Delusions of Mediocrity

Your feel-good story of the day for 3/30

From MSNBC...

Mom pimps son to pedophile neighbor for $600

I'm going to reserve comment here, lest I start incorporating such phrases as "mandatory life sentence" and "forced sterilization."

Sex in the News

A charity's accountant in New York admitted stealing almost a quarter of a million dollars from the charity.

To pay a professional dominatrix (not Mistress Matisse).

It probably says something (or other) about our attitudes towards female sexuality, or possibly alternative sexuality, that the tone of the article is very much "she made him do this." She didn't make him steal. She's causing no more heart attacks than if he'd done it to pay off gambling debts. Although, of course, that wouldn't have been an interesting story.

He's being treated by a number of blogs as a weirdo. Well, no, he's a criminal. But she isn't. He could have -- and ought to have -- paid for such services out of his personal funds, or, if he couldn't afford that, not paid at all. No one, even a pro domme, wants customers to steal to pay for their products.

But the media story tells us that any woman who is in control sexually must be grasping and soulless. He's crazy, and she's evil for driving him to it.

Funny, I make my own decisions. I know right from wrong -- and stealing is wrong, even for something I really want. That's what's at issue here. She didn't steal. She didn't ask him to steal. All she did was charge money for providing a service.

Just in case I ever want a job at the Washington Post, I should point out I got perspectives from here (although there's no proof the guy was a Democrat, and he does live in East Meadow), here here, and here.

DelMed and Henry Rollins: a forever kind of love

The Washington Post interviews Henry Rollins, who hopes one day to become a modern-day Mark Twain, someone audiences will enjoy listening to as he speaks his mind on politics, current events, and the human condition. Granted, he'd be a Mark Twain who curses a lot and has a neck that's wider than his head, but if anybody could take on that role in today's world, it would be Hank.

"What makes me mad, now? What do I lose sleep over? Iraq, Katrina, Dubai Ports deals," he said. But he also loathes his own "failures, shortcomings, shallowness, self-interest -- and all that groovy adult (stuff)."

The editors of DelMed saw Henry Rollins perform at the Town Hall in New York City in February, and were amazed that he managed to talk non-stop for nearly two hours straight, covering topics ranging from the Bush presidency to James Frey to a miserable solo voyage across Russia by train to that godawful sound everyone makes just before we vomit. He never stumbled, rarely repeated himself, showed a stunning amount of insight while keeping the audience howling with laughter, and knew his way around a non-sequitur like nobody's business. He is also very short.

Today, DelMed shamelessly kisses the ass of one of our heroes. Bask in our adoration, Mr. Rollins, sir, you've earned it.

Celebrities: not like the rest of us

From yesterday's New York Post...

Tom Cruise continues his descent into madness, embarrassing assholishness

You've got to love the "okay, stop, honey, you're embarrassing me now" on Katie's face.

A money-back guarantee with every marriage certificate

Meet MIM. MIM is a 35 year-old upper class Los Angeles wife and mother, whose blog recounts her daily travails balancing family life and school (but not a full-time job, lucky her) in a way that's supposed to make her readers shake their heads in wonder and murmur "gosh, I just don't know how she does it." MIM's capably written, occasionally amusing yet mostly tedious blog focuses almost entirely on her misadventures with her husband (named "Husband") and two young children (named "Tod-lar" and "In-fant"), with occasional posts describing the hugeness of her brand new home and why she thinks the answer to curing postpartum depression is spending several hundred dollars on a baby stroller. Like most bloggers, Yr. Correspondent included, it's fairly clear that MIM has an agenda, and that agenda is getting picked up for print publication, in the spirit of Wonkette's Ana Marie Cox and Stephanie Klein. Her oppressively spunky "I can take anything as long as I have a cappuccino in one hand and a gold card in the other!" style of writing would fit perfectly in bookshelves between Sophie Kinsella's interminable Shopaholic series and The Devil Wears Prada. You can almost picture the candy-colored book cover, with a cartoon drawing of a stylishly dressed, perfectly in shape MIM stepping off a cable car and into an awaiting taxi, a smiling baby attached to her hip and a handful of bulging shopping bags hanging from one hand, with a slightly askew caricature of the Golden Gate Bridge behind her.

Perhaps marketing is my call in life, as opposed to blogging. But I digress.

Despite my being a mother and also the target readership, I'm not a fan of that "the baby threw up on my Jimmy Choos!" kind of writing, so MIM's blog most likely would have stayed happily under my radar. That is, until MIM wrote a well-meaning but ultimately wrong-headed post in which she states that altering your appearance, i.e. cutting or dyeing your hair, growing a beard, etc, without consulting your spouse and getting his or her okay first is a serious relationship no-no. Further, putting on a significant amount of weight, say, twenty pounds or more, is not just unsafe for your health and emotional well-being, but also unfair to your spouse, as it renders you no longer the person you were when he or she met you. Thus, this makes you guilty of a sort of false advertising, presenting yourself as something you're really not--in this case, someone who's entirely preoccupied with what your spouse thinks of you, constantly exercising and dieting so that you never waver more than five pounds in either direction from how much you weighed when they first decided they wanted to sleep with you.

Happily, weight is not an issue for MIM, who makes a point of mentioning that, despite having two children in less than two years, she weighs in at a slim 125 pounds. But it is for some of the ladies in the psychology class where she first made this revolutionary statement, many of whom, not surprisingly, called horseshit on it. Yet when MIM explained further to her classmates that weight gain is usually a sign of depression and a lack of self-respect, both of which are even more crueler to inflict upon your spouse than a lumpy, potato chip crumb-speckled ass, suddenly they were all nodding in agreement, as were many of MIM's blog readers, the majority of whom fawn over her writing as if each word was a pearl of wisdom falling from the sky like God's own tears.

One of MIM's acolytes is "L." Inspired by MIM's "false advertising" post, "L." goes on to write a depressing account of her own struggle with putting on weight after marriage. Her husband refuses to take her to company functions, and her male friends tell her that she's all but obligated to lose weight, since "...you don`t look anywhere near as good with all this extra weight. It`s natural that this bothers your husband, because it`s really important to guys to have wives who look good." "L."'s current weight? A scale-punishing 155 pounds. Unless she is under five feet tall, she is at best slightly overweight, and probably wears somewhere between a size 12 and a size 14 in clothes, the same size as the average American woman.

I really want to believe that MIM, who, when I complained about her post at Pandagon, told me directly that I should not judge people according to what they write in their blogs1, did not mean to imply that women (and men, really) with weight problems should not just be concerned with their own physical and mental issues, but the fact that their spouses probably don't want to fuck them anymore, and perhaps knowing that can motivate one to get in shape faster. In fact, I'm sure she didn't, because a day or so later she wrote a defensive, mostly self-serving rebuttal of sorts, bringing forth a whole new slew of "Oh, MIM, you're brilliant and only your regular readers understand what you meant, I love you!" ass-kissing2. However, what sticks in the craw from the original post is that use of the phrase "false advertising." This seems to be a somewhat creepy suggestion that the perfect spouse will never divert from the image he or she created that originally attracted his or her partner, whether that means staying the same weight, never cutting more than an inch of hair off, or, if you're a man, growing a beard. Doing so means that you're deceiving your spouse, ruining the image, pulling a rubber mask off to reveal the horrible real you underneath, like a villain in some old Hitchcock film.

The post reminds me in an odd way to the now semi-infamous Men's Health article, written by a woman, that talks about all the secrets we supposedly keep from men. The article ludicrously suggests that grown men don't know that women grow hair on their bodies, and yet, is it really all that far from MIM's post, which seems to suggest that men don't seem to realize that the woman they fall in love with is going to look a little different five, ten, twenty years down the line? She may not necessarily be fatter, but she'll be wrinkled, grayer, less fit, less sexually desirable. But of course, so will he. Yet, while MIM does vaguely suggest that she expects the same sort of obsession with awareness of appearance from her husband, it really seems to be more of a wifely duty to keep oneself young, thin, and fuckable forever, to prove how much you really love him. Of course, it becomes a feminist statement when MIM declares that it's not her husband who wants this, but something she's thought all along, and women who don't agree are really angry at themselves and not interested in a healthy fulfilling relationship with their partners.

Originally found through Pandagon, who found it through I Blame the Patriarchy, and so on and so on and scooby dooby doo..

1. A fair statement, given I'm sure she's not really as shallow and superficial a twit in real life as she comes off in her blog.

2. Reading MIM's blog and its comments brings to mind visions of sitting in a high school cafeteria, watching the most popular girl in school file her nails and brag about her date with the quarterback, while a crowd of pimple-faced Carrie White types sit at her feet adoringly. God, I love the internet.

Interred With Their Bones

I've been thinking about my own mortality. I realize this is a strange pastime for someone who's not yet 30.

Specifically, I've been thinking about what should happen to my remains. I want to be cut up and parceled out, watching House as gotten me thinking it might be nice to be used for research -- although, as I'll get to in a moment, it's not me per se, just my corpse. For once everyone's finished with me, though, I've been looking into "green burial."

Which isn't.

Green burial sounds like a great idea. The trouble is that they still bury you in a remembrance garden or whatever, only under a tree instead of in a concrete vault under a block of stone. The environmental problem with traditional burial, however, isn't granite. It's ptomolatry. We as a culture have decreed that once the rotting organic matter that used to be someone's loved one is put under a patch of dirt, that patch of dirt is barred from any practical use without end forever and ever amen.

Well, shit, I'm useless enough now. At least I should be able to give something back after I'm gone. That's why I want to be sliced up for parts or reverse-engineered or both. And then I want to be returned to nature. I'm only organic material. Right now I may be thinking, feeling organic material, complete with will and agency and personality -- all of which some would attribute to a soul, and I can't prove them wrong -- but at some point I won't think, I won't feel, I'll have no will, I'll have no agency, and I'll have no personality. I will be a collection of organs, a 100%1 accurate (well, almost) model of human anatomy, a bunch of molecules with carbon in. And just as we as a society have a use for organs and for accurate models of human anatomy, nature has a use for molecules with carbon in.

I see no reason to deprive it of them.

Thank heaven for small favors

One more reason to believe in the existence of God...

Scott Stapp, Kid Rock sex video still blocked from release

Perhaps the funniest thing about this article is not the article itself, but the sidebar that allows you to request notification whenever CNN posts news about character actor Ned Beatty, perhaps best known for playing Lex Luthor's sidekick in Superman and getting raped by a hillbilly in Deliverance.  I'm not sure how often CNN posts news about Ned Beatty, but it's nice to know that feature is available.

Language

At the risk of losing whatever liberal cred I may have, I am going to agree with a columnist for NewsMax, specifically Barry Farber¹:

Learn a foreign language before you die.

This is important. Americans have a reputation, not undeserved, for being insular and provincial (I don't think those are the same thing). Don't support the stereotype. Arabic is obviously important, Spanish is important, but the point is to do it. Do it to keep up on the news from a world perspective. Do it to speak to your neighbors. Do it as an act of political protest -- more and more states are enacting English-only provisions. Do it because, in one way or another, it'll help you get laid. I don't care. Learn a foreign language. I cannot stress this enough. Learn a foreign language.

In days to come, you may see refernces to blogs in Italian. My girlfriend got me a set of CDs from an Italian self-study course, and I'm trying to augment that by reading blogs in the language -- Technorati includes Italian among the dozen or so languages it tracks blogs in. I'm hoping that will help me acquire a fluency in Italian. Once that happens, I will be a better person because I'm flent in two languages.

Even though Italian isn't considered a threat to American hegemony. And even though my neighbors don't speak Italian. I think my best bets there would be Arabic or Bengali or Russian. The important thing is that I do it.

Ciao.

¹Actually, aside from his belief that peace is a Commie plot, he doesn't seem too crazy by NewsMax standards.

This just in: feminists ruin sex, eat puppies

I was a terrible science student in high school, but even my feeble memory can recall Newton's Third Law, that of every action having an equal and opposite reaction. Thus, the modern feminist movement has spawned a small but vocal group of women who want the men of the world to know that they're not like the rest of us, if for no other reason than to ensure that they'll still get dates. Because, really, men don't actually like women who stand up for themselves, they just say they do so they'll get laid more often.

Providing a good example as to why navigating the blogosphere is sometimes akin to crossing a snake-infested minefield blindfolded while juggling glass balls filled with nitroglycerine, "Raven" at And Rightly So! posted a grammatically poor, astoundingly self-contradictory rant on how feminists have only themselves to blame for unsatisfactory sex, pornography, and the media's unrealistic view of women's bodies.

"Feminism was supposed to free women from outdated and demeaning gender stereotypes; to empower us as people and put us on a more equal footing with men. Yet now, when women have more education, money, and power than ever before, we seem to have surrendered to the very culture we once viewed as oppressive and sexist. Have we finally transcended sexism and if so, why aren’t men jumping on the same bandwagon?

Okay, that's a pretty good start, "Raven." However, a solid start quickly gives way to a whole lot of "whatchu talkin' bout, Willis?" navelgazing about why feminists make lousy lovers because they care about having the occasional orgasm, with a healthy side order of completely made-up statistics and a mind-blowing lack of awareness of your own body to go with it.

Breast enlargement, vaginal tightening (rejuevenation), labia nip and tucks, pubic hair shaving/waxing (some women actually use stencils to make fancy designs)…butt lifts, vaginal lip scultpuring surgeries…you name it, it can be done. For a relatively small price.

Alas, my health insurance steadfastly refuses to cover pubic hair shaving. Damn patriarchal bastards.

Feminists don’t want women to need men. So much has been written about the mysterious clitoral orgasm that the true, really exquisite and uttery amazing orgasm we CAN experience with a MAN is almost unheard of.

Actually, there's nothing mysterious at all about a clitoral orgasm. You appears to be confusing it for a g-spot orgasm, something that far more books have been written and advice given about, simply because it is factually proven to be more difficult to achieve than a clitoral orgasm. Oh, and it also can be achieved with a female partner, but this passage here clearly shows you're not aware of that...

Lesbian sex sucks- because they cannot replicate the really good sex that only a man and a woman can create. You won’t hear about this in modern magazines though. Or from a feminsist.

Well, you might hear it from a feminsist. A feminist, on the other hand, as well as anybody who's given more than fifteen seconds of thought to how certain things might be done differently than the way they do it, would tell you that entire businesses flourish on selling items that can simulate penetrative sex. Hey, did you know that sometimes heterosexual couples use those items as well, not just to simulate but enhance the experience. Doesn't that just blow your fucking mind?

Another lasting effect of the feminist movement (and this has gotten me into trouble here before) is the expectation upon women to always have an orgasm…when so many do NOT. They FAKE it though. Upwards of 90% of women do this on a regular basis. I would like to say that it is the feminists who do the faking most the time but I have no actual proof of that. I am pretty sure it’s a fact though.

Well, I'm pretty sure it's a fact that Polly-O string cheese is the greatest food ever invented, and that Scott Stapp is the son of Satan, but that doesn't mean it's accurate. I believe, and again, let's keep in mind that "lies, damn lies, and statistics" mindset here, that the actual number of women who admit to faking orgasm is probably somewhere around 40 to 55%. Lack of orgasm can be attributed not just to lack of skill or interest on the male partner's behalf, but to anxiety, depression, various other health issues, side effects of certain medications, and because your body just doesn't feel like having one sometimes.

They have good teachers though: Hollywood movies with the steamy sex scenes, porn, magazine articles. Women are expected to have a good time every time because men know what they are doing right? Who cares if the man has been lied to about his ability and skill. Who cares if every woman he has ever been with FAKED it. It’s a nasty secret that just about every woman will deny til she drops dead. But it is fact and we all know it.

If you can explain yourself a little more clearly and without adding such statements as "it's a fact and you know it" to something that cannot be proven, I'll send you one shiny nickel and a coupon for a free cup of coffee at McDonald's. What is the nasty secret that we'll supposedly take to our graves, that women fake orgasms on occasion? I'm fairly certain most intelligent, emotionally mature men are aware of that, and while they surely hope that it hasn't happened to them, are probably resigned to the fact that it likely has once or twice. Yet, somehow feminists are to blame for both men being bad in bed, and for men not knowing they're bad in bed. How do you figure that women are so concerned with their own pleasure that they fail to tell their partners how to please them? You want to know who cares if every woman a man has been with has faked her orgasm? I'll tell you: not me. That is literally his fucking problem, for being both bad in bed and getting involved with women who refuse to discuss sexual issues. That's not fall-out from the feminist movement, that's residual repression from the Victorian era up until the 1950s, where women were not supposed to acknowledge that they had their own sexual needs, and the clitoral orgasm was indeed just as mysterious as the g-spot.

We are expected to go along with the lies and falshoods or else WE are seen as having a problem. We’re COLD. Something is wrong with US. Bull shit! It’s the big LIE of feminsim. All the porn and slutty ads we see on the TV and in magazines set us up, women, to be failures. It creates confidence problems. It creates realtionships that are depended upon porn as a jump start for sex. The average woman cannot compete with the plastic Barbies of the porn world. The average woman doesn’t look like a bulemia-induced skin and bones super model. And the average woman shouldn’t even try to live up to those (very low) standards.

Okay, now here, after several paragraphs of inane blather, is where you start to make a little sense, "Raven." Granted, noting the media as the reason why so many women have poor self-images isn't exactly a cutting-edge observation. I'd like to know about this "feminsim" you speak of that is responsible for the media perpetrating those images. Someone should really stop that.

My boobs are not huge but they are real; my vagina isn’t a cherry but it’s quite capable to bringing a man to the best orgasm he’s ever had (because I know how to use IT right LOL)

A hint for future posts, "Raven": people tend to take you a little more seriously as a politically-oriented blogger when you don't resort to inserting some reference to how hot you think you are, and inserting tired old chatspeak. Also, thanks for letting me know that you're using your vagina correctly, as I've been using mine to store loose change.

I’m not self centered enough to actually look at my labia and lips and wonder……Is this good enough???

Indeed, because it's so narcissistic to be aware of what your body looks like and how it works. Men love that, it makes them feel so in control of the situation.

I like me as I am. I wouldn’t change me for anyone. And if I’m not good enough for some men, it’s their loss- not mine.

Right on, that's a very feminist statement to end your rant on, "Raven." Maybe not feminsist, but still.

Love is a many splintered thing

From the New York Times, March 12th edition...

Putative humorist Catherine Lloyd Burns takes seventeen paragraphs to describe what a thoughtless, irresponsible twit her husband is, and two sentences to vaguely hint that she might be a demanding, neurotic control freak.  Thus, they're a perfect match.

I wake up to the smell of browning sausages. My sweet husband is at the stove with the cookbook open. I fall in love all over again. Then I look at the bag they came in and do a double take. He didn't buy them from Esposito's. We live in the sausage capital of the world, and my husband may as well have brought back breakfast links from Denny's.

"Adam. Why didn't you buy them at Esposito's?"

"Because I was in the cheese store buying the bread, and they had these, so I thought I'd try them."

"Are they the fennel ones?"

"No. They didn't have the fennel ones."

"Oh no."

"You know what, Cathy?" he says throwing the wooden spoon on the counter. "Do it yourself." He goes into his office to seek refuge.

I know he's right. But on the other hand he did bring home inferior sausage product. We're cooking a sausage ragout. Sausage is the main ingredient, and it's corrupted. I knock on his door and try to apologize.

"I'm sorry, honey. I should have just been thanking you. That was so nice of you to do the shopping. Really. I just don't understand how you could not go to Esposito's. It's right next door to the cheese store. When they didn't even have the fennel ones, why didn't you just think to go next door?"

Let this be a lesson to all of us gals: whenever our partners attempt to help out around the house, make sure to find fault with everything they do.  That way, they eventually won't do anything at all, the housework will be done to our specifications, and we can happily continue to pursue martyrdom.  Everybody wins!