Here’s Something Baffling

I am trying to picture this scenario: You’re getting intimate with someone, and you’re all up in your underpants, and then said person decides they’re NOT going to go for it after all (Which, you’d think they’d have known before everyone got unclothed and stuff.) But then they accidentally catch a whiff of your pheromone-laced underdrawers, and then the game’s back on?

What?

SO many questions.

1. So why did everyone take off their clothes if they weren’t already pretty sure they were going there? Did everyone’s clothes accidentally fall off? Does that happen a lot? If it does, can someone let me know? I would not want to be startled if such a thing were to occur.
2. If everyone’s derobing and a decision is made not to go where one thought things were going, what precipitated this mind-change? I would hold that there would have to be a pretty good reason.
3. Would you really want to override that reason with pheromones? Is this a legitimate thing? Like, “Oh no on third thought I don’t want to have intimate relations with… *sniff sniff* well hang ON a minute!”
4. If this is meant to be inhaled/ingested/experienced with clothes ON, well, that’s a different thing. But if it IS meant to be inhaled/ingested/experienced with clothes on, then why is it an underpants dip? Why can’t you just spray it on your jeans or your shirt or something?
5. Once the clothes are off and everyone is in an amorous mood, aren’t there supposed to be actual self-made pheromones at work? You can’t tell me that if everyone’s in their underpants and turned on, the primary thing people will be smelling is this panty spray. People have, you know, natural scents when they’re turned on, yo.

I just… I am having a hard time picturing a scene where a person is within underpants-clad, crotch-sniffing range of me and this pheromone spray would be what it took to seal the deal. And if it WAS, then possibly there are larger issues at hand. I am pretty sure my reaction in such a scenario would be way more along the lines of “Hit the fucking road, asshole.” than “Holy shit, wish I had wet my crotch down with pheromones, this may have given me the edge I needed! Damn my own eyes!”

So I don’t really get it. But hey, here’s an idea. Perhaps this is just some random crap someone thought up to sell to women who are made to feel insecure about their sex appeal and natural body odors…? And the thinking is that one can make that pink and pretty and then capitalize on that pretty pink insecurity and make some money with this worthless product? Just a thought.

Perky Panties (link may be NSFW)

Wednesday Playlist – Facial Hair Edition

This week! Songs about facial hair! Postive, negative, indifferent, it matters not!

My own submission: “Mass Nerder” by the Descendents:

Don’t got no goatee
Don’t got no tattoo
Don’t got no nose ring
Don’t wanna be like you

From @sDonoho


ieincognito – @superbadgirl Not the most musically advanced offering, but the Bugs “Dave Navarro’s Goatee Fucking Sucks” fits the bill #wednesdayplaylist

El_Dickman – @superbadgirl I bet 90% of the Santa Claus songs have some mention of a white beard. :P #wednesdayplaylist

butterflyfish_ @superbadgirl Lizzie says there’s a mustache in Girl All the Bad Guys Want by Bowling for Soup.

H_Wallbanger

communique – @superbadgirl “teenage mustache” by the locust #wednesdayplaylist

_bunny_ @superbadgirl The Girlie Had a Mustache – DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince #wednesdayplaylist

bengoldman - @superbadgirl: “Relax & Ride It” (aka, the mustache ride song, aka the @cvbarnhart theme song) by Alter der Ruine #wednesdayplaylist

cvbarnhart – @bengoldman Dag. Beat me to it.

Lorizs_tweets – @superbadgirl Burning Beard ~ Clutch #wednesdayplaylist

cvbarnhart – @superbadgirl mc chris – Older Crowd #wednesdayplaylist

p_tea – @superbadgirl “The Night Santa Went Crazy” by Weird Al.

stevodarkly – @superbadgirl Bowling for Soup, “Girl All the Bad Guys Want.” Dream girl likes mustaches, singer can’t grow one.

trmink - @superbadgirl Untouchable Face – Ani DiFranco #wednesdayplaylist

cvbarnhart – @superbadgirl Rev. Horton Heat – Devil’s Chasing Me #wednesdayplaylist

cvbarnhart – @superbadgirl Clutch – Burning Beard #wednesdayplaylist

bengoldman – @superbadgirl The Whisker Ticklers – Molestache Mamba #wednesdayplaylist #makinshitup

SOTD – Ditty Bops “Wake Up”

It’s funny, looking for the lyrics to this song online (or a video that wasn’t a truly horrendous amateur cover version. OMG why do people post that shit? I am humiliated on their tone-deaf behalves.) I found that most people entirely missed the point of the song. It’s about checking out, not doing things the way you’re told to – being apart from society. And most people hear the first stanza and apparently think “Oh, what an awesome song about being an asshole extrovert optimist!” Point. Missed.

Anyway, it’s the song of MY day, anyway.

Ditty Bops “Wake Up” (listen at playlist.com)

Wake up and smell the coffee,
Rise and shine,
The early bird gets the worm,
Strike while the iron’s hot,
And whistle while you work

Stay on the trail,
Keep your hands and arms inside the train,
Don’t stray,
Watch your step,
And wipe your feet,
Draw inside the lines

What if you didn’t know where the bad side of town was,
Where would you wander to?
So many places from which to choose
Would you let yourself be?

Don’t cause a scene,
Mind your manners,
Speak only if spoken to,
You know what you are not to do,
Watch and learn

What if you never were short for time?
All meetings cancelled, clocks stopped at nine,
Without alarms the silence beams,
Invited to be

What if you never heard a word they say,
And up were down and night were day?
I bet you’d have a lot more time to play
If you’d let yourself go

Breath deep,
Speak out,
Make up your mind,
Be brave,
Follow your dreams,
Listen to you heart,
Close your eyes,
Make a wish.

What it’s Like to Notice Things

I notice things. I notice lots of things. I would presume that you, also, notice things. Sometimes we will notice the same things, but lots of times, we will not.

I happen to believe that noticing things is a positive trait. It’s protective. If I notice things, I can then process what I’ve noticed, and react to it as I find appropriate. I have come to believe that my noticeometer is set a fuck of a lot slightly higher than most people’s. Whether that’s because I am a Highly Sensitive Person or have an Insecure Attachment Style, I do not know. Nor do I really give a shit, because even though it can be uncomfortable, I have come to accept that this is the way that I am, and I do not find fault with it.*

I notice individual bits of data, and I notice patterns. I am much more observational than participatory, by a factor of about six hundred billion. So when you see me out and about, I am much more likely to be observing/noticing/contemplating than I am to be instigating/participating. In contrast, some of you are more likely to be making shit happen than watching shit happen. That’s cool. Takes all kinds. If you didn’t make shit happen, there’d be little for me to notice, really.

Once I notice things, I have a tendency to think about them, point them out, come to conclusions about them and (sometimes!) even want to discuss them. And to me that’s a natural progression of my way of being.

“Say!” I might say. “Have you observed that X is happening rather more frequently than it used to? What might that mean? Shall we discuss it at some length?” And sometimes people will reply “Why yes! I have noticed that very thing! Let’s discuss it at length, with booze!” And sometimes people will say “Why no! I had not noticed that! But it’s interesting that you did! Let’s discuss it at length and then spend some significant time making out, as I find your heightened powers of observation excruciatingly sexy and would now like to touch your bosoms!”

But sometimes when I point out a thing, whether it is personal or global in nature (or personal with a universal resonance, perhaps) people will reply: “No! I had not noticed that! And how dare YOU notice it? Much less ponder it at length and then point it out! What is WRONG with you? Who notices a thing like that? That’s a thing it’s better to ignore! I feel very uncomfortable now! I prefer you quit noticing it, actually! If you cannot not-notice it, you had damn well better shut up about it! And also, be quiet overall! Your noticing/pointing things out is being perceived by me as whiny and judgmental!”

I must admit, this attitude confounds me.**

I do not see the benefit in not noticing things. Ignoring things does not make sense. Whether or not you act upon a thing is a personal choice, and I won’t ever prescribe/proscribe another person’s actions. But noticing and pondering and discussing, these are not in themselves harmful acts. There is no crime in noticing a thing. There is usually no significant harm in pointing a thing out. “Look, here’s a thing!” is not some kind of subversive hate-speech. You’re free to disagree about the existence of the thing, or the nature of the thing. You’re free to offer evidence that my perception of the thing is inaccurate. And I will almost always be willing to spend time talking about the thing with you. But I resent being told to just plain not notice, and to not speak about what I’ve seen.***

Don’t tell me not to see. Don’t tell me to pretend I don’t see what I have seen. Don’t tell me to not talk about the things I have seen. Noticing and pondering and reacting to things is what I DO. It’s who I AM. It’s my primary trait. And you know what? It’s super-beneficial! For instance: It makes me the person people want to talk to when they have a thing they want to talk about! Because I like to listen! It gives me more things to notice and ponder! I can usually give them some data they had not previously had access to! I can offer alternative ways to think about things! It’s super-fantastic!

It also informs my writing. I like to write about the stuff I have noticed! I make an amalgam of things I have observed, and then I write it down in narrative form! And guess what? It resonates with people because it’s got some truth up in it!

It informs my professional work! I use what I have seen to construct persuasive materials to meet people’s unknown needs! From doing this, I have money to use to pay my mortgage and buy booze so that I can get drunk and stop noticing shit for awhile! This is quite nice!

But mostly— this is who I am. And as such, it’s really frustrating to be told to stop it. I am sorry that I saw something you wished I didn’t see. I am sorry that makes you uncomfortable. My noticing what is happening might make you feel vulnerable, but it’s not a hostile act. In telling me not to notice what’s going on around me, not to think about it and ponder it and wonder about it and talk to you about it, you cannot imagine what it is, exactly, that you’re trying to take from me.

I will not stop seeing things, and making connections between them and thinking about them. And if you tell me to stop and I get angry and tell you to cut it out with the telling me to stop… well, fair warning.

————————————————————————————————–

* You may also observe that sometimes I am so busy noticing one set of things I do not notice anything else at all, and miss a whole slew of stuff happening around me as I am lost in thought. But that’s really only something you’re going to notice if you’re really into noticing things, and if you are, then I assume you know what I am talking about.

**Sometimes I have to admit that I am baffled about the way in which other people do not know a thing. A big, obvious thing that everyone should know, if they’re paying attention. And then I realize, again, that they’re not paying attention in that specific way. And that’s OK. Really. It’s OK. I am not all alone out here in a sea of overwhelming data. Not. It’s fine. Anyway. I am finejustfine do not trouble yourself on my account. It’s cool,  you slack-jawed, unobservant jerk-faced assholes. Oh wait, did that sound judgmental? :-/

***I can agree that there are some things that I will notice that it’s better to keep to myself, and I will assume we all do the same. People’s bad haircuts, or recent spates of binge-drinking, their suddenly ill-fitting pants, or the couple who no longer touches each other with affection but are both suddenly looking a lot at other people—those are things I might notice and yet not publicly remark upon. So much of social lubrication is based in ignoring these things, which have the potential to cause discomfort when pointed out. And I would not knowingly point out a thing that would make someone uncomfortable. Sometimes I do this on accident and once I realize it it makes me want to lay down and die, basically, as I tend to feel other people’s discomfort right on top of my own, and a double layer of someone else being uncomfortable around me because of something I did while I am right in the middle of being uncomfortable around them is pretty much the worst thing I can personally experience. I don’t even like to be in the same room as people who are uncomfortable with each other, much less feel as if I am the cause of someone else’s unease. I feel uncomfortable thinking about the possibility of people feeling uncomfortable at some imaginary future point, actually, and I think I have to go lay down for awhile.

Now listen to this song, it’s nice.

What is there to even debate about online anonymity?

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.  - Oscar Wilde

Ugh. This video is making me want to reach into the screen and throttle someone. Firstly for the way the panel is set up. White male moderator, three white male guests, one non-white male guest. No women.

So their very first unstated message: The internet is a fundamentally male experience—OR—there are no significant differences in the ways that women and men experience the internet. NOPE. WRONG TOTALLY WRONG. Not only are women who are merely known to be women online subject to oddball, oafish behavior from men (and other women) they are also subject to things like being told they should be raped to death when they disagree with people. This recent charming surge of “Tits or GTFO” statements and “make me a sandwich” jokes (Har har HAR, fellas) are employed to derail even the most serious commentary by women. Throw in the experience of female gamers, harassed in-game by all sorts of trolls, and really the experience of any woman anywhere who’s been online for more than 15 minutes*, and we can tell you that it’s different to do everything when you’re a woman, especially be online and EVEN when you’re anonymous and merely known to have girl parts down there. So constructing a panel without a woman’s voice on it (or even two! We are pretty much half of everything, you know!) ignores the experience of half your audience.

The we have the British guy: Who makes remarks about how online anonymity is ruining everything, apparently, and then goes on to make some profoundly ignorant, privileged statements about how of course he means there should be no anonymity - but only over here in the West! Not in those other (Iran, China) countries where they will jail you for speaking your mind and stuff. Because that would never happen here in the civilized West! You can speak your mind around here with no repercussions apparently! And so our responsibility is to reveal who we are! And then he wonders aloud why in the world African-American political bloggers right here in America might fear death threats for airing their views. The exchange between him and Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia on this topic was quite precious actually – with Wales patiently pointing out “This is America, and we have racism here.” Even his opening remark was quite Sarah Palinish, I thought, where he called Wales out for using the term “social mechanism” by going for yucks and saying that he didn’t know what it was, but it sounded very painful. Hardee har har, that’s hilarious!? Got a mild chuckle out of the crowd, but that “I don’t understand your highfalutin ideas and language over there, son.” shtick is incredibly tired. I had not realized the Brits had adopted aggressive ignorance as a debate tactic.

He also claims that Facebook and Twitter are a) non-anonymous and b) because of this, the level of civility on those sites is “much higher.” Better check your facts there, dude. Facebook has its fair share of “anonymous” (non-real-name)  users, and Twitter has tons more. Sure, some people on Twitter choose to use their real names, but many people do not. In addition, I’ve seen plenty of incivility on both sites from people using constructed and “real” identities, and the lack of anonymity on Facebook has led to actual violence and serious repercussions offline for its users, showing they’d have been better off keeping their shit quiet. Where is this magical world this guy waxes poetically about, where people who can look each other in the eye are suddenly very respectful of each other? It’s not my experience that this is the case. Perhaps in a moderated, safe environment people are respectful, but in moderated, safe online environments (where they’re forced into it) people are respectful as well. Safety and civility has much more to do with the way the environment (on or offline) is constructed and maintained, and the people you’re dealing with in the first place, than it does whether you know those people’s “real” names and faces.

Sure, it sucks that people can go around saying hurtful things to me and each other. And the fact that they can do that is part of why I choose to be as anonymous as I can online. But I would also not take that right away from anyone. I prefer not to engage in a lot of communities online because they are not moderated in a way that makes me comfortable, and so I restrict myself from them. That’s OK because it’s my choice. A few years ago, only a handful of people knew me both on and offline. Now a lot of people do. I’ve become comfortable with that, but there have been trade-offs involved in combining the two sides of how I express myself. I am different online because of my offline life, and I different offline because of the things I do online. I’ve mostly made peace with it, but at my own pace, in my own time, at my own discretion. At no point was I thrown in front of everyone I knew and forced to own every single thought I’d ever expressed online. I chose to do that, and have made allowances in both my worlds to allow that to happen. Having a choice to be anonymous was essential to that process. It was crucial in my ever beginning to express myself publicly at all. I would never have begun to share my voice with anyone if I’d had to own it publicly from the outset.

Allowing for online anonymity does not build a perfect world, but it does paint us the picture of a the real world. It allows us to see the ugly and the beautiful in the ways that other human beings really think and feel without their filters. While I choose to spend most of my time in places where people are forced to adhere to some rules and treat me with respect, I will never advocate that every space should be that space. If we don’t allow people to show their true, sometimes ugly, feelings – how will we know what those feelings really are, and what we as a society can do to change them?  If I didn’t read hateful, anti-woman screeds and casual nasty comments all over the place I wouldn’t know that some of my friends have internalized and agree with those exact statements. I probably wouldn’t be as impassioned about women’s causes if I didn’t see the naked misogyny that people display when they have the opportunity. I am sure that people who advocate for other causes feel the same. At least with anonymity you can take an honest pulse. Some of my most telling conversations with people have sprung from “Can you believe so and so said such and such online, and other people agree?” If everyone were forced into totally public online civility, they’d just do a better job hiding their prejudices, and wait for the privacy they needed to express them in a peer group with which they could find social approbation. In other words – dude, at least now we can see what we’re up against.

Our society has rules about places where the right to privacy is almost absolute. We recognize that in some situations, truth cannot happen in the open. When we talk to lawyers, medical doctors, psychiatrists, priests, our society has made allowances with the understanding that privacy is necessary so that we can tell the whole truth and get the help we need. And now the internet has become many people’s only source of information that they can access in privacy and safety. It’s their shrink, their doctor, their priest. It’s a gay teen’s source for information and community. It’s a young girl’s source of birth control and sexual health information. It’s where abused women can find the shelter and assistance they need to flee their situations. It is the meeting hall for every underprivileged and abused group, for all the “others” to band together. It’s where people can go do a normalcy check, when there’s no one in their world that they can trust. In a society that is, for whatever reason, increasingly fragmented and isolating, it can help people find the other people like them. But first they have to be free to admit who they are, or find who they are without repercussions.

Thinking that some people believe this should be taken away to force people into “civility” is quite chilling. It also smacks so much of butt-hurt that it’s laughable. “I want to know who that person is so they can no longer say things that I don’t like!” is simultaneously the cry of the infant and the bully. It says “I can’t debate what you SAID, so I want to debate who you ARE.” It’s the wish of a person who wants to use knowing more about a person in order to defeat their arguments, instead of just, you know, defeating the arguments on their own merit. (Naturally this is only in cases that have not escalated to the point of credible threats of physical violence. But I believe there are channels in place to unmask people for those reasons. And yes, crowdsourcing is a channel.)

If you want to be public online, do so. Throw your name, face, street address out there. Own all your opinions openly, with every audience you encounter. If you have the safety and autonomy and position of personal power from which to do that shit, no one is stopping you. But accept that it’s not safe or pleasant or possible for everyone to do the same. Let everyone choose how much they’re comfortable sharing, and stop trying to force people into a public “civil” mold. You’re shooting for some online utopia that will never, and should never, exist.

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*and I refuse to touch with a bargepole the topic of women who are non-anonymous online while SIMULTANEOUSLY committing the most egregious sin of them all – not giving straight guys they encounter a boner. Boner-provision is, of course, the woman’s primary purpose in any scenario, and failure to provide a boner to any man who is desirous of one is the cause of many a swift and brutal take-down. In other words, interneting with a vagina is sometimes permitted, but interneting while having a vagina and not being “attractive” is a grave offense indeed. Unattractive RIGHT IN THEIR FACES! Holy Jesus, I am covered in flop-sweat just thinking about the boner-shriveling horrors out there for the unwary man.

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Also, I really highly recommend this piece by Kate Harding, who writes about the challenges of women who blog under their real names.

And I also recommend this piece at Jezebel about a (St. Louis) blogger who was fired for her sex blog, which she meant to keep anonymous, but she was accidentally unmasked by a technical glitch, resulting in the loss of both the job AND (temporarily) the blog. Everybody loses.

Here’s an interesting TED talk from moot from 4chan, where he does not specifically outline the case for online anonymity, but one can infer why it’s important by what he does talk about.

Casual Sexism in Action

Saw this in my Facebook feed this morning.

After I saw it, I had to go look Cat Cora up, as I had no idea who she was. Some kind of beauty queen/fashion model/sex worker, I presumed? Someone whose living was made by being “hot?” Someone whose “hotness” was in some way germane to the discussion of their attendance at an event?

But no. She’s a chef. A female chef. This means that instead of talking in any sensible way about her actual accomplishments and the purpose of her appearing at this venue, we get a personal opinion on her “hotness.” Presumably, no one is coming to listen to her talk about food, there will just be a bunch of guys beating off in the audience?

This very casual assumption that it’s OK to talk about the perceived attractiveness of women in every circumstance is blatantly sexist. Women are (in actual fact!) about more than their physical appearance. They have talents and skills and brainz, and all kinds of stuff! Not just Teh Tits!

I would assume that most people would not give a status update like this a passing thought. It’s completely natural in our society to remark upon a woman’s perceived “hotness” as if it is her duty to be hot, and our right to judge that hotness and remark upon it freely. There is no mention here of her actual purpose in showing up, what she will be talking about, her title of “chef”or any link to websites where one can get more information or even frame who this person is. We get only the information that’s most important. This female will give you a boner!

How interesting it would be if women were instead judged on the merits of the tasks they’re actually performing, and this kind of casual, blatant sexist crap set off everyone’s bullshit meter.

SOTD – Fever Ray “Triangle Walks”

Can I come over? I need to rest.

Fever Ray “Triangle Walks”

an apple and a berry plant
comes with a house
on the grass
who is that
to come by my house

stands outside my window
sucking on the berries and
eats us out of house and home
keeping us awake
keeping us awake

can i come over, i need to rest
lay down for a while
disconnect
the night was so long
the day even longer
lay down for a while
recollect

five AM
out again
triangle walks
magpies, i throw sticks at them
they laugh behind my back

getting a feeling
maybe i will dream again
having that feeling
when there’s no one awake
no no one awake

can i come over, i need to rest
lay down for a while
disconnect
the night was so long
the day even longer
lay down for a while
recollect

can i come over, i need to rest
lay down for a while
disconnect
the night was so long
the day even longer
lay down for a while
recollect

Sitting on the porch in St. Louis – Classic sucker move.

I may pick back up with my six hundred and nine part series “Don’t Sit on the Porch, Dude.”

But then again, I may not. I am kind of an enigma, after all.

Teen, 16, shot in chest while on porch in north St. Louis

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

06/11/2010

St. Louis police are investigating a shooting that seriously injured a teenager in the 4200 block of Lee Avenue.

Police say the shooting happened at 9:45 p.m. Thursday as the 16-year-old victim and two friends sat on a porch. Shots were heard and the victim was struck in the chest and leg. Police say he is in serious but stable condition at a hospital.

Officers are looking for a late ’90s model black-and-red Chevrolet Impala.

Between Point A and Point B

So I am on vacation this week. I felt a need to go on vacation, have been feeling it for awhile now, but not any particular desire to go on vacation. Extreme apathy has been more my style lately. But you can’t hang out in extreme apathy too long,  I’ve heard you forget how to breathe in there. So I knew it would be good for me to go, I knew I needed to be doing something, going somewhere, and yet I had no particular desire to do so.

How about some beach?! Sez I. Beach will be good for you! And so I made some plans, and reserved a room, and last Saturday I headed on out to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

From St. Louis, where I live, to Myrtle Beach is about 15 hours, not counting stops, so I thought that was a little much for a one-day drive. Some people I know thought that was a little long for a drive, period. Too much time with my thoughts, apparently. Like I can get away from my thoughts, no matter where I go?

Truth be told I was not looking forward to the drive, due to the aforementioned apathy. But I loaded up my iPod and I made a rule that I could not fast-forward any songs, I had to listen to whatever came up. (Deep, Song-Related Thoughts on the Road are some of my favorite Deep Thoughts of all. There’s something curiously validating about someone feeling something you feel, and feeling it so hard that they wrote a song about it, and other people recognized that this was a real feeling and they produced and promoted and sold that song. That means I am not alone in my feelings, no matter how weird and singular they seem inside my head.)

I started out with The Weepies newest single “I Was Made for Sunny Days” because it’s hopeful, and it makes me sad and happy and leaves me forlorn and optimistic all at once, and I thought that pretty much suited my state of mind. (If you want to hear it, it’s currently streaming at their site, so click the link up there and you can hear it. But I am sure you will not understand. I am sure you will not get why it’s what it is. I could explain it to you another time, if you asked me. But no, you will not understand it, I feel certain. Oh you, you and your not understanding things. The only thing I hate worse is when you do understand things.)

And so down the road I went, listening the The Weepies and Duran Duran and Public Enemy and Franz Ferdinand and Laura Veirs and Combichrist and DICEGRINDER and lord only knows what else. And as I drove I remembered what I thought I’d remember, as I had not really forgotten it, which is how forward motion soothes my soul.

I like to go places. I really like to go. I like to be on the way somewhere. I like to be in motion, aimed at a destination. I just plain like to go. I do not so much like to arrive. I do not like to BE places. You get somewhere, then you have to deal with that place. It’s no longer a potential place, a potential experience, it’s a real thing that you have to comprehend and undertake and deal with. That’s no fun. Going to a place is wonderful, and purposeful and calming. “I am on my way to a place! Look at me go!” That’s fun. Being at a place is frenetic and scary and full of loud noises and brightly-lit signs and full-length mirrors set across from toilets and all other manner of inexplicableness.

I like to have road in front of me, and beautiful scenery that I can’t quite see clearly, since I am driving. I like the sun and the trees and getting excited every single time I cross water, and I like the interaction of passing other cars and going faster than them, and then they pass you and you’re seeing their same stupid bumper sticker again for three hours in a row, and then you’re not because you passed them again, and then they have to stop for gas and VICTORY! You have defeated them!

I love listening to music and singing really loudly because all the lyrics suddenly really mean something – something profound – and I just have to sing along to it, and it’s OK because no one can hear me and it doesn’t matter if  Jim Bob from Kentucky thinks I am making funny faces, I do not even know Jim Bob and don’t give a care what he thinks about the faces I make. Has Jim Bob even heard this song? No, I thought not.

I like the physical act of driving. I love to go fast, and feel in control of my vehicle, and feel it respond the way I want it to and the way the motion of the car drags my body back and forth when I take corners and change lanes. I love having the window open and feeling the wind rush past, but really it’s me rushing past the wind. Driving – it’s so complex and it’s so simple. I push this pedal, I make it GO. Sometimes I think I’d like to rent a race track and just drive in circles for a few hours every day. Vrooom.

And so today when I was walking around this botanical garden/nature preserve thing I thought about the pictures that I most often take when I am in that kind of environment. They’re all paths. All my favorite pictures from all my favorite places, they mostly have paths in them. Maybe everyone likes to take pictures of paths. I don’t know. But I take a lot of them. And that makes sense to me, that fits. I want to look at paths because I want to be on paths. In several senses, I want to be on my way somewhere or I want to dream about being on my way somewhere. I just don’t ever, ever want to arrive.

And so tomorrow morning I will start for home. I really, really want to go. Tonight I am impatient that a night of sleep stands between me and the going. I am afraid that I will not want to arrive, and that when I do I will just want to turn back and head out again. And I will not be able to, I will have to stay. But I guess that will be OK too. I will make up some crap about an inner journey and I will make my peace with it and I will construct a process inside my head that feels like a trip somewhere and I will wait for my next chance to go.

Permanence

So Myrtle Beach. WTF. It kinda sucks! I was all “Beach is Beach, yo. Might as well go to a new place with beach, and experience that, right?” But no! Beach is not all the same! The town surrounding beach is not all the same, either! Let me tell you about it! (Warning: this is not a cheerful post, and it’s not even all that funny. It doesn’t wrap up with a feel-good, upbeat ending or anything.)

Savannah? Prettiest place in the world.

See, for the past few years I have vacationed in/around Savannah, Georgia, either in the city itself, or on Tybee Island. Savannah is the prettiest place in the world. If it weren’t for me not knowing a single soul there, I do believe I’d just move there. It’s lovely. It’s graceful and charming and it’s got a slow-paced, languid quality to it that speaks to me of imaginary times gone by when things just might have been easier to deal with. Seriously. Everything there is gorgeous. I’ve said before it’s the kind of beautiful you can’t even photograph, because it’s collective. It’s just beautiful thing after beautiful thing and you’re in the middle of all this enchantment and you can’t even capture it without being there. Old, perfectly restored homes, exquisite gardens and public parks, gigantic old live oaks dripping with Spanish Moss, cobblestone streets, hidden little corners and shops, magical, sleepy things to find everywhere. Tybee is also small, pretty and old fashioned.

Myrtle Beach is none of that.

Driving into town, one is inundated with signage. All the tacky, peeling indicators of impermanence. Fast food, discount stores, designer outlets, big box madness, all the awful, temporary things that make up our world right now. Flashing traffic lights, decaying billboards, nudie bars. When you get into the main part of town, “Ocean Boulevard,” you’re in the middle of a disaster of tacky surf shops, ice cream parlors, miniature golf, go-kart racing, stands selling everything from air-brushed t shirts to tattoos and cheap jewelry. Everything you think you want for five minutes, and discard easily five minutes later.

The buildings are huge and towering, 18 floors and up, each one studded with tiny jutting balconies at odder and odder angles, so that every room can boast an “ocean view” (you just have to crane your neck a bit.) You know none of these buildings were here forty years ago, and none of them will be here forty years hence. The people in this place are pretty much what you’d expect, too. It’s easy to see that this is probably a popular spring break destination, and there are plenty of spring-break types hanging around. There are families too, but there are a lot of young people. Sorry while I whack you with my cane here, but I am not a fan of young people in troupes. They’re loud and erratic and they tend to posture and flail about and altogether they can go sit in the basement with the kids until they know how to act right in public.

So my hotel room (Actually, quite nice. With ocean view!) had a small kitchenette, and I determined to go and get some bottled water/other drinks to take out on the beach with me. I made a trip to the mall (all the same things you can get in St. Louis! Only now you also get to transport them 1000 miles home!) and on the way back the only place I saw to stop and get snacks/drinks was… Wal-mart. Now, being a card-carrying progressive liberal pro-union, anti-waste feminist, I have not shopped in a Wal-mart in probably 15 years. Back when I was in college I went to the one in my town, because that was the only place to go, really. But since then, I’ve avoided them. But this time, I was hot and tired and I didn’t want to look for another place, so I went in. And you know, I realize this will sound very dramatic, but inside that store, I saw everything that’s wrong with our society. All in one tidy little big-box hellhole. Honestly. First of all, it’s clearly set up not for the comfort of patrons or workers, but to maximize profits. It was hot. The A/C was at a barely-tolerable level, and I was just walking around. I can’t imagine having to work all day in that place, as the air did not seem to move. Also, the light? It was gray. I do not know how they managed to make gray artificial light, but  they did somehow. Presumably they’d found some kind of hideous, gray light bulbs, designed to save $.03 per bulb, per year! Increasing shareholder value! And I felt like that awful gray light was leeching the will to live out of my damn soul. So it was hot and stagnant, with evil gray light that cast a deathly pall on everything. And dirty? It was awful, spills on the ground that no one had cleaned up, things flung everywhere in the aisles. The signage was awful, it made no sense, I could not find things. People were going up and down the aisles randomly, so the whole place was a traffic jam. They had some weedy, dirty looking produce, but the main action was in the pre-packaged convenience foods. There, there were cases of crap ripped open, plastic packaging everywhere, carts piled with high-fructose death and destruction. And I looked around at all these people randomly grabbing at this crap with their dirty, mewling children, and I realized just how far out of the mainstream I am.

The other day I was talking to a friend about American attitudes, and how if you took a snapshot of the country’s views, mine (and his) would not be represented. That even though we believe our own liberal ideals are where the country needs to go, that is nowhere near where the majority of the country actually is. And that’s what I saw so clearly at this Wal-mart from hell. That I live a rarefied, organic-produce kind of life. That I have the money and the spare time and the personal interest in leading a very different type of life than most people. That the things that concern me do not concern them. That they’re not worried about high-fructose corn syrup and over-packaged, over-processed food. They don’t care that they’re spending WAY LESS MONEY! to get WAY INFERIOR, DISPOSABLE PRODUCTS! They are fulfilling their needs in the way that’s been presented to them to do so. And it’s cheap. Jesus, I checked out with two big bags of (for me) snacky, crappy food, and it was less than $25. When I shop at home, I buy $4 loaves of bread and $6 organic preserves and $5 organic butter and $6 organic milk. It’s not enough that I have the free-range eggs, or the organic eggs, I have to have the free-range, organic eggs. And they do not come cheap. (And even then I worry that they come in plastic packaging. And my milk is organic, but it’s not in glass bottles, and really, should be I be spending more to get milk in glass? Am I Doing It Wrong?) So typically, breakfast for the week costs me $30. And I know that sounds like an assholish thing to say, and I understand the privilege I have in being able to live my life that way. Honestly I do. But I really had forgotten that the vast majority of people have no such interests and concerns. They want to get some food in their stomachs, and their kids’ stomachs, and they want things for the kids to play with, to shut them up (I agree, they should be shut up!) and they don’t care that those things are going to break by the time they get to the car.

Bizarre, baby-pageant style Paula Deen.

And to top it all off, I am standing there, sweltering, in the gray light, waiting to check out, and I am next to the magazine rack. And on sale are two “lifestyle” magazines, meant to be aspirational for the common person, I think. And they were “O” magazine, and “Cooking with Paula Deen.” And you know what, Oprah and Paula? I am sorry, but you do not look like that. Paula’s pic was a variation on this one from last year (couldn’t find the actual current cover) and Oprah’s featured her laying in a hammock. Analyzing the way that Oprah’s leg and hip intersected, it was pretty clear that some serious Photoshop chicanery had occurred. And gosh-bless, Paula, but no one’s skin looks like this. And this is not even mentioning the other awful “Ten Worst Beach Bods!” and “What does he really think about your skin tone?!” bullshit “women’s” magazines. This is just… non-reality here. Aspirational non-reality. Maybe I, too, can buy enough plastic products so that one day I can look like someone on the cover of a magazine! Except, the people on the covers of magazines do not look like the people on the covers of magazines.

Actual Paula Deen. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with the actual Paula Deen.

And so I checked out. (the checker was wearing medical gloves so that she did not have to touch the products she was ringing out.) And I drove back to the hotel past all the signage (Fine Art Gallery! Giant Clearance Sale!; Live! Nude! Girls! at Club Toxic!; REAL Myrtle Beach Discount Souvenirs!; Exotic Shells and Fireworks!; Keepsake T-Shirts Sold Here!) and I felt like the world was just one giant, overflowing trash can of temporary, plastic, hideous shit. And that no one sees it but me. And that, try as I might, I am also embedded in this process, I take part in it. I support it.

And so, Myrtle Beach? Not for me. The beach itself was lovely, it was wonderful to get sun and be in the ocean. But the environs were not conducive to a healthy state of mind for me. St. Louis has issues aplenty, and the neighborhood where I live has many. Blowing garbage and flying bullets being chief among them. But at least the homes around here have been standing for 100 years, and there is some sense of history, and things that are restored instead of being thrown away.

And so now I go back to my privileged, rarefied life, and I don’t know what it all means, or if it even means anything, really.

Friday Five – Five Favorite Things About the City in Which You Live

Post-vacation doldrums having set in, I wanted a reminder why I live where I live, and why it’s a fabulous place to be.

• superbadgirl – Alright sleepyheads! Let’s have a #fridayfive. What are your five favorite things about the city you live in? (presuming StL for most of us)
• superbadgirl – my friends are here, the varied neighborhoods/architecture, the changing seasons, we’re centrally located,”small city” feeling. #fridayfive
• narcise – Cherokee Street, Amazing architecture, Accessibility of the arts, Surprisingly sophisticated food culture, City Museum!
• justwannawrite @superbadgirl And so many more. Food, music, art, people…
• getoffmylawn – @superbadgirl The weather, cost of living, architecture, over abundance of trees, all my stuff is there #fridayfive
• violentecstasy – City Museum, thunderstorms, @getoffmylawn , affordable housing/rent, proximity to awesome camping #fridayfive
• thatcesareguy – @superbadgirl Worlds Fair Donuts, Gooey Louie’s, Gioia’s Deli, Volpi’s Salumeria, & our “mini-Chinatown”. Oh, & family, I guess. #fridayfive
• El_Dickman – @superbadgirl Cost of living, great natural settings close by, great Yoga, diversity of restaurants, quality friends
• cbellers – @superbadgirl Parks, people who give a shit, cheap rent, good architecture, variety of stuff to do #fridayfive
• laurabean – #fridayfive I know where stuff is, real estate prices, family & friends, bob cassily’s stuff, spot of blue in the Midwest/biblebelt.
• UnclePilot – @superbadgirl Great bars, great friends, most of my family is here, Zombie Squad… #fridayfive
• UnclePilot – @superbadgirl But, most importantly, my job is here! #fridayfive
• avandonsel - @superbadgirl Beautiful parks, a surprising variety of things to see & do, neighborhood bars, affordability, great friends & acquaintances.
• Lorizs_tweets - So many wonderful friends, cost of living, City Museum, Zoo (free!), good variety of non chain bars and restaurants. #fridayfive
• Joule - My house, friends, TG park, diy culture, its small enough to know people but big enough to be interesting. #fridayfive
• soupy – @superbadgirl free stuff to do, cigs are cheaper, bars stay open later, family and friends. #fridayfive
• p_tea – @superbadgirl Mexican restaurants, cheap gas, interesting climate and weather, nearby wilderness, zombie squad #fridayfive
• The_Cyr – @superbadgirl South City, South City, South City, South City, my friends. #FridayFive
• _bunny_ – @superbadgirl My haps Secret Lair©, walking-distance bars (Deacon!), DICEGRINDER, generous UI, solid accomplices. #fridayfive

Ten Years and One Afternoon

I was conversing with a friend recently about how some books need to wait for the right time in your life to be read. You can try to read them any old time, but until you’re ready to pick up what they’re putting down, then you are just not going to, well, pick it up. You have to be in the right place to receive whatever message is there to be had.

Such is the case with Paulo Coehlo’s “Veronika Decides to Die” for me. I remember reading a review of this book in a magazine when it first came out, and thinking “I have to have that book. That book sounds amazing.” And I ordered it right away, and when it came, I started reading it, and then put it away in irritation and confusion. The book came out in 1998 and I have it in hardback, so that means I bought it close to then. ’99 probably, or early 2000. And so, for the next ten years that book sat on my bookshelf. It followed me through two or maybe even three moves. It was a book I always intended to pick up again. And today I did. “I am going to give that book another try.” I thought. And so I started again, and then I devoured it all in one sitting. So, now is apparently the right time for that book, for me.

The synopsis I read at the time talked about a character who decides that her life is meaningless and empty, the world is horrible and she is powerless to change it. So she decides to die. She overdoses on sleeping pills, but wakes up in a mental hospital, where she’s told that she’s done irreversible damage to her heart, and has only five days to live.

And the thought of that story appealed to me at the time, because I was intensely depressed and found most everything totally meaningless and the world totally hateful.*

But when I started reading it back then, the message was not what I wanted it to be. I wanted more darkness and despair. More proof that everything sucked as much as I thought it did. Not a lesson in how to change your life if your life feels empty. And so I abandoned it, because taking responsibility for making my life what I wanted it to be was not a thing I was ready for.

But today that message resonated with me, and I enjoyed someone telling it to me, very much. There is a lot of truth to the main theme of the book, which is that if your life feels meaningless and monotonous and full of restrictions, it’s because you’ve purposely constructed it that way, in order to feel safe. So you have to make a choice – safety and stagnation, or taking risks and feeling alive. And I think that for me every day is different. Today maybe I will take some risks, tomorrow I might curl up in the bottom of my closet with a blanket over my head. But knowing that life itself is not a stagnant, meaningless thing and that sometimes I strip the meaning from my life intentionally, because meaning is scary, is a good reminder.

I particularly loved this passage:

As she was walking down the corridors, lit by the same faint light as in the ward, Veronika realized that it was too late: She could no longer control her fear.

I must get a grip on myself. I’m the kind of person who sticks to any decision she makes, who always sees things through.

It’s true that in her life she had seen many things through to their ultimate consequences, but only unimportant things, like prolonging a quarrel that could easily have been resolved with an apology, or not phoning a man she was in love with simply because she thought the relationship would lead nowhere. She was intransigent about the easy things, as if trying to prove to herself how strong and indifferent she was, when in fact she was just a fragile woman who had never been an outstanding student, never excelled at school sports, and had never succeeded in keeping the peace at home.

She had overcome her minor defects only to be defeated by matters of fundamental importance. She had managed to appear utterly independent when she was, in fact, desperately in need of company. When she entered a room everyone would turn to look at her, but she almost always ended the night alone, in the convent, watching a TV that she hadn’t even bothered to have properly tuned. She gave all her friends the impression that she was a woman to be envied, and she expended most of her energy in trying to behave in accordance with the image she had created of herself.

Because of that she had never had enough energy to be herself, a person who, like everyone else in the world, needed other people in order to be happy. But other people were so difficult. They reacted in unpredictable ways, they surrounded themselves with defensive walls, they behaved just as she did, pretending they didn’t care about anything. When someone more open to life appeared, they either rejected them outright or made them suffer, consigning them to being inferior, ingenuous.

She might have impressed a lot of people with her strength and determination, but where had it left her? In the void. Utterly alone. In Villete. In the anteroom of death.

Veronika’s remorse over her attempted suicide resurfaced, and she firmly pushed it away again.

So anyway, I really enjoyed the book, and it had some good life lessons for me, in the place I am at right now, blah blah blah. And I was looking up when the book was published in order to accurately report just how long I had procrastinated finishing it, and then I saw that it’s been made into a movie, with Sarah Freaking Michelle Gellar as Veronika! And it’s going to be released in 2010 sometime, apparently, and here is the trailer for it!

And I am very excited as it seems to have a lady director! And I think that will add something to it. So now I am very curious to see the movie, and very glad that I finished the book. It was a quick read, just took me ten years and one afternoon.

*If you think that sounds like me now, you’re not quite wrong and you’re not quite right. Now I struggle with feelings like that, but back then I just lived them as pure truths. I realize I often sound very depressed when I write, but honestly, I am not that much. I just think about serious things, and serious things sound… well, depressing to some people. I almost never blog  ”Holy shit my day was amazing and life is the bomb-fucking-diggity!” even though I frequently feel that way, because, well, who the hell wants to read that? Nobody. That’s just some tiresome shit right there.

The Police Have Their Ways

This is weird:

ST. LOUIS: Man is fatally shot
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
06/21/2010

Darvin Love, 31, of the 5700 block of Lillian Avenue, was shot to death early Sunday.

Police said Love was sitting in a vehicle when someone approached and shot him in the chest.

Police said there were no witnesses or suspects.

If there were no witnesses, how do they know someone approached and shot him in the chest? Someone could have shot him from afar, perhaps. Someone could have strolled by and shot him in the chest.

Second most hazardous place to sit (after your front porch) is in your car. Don’t just be sitting in your car for no reason, you are likely to get shot. Move along, people.

Yay Netflix for Wii!

I am so not sorry for giving up my satellite and going to Netflix. I have not missed television at all so far, and have had much more time to focus on watching things I really want to watch and actually spending significant time reading again. I feel like I might even get my calm and my attention span back. I fear to hope, but maybe.

Tonight I watched the most fascinating PBS documentary, the first of three parts. It’s called “This Emotional Life” and the first episode focuses on relationships and why/how they’re important to us. They start at the beginning with attachment and various disorders relating to attachment difficulty, then they move on to discussing Asperger syndrome, bullying and how to prevent it, marriage and why relationships fail and why they succeed. They talk about the importance of friendships, and how we’re affected when we don’t have social ties. I found it totally fascinating and really well done.

They intersperse the various stories with short interviews with celebrities and for some reason I was very touched to hear Chevy Chase talking about how he has three friends. How he misses his wife when she’s not home and calls her just to hear her voice. How he’s struggled with depression. It’s not a good thing, exactly, but a somehow humanizing thing, to hear people we’d think of as successful talk about how they also struggle with these issues.

Anyway! Totally recommend this! Can’t wait to watch the other two in the series and see what they’re all about.

“Is there no way out of the mind?”~Plath

Goth Monkey lately refuses to leave the house without her Sylvia Plath biography and her Moleskine journal.

What You Don’t See

Here’s what I was pondering yesterday. Grief, and the showing of emotion.

Yesterday I had to go to the vet’s office, for the first time since Bruiser died. Going to the place where she died, it made me want to throw up. I knew that I would physically be able to do it, I could make myself open my car door, place both feet on the ground, walk through the door. I had to get Jake’s steroids and heartworm meds for him and Chelsea. It needed to be done, and so I could do it. But I did not want to do it. Emotionally, I did not know quite how I would stand it. Or… I knew that I could stand it, because apparently I can stand just about anything, but I did not want to stand it. And I varied between “I can do this, no probs.” and “I am going to have a total breakdown.” And once I was on my way there, I saw quite quickly that things were veering straight into breakdown land. It was not surprising, as several times I have burst into tears just from passing that exit on the highway, so the idea of actually going into that place, the last place we went together, the place where I had to leave her body when she was dead, the place from which she is never, ever coming home – that idea was just… I don’t know the word for that idea. (I hesitate to use the word “unbearable” anymore, because I don’t think that word means anything. Everything, it turns out, is bearable to some degree. Unless it actually has killed you, you have borne it.)

And so on the way there, knowing what I had to do, I started crying. I cried all the way there, and I cried in the parking lot. And I cried as I walked in, and I cried as I told the ladies at the counter what medications I needed. And I saw Bruiser’s and my favorite vet, and she said hello to me and I just stood there weeping, and also going about my business. I did not let the fact that I was crying stop me from interacting and getting my business done. I just did it while I was also having an obvious emotional response. And I felt really OK about that. I have suffered an intense loss. I am devastated about it, I am sad. I feel pain when I think about it, I feel pain when I have to take part in activities that make me remember it. That pain and grief and loss comes out my eyeballs in the form of tears. They are an expression of my overwhelming sadness. That sadness did not stop me doing what I needed to do. My sadness and tears did not end the world. Presumably, after the girl with the intense sadness was gone, the veterinary staff went about their day as normal. Part of me wanted to feel ashamed and wrong-headed for being so openly, unabashedly sad, and yet I refused to. I did not want anything from them (aside from the meds I was buying.) I wanted no particular comfort or attention. My tears were not a strategy devised to elicit anything from anyone. I wanted only to exist in my own emotional space, having my own feelings, and expressing those in a way that not only came naturally to me, but also was not something I could control. I could have taken medication to make myself not feel those things, and not express those things, but to me that no longer seems like a sensible option – ingesting chemicals to quash my emotions. For whose comfort would I be doing that? For the people who might have to see my grief? I think they can stand it.

So while and after this happened— here’s what I was also pondering. I know that many people I see on a daily basis are also experiencing some intense forms of emotional upset. I mean, I presume they are.  Things happen to people, people get upset about them, that’s the human condition. I don’t know about them, because even though I know other people must be feeling some feelings, I do not see this expressed very often. I don’t know if that’s happening outside my sight range, because I do not search for it in other people’s faces. And honestly, I do not know for sure if it is happening at all. I was wondering, as I stood there weeping at the vet’s office—am I the only person today who will stand here and do this? The only person this week? The only person in the world, ever, to stand here feeling this way and let it leak down my shirtfront? I don’t know. Maybe so. Nobody else I know ever talks about feeling the kind of wild grief that I have been going through. Maybe it’s not considered polite, or maybe it’s considered weak, or maybe nobody else really feels that intensely about things, and my emotional brain is cranked up to eleven. Honestly I have no idea.

All I know is that these emotions are mine, and they are real, and they are not something I am going to pretend not to feel, or squash down or hide away behind a big fake “everything is fine!” smile. Being in touch with my emotions is a gift that I have given myself permission to accept. And I would say that I am sorry if it makes other people uncomfortable, but honestly, I am not.

New Favorite Blog o’ the Moment

Stuff No One Told Me

I like this!

Just finished reading “Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture” by Ariel Levy. I totally think you should read it too! It perfectly captures a lot of my inherent uneasiness with the way that everyone from my friends to total strangers to popular media tell me I (and every other women out there) am supposed to be performing my sexuality. It talks not only about the objectification of women, and how that’s harmful to men AND women, but it also talks about the commodification of sex, and how that hurts everyone. Particularly enjoyed this passage: (bolding mine)

If we were to acknowledge that sexuality is personal and unique, it would become unwieldy. Making sexiness into something simple, quantifiable makes it easier to explain and to market. If you remove the human factor from sex and make it about stuff—big fake boobs, bleached blonde hair, long nails, poles, thongs—then you can sell it. Suddenly, sex requires shopping; you need plastic surgery, peroxide, a manicure, a mall. What is really out of commercial control is that you still can’t bottle attraction.

Anyway, if you’re needing some “Yeah, see that’s what *I* thought!” reinforcement about your decision not to wear a pair of Playboy bunny track pants and get your tits out for Girls Gone Wild, this is the book that will do it for you. And far from rejecting or demonizing healthy sexuality, this book reinforces that women should have sex when and if it brings them pleasure to do so, not for any of the other myriad reasons we’re told or expected to perform sexually.

Loved it! You should read it! Let me know if you want to borrow it!

So here’s the deal

If you come at me with intent to harm and I am armed, and you are directly in my line of sight, a little to the right, and/or a little bit down from me, I will shoot you in your face. If for some reason you approach me and you’re up and to the left, I will miss your face and shoot you in the throat, probably. But all in all, you will still be shot the fuck up.

In other words, I kinda kicked ass at the range today, with my .38 and my 9mm. Better shooting with the 9 than I have done in quite a while, which I will attribute to the calm that comes with familiarity/confidence/no longer giving a fuck.

I also apparently had enough of a “fuck your face” look about me that no one hassled me, despite my having the nerve to go shooting alone. Yay me.