Saturday, March 5

July is Mismatched Torso Month

A dilemma: Who do I know that would benefit most from a mutant stuffed animal?

For thirty-nine dollars, this amazing woman will send your special someone a hand-crafted adorable fuzzy bunny or cuddly bear with three heads or no arms or real bird skulls growing out of its back. Better still, for five dollars, she will send them unattached random bits of the same. You can even sign up for a monthly club. Think of the possibilities! Nothing says "I love you" like six months of dismembered bunny arms packed in leaves. America is truly a glorious nation.

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Friday, March 4

What Orchestral Musicians Talk About During Rehearsal

"I'm getting a muscle."
"A muscle?"
"In my arm. It's weird."
"Um."
"I don't lift weights or anything. It's just from, I dunno, lifting stuff at my job."
"All that heavy sheet music."
"Right. What should I do? How do you get rid of a muscle?"
"Wait, what?"
"I don't want it. My arm's getting all big."
"You don't like muscles?"
"No. Ew."
"Um. Stay in bed. Don't lift things. Masturbate with your other hand."
"What? No, I use both arms!"
"Jesus, really? At the same time?"
"To LIFT THINGS, I mean there are muscles in BOTH MY ARMS, not to.. oh, God, you're terrible."

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Thursday, March 3

Browser Therapy

Dear Internet Explorer,

Why would you give my computer nasty viruses because I wanted to look at lesbian porn? If anything, I would think you would want lesbian porn to be disseminated more efficiently, and you would give me some sort of extra-bandwidth virus with which to more effectively preview the movies on Sapphic Erotica. Instead, I've spent at least three hours between last night and this morning trying to rid you of these hateful Trojan Horse/Browser Hijacker/Nasty Hobbitses which you snuck past several layers of Anti-Virus.

Don't you like lesbian porn, Internet Explorer? You could just tell me, you know. I figured we were good enough friends that we could talk about that kind of thing. I mean, if you'd rather, we could look at straight porn, or bisexual porn, or no porn even. I'm not attached; it was just a whim.

But why didn't you say something rather than just going behind my back and fucking up my computer? I know you know my email address; you could have even just written me a popup. "Alert! Lesbian porn! Error!" That's all I needed, was a little communication. Is it some kind of jealousy thing because I sometimes use Netscape up at school? Can't we all be friends here?

Whatever, Internet Explorer. Either we sit down WITHOUT your little bastard virus friends and talk about this like adults, or Mozilla and I are TOTALLY not hanging out with you anymore. This friendship is just getting way too high-maintenance.

Sincerely,
Jaime.

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Wednesday, March 2

At Least I've Still Got Pretentious Down

I just realized that I've lost the ability to reliably form my own political opinions. This may be because I get a lot of my news from CNN or (even worse) MSNBC, both of which I think are designed to lull you into complacency and indifference until you find yourself gibbering right along with them to Top Celebrity Baby Names! and Five Things to Avoid on a First Date! and Twenty-Two-Pound Lobster Saved! while the apocalypse continues around us unheeded. Yay! Pass the pretzels!

I’ve been thinking about this because my old roommate Seth has just put up a really excellent blog devoted to high-level debate of social and political issues, and I’m sort of afraid of it. I’ve reread his posts examining the economic implications of gentrification and rent control a few times now, vacillating between "SWEET this debate is going to be so cool and informative" and "FUCK why am I dumber than all of my friends" and very much not posting any replies, which is really too bad because it sort of defeats the site’s entire purpose.

What’s happening here? Somewhere along the way I started focusing on Cute Funny Perky while Intelligent Well-Read Opinionated sort of fell off, until suddenly I couldn't focus on homework and I really, really had to know what Hilary Swank wore to the Oscars. My Liberal Arts Feminist Background tells me to blame this on our culture’s subtle encouragement of gendered behavioral norms and silencing of female-identified voices in certain arenas of political discourse*, but actually I think it’s because I’m fucking lazy. Does this happen a lot when you leave the undergrad bubble?

I figure either 1) this post will haunt me until I’m shamed into actually researching economic theory and joining the discussion, or 2) someone else will click through to his site and post first and then I can steal their opinions. Win-win situation, really.

*Edit: I totally made up a bunch of random bullshit here. Can you 'gender' a 'behavioral norm?' Why would you want to? Does it hurt?

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Tuesday, March 1

She Didn't Even Have to Get Me Drunk First

Philadelphia mocks my efforts to hate her. Yesterday she taunted my sulking, freezing, California-bound ass with mountains of the most perfect snow ever, giant fluffy adorable flakes glittering in the streetlights and crunching satisfyingly underfoot. I sneered at her and her silent, windless, Hallmark-card-gorgeous winter night, but she just laid on the charm - more delicately frosted tree branches, more tiny beads of sparkling snow melting against black wool hats, more adorable children in pink and blue parkas. North Philadelphia's first collective haiku.

I ended up falling for it completely and walking thirty blocks home from school down an empty Broad Street just to take it all in. I caught snowflakes on my tongue; I watched my reflections in the glass-mosaic tiles; I smiled like an idiot at anyone I passed. I knew she was doing it on purpose, especially when she walked me past a bar playing one of my favorite songs. By the time I got home, my hands were so numb I could barely turn my key in the gate, and I was singing. It was all too wretchedly perfect for words.

Philadelphia, you little minx, you know I can't resist you when you dress like that. Why do you keep seducing me when you know it will never work between us?

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Sunday, February 27

From One Red-Stater to Another

Dear Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline:

So once word gets around that you're demanding abortion clinics turn over complete medical records for all their late-term and under-sixteen patients, including their complete sexual histories and psychological profiles, it's fairly safe to say that nobody in Kansas will ever get an abortion ever again because they don't want you jacking off in your office over their files.

But why do you want more people to be born in Kansas? Kansas fucking sucks. At least in Nebraska we leave each other alone because we're too busy eating steak and crying about college football. Jesus.

You Kansas Government Yahoos put stickers on your classroom textbooks saying evolution is a THEORY. You put an eighteen-year-old kid in jail for SEVENTEEN YEARS for having sex with another teenage boy, when the most he could have gotten as a heterosexual was FIFTEEN MONTHS. You took THIRTY YEARS to find a serial killer who not only never left Wichita, but was WORKING FOR THE FUCKING CITY GOVERNMENT.

So do you just want to force the fourteen-year-olds to have their unwanted children so that they'll be too helpless and destitute to get the fuck out of Kansas?

You are a giant penis. You probably think 'Rock Chalk Jayhawk' is a really cool slogan. I hope they publish your sexual history on the Internet right next to Paris Hilton's cell phone directory. That'll learn ya.

Love,
Jaime.

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