Wednesday, April 30, 2008

best thing I found on the internets today

"Chick Lit isn’t just shoes and weight loss any more than romance is about adverbs and rape." - SB Sarah, Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books.

Marry me, Sarah.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

wicked pouty



This is how I feel.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Have I mentioned lately that I love my house? I love my house.

I love spook, and I love Lizbeth, and I love the Many And Irritating Cats of Disaster.

Also, dudes, I am so sick, and I should really be in bed, so I'm gonna go do that now.

p.s. for your amusement, a recipe for Schadenfreude Pie.

Monday, April 21, 2008

things that grow

I am sunburned and dirty, but perhaps ready to try posting a little more. No, I have not fallen down a hole; no, I have not been eaten by wolves; no, I have not been abducted by aliens--you all know I just disappear for weeks on end sometimes. This has been one of those times.

spook and I have been gardening, or pre-gardening, really--turning over the soil and sprouting seeds for things that have to germinate inside first before you put them in the unforgiving earth, and digging up a whole new bed along the other side of our backyard. For a yard with a pitiful, uneven scratch of grass in it, there sure are a lot of root systems. We will be growing tomatoes and zucchini, spinach, basil, thyme, rosemary, lavender, peas, sweetpeas, phlox, cherry tomatoes, strawberries, and raspberries, as well as taking a stab at corn because we thought it would be hilarious. Well. I should say we'll be attempting to grow these things. I am under no illusions that they will all grow, but I'm trying to remain optimistic.

I'm also having conversations with the kids next door as I diligently but inexpertly prune raspberry canes, weed, etc. We've talked about compost and when/why it's not stinky anymore and vitamins in the soil and how I'm not sure about all the things I'm doing but I'm reading books to learn about them. So far, so good.

Friday, April 04, 2008

"I want more options!" "Don't we all?"

Random dude: "I'm looking for Neil Strauss."
Me: "Oh. The Game." [stands up, brushes dust off pantlegs, heads in direction of book]
RD: "You know it."
Me: "Yep."
RD: "Does it work on you?"
Me: "Lemme see: sad men trying to make a connection with women and sabotaging themselves because they chose manipulation as their opening gambit?" [two beats] "No."
RD: "Come on, you can't lie to a woman, I mean, if she falls for it..."
Me: [rounding on the dude with that smile that's more like showing my teeth] "Let me ask you this: if you lie to a woman and she believes you, who exactly is at fault there?"
RD: "You can go away now."
Me: [customer service smile] "Have a nice afternoon!"

There was a much less amusing story featured in one of our local weeklies about pickup artists (or, as they're apparently called, PUAs--pwahs?--am I the only person who thinks that acronym should be avoided at all costs?) and the pickup scene, which is apparently big in my city. Huh. For the record, I am not against the notion of picking up, or the idea of casual sex. All I ask is that all parties give informed consent, (which, duh, means that you can't lie to each other about what you're looking for out of the experience) and that everybody tries to make sure that everybody else is having a good time. If that seems like an unreasonably stringent standard to you, then don't bother commenting, because we have nothing to say to each other.

(I'm not going to link to the article, because frankly I don't have time or energy to handle the trolls and all the tedious, tedious things I know they'd call me, but if you would like to throw up in your mouth a little, you can find it by googling "pickup artist" along with "worship the cock." Yeah.)

One of the discussions we had at my place about it was about whether the author had a responsibility to frame the discussion a bit more around the guy she was profiling. My opinion on the subject is that while there's a valid critique about whether you want to give this man a lot of airtime, framing the discussion would have been a mistake, because it implies that there's a discussion to be had. There isn't. Not with this guy. Because he fucking hates women. There's no discussion possible with that level of pathology. The guys you want to discuss with, they're the guys who end up in pickup workshops because they'd just like to meet girls. Maybe for a long-term relationship, maybe for sex. I think there's a hole in the culture where we could be talking about the challenges that men face in meeting women, and an article about that and where/whether the pickup wave falls into that would be...interesting.

Based solely on a short trip down the relationship aisle in the bookstore I can tell you--newsflash--that folks looking for love, sex, and romance have no clue how to go about it. Well, there's no shame in that. Our culture, gender roles, and expectations continue to evolve, and they're damn confusing. I long, however, for strategies which are less depressing; for every book about how to have sex with women you met in bars by being an asshole, there's at least one about how to get some guy (apparently, any guy will do,) to marry you. Also by being an asshole. The Mystery Method, meet The Rules. You totally deserve each other.