the art of conversation

starting a new job, being the new girl, it's best to keep your trap shut, learn the ropes and the culture before cutting even a tiny bit loose. restaurants are mostly free-wheeling places in which to work and the talk can be filthy more often than not. go ahead, try to shock a restaurant lifer. cannot be done and countless times i have caused jaws to drop with a toss-away that my friends would consider child's play. musicians and jocks can't even hope to compete.

it's also a time to listen and find out with whom you might best mesh.

the gm has been encouraging me to talk to a guy who has a nascent interest in wine and i do frequently overhear him yapping about it in a superficial way. he's taken some classes, and last night i found out he worked under one of the city's best and most respected wine directors. it's a large chain, so they saw each other infrequently. i have known that guy professionally for years and he has helped me in my career. an insane wine brain and good one to know.

co-worker blahblahblahs then mentions a winemaker he has met whom i adore -- as a person and as a brand. i mention that i have been to his estate and spent the day with both uncles who run the alsatian daily ops, while nephew gallivants the globe for marketing. co-worker looked away, did not miss a beat and dropped another name. a burgundy winemaker i have also met who makes very mediocre juice, but wears astonishing suits. instead of saying i know him too, i guess i was kind of waiting to be asked how my visit to alsace was, what did i drink there, or even an, "oh, cool," kind of response. nothing. he then switched gears to moaning about friday crowds and then i had something to do so i scooted. boring.

droning about his brush with two notables just sounded like he was trying to impress while unsure of how he stacks up next to me, but knowingly suspects he doesn't. yet i did nothing to put him on the defense. he's a tiny violin player, always wearing a puss and dragging along with no zip, so i'm no rush to be cozy.

later, when the night was winding down, another guy approached and remarked we rarely talk. one of my first nights, i was trapped listening to his sob story of how sick he is of waiting tables, dreads coming to work and hates everybody he sees. in passing at pos stations or the service bar, all i hear is him bitching about guests and or/managers or sniping at his g/f, who also works there. gaaah. i'm sorry, mr. sour-lemons, please explain why i want to be drawn down into your voracious black hole of "life sucks, woe is me," when i am brand new here? i said something about not seeing him much (which is true) and that when i do he is either grumpy or fighting with his g/f. he laughed and said both of those are true, totally missing the subtext of why i don't feel the need to buddy up to him.

my parents drilled this wee noodle that a conversation was give and take. that it took two, or more, and it wasn't the moment to just yammer about yourself. in fact, that was the most egregious behavior possible in a social setting. even if the person was a stiff, do your best to feign interest before politely breaking away. later i learned that asking people about themselves was one of the easiest ways to protect my own privacy and keep them at a distance. answer the rare question with a question and know that person's life story in minutes while remaining discreet about my own.

the raconteurs in my family taught me how to talk to just about anybody and usually get a few laughs along the way. great skill to have in my profession.

as i am at last finding more comfort in "me" and my place in the world, i find myself less inclined to be sucked dry by those who see only themselves and at the same time feel self-pity. we allow forces and people into our lives, shaping and driving our present and future. as mine gets better, and the positive is tipping the scales so much for the better (emotionally, if not financially, lol) it's enough i say hello and ask about your new puppy. we don't have to go for drinks. ever.

the rich are just like you and me

on thanksgiving, a man of mixed ethnicity and his pretty blonde wife had a big fight because she thinks he be running around on her with a ho. she scratched at his face and no doubt was screaming like a krazee lady. he's a lot bigger. in hysteria she grabbed a totem meaningful to him and started swinging.

he decided to get away from his wife-now-insane-biatch and jumped in his car. she kept whirling and knocked the windows out.

it was late. he'd already taken some painkillers for bedtime. he crashed his car into a fire hydrant and then a tree.

so like plenty of poors on thanksgiving, their richy-rich house was full of emotional firestorms, recriminations, tears and violence.

they both insist nothing happened and are not talking to the cops or the media. see? just like you and me. "my wife didn't assault me, she was a hero and saved me from a non-dangerous car wreck, where i was woozy, not from the impact, but from pills! none of your beeswax where i was going, zonked on meds, at 2:30 in the morning."

the not rich person in the story? the ho in question? has hired professional harridan gloria alred as her attorney. yup, nothing to hide on her end except the whoring for media deals right now. see? not like you and me.

so many kinds of just plain wrong

the genius who got z-listers like danny bonaduce and tanya harding into the boxing ring has pulled a stunner.

he went in search of amy fisher. remember the long island lolita who blew a hole in the face of the wife of her married and grossly older guido boyfriend? the one that was the subject of not one, but THREE, made for tv movies (one with drew barrymore and one with alyssa milano) and countless hours of hard copy? yeah, that one.

at the house he meets her new boobs and her husband. an ex-cop.

oh to be a fly on the wall.

book your acela tix for december 18th to philly.

her husband, yes, a former police officer, will "fight" rodney king. yeah, that guy. the one who was on the receiving end of one the most infamous cop beat-downs of our time.

there is no longer lead in the water. why is everyone insane?

family

the other night at work i was on the receiving end of what can only be described as pity, from a woman about my age when she asked me if i had any kids. trust me, i have never felt that as a missing piece in my life, but it's confounding to most mothers. my owning of a pet seemed to cheer her somewhat. she could now sleep at night knowing i wasn't rattling around alone, all havisham-style, in an empty apartment, without something else that walks and breathes.

the night before thanksgiving, i met some friends for drinks. they were staggered to learn i hadn't been home for that holiday since i left for college. in fact, freshman year my b/f and i booked a vacation to jamaica because neither of us wanted to go home. my mother went ballistic, and dragged that sin out often to scold me about how rotten i was as a daughter. uh, remind again why i don't want to spend time there, with you, mommy dearest?

course, now, there is no home to go to, but that didn't seem quite right to bring up in that context of a shit-hole bar and holiday cheer, lol.

in my earliest thanksgiving memory i was three and we traveled to my aunt's in westchester for dinner. because my mother passive-aggressively controlled time for everybody in her life, we were late. very late. the weather and driving were foul, and my parents fought the entire drive up because of her perpetual tardiness. when we at last got there, my father thought to make a big joke of it all, but my drunk uncle thought violence a way better solution and chucked him down the stairs. the day only got better. uh-huh. there is a picture from that night. i am wearing a party dress, a football helmet, singing and "playing" the guitar. like a little uso kid entertaining the troops.

even when we hosted holidays, my mother could not be on time and would still be showering or something when everybody started arriving. then she'd feel rushed and peevish when she finally swanned downstairs. after, she'd gripe that everybody ate so quickly and she had cooked for days. there was always some kind of tension between various factions, and i was very glad when i was finally old enough to have a drink with dinner. i never understood why everybody felt so compelled to gather, when so few enjoyed each others' company, and i'd be exhausted afterwards. when the clean-up was finally finished, my mother and stepfather would sit, have a drink and pick apart all who had attended, and those who hadn't for good measure. god, it was petty.

in fairness, my father's family got along more easily, and those dinners could be quite entertaining, but when my father drifted away to his new son and g/f, he cut me out of that picture, and nobody else could be bothered to invite me. i became so little a part of him and his family, that when he finally married b. years ago, nobody even told me. his daughter.

mean-spirited, selfish and dysfunctional. i couldn't find enough positives to place and balance the scale. i wasn't following the mold of marriage and kids which also confused. to this day, i'm quite sure my grandmother thinks i am a lesbian because i am still single and child-free. the b/f's i did bring round were not met with enthusiasm, so i just stopped doing it. they never even met the guy to whom i was engaged. when my stepfather died, my mother told me in no uncertain terms he was not welcome in her home or at the funeral. unmarried, she didn't want us sleeping under her roof. even in separate rooms. even though we shared a home here.

the years of silence got easier as each one passed.

thanksgiving, this year and last, i cooked for the owner, a friend and myself. we saw a movie and then came back here to feast. nobody fought. nobody cried. we enjoyed each other's company and had delicious food and amazing wine.

i still struggle with what i "don't" feel for my family, but perhaps those i care about, and care about me in return, are enough. this is the only time in my life someone has been there whom i cannot bear the thought of losing. that is love. devotion. that is family.

i am very thankful to have found that in my life.

sheeple

oprah is the devil yet millions and jillions of women find her the most inspiring and rightest bestest person on the globe. everything she promotes skyrockets in popularity.

this has been a boon for authors with her book club, although i doubt she made anybody read books who wasn't inclined to do so in the first place. they're still flipping through cosmo for sex tips and how not to look so fat in your jeans while they watch oprah and eat ice cream. there was her smiting of jonathan franzen when he expressed discomfort that her majesty's selection of "the corrections" would forever relegate it to a chick book. he was booted from the show and she dropped the book.

there was the come-uppance when she had to admit she'd been duped by james frey with his fantastical lies in "a million little pieces" and the even bigger fatter liar herman rosenblat with his holocaust love story "angel at the fence". lies, lies, damn lies.

she is not infallible, yet her coven blindly follows her every directive and believes she is all the goodest. much like the witches of bacchus, the women are driven to heights of ecstasy their husbands can never hope to match. terrifying, really, that a sweater give-away prompts an estrogen melt-down of hysteria in the studio.

let's not digress about her flock taking diet advice from an obese yo-yo dieter, or the bully pulpits she allows wackadoos like jenny maccarthy (vaccines cause autism) and suzanne somers (bio-identical hormones and taking up to 60 different pills a day. she looks absolutely awful. wan, puffy, haggard. yeah, her "system" must work great.)

with her announcement that she is leaving the network show that made her empress of the world, lots of retrospective on the net. i found out only today that SHE is the beezlebub responsible for the omnipresence of uggs!. i'd seen them years ago in a pic of the baywatch girls, circa the pamela anderson era. so... mid-90s? there was some connection to australian lifeguards and the boots eventually crossed the ocean to california beaches.

in 2003, oprah gave them away to her screaming midwestern menopausals and they continue to be seen everywhere. watching the owner's soccer game on sunday, i was in the minority not wearing them, ffs. they make women slough their feet, sounding like lazy baboons dragging their tails in the dust, and they all look as if the foot is not held in place by the heel, with broken-down sides. since they were made for walking on sand, not the tiled floor at the mall, that may be why. but you know what? they are ugly. ugly. ugly. $150 of fugly.

her diabolical powers of persuasion know no bounds.

are crocs her fault too?

the end is nigh

we've previously covered the slow death march of print media. personally, i haven't bought a "paper" in untold months. the ny times and bbc websites have been very serviceable, although i want to punch the designer of the boston globe's. (not that their writing was ever all that great in ink, but the web format honestly just sucks.)

slashing of staffs and departments, plummeting profits. scary times.

long ago, i could spend an entire day reading the sunday times. lolling about with tea and toast, with the fat satisfying in-depth coverage unseen in most other dailies.

when i switched to an on-line reader, the sunday edition still could consume several very satisfying hours when i could find them.

much like gaining weight or growing older, some personal shifts don't register consciously at first. however one or two sundays ago, i realized i couldn't recall the last time i gorged on a sunday times. in fact, there hadn't even been a binge. just a few snacks, more unsatisfying than a single potato chip, which sent me elsewhere for my news junkie fix. frankly i've become a more frequent consumer of sites like the awl and gawker which mock mainstream media.

msm took a flying pass on so many recent stories: the entire bush presidency and its ham-handed forcing of itself into power,the bulldozer rush to an unjustifiable war, the tyranny of the patriot act, the non-existence of the wmd's, abu ghraib only got to light when soldiers themselves posted the photos, the bush regime killing science and medical research in favor of stone-age religious principles; the national enquirer, a paper thought one greasy rung up from those that run "bat-boy returns" and "aliens lunch with limbaugh" howlers, broke and carried the john edwards baby-daddy saga, etc. etc., to a sickening etc. msm, both print and network, squandered its credibility for investigative journalism, in exchange for sound-bites and chasing its own tail, happy to be spoon-fed misinformation or gobble ratings and kill minds with maniacs like glenn beck.

this week, feeling like a straying, but conflicted, spouse, i tried to go back to the grey lady. (please note, links to nyt articles go dead in a short span, so it's pointless to paste them. sorry.) science? few papers have much of it, other than an occasional piece about nuts or bolts flying off a shuttle. an article on new studies about pig cognition. okey-dokey. i thoroughly enjoy info that knits humans even more deeply into the fabric of the animal kingdom and all creatures that roam or wriggle the earth. the article begins with a 3 little pigs analogy and then, after citing a study where the subjects passed the "mirror cognition test" (which dolphins and elephants also do well with and thought to be a high-sign of innate intelligence) had this to say:

To which I say, big squeal. Why should the pigs waste precious mirror time inspecting their teeth or straightening the hairs on their chinny-chin-chins, when they could be using the mirror as a tool to find a far prettier sight, the pig heaven that comes in a bowl?


is this story-time for 3rd-graders?

a british prof, dr. byrnes, attributes pig smarts to the same evolutionary pressures that prompted cleverness in primates: social life and food. wild pigs live in long-term social groups, keeping track of one another as individuals, the better to protect against predation. they also root around for difficult food sources, requiring a dexterity of the snout not unlike the handiness of a monkey. that brain power remains, even though pigs have been domesticated for many 1000s of years.

there was, i think, 1 sentence about the evolutionary big picture, and how, although we diverged millions of years ago, we share huge chunks of genetic codes.

i wanted to punch the chick who wrote it and her editor who either allowed or forced an article so twee.

food.

not heavy news, but a long-time go-to for me. my first wednesday section to read. this week, it was some sort of thanksgiving sides death match between two female food writers. i couldn't get through it. "stuffing muffins"? is craig clairborne weeping into his claret? many years ago, amanda hesser began chronicling her relationship with a certain mr. latte through her sunday magazine food page. it was so suffocatingly protestant and upright, yet filled with skinny girl angst, i stopped reading until i heard she had at last married him and given up her regular gig. phew.

now? back to cutsie-pie. the guy who now has that page is inspired, and aided at the stove, by his pre-school son dexter. he wrote of the challenge of the THIRTY-TWO DOLLAR farmer's market chicken and $5 quarts of fresh milk his kids consumed by the gallons. are you fucking kidding me? what was your salary before the cuts, mr. wells? i gave it up.

this week, it's about making caramel popcorn. caramel popcorn. i couldn't get through it, but this line leapt out:

I am probably overselling the sophistication of Dexter, who, after all, is only 5.

spoken only like a parent who likely lives in park slope. gag.

there was a homes article about a woman whose marriage collapsed while she and her 2nd husband were renovating their $3 million dream loft. the reno went $500,000 over projection. sure, divorce is painful, but please let me wipe my tears with my unemployment check stub, ok? nice to know not just the poors get divorced and have to downsize, although the end i took away was sad middle-aged rich white lady now alone will make a tidy profit on house in shit economy while 1000s of regular people can't sell homes they can no longer afford because they cannot find work.

a culture writer this week has a LONG story about how "douche" has become an acceptable zing on tv. this is "news"? maybe a few years ago, whenever the first show got by the censors with it, but if it's on that julia louis-dreyfuss piece of drek, or "gray's anatomy", it has already jumped the shark, ok?

today may spell the end for me. meghan fox is on the cover of the magazine. she of "transformers" fame. one movie, which was all cgi and maybe her screaming? (dunno, didn't see it.) a cosmetically-enhanced high school drop-out with freak thumbs, no discernible acting chops, a giant marilyn tattoo on her forearm and a knack for saying inane shit:

"I resent having to prove that I'm not a retard." - Esquire, June 2009



"If you eat Chinese food, your farts come out like Chinese food. If you eat Mexican food, your farts come out like Mexican food. And milk, it's like-you can smell the warmth in the fart. My wardrobe on Transformers always smells like farts, and I have no idea why." -GQ, October 2008



on the cover of elle or self, maybe but, honestly?

did contemporaries moan the end of the horse and buggy as cars began roaming city streets? did housewives beg to keep the wringer washer when hubby brought home the electric drum version?

this will happen in my lifetime and i feel sooner rather than later. i don't have a crystal ball, nor am i that net savvy. i DO know very few readers will begin to pay for content that had been free which seems to be the stone-age model most paper honchos want to pursue. (by all means, full-steam ahead -- your other economic strategies have proven excellent!) sorry, sulzberger. if this is the best you have now? i'm certainly not going to pay for something so crappy. the times is now like bad chinese: it's kind of ok if you can't find anything else nearby and cheap, but you're starving not long after.

lazy is as lazy does

for many years, i resisted getting tivo. the first person i knew who had one was dumb as a box of hammers and i couldn't take seriously anything that came out of his empty head. he also couldn't articulate how it worked. moreso, after a career of working nights, i'd simply lost the habit of prime-time tv. like i missed the entire seinfeld era. (no loss, that kind of new yorky navel-gazing doesn't amuse here, but lots of episodes became familiar cultural references. as a restaurant person, how i envied the soup nazi! but when customers would make a crack, assuming i simply MUST have seen such-and-such an episode, my lack of recognition registered like i was some sort of bone-in-the-nose savage reshly emerged from the amazon rainforest.)

fast-forward and the owner is adamant tivo will change my world, and there will be no getting around ordering the box.

my concern that i'd start watching too much mindless tv was unfounded, because the only stuff on there was what i had asked it to store. no time wasted surfing channels looking for a show of interest. brilliant! (except early in its personal learning curve. the owner had included lots of soccer in the to-do list, so tivo helpfully picked up lots of telemundo soaps, thinking i was latin.)

much like tv was going to kill radio, and vcrs kill the movies, network honchos gnashed their teeth that dvrs would spell certain boob-tube doom.

with everything based on ad dollars and that coveted demographic of 18-49 year olds, the suits decided on what, even to me, seemed a flawed model of counting eyeballs. they only tracked same day views and yeah, it didn't look great. don't know who had a light-bulb moment, but two years ago nielsen switched to a plus-3 method. same day, plus the 3 days after for ad views. personally, i nearly never watch programs on the same day, and neither does anybody i know. duh. this has dramatically increased ratings from some shows thought to be laggards, some clicking up more than 20%, so there is now a little more sunshine in hollywood.

the biggest surprise? from today's ny times:

"According to Nielsen, 46 percent of viewers 18 to 49 years old for all four networks taken together are watching the commercials during playback, up slightly from last year. Why would people pass on the opportunity to skip through to the next chunk of program content? The most basic reason, according to Brad Adgate, the senior vice president for research at Horizon Media, a media buying firm, is that the behavior that has underpinned television since its invention still persists to a larger degree than expected.

“It’s still a passive activity,” he said."

even with remote controls and only a simple button push to avoid the chevy tahoe/bud light-lime nonsense, most people are simply too lazy to bother, lol.

real amurricanz

let's do some catching up on a few of our favorites from the heartland, shall we? the internetz were chock-full of homey apple pie and gingham apron goodness today.

my favorite beauty pageant not-winner, and stalwart public defender of opposite-marriage, carrie prejean, was pressing hard on her crown-stealers for a settlement. like over a million bucks hard. but whoops! miss not-california walked out of the talks red-faced and empty-handed when lawyers showed her a graphic sex tape.
of herself. doing herself. did the wind accidentally turn on the video camera while she was indulging in a wank-fest?

edited to add, she has been dropped from an appearance at a "defending the family" conference this weekend.

raymond jessop, formerly a resident of the yearning for zion ranch, in eldorado texas, was convicted yesterday for sexually assaulting a child. this is one of the guys rounded up after authorities raided the compound belonging to the fundamentalist church of jesus christ of latter day saints and over 400 kids in prairie dresses and braids were taken into protective custody. his victim was 15 at the time and had originally been "assigned" to jessop's brother, but i guess they traded. she eventually got pregnant by him. he had 9 other "spiritual wives," as permitted by the rules of this break-away bunch of mormons. over a dozen other guys are cooling their heels in the pokey awaiting trial on similar charges and jessop isn't finished with his court stuff either, but is now behind bars. i am especially fond of this story because a) regular mormons are whackos, so this nutsiness ups that krazee exponentially b)the guy looks like a ventriloquist dummy in a profoundly creepy way and c) any guy who thinks it's a good idea to have a harem, of teenagers no less, to manage is out of his mind. we'll add a d) to the list because i was floored to discover the age of consent in texas is 17!

lastly, our cute dumb friend levi johnston. our hockey-playing thrilla from wasilla who knocked up palin's daughter bristol. the pit bull pushed him under the kliegs in a suit and holding hands with her pregnant teenager and glossed them over as kids doin' the right thing, cuz they had an oops, but would get married and everything would be great and happy-ever-after, cuz that's what happens to real amurricanz who don't do the chastity thing you, as a mom, just knew they would always do when you let your daughter's boyfriend sleep over in her room. then when the vp office didn't get her name on it, levi was out in the alaskan cold, don't let the igloo door hit you in the ass, and don't try to see your kid. go back and live with you meth-head sister and oxycontin dealing aunt. but levi had gotten a taste of the limelight, ya know? perhaps not as dumb as others thought, cuz he's been stretching his 15 minutes now for over a year. vanity fair profile, red carpet walks with kathy griffin, chats with oprah and larry king -- usual d-list crap. today? he arrives in nyc to shoot a spread for playgirl! this is brilliant in so many ways i can't stand it. he'll be traveling with his posse, tank jones and rex butler. was hiring handlers with porno-sounding names prescient or a delightful serendipity? even the photographer running the shoot is named weiner! the ny post is speculating about the size of his wang (natch) and net geeks are back and forth whether it'll be hard or soft. who even knew playgirl was still published? but we all know only homos buy it, if anyone still does. the money shot is that his issue will be on the stands right before sarah's book. which yes, is actually called "goin' rogue." (ok, the editors didn't drop the g. that's all me.) this book should not be confused with the meanie version, called "going rouge".

once again, i face the fact that i am not a real amurrican, and that thanks to obama, they are perilously endangered

more bewbies, well, less, actually

last night i heard, then saw, a victoria's secret commercial on tv. in severe non-shopping mode all these months, all the catalogs have gone straight to recycling, so i am out of the lingerie loop.

they have a new "miraculous push-up bra". instantly (well, as soon as you put it on) adds 2 full cup sizes. never having worn a padded bra, i have no idea how much batting that is, but likely enough to make a puppy bed.

please 'splain how this is different than the junior high girl stuffing sweat socks in her training bra? once the guy gets in there, expecting cantaloupes but getting blueberries, then what? yeah, a 13-year-old boy will be thrilled to be copping a feel, but a grown man won't be thinking wtf?

although if a chick isn't getting any a $50 bra is way cheaper than a $5000 boob job and will succeed just as well in getting catcalls and hisses of "mommy" at construction sites.

shrinkage

it's a word that strikes terror into the limbs and minds of men, because they think hairline or something more, ahem, private that is terrified of icy water. lately, recessionomics has shrunk their portfolios too.

let's begin this by saying i am happy with the way i have been eating since the end of summer. i still feel great, it's getting much easier and i haven't gone off the rails and eaten a pile of mashed potatoes or an entire pizza. or even a slice for that matter. i had a dinner party last week and but for a few spoonsful of flour (divided by 4 of us) everything was allowable. that included the staggering amount of butter and olive oil, lol.

the down- and frustrating bit of this is i have been at the same weight now for over a month. i've been advised to up my calories which i have. it's so counter intuitive i spend a good portion of the day freaking out. ahem. still no loss, but i have not gained any weight in the 2 weeks of uppage, so am being told to EAT STILL MORE. gah. can't do it yet.

but here's the weird thing. i'm shrinking. rings are too big and have moved from the second to the index finger. a blazer that hasn't fastened in forevah now fits closed over a wool twin set with room to spare. all the sleeves on my sweaters and jackets are much looser. freshly dried nighties that needed a pull to relax the lycra and be less tight now fall freely as soon as i put them on. the new delta bras from only a few weeks back went from being hitched on the 1st hook to the 3rd. blouses that strained buttons at the boobs no longer threaten to explode. (sorry, hubert.)

consensus seems to be when you lose 10% of your body weight, everything stalls. your body puts on the brakes to see what's what. once it figures this is for real, it will let go. for some people it took months. i've resolved to up my resistance training, which is the only real change i can make. am back to work finally, so my daily activity will be much greater than it's been too.

as crazy as the numbers are making me, i cannot remember the last time i felt this good and THAT is what keeps me on track. last night at the market i spent a few too many minutes tempting myself with low-carb wraps. "only 7 carbs, noodle... don't you miss bread, noodle?" (calling it bread is kind of a stretch here: flaxseed, oat bran and a tiny bit of whole wheat, but a regular wrap has 25-35 carbs -- more than i eat all day.) then i pictured myself eating the entire package before i went to bed and how puffy and bloated my face would look and my stomach would feel in the morning. i stepped away from the grains, lol.

boyz, girlz and bewbies

every so often i read of a study done and have that moment of, "somebody got grant money and university time for this shit, yet we don't know how cats purr? wtf?"

because today's' article was in the "london sun" not all basic journalistic principles were followed, so i don't know the number of subjects who participated in this new zealand study.

all the subjects were male. they were shown digitally altered photos of the same woman, variously enhancing or decreasing her breasts. omg! guess what!! 80% of the guys looked first at boobs and midriff region. shocking, eh? gobbledy-gook about hormones and fertility, but women walk around with sex organs bouncing in guys' faces. men are wired as visual (women are audio) and just cannot help themselves.

having been large-chested from an early age, i frequently don't notice people gawking, unless their tongues are lolling out or they crash their car. (yes, that happened, lol.) the owner occasionally comments on guys doing a hooters-check and also has observed the female version. they look at him, then my boobs, then my shoes, then my boobs again. but see that's competitiveness and self-esteem regulation. they don't want to run over and bury their face in my cleavage.

out socializing with less-endowed friends and every so often their egos boiled over because guys were gravitating to me more than they and i had pretty much had my pick of the litter. it always got ugly and they were too crushed to be able to see how superficial all that attention was, nor how little it meant to me. they always came back with, "easy for you to say!" which is true, but god, most guys will fuck most willing females, ok? it's not survival of the biggest cup-size, ok? maybe stop being a resentful bitch about your genetic lottery and smile at somebody you think is cute? instead of fuming over your drink and looking like you'd kill anybody that came near you.

there are days too when i am cranky or lost in my head and frankly the shallowness of the attention makes me angry or resentful. like, leave me the fuck alone and put your eyes back in your head. there are days when they are heavy, swollen and sore and i swear weigh 20 pounds each.

the same paper had another article saying that over the last few years women getting breast augmentations have requested them to be on average 40% bigger. the celebs i see on-line often are rail-thin with porn-star size melons bolted onto their bird-bone frames. they look bizarre. so if this is becoming the visual normal, i guess jane average is using salma hayek as a role-model? careful what you wish for, girlies.

oh, and for those of you in doubt?


in what fun-house mirror does this "after" look good?

wet, then crisp

just a few days ago i was being drenched and pelted by hard heavy rain. in less than a block, my pants were soaked through and my umbrella threatened numerous times to blow up and away. it sure proved to be a scrappy fighter and it was all i could do to hold on.

today started grey, but the clouds cleared and the sun is favoring us. my deck door is open and i can hear the crisp bits of what had been summer's green skittering across the pavement. i just love that sound. those of you who live without autumn really miss out, and not just about the colors. the sounds and the smells are so different this time of year.

there won't be many more, so i'm off to get some for myself.

how to torture women

all i have read indicates there were no female prisoners at abu ghraib or guantanamo. they didn't have to endure the naked pyramids or waterboarding, which, no, were not really torture, ok, mr. cheney.

however, yesterday i realized the ideal way to do this. make them try on bras. or bathing suits, but having spent yesterday afternoon doing the former, it was quite horrible, i assure you. frustrating, humiliating, maddening.

why, noodle, why?

about a week ago, i realized my jackets were buttoning and zipping unlike they had in forevers. which prompted me to pull out my measuring tape. surely a man would never do this, he'd just be psyched his clothes were looser and take that as sufficient confirmation he was getting thinner. so anyway, i lost 1.5 inches from my back. my bra cups are just as full, so it was only from my back.

shortly after that 2 of my bras decided to come up with broken underwires. it's near impossible to describe the discomfort of walking around, not supported and yet bound and askew. but bras are crazy expensive and i was hoping to postpone purchasing new ones til i had lost more weight. foiled.

instead of going full-on masochist and having a saleswoman measure me (knowing i am not the same size as those very old bras) i hit the net to learn the proper way. for decades, i have worn basically the same style, which manages to give a decent heave up but doesn't look like a granny sack. so armed with the new digits and in the interest of frugality, as well as considering them temporary, i headed for the deep discounters downtown.

i suppose because the little frillies are pretty, but i am always amazed at the tiny tiny bras and why a woman would even bother wearing one if that small-chested. so i make my way to the boulder-holder rack, which is only the beginning of the slow boil since nothing is hanging in proper order with b's, c's and d's all mixed up and the 34's in with the 40's. grrr.

the web claims i am a cup size smaller than i had thought, but i hold them up and think, "no way will that do the job." i take some anyway, along with an assort of of 4 different cup sizes and 3 different back sizes. 10 bras. 100% fail.

next shop. smaller selection, but i paw through. i realize they are insanely cheap, and take 5 into the dressing room. the woman who gives me the plastic number tag is covered up in a burka, but i realize under there, she too knows my distress.

miracle. one fits. i am not a cup size smaller, lol. non-miracle, there is only one other that is the same style and size and it's leopard print, lol. under my winter wardrobe of browns and blacks, i justify it, and know the owner will laugh when he sees it.

no doubt the egyptians were adept at torture, but they missed a grand possibility with just wrapping the bewbies up tightly in muslin strips, i swear.

women, bodies, hate, again...

this model was fired by her long-time employer this past april. for 8 years, since the age of 15, she has done print and runway work for ralph lauren. she was fired for being too fat. she is 5'10" and weighs 120 pounds. the termination letter sent to her agent claimed that because she could no longer fit into the sample clothes, size 2, she was being let go.

heartbroken, she kept mum until she saw this photoshopped image of herself on a board in tokyo. her head is bigger than her goddamn hips. it looks horrible. she also kind of looks like a young brooke shields which is weird since she doesn't. this ad caused quite a bit of interwebs kerfuffle so lauren pulled it with awkward non-apologies and is trying to get it erased from the net. haha! good luck with that, ralph. but what kind of disordered group thinking wants to morph a gorgeous model into looking like an auschwitz survivor with a blow-out? it wasn't just one person that got this image and this ad and its distribution all green lighted, but a team working together in a process.there has been buzz lately about the use and abuse of photoshop, with some editors going so far as to say readers don't want to see how women really look, especially models and celebrities. the nanny state of france is trying to pass a law requiring all photoshopped magazine pix to carry a disclaimer. it would be far less ridiculous for untouched pix to carry a tag, since there are none.

lastly, we'll look at lizzi miller. this was in glamour a few months back. she is 5'11" and weighs 180 pounds. from the looks of things, i'm guessing she's perhaps had a baby. she is a successful "plus-size" model and wears either a 12 or 14. there is no arguing she is a big girl, but i'm sure in person she looks great, i mean, she is amazon tall, ya know? modeling agencies consider anyone over a size 6 to be a plus-size model, even though it's 16 and up in shops.fashion has always been about fantasy and that will not change. nor do i think it should, so i'm not advocating to see fiddle-faddle chomping lard-asses in harpers bazaar. unless a woman was raised by wolves, she knows the chicks in the magazines are genetic freaks and/or starving themselves to death. (actually, a girl raised by wolves would be very slim and lean from all that running and subsistence eating, lol, so maybe that's not the best example...) i also find specious the consideration that these models "make" their audience into anorexics. that's craziness in one's own head and isn't about looking like agyness deyn.

supermodels in my youth (when i was in fact torturing myself with badly disordered eating) were cindy crawford and rachel hunter. they looked healthy, athletic, fit. they had hips and breasts and filled out the swimsuit fantasies of the young men i knew. heroin chic was decades ago and still the ideal is considered to be wraith thin and built like a boy.

americans are getting ever fatter and we all agree that's a bad development. even though this is one of the thinner cities, i still see many people that are of a staggering size. only a couple of my female friends are overweight, yet every single one struggles with both the scale and self-image. even as i get slimmer and am fitting into some long unworn clothes, i torment myself with the scale. if the number blips up by even a pound i scan my memory banks and dissect each caloric molecule for the culprit, and see only a bloated pig in the mirror. "did that chicken leg make my ass look fat in these pants?" 2 weeks ago the owner took me clothes shopping. the scale had ticked up that morning, so i could barely look at myself to see if anything fit and simply refused to try on any slacks. of course, this led to madness anyway since a size small dress was too big and a size 14 would not go over my boobs.

last week, i finally made myself stop weighing and tracking all my food on my excel sheets. it was putting my head in a very bad place, reminding me regularly that the only times in my life i have been fully comfortable and confident in my body was when i was anorexic and bulimic. obsessing about not eating or what i might allow myself to eat after feeling insanely hungry for a set amount of time. the scale has held steady, so i haven't sabotaged myself, but each day i am increasingly anxious that i'm not losing. rationally, i know my body is redistributing itself since those size 6 pants now fit, but that doesn't silence the accuser in my head who will always know i eat too much and am too fat.

liars and thieves

the restaurant industry is rife with both, often combined in the same person. it attracts the unstable, those who struggle with drink, drugs or gambling, so they're often short on dough. there is cash-handling mischief, the potential for credit card fraud and identity theft and simpler stealing of product. this is true on the low end like dishwashers, and also managers.

i know people who have been fired for regularly adjusting their tips upward. i worked in a place where the safe was unbolted from the floor and disappeared, along with over $30k in cash from the weekend's receipts. a 40" plasma tv walked itself down 6 flights of stairs and out the door. large format bottles of expensive wine, like massive 6-liters, went poof. guys i know ran a gift card scam for at least 6 months before getting bounced.

more than once i have been on the short end of a tip pool. one new years' eve, the owner and gm decided to pool all the waitstaff tips and share it with everybody else. including themselves. completely 100% against the law. we knew we would get screwed. we all waited for our envelopes and added up what we had collected. they took 60% of what we made and passed it around. it was 2000, the check averages were staggering, we worked a 12-hour shift and made less than on a dead monday. imagine my joy when that gm's jacket, with his envelope, got stolen in the after-hours party. share my delayed gratification the next year when we all refused to work new years if they pulled the same stunt.

an early, but short, escapade in my career was in a splashy place that turned out to be owned by the mob. guidos in and out, up and down, all day and night. something about the gm rubbed me wrong. besides the capacity my breasts had for hypnotizing him and his staggering misogyny, i mean. one of the soft opening nights a wine salesman pulled his car up front to unload product his company was donating that we were supposed to serve gratis. that gm pulled his car right up behind and loaded all 3 cases right into his own trunk. i was there only a few weeks and this was not the only time i saw him do this.

it's a small town and i have seen this bad penny turn up over and over. servers who have suffered under him and salespeople who have had to deal all know he is a thief. like the sky is blue kind of general consensus.

a few weeks back, i nearly spat my tea reading he is now the OWNER of his own place. which means he has investors. some rich dudes wrote checks to a guy who rarely stayed anywhere more than a few months. in the short bit in the globe, 1/4 of a column, maybe, he said, "it's a scene, man," three times.

he appropriated an iconic name, will have live music every night (a dearth here, admittedly) and hired a chef from a place famous for sticky sweet cocktails and hook-ups -- not food.

because i am not a nice person, imagine my glee at the craptastic reviews this place is getting. the food, the drinks, the service all suck. i am happy he is unlikely to succeed. however, i feel a bit badly for his dupes. then again offering start-up cash to a restaurant is only done with money you plan never to see again. this guy is such a small-time sleaze and yet people were amazed at a silky-smooth op like bernie madoff.

barnum was right.

women hating their bodies, redux

these ladies are british celebrities. one is a former spice girl and the other is that peculiar english phenom of "glamour model".

today's on-line version of the rag, "the daily mail", featured these pix.

commentary? spice girl on the far left is lauded as healthy and curvy (although slammed for wearing a dress she wore to an event 7 years ago), and oh-so-much finer than in her bulimia phase in the other pic. hard to tell with the camera, certainly, but is there maybe a 10-pound difference? at most? even "curvy" you can still clearly see her pelvic bones through her dress.

the other was on a british version of "big brother" and gained some weight on a crap diet of chips and such during filming. paper says she's "fat" now, and not worried about losing the stone she gained. in that yellow dress her fake boobs look big enough to topple that tiny body. i can only think that in-person she must have looked like a stick with basketballs implanted under her pecs. (or over, can't tell from the shot.) she looks curvy and healthy to me, what do i know.

this was the same issue where karl lagerfeld, formerly very fat, decreed nobody wants to see models with curves. that it is "only fat mothers in front of the tv stuffing themselves with chips complaining" the skeletor cat walkers are ugly.

not just kids

a few weeks ago, i discussed a poll of high school kids and my subsequent disgust at their ignorance of basic american history. "no child left behind", indeed.

around that same time, i just couldn't bring myself to write about the whole "birther" nonsense that was swirling around the blogosphere and from the shouting heads on fox news. laugh about it with my friends, sure, and take satisfaction in knowing nobody i know is a real amurrican.

today i stumbled belatedly upon this poll of peeps that gave me yet another face-palm moment, tyvm republicans.

24% know he is absolutely is NOT a real amurrican and 14% were unsure.

10% of the country thinks he was born in indonesia, 7% think he was born in kenya, and 1% think he was born in the philippines.

we are left with 20%.

that does include a portion who do know that obama actually was born in hawaii, however 6% of those people think hawaii is not part of the united states and 4% are unsure. yup, 10% of 'em don't know hawaii is "one of us".

and i suppose just to be funny, the pollsters asked the remaining hold-outs if they though obama might be french, lol. 2/3rds of that 20% were "not sure", but he might be.

62% of the birthers identified as republicans
86% are white.

nope. ain't about race, right?

dumb food

this is an actual product and i saw it for the first time today in a big display cooler at the market. different flavors all filled with buzzy ingredients without which we absolutely will die if we don't get them in a fruity beverage. ginseng, green tea, guarana, pomegranate and acai just to name a few. potassium too so you can skip your steak or your banana.

it's also full of splenda.

now, you're saying, what pisses you off about this, noodle? water is SKINNY. no calories and drinking lots of it keeps you healthy. there is no science supporting ANY of these ingredients, separate or combined, being dissolved in 21st century kool-aid will help you lose weight. however, there is science proving that a diet high in artificial sweeteners does make you crave more sugar. which will make you FAT.

i thought the special k protein water was bad enough (yeah, cuz americans just don'e eat enough meat!) but this is really the shizz. i'm sure there are women who drink it by the gallon. i wonder if they've yet inked a deal for placement in places ladies' gyms like curves?

which is worse? that a product this stoopid is marketed to women or that women are stoopid enough to buy it?

naked at school

do we ever stop having some version of this nightmare? does lance armstrong wake up in a cold sweat having seen himself up on the podium sans cuissard? does madonna gasp in the deep dark thinking she is just too old and the toy she wants to bang says, "uh, no thanks, k, granny"?

before yesterday's interview i dreamt i was at the place and had gone through the paces, i just needed to take a written and timed test. there was mad activity everywhere, like there always is in a busy restaurant and no place quiet to sit. hordes of people, whom i of course did not know, kept badgering me with questions i couldn't answer. i begged to be left alone -- "the test, the test, i'm trying to finish the test, please" -- and that person would go only to be replaced by another in a few seconds. i didn't finish the exam and was met with an acid glare from my potential boss when i woke up barely breathing. i was drained from my brain being in that chaos.

all morning and all the way there, i was jumpy and weirdly nervous. the woman was very down-to-earth and easy to talk to, with lots of dropped hints that she is much like me being over 40, single, living here over the harbor and being a lifer in the industry. it went very well and i will get a call-back, lol.

i just can't help but wonder if this is more of the "i'm a fucking phony" complex that seeps from my subconscious now and again or if everybody from queen elizabeth to justin timberlake sometimes wakes up all freaked out too.

merry prankster

new englanders are stereotyped as taciturn, with that laughter-free puritan image just not dying. yet our weather has a sense of "ha-ha" like no place else i know.

many nights last week were down in the 40's and cold raw rain pelted my face just like march or november. october is close. i put away all the summer clothes and started mending the winter garb. "fooled you! haha!!" it's sunny and 80 and i'm about to get a nice big dose of fresh air and sunshine while it's out there.

every year, without fail, that box goes back and forth a few times before it finally rests, lol. every year, no matter how late i wait. maybe it's personal?

well-done

my italian grandfather taught my irish mother to cook. she was clueless in the kitchen, coming from a mother who was mostly out whoring around at dinner time and a father who, i think, boiled steak. the lessons took well and my mother learned to enjoy it.

except for one thing: meat. no matter what it was, it was well-done. cooked through and then some. beef was grey in the center and as chewy as chaplin's shoe. when it was corned beef brisket for dinner, no prob, but filet mignon made me want to cry. when my stepfather leapt several income ladders in a single bound, we had beef more nights than not. yuk. chicken too was cooked to dust and we were not a gravy house, so abandon hope and look forward to fridays which were catholicly meat-free.

when i left home, i sort of passively decided to "give up meat". more out of overkill and dislike than anything else. besides, freshman year dorm "meat" wasn't exactly julia's bouef bourgignon. over the years, i went through various stages of being "vegetarian", getting anemic, getting "save the world" fever, and finally, well, i'll have fish.

which quickly led to trying 2 new foods. the first was oysters. in nyc on a girls' trip i ordered a dozen and was blown away by the burst of salinity, the fresh icy piece of the sea in those rough grey shells.

shortly after was sushi. a date took me, a slightly older, very wealthy man (who got weirdly instantly stalker-y on me, but not germane here, lol) and i suggested he do the ordering, but to not be afraid for me. the one bite that instantly staggered me and became me favorite food evah in the world always, was sea urchin -- uni. again, it gives that slight resist before you bite down, and it's briny minerality slides down your throat in a cold swallow of ocean velvet.

as i became more adept at cooking, entertaining and eating, i was very aware of the play of not just colors on a plate, but of texture too. if you're having pasta, put something crunchy on, like toasted pine nuts, so you don't get bored to death before you are full.

now a few weeks into my new eating habits, i've been having to tread back out to meaty waters. not long ago, i had my first hamburger in maybe decades. it was sooooooooo incredibly good. granted, from prime beef at a steak house, but still. i've had a few since, and while none were at that pinnacle of beef grade, they all were really good. how had i been denying myself all these years?

so, another food light bulb for noodle. i don't dislike meat. i hate badly cooked meat. bring me medium rare with a nice sear on the outside and a barely warm moist juicy inside. what's not to like? add crispy bacon to kill it, lol.

what kind of eater does that make me? a textural one? is that a thing?

more god gobbledygook

no secret that the born-again george bush had a penchant for invoking god (who told him personally and specifically) both to run for office and to invade iraq, as well mixing up religion with real stuff, ya know like evolution, or the fierce fundy battle to keep the so-called "morning after pill" off the market.

also no secret my personal impatience with ALL the superstitious nonsense that the world calls religion. reading baboon entrails or telling me that man has only been on the planet 6000 years cuz that's the bible math is all the same mumbo-jumbo to me.

rest assured the face-palm moments will continue even though he's out of office, because some of bush's crankier and disgruntled former staff are putting out books.

here's a snip from a speech writer's forthcoming tome, on why j.k. rowling did not receive the presidential medal of freedom:

This was the same sort of narrow thinking that led people in the White House to actually object to giving the author J.K. Rowling a presidential medal because the Harry Potter books encouraged witchcraft.

just so we're clear: guys like paul bremer and george tenet, who were instrumental in invading iraq and afghanistan, oh yeah, and endorsing torture, got the snazzy medallions but a woman who encouraged a generation of geeky kids to read books and enjoy imagination was too subversive. all that backyard pretend quidditch was a step away from the glamor that is devil-worship fer sure.

i hate women, redux.

lucky-linky and i found myself reading the sordid saga of a young woman who got involved with an older man. nothing new under the sun, eh?

in the second sentence (!) she admits, "i liked to think i was different." so does every 22-year-old ever, honey. she met him as an intern at the magazine of which he was editor. they stayed in touch, he mentored her with her freelance writing and a few years later, she landed a paid gig at his rag.

things end badly with the editor's long-time g/f, and they start bonking. rebound nookie not in her vocab, i guess?

she is hurt because around the office, he keeps his distance. she is hurt because she does not meet his friends nor his parents. she is hurt because he never introduces her to anyone as his "girlfriend". she is hurt when her mother voices her disapproval of this may-december fling and when girlie tells this to the editor, he freaks out, which makes her feel hurt. they had been fucking for 2 months and she says: "In my mind, we should be openly dating as boyfriend and girlfriend, and we’d marry and have children together."

on the phone, she tells him "she loves him". he admits he does not feel the same and they should end "this". he is seeing somebody else and it looks like it may become serious. someone his own age. she is beside herself that he doesn't feel emotionally the same, even though he gave every indication that was the case, and feels sucker-punched about the "other woman", even though they never discussed being monogamous.

he no longer takes her calls or answers her e-mails. it's OVER.

heartbreak hurts, no matter how young or foolish be the one feeling the pain. yet years later, she continues to blame him. "that he should have known better" than to "allow" someone so young to fall in love with him. um, which part of him coming to her with a broken heart does she refuse to accept? that perhaps he wasn't thinking clearly? that he wasn't in control of his own emotions, so how could he be expected to be responsible for hers too?

a year later, through facebook (oh, the joys made possible by social media!), she discovers he is engaged to *that* woman. she is furious and demands to see him. he accepts. she is hurt he didn't tell her in person. they no longer SPEAK so why does he *owe* her that? because he quickly moved on from a fuck-toy and she had not yet accepted that's all she was?

lastly, what really steamed me about this whole baring of her soul, is she gives enough personal details for anybody who worked at that mag to easily deduce the editor she was banging. nice discretion, lady. it's one thing to write about personal experience, but it's possible to do so without harming others. unless that's your intent.

as seen here

walking with purpose (which i do, even when i don't have one, and this will show why) yesterday, i was all dressed up for an interview.

giant black man: you an actress?
me: no

i do not break stride and he starts following me. the sidewalk is crowded with people, both walking and sitting at cafés.

gbm: you in one of them movies they makin' round here?
me: no
gbm: you should be
me: thank you
gbm: why you walkin' so fast? you afraid of black men?
me: no, i have someplace to be and my husband is black
gbm: you married to a brother and he lets you out alone and you so fine?
me: yes
gbm: you ax him if you can have a boyfriend -- i keep you safe when he ain't around.
me: please. leave me alone.
gbm: (yelling) i told you, you afraid of black men!

other black man: leave the lady alone.

and just like that, he finally went away.

one way to win an argument

a kansas couple had been arguing about his cross-dressing. one might likely think not for the first time. he was the father of her two children. the eldest, aged 18, came home to find her mother shot dead on the kitchen floor. her father, dressed in women's' clothing, was also on the floor, with a self-inflicted flesh wound, smoking. i'm guessing a post-murder smoke is even better than a post-coital one.

he appeared in court to plead not guilty, wearing make-up and a baby blue jumpsuit. (hey, we know kansas ain't exactly fashion-forward and even the frugalistas are shopping at the good will these days. just ask the ny times.)
eye bleach is in aisle 5.

good advice

anna rapaport, who is an actuary out of chicago and leads the society of actuaries' committee on post-retirement needs, was interviewed by "florida today":

reporter: if people can't bolster their savings, what can they do either before or in retirement to better deal with high costs?

rapaport: try to stay healthy.

this is the woman who knows how and when we are all going to die. see, america? health care crisis SOLVED! yo, get barry on the horn!

pray for us

there are certain republiclowns i am coming to depend upon to bring me the face-palm moments (except they also bring night terrors) and one of those is sen. tom coburn from oklahoma. you remember tom, right? another member of the extreme fundy group "the family", who, as an ob/gyn, claimed doctor/patient privilege in his counseling of slutty sen. ensign who was outted for fucking his not-wife and most definitely does not have a uterus.

this weekend was a "values voter" summit in d.c., with all sorts of loonies to bring the lulz: baby farmer michele bachmann, mike huckabee (i guess god stopped helping sway his voters?), actor stephen baldwin, phyllis schlafly (she's not dead and jello-wrestling with anita bryant in hell? wtf), and windswept former beauty queen carrie prejean. mormon mitt romney was there as a centrist. (and, no lie, a very bright white hope for 2012.)

as a direct paste from their site, here are the titles for the break-out sessions:

• SPEECHLESS - SILENCING THE CHRISTIANS
• THUGOCRACY - FIGHTING THE VAST LEFT WING CONSPIRACY
• DEFUNDING PLANNED PARENTHOOD
• ACTIVISM AND CONSERVATISM: FIT TO A TEA (PARTY)
• TRUE TOLERANCE: COUNTERING THE HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS
• THE THREAT OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
• OBAMACARE: RATIONING YOUR LIFE AWAY
• MARRIAGE: WHY IT'S WORTH DEFENDING AND HOW REDEFINING IT THREATENS RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
• THE NEW MASCULINITY
• WAIT NO MORE: FINDING FAMILIES FOR WAITING KIDS
• TURNING THE TIDE IN YOUR GENERATION
• GLOBAL WARMING HYSTERIA: THE NEW FACE OF THE "PRO-DEATH" AGENDA

and here are some juicy cherry picks from the sessions deets, in order to continue the tide of fear, other-bashing and hysterical lying:

Ultimately, climate change hysteria rests on an unbiblical view of God, mankind, and the environment.

Redefining marriage poses serious threats to the religious liberties of people who continue to believe that marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman.

Long lines, refusal of care, months waiting for needed surgeries, rationing of treatments, mandates in support of abortion.

Why did the President's science advisor support coerced abortions to protect the planet?

Americans are at a greater risk of losing their basic freedoms today than ever before in the history of this nation.

Feminism has wreaked havoc on marriage, women, children and men. It is time to redress the disorder it has wrought and that must start with getting the principles and ideals for a new "masculinism" right.


sen. coburn had this lil gem as part of a statement read by his chief of staff:

"praising one's parents in nightly prayers could enforce the notion of marriage, and telling children that "all pornography is homosexual pornography" could prevent them from becoming perverted."



because nothing says "homo" quicker to a horny teenage boy than hustler or estonian internet bukake. um, yeah. and seeing a triple-d blonde get trained by 10 bikers will make him want peen. for realz and forever.

as seen here

running errands in my hood today i saw that eyebrow waxing only costs 5 dollah. hollah. in all the joints. cheaper than a pack of smokes. this explains why all the boyz have gypsy moths doing cirque de soleil on their foreheads.

real amurricanz

tomorrow is constitution day, the 222nd anniversary of the completion of the constitutional convention. before y'all run off in your powdered wigs to party consider
this.

an outfit calling itself the oklahoma council of public affairs conducted a survey of 1000 high school students. they asked them 10 questions randomly selected from the current test immigrants take to become citizens. 92% of aspiring americans pass that test on the 1st go. 3% of the students passed. 3%. teens born and bred here, having been taught social studies and history since kindergarten. 75% could not name our first president, and the most commonly given answer to the 10 questions simply was, "i don't know."

oklahoma is not alone in this ignominy. arizona had similarly dismal results.

our founding fathers understood that free public education would be a cornerstone for maintaining the republic. that our citizens would need and have a grasp of civics, history and the ethics required for democracy. thomas jefferson wrote in 1789 that "whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government." later still he wrote, "enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day."

golly, i hope those local school boards ordered enough intelligent design textbooks. i'm sure the kids are much better at (ahem) science.

oh, no, it's not about race

this was also taken at a 9/12 rally this past weekend, but had so many different kinds of stoopid in it, i felt it deserved its own post.


she seems delighted with her own cleverness, doesn't she? like a toddler who just made a big-girl poo in the potty instead of her pants. if she wasn't receiving medicare benefits for her hormone replacement drugs and high blood pressure meds, would she still be able to afford her fancy-schmancy art supplies?

i'm all for freedom of speech, but this is not dissent, this is hate speech, pure and simple. their white world has been turned upside down and it might as well be satan in the oval office, eating angels for breakfast and sodomizing girl scouts after a big lunch of bbq ribs and watermelon.

scans of the crowds at these rallies show white faces. lots of them. the only browns seem to be carrying press credentials.

freedom of speech

these were taken at a "9/12" rally, promoted by fox news' glenn beck. i don't think commentary from me is really needed.

now i know

why some people are afraid of clowns.

more proof men rule the world

in 8 states, it is legal for insurance companies to refuse coverage to women who have ever been victims of domestic abuse. statistically they are likely to suffer the same again, so ipso facto, are a bad and unacceptable risk.

i stumbled across this doozy today over at huffpo.

in 1994, then-rep. charles schumer (d-ny), now a a senator, had his staff survey 16 insurance companies. eight would not write health, life or disability policies for women who have been abused. in 1995, the boston globe found that nationwide, allstate, state farm, aetna, metropolitan life, the equitable companies, first colony life, the prudential and the principal financial group had all either canceled or denied coverage to women who'd been beaten. "you're in good hands," indeed.

in 2006, democrats tried to end the practice. sen. patty murray (d-wash.), introduced an amendment that split the health education labor & pensions committee 10-10. the measure failed via the tie. all 10 no votes were republicans, including sen. mike enzi (r-wyoming), a member of the "gang of six" on the finance committee who are currently hashing out a bipartisan bill.

at the time, enzi defended his vote by saying that such regulations could increase the price of insurance and make it out of reach for more people. "if you have no insurance, it doesn't matter what services are mandated by the state."

if your husband beats your face in, it will be your fault that granny's lipitor co-pay costs more. if your husband beats your face in, you should know enough to get out beforehand. if your husband beats your face in, you must have deserved it. if not now, for something you'll probably do. eventually.

explain to me, again, slowly, why universal health care is a horrible concept? why private industry should be trusted with the decisions regarding the health and well-being of our most vulnerable citizens? why actuaries and pencil-pushers decide who warrants what treatments?

puts a whole new spin on how to answer that emergency room intake question: "do you live in a safe environment, dear?"

lady business

women's bodies are solid proof that evolution has a sense of the absurd. so much going on, all the time, and it's all inside. might as well be discussing the humors and the true location of the soul, ffs. (of course, at a certain point in history, men thought women did not have souls. maybe there was no room because of all that lady biz?)

men have that one thing which they discover during infancy, from whence it instantly becomes a source of pleasure and joy. hours, years, of amusement. granted, as they age, and that one thing becomes less cooperative, it may offer a certain level of frustration, but most healthy males can eventually goad it into action, even if that means a little blue pill before you ballroom dance your wife around the kitchen or sit in separate tubs in the sunset. still, it's one thing and you always know what it's doing.

i've kvetched before about my body betraying me. age is a culprit, fer sure. we lose muscle mass each year, and that accelerates after 40. resistance training can be a huge help there. hormonal changes mean fat decides to disperse itself differently than in younger years. decades of what i'm now confident was a very unbalanced diet did extreme damage to my insulin aptitudes. i flipped over my personal food pyramid, weight came off and i have never felt better. after 3 dry weeks, i went off the wagon and my weight loss stalled, but the number remained in a happy zone, and the same for several days.

so, noodle, all these answers, what's the mystery?

last week, i decided to start adding some foods. slowly. not trusting myself around a bounty of berries, i bought pistachios. in-the-shell, so i'd be less likely to hoover them out of the bag. i ate a few ounces. the next day, i weighed 3 pounds more. grrr. impossible to gain 3 pounds of fat overnight, so ok, must be the salt. gallons of water, a good sweat at the gym. next day -- same. 5 days later, the scale has bounced a few ounces either way, but has not descended past that whole and higher number and i want to SCREAM.

the nut explosion was wednesday morning.

friday i started to feel that weird feeling.

by saturday, it was full-blown, with all my lady bits, inside and the ones oh-so visible to men, all swollen, sore and heavy. my abdomen all crampy, bloated and grumpy. wtf? i am on the pill so pms is not really an issue, and this is not *that* time of the month. what is going on in there? why isn't there some kind of diagnostic/prognosticating periscope that i can snake down? with a timeline to let me know, "oh, you will feel absolutely fine in 3 more days and have lost 5 pounds. all is well."

in the meantime i want to stick a whalebone needle in my gut and let out all the ick. the nuts went immediately in the trash. i have eaten nothing new or weird.

i am so pissed.

men wonder why womynz hate their bodies.

shame on who?

william taylor's wife was snooping into his cell phone and found sexy pix of not her. confronted, he admitted having an affair.

they fought.

as penance she is making him wear a sandwich board that says, "i cheated and this is my punishment", at a busy intersection, by a shopping mall, near their home in virginia. all week.

the story has gone global with video of him and his sign all over the net. over at huffpo an on-line poll has 57% of the readers laughing at the story. really? laughter is your response to this?

when a married person wanders off the one-and-only path, something is not quite right at home. just a guess here, but i'm thinking that he's been waking up to a petty, vindictive bitch who has no qualms airing her dirty laundry in major public oh, just might scratch the surface of what drove this guy away? yes, he did a bad thing. this makes it better? is she 6 years old?

but he wins pussy of the year award for a) wanting back in and b) not telling her to go fuck herself over this horrible scheme.

people suck. ahem.

can't make this stuff up

actual quote from a parent in sedalia, missouri, who also happens to be a teacher in the district:

"I don’t think evolution should be associated with our school.”

the marching band had designed and worn shirts with the slogan "brass evolution" and used a version of this well-known image, but at each stage he is holding an instrument. all those well-versed in "intelligent design" went nuts and the school is banning the shirts. the assistant superintendent of schools defended the action because they must "remain neutral on religion."

a donor had offered to pay half the cost of the shirts, but withdrew support upon seeing the risqué and controversial image. the band parents now have to eat the $700 and pony up again for new shirts.

"it’s not like we are saying god is bad,” sophomore band member denyel luke said. “we aren’t promoting evolution." no, heaven forbid science is taken as true when the mystery and power of god is so much more verifiable and likely.

now let's hope they burn the offensive tees in the town square to ward off the devil who no doubt was licking his lips and twitching his forked tail at the thought of the the town collapsing into a monkey-fucking haven of sodom and gomorrah.