboos are a traditional mechanism. A ritualistic framework that defines sexual behavior in a spiritual/animistic/cultural context serves to delineate sex(human) and mating(animal), and begins to form a context in which that which is good and constructive about sex (affection, getting of offspring) is separated from aspects of the sexual impulse that can be destructive (violence, injury, possessiveness). Another framework that sanitizes sex is marriage. It defines, very clearly, what is good sex (that which exists within the confines of marriage), and what is deviant sex (that which exists outside- fornication and adultery). I talk more about that here. Now we've begun to move out of that system. There is a new measure that divides good sex from bad sex.

That measure is mutual consent.

Sex+Consent=Sex. Sex-Consent=Rape.

Simple. It's not even algebraic. This is the simplest system yet devised to create a nurturing, humane context for a chaotic biological act. Consent allows love. It allows personal relationships to flourish. It allows sex to become a private act. Ritualistic taboos and legal frameworks require community enforcement. They encourage community involvement in sexual behavior. Consent brings sex into the bedroom and closes the curtains. While community and legal involvement are still necessitated when sex without consent has been perpetrated, no public certification of consent is required.

The problem is, while this does successfully differentiate between good and bad sex, it doesn't actually serve to remove any remaining violent sexual impulses or associations from the psyche. It may be atavistic, but there is an inherent awareness with the violence of sex within all of us. It comes out in different ways. Some women fantasize about rape. Some men do, too. Every woman with an e-mail adress or cosmo subscription is familiar with rape-prevention hysterics.

Somewhere between approach and avoidence lies rape literature; art that utilizes motifs of rape and subjugation. Don't think solely of anime monsters with dildo-tipped tenticles, folks. It can be part of the legitimate media. It can be marketed toward women. Think of Lifetime, Television for Women. Think of Law and Order: SVU.

Of course, my friend's objection is not towards such lauded films as "Someone to Love Me: A Moment of Truth Movie"* it's towards films that utilize sex, directly as a means of violence. Or violence as a means of sex, bringing the acts towards a cheap, titilating, equivalency.

* Inspired by actual events. A high-school student is brutally raped but is reluctant to come forward. She is afraid that her promiscuous past will be used against her. Starring Lynda Carter, Jessica Bowman and Scott Foley.

Meta-foods.

So velveeta got me thinking.

Some of the most popular foods out there are symbols of food, rather than food itself. Sure, they contain thebasic components of food- fats, complex carbohydrates, minerals, simple sugars, msg, maltitol, sprinkles...but they, themselves, are symbols of and substitutes for, other culinary experiences.

Take a product my roommate is quite fond of: Chik Patties. She loves them. They are not chicken. They do not contain chick peas. They are something...else. They are patties, shaped to resemble something that is, in itself, a processed food. (breaded, shaped chicken patties, where the chicken has been shreaded, pressed, water and stabilizers added, breaded, fried, and frozen- in order to resemble- a hamburger patty) There are so many layers of substitution, deprivation and derivation that these -things- have lost all connection to anything that grows, walks, or flies. Anything, that is, traditionally eaten and prepared by human beings from scratch.

And chik patties, at least, can be used as an ingredient on a plate that contains other food products, as the serving suggestion on the box cover suggests.

It's too easy to pick on vegetarian food products. Of course there would be substitutes for childish comfort foods, stripped of meat (actual meaning) and injected with soy (symbolic meaning). So how about something for us meta-omnivores out there. Hot Pockets Subs Brand Stuffed Sandwiches (the full name of the product). This one here is pepperoni pizza style.

Let's contemplate that, for a moment. Pepperoni Pizza is, indisputably, a food. You have crust, sauce, cheese, and pepperonis. It has predictable characteristics: It is round, comes from a flat box, served hot. It can be delivered or picked up, or prepared frozen. Pepperoni Pizza exists. It is known to us. It is a cultural icon, even.

Hot Pockets Subs Brand Stuffed Sandwiches Pepperoni Pizza Flavor...is not pepperoni pizza. It is not even the major components of pepperoni pizza, served as a sub. It is pepperoni pizza, interpreted through the worldview of hot pockets. In a hot pockets context, people are always on the go. In a hot pockets context, people need food portably, somehow. They can't be bothered with sitting and eating! Certainly not with forks! (Pepperoni Pizza is not eaten with a fork). You can't slow the hot pockets people down! They need their pepperoni pizza in...some sort of edible tube. And thus, Hot Pockets Brand Stuffed Sandwiches, Pepperoni Pizza flavor was born. The people rejoiced.

But whither the sub variation? Who demanded a re-interpretation of the Hot Pocket translation of pepperoni pizza into a hot-pockets submarine-style tube sandwich format? Too meta. No more. Not food.

It was probably similar go-getters who fueled a demand for another needless metafood...gogurt. Or should I say "Go-gurt Brand Portable Yogurt" At right, you can see a package of "Scooby-Doo! Rogurt". This is, apparently, tubes of sweetened, artificially flavored yogurt that are somehow reminiscent of a 1970's television show about a group of skeptics who travel around in a van with a talking great dane, which was itself a take off on stereotypes of students from the five colleges in Amherst MA. (Velma is Smith, Daphne is Mount Holyoke, Fred is Amherst, that goddamned hippy is Hampshire, and Scooby is UMass Amherst). So, stripping away layers of intervening metaphore, what we have here is:

Yogurt meant to taste somehow like crime-solving college students in western massachusetts in the early 1970's would, if they were sweetened flavored dairy products, that has been conveniently packaged into tubes in order to be eaten either very quickly, or very sponteneously.

And of course, it's marketed toward children.

All of this makes Velveeta seem very, very simple by comparision. There is only one layer of hidden meaning. Velveeta is a cheese spread made to resemble cheese. It is cheese product created from, and meant to resemble, cheese itself.

Uncultured cheese.

I'd like to talk about circumcision today.

There's a Velveeta commercial that runs frequently on the Food Network, Discovery Health, and other networks that cater to women and the insincere idle. It's cartoon-bright, but live action. There is a very catchy jingle, set to the hokey pokey, that exhorts you to "Put Velveeta in/Leave the Cheddar out/With lumpy, oily cheddar, who KNOWS what will come out/With Velveeta, there's no doubt"

The characters in the commercial seem to be a family. There is a grandmother character central to it, and sundry others. It appears she wants to make a dip, perhaps for an occasion. And she wants to use the microwave. There is no dialogue; this is just what I gather from repeated viewings. And velveeta, the commercial seems to say, is the only reasonable option. Only Velveeta is guaranteed to melt smoothly unsupervised, while cheddar leads to uncertainty. Who knows what will come out? The jingle singer's voice extends the "knooowwws", in familiar comic parody of absolute fear. (Seriously- it's almost like how the guy singing the 'Monster Mash' says 'Monster"- Same extensions). Melting cheddar is something to be feared. Anything could happen. Lumps. Oiliness. Our velveeta grandma would be humiliated, trying to serve a lumpy, oily dip to her family. In what I like to think is a flashback, grandma looks at a bowl of melted cheddar, stringy, oily, and hard. It breaks chips. Grandma looks disgusted, at the cheese. And I detect a little bit of shame.

Velveeta has hit on a surprising honest ad campaign here. Kraft knows what velveeta's appeal is. It's not taste. It's constancy. Velveeta will never surprise. Velveeta will always be the same, melt the same, taste the same. It will melt smoothly every time. It will never lump. And that's why it's bought and used. It's certainly not for taste. Velveeta, if you haven't tried it, tastes halfway between margarine and cheeze whiz. It's no longer even qualified to be referred to as a "pasturized processed cheese food", but now must be marketed as a "cheese spread". The texture is flabby and perfectly smooth, with no tooth at all. Cheddar would win on taste every time. Or swiss. Or even american. Maybe. Velveeta will never delight you, but it will never embarass you.

Velveeta sells on fear of cheese. People don't know how to deal with ambiguity in their sauces. Nobody learns roux at maman's knee; Alton Brown does what he can, but he's not everywhere. Cheese can be hard. It can be inconsistent. It's scary to some. Some people think that when the edges of cheddar get a little dried up in the fridge, you have to throw it out. Some people don't know you can cut the mold off hard cheeses. It's mysterious. It's possibly dangerous. Nobody really cooks anymore. People refrigerate like it's a religion. Microwave directions given biblical reverence, sell-by dates are epistles. We're scared of food. We don't want to get sick, and nobody feels very confident about cooking. Restaurants and fast food are seen as sanitized, clean, consistent. Home-cooked food is foriegn and possibly diseased. Velveeta is manna from heaven in this way; it offers home cooks the sanitized predictability of prepared food.

Americans fear inconsistency because they've lost the ability to tell difference from contamination; and all contamination is suspected to be seriously compromising. I've begun wearing gloves while working on the espresso bar. They protect my hands from the milk rags, not at all to protect beverages from my hands. (There is no reason that my hands would ever come into contact with any component of anyone's beverage. Ever. Milk into pitcher, beans into hopper, shots into shot glasses, shots into cups, milk into cup, done) But many, many customers have taken me aside to thank me for wearing gloves, and ask if maybe I could persuade the other baristas to wear them, as well.

I will fuckin not. Gloves slow you down, need to be changed frequently, make your hands smell funny, and slow the transition between various positions. Nobody else has as severe a reaction to the milk chemicals as I do, so nobody else needs them. And there's no reason to assume that anyone needs them. You can see what we do, if you lean over by the register. You know we're not sticking our thumbs in to check temperature. But people still reacted to my gloves. And at least weekly, someone says something to me about people not leaving the slip of pastry paper in the bag when we hand them a scone. (It's against health codes, by the way- once you put the scone in the bag, it's a food container, so you can't leave something you've touched with your bare hand, it's contaminated) How will they know, they ask, that we used pastry paper to take their pastry from the case, unless they can see it in the bag?

Faith?

So there exists a powerful cultural force, currently, that fears contamination, fears uncertainty of taste, smell, and texture. Which brings us to-

Foreskin.

Not many parents are willing to force their sons to undergo a surgical procedure to cub masturbation anymore. It's not a big new modern motive. (However, if there were a surgical procedure that would place a time-seal on the vagina, only allowing the hymen to be breached at a parentally determined interval- say, 21 years, I'm sure it would be hugely popular right now). Parents are willing to admit that boys will masturbate and it will neither damage nor damn them. In fact, a certain segment of parents think that it's not only normal and natural, preteen sexual exuberance is kitshy and cute.

But many parents still circumcise their sons. Why? Fear. An uncircumcised penis is less predictable than a circumcised one. It's less, well, dry. A foreskin is a mucus membrane. It has secretions. It traps sweat and occasionally urine. It has smegma. Boys must be taught how to take care of their foreskin. (Of course, their parents also teach them how to piss and wipe their asses, but we haven't designed a way out of it yet) It's unpredictable. Its smell, taste, and function might vary on a day-to-day basis. It's this that parents cite when choosing to circumcise their sons. They cite hygiene. Some mothers even state that they can't picture their son getting a blowjob later in life, if he has a foreskin (when otherwise mothers love to picture their sons recieving fellatio). Others picture girls ridiculing their son's penis, and want to save him the embarassment. They want his penis clean, dry, sanitary, predictable- American. It's the only way they can picture it being (sorry) appetizing.

Everything must be controllable. Everything must be presentable. By creating a western wonder world sealed off from grit, blood, death, farming, childbirth, mucus, odor, and uncertainty, something fundamental has been altered. Research is beginning to support the hypothesis that many childhood allergies and chronic illnesses may be getting more prevalent due to the sanitization of society. Children don't eat enough dirt and bugs and slightly rotten food to develop full immunities; they get delicate. It's suggested that feeding children worms may prevent crohn's disease. People are so scared of illness and germs that they hover over toilet seats and crap on the floor; they hector poor baristas about hearing them sneeze in the back room; they throw out eggs, milk, and yogurt on their sell-by date. People are so scared of the unpredictable nature of food and cooking that they'll eat unidentifiable, factory set cheese type spread, which tastes of nothing but failure, to avoid the possible humiliation melting cheddar may bring. (Mmmmm...melted cheddar. Yum. Need Nachos. With Quickness)

And people are so obsessed with predictability, scentlessness, cleanliness, and so on that they have their children's genitals surgically altered (without aneasthesia).

Deal with it, folks.

You can learn to like a stinky cheese.

(knob)

An article

Obviously written by a woman who comes easily from oral sex and clitoral stimulation.

Women's orgasms aren't elusive...women's orgasms aren't elusive...

It's the same go-girl-pro-clitshit that women have been fed from cosmo and ms. and glamour and everywhere. If you're not having orgasms, you're down with the patriarchy. If you're having penetrative intercourse, and expecting to enjoy it...you're a fucking schmuck. And if you think women's orgasms are hard to come by...you're obviously a fuckwit who's never been in an adult bookstore. Or, as our authoress suggests "Freed from guilt over masturbation and barring serious problems, women can orgasm until their fingers get tired or their batteries run dry.". Of course, that's not true. And the qualifying clause makes it even more falacious. There are many women who can orgasm over and over again, but many are good for just one big one. And implying that women who can't are either seriously inhibited or in some way physically flawed went out with frigidity, white lip gloss and fringed leather vests.

Some women come easily from intercourse. Some women come easily from clitoral stimulation. Some women come easily from stimulation of the nipples, lips, and neck alone. Some women are completely anorgasmic. Female sexual response occurs along a spectrum. This has been known since Kinsey.

The woman makes a good argument otherwise.Definitely worth reading. Her reasoning is sound. Her conclusion is novel, and worthwile. Her premise is just so flawed it makes me angry. Just because a behavioral response (or even a reflex response) is common, doesn't mean it's universal. For example. There are some people who can, by concentrating very, very hard, and breathing and using their muscles in just the right way...affect their own heart rate and breathing. Ingrid Bergman could cry one tear out of either eye on command. Some people can move either eyebrow consciously and independantly. I can. Eysenk designed a test that proved that extroverted people produce higher volumes of saliva than introverted people. Human physiognomy is wonderfully diverse. Human sexual response, being both psychologically and physiologically based, is even more so. Any argument that depends on the

A solution to the abortion debate.

The problem with the abortion debate right now is that it's stale.

It is. You've got my side, insisting that bodily sovereignty is a human right, and the other side, insisting that anything that can be even broadly defined as a human life should not be killed. And they're at a standstill, each trying to force into legislative concrete what is really a philosophical position. Of course, my side is right, because if something is subjective, each individual should be free to act according to the dictates of their own conscience. Of course, the other side thinks they must legislate restrictions on abortions, since their principles dictate that it is not subjective at all.
Thus, we're at ends. The side that has more members, more political power, is more sympathetic to the media at the current moment is granted the upper hand. There is no debate. There is only struggle.

So let's end the detante. Let's add a third player. Let's have pro-life, pro-choice, and pro-infanticide. That way, there is some common ground. If we actually have a group of people making an argument for infanticide, perhaps it will inject some life into this tug-of-war, and actually turn a fight into an argument. Groups with common ground are more able to listen and exchange ideas than those who know their viewpoints are diametrically opposed.

And the common ground would be infanticide. Anti.

In fact, both could unite to stop infanticide, using different means. What we need is an infanticide debate. It does happen. If the media could be persuaded to focus on baby stranglings, burnings, poisonings, and smotherings, for a few days- perhaps causing a hysteria like the child-abduction hysteria of a few summers ago. Then, a reasoned, thoughtful, sympathetic pro-infanticide pundit, backed by a group of supporters, might begin to raise questions about the vaunted western (nay, human!) tradition of infanticide.

Points for Infanticide over Abortion
-It's cheaper (does not require surgical procedure)
-Possible to do painlessly (allows administration of anasthetic)
-Can be done without doctor's involvement (physicians would be delighted to not have to be refered to as "baby-killers" anymore)
-Puts fathers even ground with mothers (father's rights advocates rejoice)

Now, of course, these are absurd points. Very. Very.

But, convincingly argued, they'd trick some fringe members of the groups. Pro-lifers already believe that pro-choice folks discount the lives of 'children'. So they'd buy it.

Common ground would be found. Pro-choicers could cry out about preventing the death of innocent babies, the destruction of families, that unwanted pregnancies can bring. Pro-lifers would decry the practice as well. They could join hands and rally together. And maybe they could talk about what death and life really are.

Meditation on "Memoirs of a Geisha"

I saw 'Memoirs of a Geisha' with a friend of mine yesterday. Decent movie. Very atmospheric. Unlike Kingdom of Heaven, the careful cinematography and art direction was backed up with a plot and character development. In fact, the cinematography even enhanced the plot. Which was nice.

There was one shot in particular, where just the interaction of acting, lighting, and camera angles appeared to bring the main character, Sayuri/Chiyo, from childhood into adolescence. Her face, a childs, seemed for a moment completely ageless.

In a word, it was neat.

Anyway. That the movie had a pleasing plot and good narrative drive isn't worth talking about, because it was based on a novel that had both. I'm also not going to talk about the implications of using chinese and malaysian actresses instead of japanese, because, well, I dunno.

But. It did bring up some issues. Like...why aren't their courtesans anymore? Or geisha? Or really, really high-class prostitutes? Why isn't there a demimonde?

Because of fucking romantic fucking marriage. Or, the expectation of romantic marriage. Men expect their wives to like them, fuck them and make conversation, rather than expecting their wives to cook and clean and breed. So we're left with prostitution, because men still can't expect consistent sex throughout marriage, and straight unmarried men keep refusing to have sex with each other, as god intended.

And the sad result of this perverse modern inovation is that being charming, talented, and easy is no longer a career option for women. You have to be charming, talented, and easy for free, or pretend to be so for a few weeks or months, and then return to your dismal skanky self once a commitment is made. Men and women expect to fulfill all (or the majority of) each other's opposite sex needs. Men and women occupy similar worlds, due to feminism. There is no upperclass male world of art, letters, and dirty jokes with a separate supportive domestic female world. Thus, there is no neccessity for a segment of women to cross over into the male world.

If men have a reasonable expectation that their legally sanctioned heterosexual relationships will be in any way fulfilling, the career of professional mistress is dead. It's simply too expensive to keep two women when one will do. Especially now that one woman can be expected to be self-supporting. Why buy the cow when you can marry the milk while she continues working and pays for the cable?

Too bad. I mean, feminism is great and everything, but...I'd really, really like to be witty, learned, and slutty and nothing else, and, you know, eat cheese like nobody's business.

I think I have an inferiority complex.

I'll mail a roll of pennies to the first person who supplies me with the originator of that term. It's in my notes, but why not skip a step?

But my roommate bought that charmin ultra toilet paper. It's so thick and soft and cushy. They should get rid of those fat-bottomed bears and go to a simpler ad campaign. On a black screen, in mid-sized, serifless font, it should say:

Charmin Ultra: The kiss of luxury, on your sphincter.

That's all. That's all you need. Unfortunately, I can't deal with soft, cushy, almost plush toilet paper. It feels like it's too good for my proletarian bumhole. So I bought Scott, single-ply. I feel like after a roll of this corrective toilet paper, I will feel ready for the rippled kind, which is only slightly above me.

Underused Nicknames for US States

Alabama : The Touch-Me State
Alaska: Girls! Girls! Girls!
Arizona: America's Chumbucket
California: Potsylvania
Colorado: Coloraddy
Connecticutt:Grandma
Delaware: Smellaware
Florida: Laos on the Atlantic
Louisiana: The thinking man's Tennessee
New Jersey: The Garden State
New Hampshire: Lil' Smokey
New Mexico: Old Canada
New York: Happy Sock

more later

Lesser known facts about women

That can be discerned from the feminine hygiene aisle at CVS.



True: Women like to smell like food. They will buy nearly anything that will make them smell either like a salad course or a dessert. The dessert part has been known for decades. The salad course is a more recent innovation. It began with skin products containing avacado and cucumber, for their cooling properties. Now women will pay money for the privilege of splashing alcohol and water solutions laced with the scent of cucumber and anything onto themselves, anywhere you suggest they should.

While cucumber melon and cucumber green tea have been fully exploited at prices accessible to any consumer, cucumber and a light vinagrette is, as yet, unpopular. This may be, at least in some part, due to women's discomfort at walking around smelling as if they'd just douched and then pleasured themselves with the pick of the produce department.

False: Women want their vaginas to smell like flowers, seasons, or abstract concepts. The product at right is "Norforms Vaginal Suppositories". It's a waxy, scented, plug that women stick into their boxes, which then melts and releases its scent as the day goes on. People don't believe me when I tell them this product exists. I know it does. I used to put it on shelves when I worked at a pharmacy. But just because it exists doesn't mean that it is needed or wanted; however, it may be used because it exists. While it is false that women don't wake up in the middle of the night, concerned that their vaginas don't smell enough like lilies, ambition, or autumn dew; it is true that there are a certain segment of women who can be convinced that other women's vaginas smell like 'wisteria wanderings', and if theirs don't...well, civilization might be less for it.

True: Vulvae can be terrible, disturbing, disgusting things that must be contained, for the LOVE OF GOD. They lie in wait, in underpants, ready to spew forth, well, just anything at any moment. That is why so many products meant to be jammed into the vagina, or placed in front of it to keep it from contaminating the world, are named after soothing abstractions. Let us consider: Instead.

What is instead?

Why, instead is the feminine hygiene cup. Instead is a little soft poly cup that you brace against your cervix, to catch all the fluids that runs out. For men: This differs from tampons in that tampons absorb the fluids. This cup just..well, dams them up. So they retain all their feminine, runny, gloopy glory. It is, in all ways but one, inferior to tampons, because all fluids retain their fluid natures...just waiting to spill out. So what is it instead of? I suppose, it's instead of just standing pantsless over a bucket with your legs open for 4-6 days. (The maple syrup method) How is instead superior to tampons? It's the only feminine hygiene product that can be worn during intercourse. How's that, guys...INSTEAD of putting down a towel, you get to bang your dick against a soft cup full of 12 hours worth of blood!

Other abstract concepts in women's pants "Serenity" and "Poise".


These are, of course, products designed to keep women who piss themselves, over the course of their daily lives, from being discovered pissing themselves over their daily lives.

You'd think this would be a problem known only to elderly women, and equally so to elderly men.
Alas, no. It's a dirty secret that one in three women, after having a baby, experiences stress incontinence. One in three. That means that if you're into milfs, you're into watersports. One in three women can be found, if laughing or doing strenuous exercises, serenely, and with poise, pissing themselves.

Fat Children vs. Fat Puppies- A reprise

Even on christmas, I hate

















but I love...











not a big fan of...














but I'm pretty keen on

I have a theory.

Women experience love by doing; Men experience love by feeling.

So when I feel completely unloved and rejected because someone doesn't do something for me that I'd try to do for them, it's all mistranslation.

And this could be evolutionary. Men, to most efficiently propagate the species, would have to feel sufficient sexual attraction for a partner to facilitate intercourse, sufficient attachment to her to repeat the act over enough time to conceive a viable pregnancy, and sufficient protectiveness of her to keep buzzards, tigers, and dinosaurs away during the slow, loagy, third trimester. And that's it. If they just do what their emotions make them feel like doing, they're set. Their genes live on.

Women, to efficiently propagate the species, must do things. They've got to keep horrible screaming things alive, in the face of the same tigers and dinosaurs. They've got to feed horrible screaming things. They've got to haul shit and gather shit and maintain the cave. If women don't do things they wouldn't otherwise do, their genes didn't get passed on.

Which explains why we have so much cultural pressure on men to jump through hoops on gifting occasions. It's an attempt to rewrite the evolutionary script. It's retraining. It's an attempt to reconcile the sexes. Unfortunately, there's no profit in telling women that men can love deeply and truly without jumping through hoops; and less profit in telling men that instead of buying things for women, they could figure out ways to make their lives easier, and they'll be twice as happy. So instead we have absurd diamond commercials, 100% valentine's day markups on roses, and a heterosexual romantic culture based on buying.

Buying, by the way, is no real compromise between feeling and doing. It cheats both sides. Current theories of romance insist that thinking+buying=romantic gesture, but there is no substitute for doing or feeling, respectively.

So it's not anybody's fault that I'm feeling like absolute shit right now. It's the dilemma of non-equivalent acts.

The Boston Celtics

In order by how much I'd like to see them naked.

1. (Tied)Marcus Banks
(Tied)Tony Allen
Very tough call. But I feel like Marcus won't be a Celtic long. Who knows where he'll go. And who wants to see a Knick or a Net or a Wizard naked? Not me. Not now. But Tony Allen...the arms. The shoulders. The back. The legs. It's obvious what I need to complete this picture.

2. Ricky Davis
I just...need to know. I mean...the dunks. What is the source of his power? Could it be? I think it is. I think, if he is not an alien from the planet dunktron, he must draw his power from somewhere. And a girl has hopes.

3. Delonte West
I already know what model bed he sleeps in; It's hard not to wonder what he sleeps in.

4. Kendrick Perkins
This is really wrong, because he's a million years younger than me. But he's gotten so big over the three seasons. He has stretch marks on his arms. I want to touch them.

5. Marc Blount
I keep a basketball signed by him next to my bed. He looks a little like one of my ex-boyfriends. He's charmingly unassuming. He never looks directly at the camera. The crushness is great.

6. Orien Greene
Again, much younger than me. But oh, the legs.

7. Justin Reed

8. Ryan Gomes

9. Gerald Greene

10. Dan Dickau
I could, after all, squint my eyes and pretend he's Toby Maguire. Or Topher Grace.

11. Raef LaFrentz

12. Brian Scalabrine
Oh, the pastiness. Oh, the doughiness. Oh...the freckles and the firecrotch.

Excluded from the list- Al Jefferson and Paul Pierce. Al Jefferson because he is my soulmate, and thus, I refuse to objectify him. He's also the pure embodiment of the hopes of Basketball. He is our gallant one, our grail knight, our Galahad. Paul Pierce because I have too much respect for him as a human being, for his struggles and his successes. I have a childish adoration of him.

Ephemera

1. King Kong
Good movie. A wonderful depression era psychological tale about a girl with daddy issues and an ape with abandoment issues.

Watch out for: People telling you the movie is about interacial love. It's not. If everytime you see a 25 foot gorilla, you see a black man, you are a racist. Learn to tell the difference. And, if every time you see a gorilla, you see a black man, does that mean every time you see an orangutan, you see a mick? Ponder.
Also, watch out for people telling you that this movie has nothing to say about race- how about the tribespeople on skull island? Peter Jackson, new zealander most dear to my heart, apparently doens't like aborigines. They are depicted as, well, nothing but an exraordinarily barbaric plot device. If I were papuan, I'd be offended. As a filmgoer, watching a remake of a very racist picture from the 30's, I'm pro. Not every film needs to depict accurately the life, thoughts, culture, and self-representation of every group represented. And I say this not as a cultural critic, I say this as a fat cracker bitch.

2. Squatters
I purchased a small popcorn. The boything, as is his practice, purchased a bucket of soda. We shared both. 25 minutes into the movie, I had to piss like the proverbial racehorse. By this, I mean with a midget wearing satin perched on my back, whipping me. When I got to the restroom (Since when, by the way, has it been general practice for movie megahouses to build 20 stalls per screen? There are more porcelain seats than cloth ones), there were 5 stalls out os service, two in use, and a handicapped stall. Since I'd neglected to bring my insta-gimp kit I headed into the one remaining stall. On first glance, it was clean. Just some floating toilet paper. Water was clear and clean, better than new jersey tap.
I voided my bladder. I completed the transaction, stood up, and, saw-

SHIT ON THE FRONT OF THE TOILET SEAT.

THE FRONT!

This, kiddies, was the work of a squatter. Squatters walk among us. The, in fact, believe they are in the majority. But they are not. If there were no squatters, there would be no need to squat.

There is no better way to spread piss around the entire periphery of the bowl than hovering above and letting fly. I'd always known that I followed a squatter when the toilet seat wore a piss-yellow crown. Worse still, is sitting after a squatter, without checking thoroughly, and standing up to feel your legs driippp. It is an experience like this that turns weak-souled folk into squatters themselves.

I had always assumed, though, that if a squatter had to go bad enough that they were taking a dump in a public restroom, they'd sit like a normal person. (It is an esoteric, yet empirically proven, fact that squatters are also the people who go home to shit) Apparently not.

On the front of the bowl, folks. It was a toilet with the horseshoe shapped seat. This black, shiny, smooth, turd was perched right between either end of the seat, insouciently on top of the rim, as if it were peering into the bowl.

This could only have been the work of a squatter. Squatters hover above the bowl, either supporting themselves by bracing against the walls or relying on the strength of their thighs. They often miss the bowl while peeing, due to labial interference, instability of position, or improper positioning above the bowl. There is great variance of genital positions vis-a-vis the bowl, due to innacuracies inherent in squatting calculations.

There is no way, sitting on the toilet, to crap on the front of the rim.

Unless you have a prehensile anus. In which case, can I see a picture? Because I'd like to see how that works.

Otherwise, a pussy-ass SQUATTER was responsible for my legs coming closer to someone else's shit than they ever have before. This squatter, so concerned that there might be microscopic ass cooties on the seat, decided to let fly and let lie. Selfish, neurotic fucks.

Friends don't let friends squat.


3. Whiners

Ah, whiners. These folks have some advice for the new owners of Dunkin' Donuts. Apparently, they want English speaking employees, who are warm, professional, and precise, delivering hot coffee precisely the way they want it, and baking donuts overnight inthe back room. All for less than the change in your pocket.

People want everything. They do. People expect absolute facetious solicitation for all purchases requiring paper money. They want their order more precise than they can make it. They want the cream cheese on the bagel. They want the cream and sugar in. They want the coffee to taste exactly the same. No, stronger. They want DD's to focus only on coffee and donuts. No, keep the chai too. On second thought, bring back soup. Bring back chili. Bring back sandwiches. No! Get rid of the steak, egg, and cheese.

The dirty secret about coffee is that it tastes bad. It's not just an acquired taste. It's earned through days and months of choking down something that you can't believe the whole world considers necessary. Chocolate, cocoa, also tastes bad. When something is so raunchy and bitter that entire industries have been built around doctering it up...it doesn't taste good.

I drink espresso, straight. By which I mean I swallow it in four gulps, and chase it with whipped cream, hot chocolate, or water. It tastes like burning. But the effects are lovely. So I believe that I like it. I crave it. I want it. So I think that there is some sensory experience to it that I enjoy. There isn't, really. I'm simply too lazy to drink drip coffee. Espresso is quicker, so it's my preferred caffiene delivery system.

Donuts exist to make people believe they like coffee. So do cream and sugar. Fat and sugar are the drugs our bodies use into tricking us into doing things we otherwise wouldn't. Also, orgasms and laughter. But mostly fat and sugar. (Note to self- Open Regional House of Fried Dough and Oral Sex). And since the effects of cafiene feel good, and we trick ourselves into drinking coffee with cream and sugar until we associate the physiological arousal caused by cafiene with the taste of coffee...we all think we like it.

I don't know where I'm going with this. Later.

People keep telling me not to be a lawyer!

Goddamnit, it's not about what I want to do. It's about possibilities, and apptitudes, and doors. It's not about dreams and wishes and childhood.

I'm 23 years old. My breasts are 2 inches lower, at their lowest point, braless, than they were when I started college for the first time, 7 years ago. I've got grey streaks, heating bills, and three tubes of steriod creme to keep the skin on my hands on, if not soft, painless, or whole. If I were graduating Bennington two springs ago, rather than UMass Boston this summer, maybe things would be different.

But they're not. I'm old. I'm tired. I want to sleep. I want to cook. I want to perfect my muffin recipe. I want to learn to make yeast-raised biscuits, and baking powder biscuits with mashed potatoes in them. I want to paint. I used to paint. I wasn't good at it, but I enjoyed it. I want to sew, which I was good at, but don't have time to do anymore. I want to read fiction without feeling guilty. I want to have two days off in a row, from school and work. These things aren't going to happen, vocationally.

I realize that.

But I'm also very bright, and very verbal, and I've become very motivated. I can stay at the top of a class comfortably, I can achieve, I can study, I can take tests. I want doors to open to a career where the good parts of my mind matter enough to make up for the bad parts. And I want to continue my education. Graduate schools are too much like Bennington, and the only thing a graduate education in the Humanities is sure to prepare you for is some more time in academia. Not for me.

Also, the highest acceptance rate of legitimate Psychology Ph.D programs is around 8%. And you're competing against people with 4.0s exclusively. Yale Law has a 6% acceptance rate. And they're #1.

Is it so terrible to want to use my mind? Is it so terrible to want an education that will lead to a vocation? Is it so terrible to abandon, as avocational, all my dreams? It's not, by the way. It's just fucking honest.

I'm tired. I'm tired of stressing and fighting and exhausting myself trying to keep my life together. I drive to work, drive to school, drive to Rhode Island. I barely go out with friends. I think I've been out with friends twice this month, if you don't count grocery shopping with my roommate. I don't eat lunch at school with any group of peers- I drop in, drop out. My closest allegience is through work. My roommate sees her psuedo-boyfriend more often than I see my whatever. I want to just do. one. thing.

And Law School will let me do that. First year, all I have to do is work my ass off. That's all. Just work and get through it. And I know that I can. And I know that if I work hard, I will do well. It's not like this illusion of adult life I try so hard to maintain. It's one thing. And I know I can do one thing.

I can be a good law student, and then a good lawyer. And it's possible that I will get a great satisfaction from both.

So all of yall can eat it. And you know what it is.

Mmm...research.

My life has become research.

Between the emergency contraception thing (where the research is done) and a long paper for my research methods class, I've been living my life inside databases. My plans for the future- sleep, reading fiction, and basically rotting my brain. But, for now, it's fun. I actually like it. I swear. I wish I had a hamburger.

This is getting weird.

The earlier I search, the less information I find about this incident in Fenton, Mo. And the more I look at news sources rather than advocacy groups, the more ambiguity and contradiction I find. Please, planned parenthood- do not turn out to be manufacturing scandal where none existed before. That's totally what the other side does. FUCK.

From Saveroe.com on 10/27/05

"A 26-year-old Missouri woman was refused EC when she handed her prescription to a pharmacist at a Target store in Fenton, MO, on September 30. The woman was told by the pharmacist, “I won’t fill it. It’s my right not to fill it.” Target does not support a policy to have valid prescriptions for birth control, including emergency contraception, filled in-store without discrimination or delay!"

Buyblue.org merely rephrases the saveroe blurb, and lists them as a source.

One week EARLIER, on Oct. 20, 2005, in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, in an article on a recent flurry of activities by Planned Parenthood, I was able to find vague mention of the incident.

"Two days ago, Planned Parenthood organized pickets outside the district office of Target in Bridgeton, to protest what the organization says was a Target pharmacist's refusal on Sept. 30 to fill a woman's order for emergency contraception.

A Target spokeswoman said the chain's own investigation determined that no such incident occurred. The woman claiming to have submitted the prescription said in a telephone interview Wednesday that it did." (Mannies, J. For Planned Parenthood, active month shows that it's in the game. St. Louis Post-Dispatch 10/20/05 pg. d3)
.
There was also this article, in the same paper, the day before.

Blog after blog, organization after organization uses the planned parenthood press release as their source. Goddamn. As far as I can tell, every bit of information floating around the web on this incident, other than the two mentions in the P-D, comes directly from Planned Parenthood. The age of the woman, the dialogue between her and the pharmacist, what happened after.

I am seriously trying SO HARD to find a newspaper article on the incident in Fenton. I'm trying so hard to confirm that what happened, happened. I have so far been able to confirm that there IS a Fenton, Missouri. There IS a Target, with an in-store pharmacy in Fenton.

I feel like Peter Sarsgaard in Shattered Glass, here.

You know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to write to Jo Mannies, of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Maybe she/he can tell me something more. I'm searching and searching and searching...and getting very nervous. If someone could just point me to one more newspaper article prior to the Dan Savage mention on 11/17/05, I'd be fucking delighted.

Plus, how's this for irony- going into my kitchen today, I was injured by a -coat hanger-. The skin on my foot is ripped open and really, really hurts. I am still pro-choice, however. But from now on, kids, lets use knitting needles, yes?

What's going on in Missouri

So I've been doing more research.

I did a lexis-nexis search of newspapers from MO, looking for newspaper articles about what actually happened in the Fenton incident. I haven't found one yet that tells me what happened AFTER the phamacist refused the prescription (it was a paper one), and BEFORE the media shitstorm.

But I did find this, in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.


Group forms to fight Blunt's Plan B proposal

St. Louis-More than a dozen Missouri union and women's rights groups, along with some religious organizations, announced Wednesday that they've formed a new coalition to fight what they call Gov. Matt Blunt's "war on women."

"Governor Blunt has named his next target in his war on women -- and that target is birth control," said spokeswoman Stacey Newman after the new coalition's news conference at the Salad Bowl, 3949 Lindell Boulevard.

Called the "Coalition Against War on Women," the group is attacking Blunt's plan to push for a state law during the next legislative session that would allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for Plan B, commonly known as the "morning-after pill."

The pill prevents pregnancy if taken within a few days after unprotected sex. It cannot disrupt an established pregnancy, but critics oppose Plan B because it can prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus.

Planned Parenthood and other members of the coalition say that the pill contains the same ingredients as ordinary birth-control pills.

Replied Blunt spokesman Spence Jackson: "The majority of Missourians will disagree . . . and see it as a drug to abort an unwanted child."

.(St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Metro Digest, 11/10/05).

Emergency contraception is an issue at all MO pharmacies, not just at Target. This is some serious peril, folks. Why is it that the fight over the policy of a single corporation has been allowed to overshadow (maybe even play understudy to) potential legislation of an entire state?

Nobody has to shop at Target. Some people have to live in Missouri. I assume so, at least, because it's still claiming a population. I wonder, though, if Target might not have been so targetted if they didn't have an incident in the right state at the right time.

Maybe, too, it's easier for Planned Parenthood to start a campaign against a corporation beloved by and familiar to us east-coast blue-state abortion-lovin' sensitive folks, than it is to go out and start a campaign in a population that may or may not believe that the morning after pill is an abortifacient.

Hey, did you notice?

All the big corporations replied, but not planned parenthood.

I feel...snubbed.

Pharmacy Procedures (How a scrip becomes a pill)

If I had time tonight, I would write this in the style of schoolhouse rock. Yet, I don't. I'm supposed to be writing a paper for my Psychology of Personality class.

So, doing research, talking to people with views different than mine, and people in the pharmacy industry, I've been able to isolate a reason for this whole dang EC thing. The claim is that filling a prescription is so much more involved than simply selling condoms, so a pro-life pharmacist who refuses to sell EC is more like a ob/gyn who won't perform abortions than a Catholic cashier who won't sell condoms.

Of course, my answer to that is that all of them are equally wrong. In fact, in my eyes, the cashier is most justified. Being a pharmacy clerk is situational employment. It's a low-paying job that a person takes because it's available and they were hired; a pharmacist or an ob/gyn has undergone years of schooling and professional training for their career. They've made a choice, knowing what the job involves might conflict with their personal beliefs, and yet persisted in persuing their career. I have no sympathy. More so because the cashier would get fired, yet the pharmacist and doctor are protected. It seems to me to be a class issue.

But I digress.

Is it really so involved? Is there something really special that goes on behind those ecru-half-walls that enclose the pharmacy from the area where glucose testing strips and "back massagers" are sold?

My pharmacy informant says not. I talked to a licensed pharmacy technician this week. In exchange for a box of generic fruits'n cream flavored oatmeal, she let me in on what goes on in a pharmacy. I call it-

How A Scrip Becomes A Pill

By H. Barista

First, a patient interacts with a doctor. The doctor determines the medication to be prescribed, and, if applicable, the dosage and amount of refills. At that point, the doctor hands the patient a prescription, or calls the prescription in to the pharmacy.

If the doctor calls the pharmacy, a pharmacy technician answers the phone. She takes down all of the information as if it had been written out, and enters it into the computer. If the doctor gave the patient a paper prescription, the patient brings it into the pharmacy and hands it to a pharmacy technician, who then enters the information into a computer.

The pharmacy technician then plays fun games with the insurance company. If they're like mine, they probably won't cover it, because they won't cover anything. If they're a good company, they will cover it.

The technician then goes and physically takes the medication off the shelf. She checks both the label and the pill against computer records. She counts it out and places it into a proper bottle. She then places a label on it. With Plan B, which is pre-packaged, she just places the prescription label on it.

Finally, she brings the prepared prescription to the pharmacist, who scans it once more and places it in a bag.

The pharmacy technician or pharmacy cashier then rings the patient up, and hands them their prescription. They ask them to sign for it and ask if they have any questions for the pharmacist.

The End.

So how involved, how INTIMATE, was that? Obviously, it would be terribly traumatic for a pharmacist who did not believe in contraception to in fact, verify that something already prepared was the proper contraception, and put it in a bag. Oh, I forgot to mention. Sometimes ,the pharmacist staples the bag. Stapling is 9/10ths of the law, right?

So this whole process brings up two things-
1. What is the moral imperative pro-life pharmacists find that prevents them, not from preparing, not from recieving, not from dispensing, but merely verifying- a contraceptive prescription? What it comes down to is that pharmacists are not just refusing to participate, but standing in the way where ever possible. And that's fucking rotten. Would these same pharmacists, if learning that a co-worker planned on going straight from work to have an abortion, lock them in the closet (wow, that's a fucking BAD metaphor)

2. Why can't those pharmacy techs just hand over the Plan B? It's against the law. Other than that, there's no danger. It's packaged. The dosage is explained, both on the prescription, and in the package insert. It's clearly labeled as what it is, and there are no refills to mess around with.

As to the first, if it were widely known how little interaction pharmacists had with pre-packaged prescriptions like E.C., maybe their beloved moral exceptions would be pushed aside and lawyers for large pharmacy chains wouldn't be so afraid of the evil, moralizing bastard pro-life pharmacist lobby. As to the second, if that couldn't be done, perhaps legislation could be proposed that allows pharmacy TECHNICIANS to dispense factory-packaged prescriptions without pharmacist verification, making sure that a single employee couldn't prevent a person from receiving birth control or EC.