Commentary

491 posts

Arctic Sovereignty or How I Learned to Live with Nuclear-powered Ice Breakers.

In August 2010 Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister, took his yearly tour through the Arctic, spending 5 days visiting various spots. Harper loves the Arctic, it would seem. During his tour he made an announcement about funding for a kick-ass new airport in Churchill, Manitoba, checked out a military operation and had a bit of fun with reporters and an ATV. Harper also had strong words for anyone who wants to fuck around in Canada’s part of the Arctic, saying that Canada’s Arctic sovereignty was “nonnegotiable.”

martime — As you can see, it gets a bit messy in the middle there.

Harper is a Conservative and a huge responsibility of being a genuine Conservative is having reason to spout off very robust nationalist rhetoric (and rhetoric is really all it is as Canada still lacks behind every other nation with a stake in the Arctic in terms of real cash investment, but that’s another story for another day). Arctic sovereignty is an ideal issue for Harper to secure his legacy of nationalism and patriotism; a perspective he is very eager for us all the view him from (still waiting on that book about hockey, though). It allows him to emphasize Canada’s North-ness, something we’ve long been associated with (“Oh, honey look, what lovely tundra they have”), talk tough with other countries for once and spend money on new military toys. Add a flag and that’s patriotic gold right there.

However, there are more reasons Canada is suddenly interested in its Arctic sovereignty. There are delicious petroleum resources up there but the extraction of these resources had previously not been economically viable. As global warming continues it war on industry and the human way of life, it is turning the Arctic into a less icy, more habitable frozen hellhole.

Secondly, there is the question of the Northwest Passage, a passage that in this novice’s humble opinion is totally part of Canadian internal waters. However, two of the world’s biggest international bullies the US and Russia insist that it is an international strait or “transit passage,” meaning they want to be able to pass through it whenever they please without having to consult the Canadian authorities. You see, as the ice cover in the Arctic melts away never to be seen again, the possibility of creating a usable shipping route through the Northwest Passage is getting more and more likely. The Americans and the Russians (and to a certain extent countries like Norway and Denmark) want to be able to use it without having to pay tariffs. Would the Americans be as generous if they had a passage that connected the Atlantic and the Pacific? I think not! Quite simply it appears that those fucking Canucks have something that everybody else wants to use and are prepared to use force to get it. For now though we’re still waiting on those icebreakers Harper said he was going to have built back in 2006. Actually it was degraded to eight shittier kinds of boats and then downgraded to six of those shitty boats. The Russians have icebreakers, you know. Nuclear powered ones.

Graphic: Durham University

Hatorade: It’s Got Electrolytes

Hate. It’s a strong word and one that I use a lot. I hate that I hate as much as I do but I try not to think of how meta that is. We’ve all recently discussed things that we hate on Facebook and things that annoy us in general. Today, I would like to break you off with some things that I hate about: THE WORKPLACE.

Cap’n Crunch – These are the people who love potato chips. Fucking love them. In fact, they love them so much that they insist on savoring them for as long as possible…with their mouths open. How the fuck can you take 3 minutes to eat one chip? Ask Cap’n Crunch and they’ll set you straight.
The Turd Burglar – This is the lady or gentleman who never quite learned that there are ways of determining whether or not somebody is in the bathroom stall. They try really hard to barge into your stall like some kind of crazed moose and then say nothing when they realize that they’ve made a mistake.
Havana Omelet – Speaking of bathrooms, it is my opinion that the turd burglar (or TB) has nothing on the Havana Omelet. This person has no shame and will not hesitate to bust ass in the stall next to you with the power of no less than 1.21 gigawatts of rectal fury. Not everyone can control how their bowel movements work out but maybe this person should try avoiding the ghost chili burger at Carl’s Jr, next time.
Howard Hughes – This is the upstanding individual who is convinced that you can get cancer of the butt by merely looking a surface that hasn’t been rigorously cleaned with a disinfectant wipe. Yes, germs are everywhere and they are coming to eat your children but have you ever considered letting your immune system do its job every once and awhile?
Wolfgang Puck – What’s that you brought for lunch, fella? Is that ‘hot sauerkraut goulash’ Hamburger Helper? Eat it in the fucking break room (or parking lot) because it smells like hot garbage.
Casey Kasem – So you like Nickelback? I don’t. Neither do the other people in a 5-mile radius. Remember when I looked at you as though you were the Toxic Avenger and told you that your music sucks? I wasn’t joking. The first clue would’ve been when I followed my first statement up with the words, “I’m not joking”. There is no accounting for taste and there will also be no accounting for where I hide your body.
Clever Name for Ergonomic Keyboard Users – I have no rational explanation for this one. I just really hate when people use those stupid keyboards.

I could go on for days but I would really like to hear what you guys hate.

– Gooch

Bipolar Disorder Beyond the Headlines

Author’s Note: It has been brought to my attention by an insightful reader that this post could be perceived as presenting psychiatric maxims and advice. I want to be clear for anyone reading this that I have no psychiatric or medical training. This post is written purely from the perspective of a layperson with bipolar disorder and is not intended to diagnose, treat or judge any illness or disorder. I apologize retroactively for any lack of clarity on my part.

In a recent Crasstalk comment thread, I made the mistake of writing the sentence “Catherine Zeta Jones is pretending to be in rehab for bipolar disorder.” Although it was certainly not my intention, my very poor choice of words made it seem that I was flippantly saying that Ms. Jones was faking her illness. Perhaps my comment is even worse considering that I do know much better than to make light (even unintentionally) of serious matters.

In hindsight, I know that I should have clarified my point by writing, “Catherine Zeta Jones’ publicist says that she is in rehab for bipolar disorder.” The point I was trying to make is that for an A-list actor, the stigma of admitting to treatment in a psychiatric facility is far greater than the stigma associated with going to rehab. My theory is that drug addicts – regardless of the severity of their addiction – can always say their behavior was a result of temporary weakness, whereas people with mental illness are often viewed as inherently and irrevocably defective. Chemical imbalances in the brain that must be treated with medication are deemed far worse than chemical imbalances in the body that require medication.

Ms. Jones has been diagnosed with bipolar II disorder, which is markedly different from bipolar I. (Bipolar II is characterized by more lows than highs, and the highs are rarely manic. Bipolar I is characterized by less severe lows and intermittent manic highs.) But I think the media lumps the two together because it’s more “exciting” to potentially have a manic-behaving celebrity, as in the case of Britney Spears’ paparazzi-fueled meltdown and hospitalization. But regardless, I think that arguing over degrees of mental illness is both missing the point and enhancing the stigma. I also think that the media’s tendency to publicly “out” people as being bipolar – even if they are exhibiting clear symptoms of the disorder – is victim-shaming at its worst. (Charlie Sheen comes to mind.)

Not every celebrity can be as open as, say, Carrie Fisher, who publicly talks about taking 8 different meds to manage her bipolar I disorder. I can understand a famous person not wanting to be painted with the mental illness brush. I think Catherine Zeta Jones is to be admired for acknowledging it. Of course, the extenuating circumstances of the personal stress she’s been under have clearly been a factor, but she could have instead chosen to say that she was suffering from exhaustion and face far less public scrutiny.

The brouhaha which my crass comment regarding Ms. Jones created in the comments has made me rethink my own situation. Despite my ebullient friendliness online, in many ways, I am a private person. I didn’t want to offer up as a defense for my remarks the fact that I have bipolar I disorder, because I didn’t want to be perceived as (1) insane, (2) self-hating or (3) unsupportive of other bipolar people, none of which is the case at all. I was merely recognizing the social stigma of the disorder – a stigma so great that it leads to inpatient psychiatric care being euphemistically referred to as rehab, and creates a hierarchy between “good” bipolar (II) and “bad” bipolar (I).

Having dealt with bipolar disorder consistently for eleven years (I was diagnosed a decade earlier) I can tell you that it’s challenging at times, but as long as I’m on top of things, I can consciously forestall circumstances spiraling out of my control. I take only one medication and manage my moods and thoughts quite diligently. Sleep is the best leveler I know of, and I make a concerted effort to keep my body healthy and balanced in all other ways as well. Bipolar disorder does not have to be a dramatic, violent life-interruptor, although mania is often portrayed that way on TV and in movies. It helps to have supportive people in your life; everyone close to me is well aware that I am bipolar, and my family and closest friends don’t judge me for it.

It is my intention to clear up the misunderstanding I created by offering a piece of my personal experience. It is obviously my hope that those reading this will open their minds to the possibility that bipolar disorder – and mental illness in general – is not the death sentence many people have been led to believe. There are varying degrees of the disorder, and I know that I am fortunate to have a milder version of bipolar I. Rather than look at it as a curse, I prefer to look at it the way Jimi Hendrix did: “Manic depression is touching my soul.”

UPDATE: bens made a fantastic — and crucial — comment that deserves to be in the body of this post. He offered some explicit clarification regarding the connection between drug abuse and mental illness that I had completely missed. Here is his comment in its entirety:

Drug addiction is a mental illness. You are mentally ill if you are a drug addict, plain and simple. Not everybody who goes to rehab or goes to a psychiatric facility for “drug addiction” is a drug addict, but for those who are genuine drug addicts there’s no way you can say its not a mental illness.

And then you get to the problem whereby many different mental illnesses mimic symptoms. You could be doing drugs because you’re depressed, have bipolar disorder, have a geniune addiction to drugs, because you’re self medicating anxiety symptoms, etc. There’s a lot of overlap and misdiagnosis.

The first thing anyone will tell a patient seeking help at a rehab is that “you can’t easily put the toothpaste back in the tube.” Its something that doesn’t go away.

For CZJ, she probably went to a dual-diagnosis rehab, to get the appropriate level of care. She’s most likely abusing substances, hence the rehab. Just going to a psych facility not tailored to treat her addiction would only be treating part of the problem.

On Being Bullied

Author’s Note:
I’ve added some links throughout this post to bring a little levity to a serious subject.

There has been much in the news in recent times regarding the increase in bullying in schools. My heart goes out to the children of this generation, because with text messages, Photoshop, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (among many others), the possibilities for being tormented have drastically increased since I was in high school. This is my recollection of being harassed and intimidated in a time before technology made life utterly unbearable for the bullied.

When I was fourteen, I attended a progressive high school in New York City for my freshman year. While I loved the unusual format and variety of the classes, I was something of a social outcast and a hermit. When I did interact, I usually hung out with other socially inept nerds who were also good students. But mostly, I ensconced myself in self-imposed isolation.

Unbeknownst to me, I had a stalker, a girl in my grade who would follow me around and try to make friends with me. My intuition said to avoid her, but I quickly learned that this was not appeasing her at all. Stacey got progressively more aggressive as a result of my ignoring her, to the point where she scrawled “Witch! 666!” all over my hall and gym lockers. She repeatedly tried to take pictures of me undressing in the locker room. I received several late-night phone calls from her where she would whisper in sinister tones that I, the “stuck-up bitch” was going to “get what I deserved.” Things came to a head in gym class, when she hurled a basketball at my stomach with such force that I spent the rest of the day under observation in the nurse’s office.

Fortunately for me, my mother became aware of what was going on. (I was too mortified to tell anyone.) She made an appointment with the Assistant Principal and calmly informed her that she was going to sue the school system if my tormentor was not expelled. My mother’s ire was effective, and Stacey was indeed expelled. I later learned that her entire motivation for trying to get my attention – including her extreme tactics – was because she had an unrequited crush on me. I had been completely clueless that this was even a possibility.

As a result of the trauma I’d endured at my Brooklyn high school, I moved in with my grandparents to their house in Sullivan County (roughly 75 miles north of NYC). For my sophomore year, I enrolled at the local school, which — given the much smaller population — was a combination of junior and senior high school, which encompassed grades 7 through 12. Given the lack of stimulation of the rural area, many of the students entertained themselves with drugs and promiscuous sex. It was tremendous culture shock to be around so many decidedly non-serious students. One of my 10th grade classmates, a charmer named Butch, was eighteen years old at the start of the school year. He would routinely serenade the class by pounding on his desk and singing the chorus of “White Lines”, a cautionary song about cocaine abuse. (Butch had clearly missed the cautionary part.) His disparaging nickname for me was “Goody Two Shoes.”

I befriended my teachers and a couple other nerdy/smart kids in my class, and I thought I was doing fine. In fact, I was doing fine, until I encountered the wrath of a classmate who appropriately shared a name with the killer car in the Stephen King novel. Christine was a pretty and popular but less-than-bright girl who hated me on sight. She scorned my big city background, my large vocabulary, my comparative innocence — I didn’t drink, smoke, do drugs or have sex — and my fondness for the lone Asian kid in our class (who was one of only a handful of minorities in the entire school). In addition, Christine openly mocked my favorite light pink hooded sweatsuit that I wore to gym class. This quickly earned me my second nickname: “The Pink Panther.”

One day, in the soccer field during practice, she kicked the ball and deliberately hit me in the face, resulting in a déjà vu visit to the nurse’s office. The gym teacher chalked it up as an accident, but I knew it definitely hadn’t been one. It wasn’t until Christine pushed me down a flight of stairs that the administrators finally acknowledged there was a problem. (Thankfully, they were stairs with a landing in between floors, so I was bruised but not seriously hurt.)

My grandparents took me out of school, since expelling Christine only solved part of my problems with the school. My teachers helped me out by arranging a home-school program for me to finish out the school year. In the summer, I returned to Brooklyn, and I nearly kissed the ground there when I arrived. The experience taught me that it was far better for me to live in a challenging but intellectually thriving place than to try to retreat to rural isolation. After that point, I was fortunate in that I never had another problem with bullies or mean girls.

I have tremendous compassion and empathy for all the kids who have to deal with unprovoked attacks on a regular basis just to get through the school year. I hope that some of these children are fortunate enough (as I was) to have parents and family members who are advocates and supporters. To any of you who’ve dealt with similar difficult circumstances, I hope that it’s helped you and in some way made you a stronger person. As always, you are welcome to share your experiences and thoughts in the comments.

In closing, the following clip is a beautiful, gently cathartic song designed to raise your self-esteem. (You may be crying by the end of it.)

“How could anyone ever tell you
you were anything less than beautiful?
How could anyone ever tell you
you were less than whole?”

Dispatches from Canada – Election v. 4.0

So politicians are knocking on our igloo doors up here in the Great White North. Canada is in the midst of our fourth federal election in the last six-and-a-half years. In between have also been provincial elections and municipal elections. Some of us are, oh, just slightly tired of elections. Fortunately for me, and now for you lucky people, I’m not one of them.

So how did we get to our fourth election, at a cost of $300+ million per election, in the space of seven years? The fact that the populace up here is sharply divided between four political parties (five if you really must count the Green Party) is a good place to start. As a result, since 2004, no one party has controlled a majority of seats in the House of Commons (our equivalent to the House of Representatives in both the US and Australia). Since the parties can’t just get along, every day brings with it the threat that the opposition parties will gang up and collapse the government by denying it the “confidence” of the House of Commons.

Well last month there was, in the immortal words of cocodeveaux, “a government thingy.” This particular government thingy was an unprecedented one – the House of Commons found the government in contempt of Parliament. The opposition parties (Liberal, New Democratic and Bloc Quebecois) decided that the government had lied to the House about the amount of money it was going to cost to buy our new air force (a planned purchase of sixty F-35s) and how much it was going to cost to build enough jails to hold all the prisoners that were going to be in jail with the new sentencing rules that the government put in place. And yes, it turns out; the government was covering up some pretty serious costs.

In Canada, a finding of contempt of Parliament doubles as a motion of no confidence in the government. This means that once the finding of contempt was made, the government lost the confidence of the House, and off went Canada to election numero quatro (or quatre, if you are of the French persuasion), scheduled for May 2.

Of course, the election campaign has roundly ignored the fact that the government fell because it was lying to us all about how much their big-ticket policies were going to cost. It seems that the public stuck its fingers in its collective ears and started humming to itself. The big story in the first few days of the election was all about the Conservatives chosen bogeyman, the prospect of, horrors, a coalition government. Never mind that a coalition government is absolutely allowed by the constitution, and that every other Westminster-style parliament has at some point been run by a coalition government. Like the Mother-of-Parliaments in the UK at the moment. Can’t have people working together or anything like that.

Since then, two main issues have evolved: the ridiculous bubble-boy campaign that the Prime Minister is running, and support for senior citizens.

Continuing his streak of being rabidly controlling, and shutting down what he can’t control, the Prime Minister took to kicking people who might ask him tough questions out of campaign events. The first one was in London, Ontario. The PM’s staff kicked out a university student for no apparent reason. It later turned out that she was kicked out because she had a picture on her facebook page of her with Michael Ignatieff, the leader of the Liberal Party. The second one didn’t get as much press, but the PM’s staff kicked out an advocate for homeless veterans from a campaign event in Halifax. Homeless veterans. Can’t have their issues brought up to the Prime Minister or anything like that. Conservative staffers denied a third man entry to the same event in London, Ontario as the facebook girl because he had a bumper sticker on his car that said “Don’t blame me, I voted NDP”. Heaven forefend that the PM should have to deal with a little dissent.

The other big issue has been aid for senior citizens. Considering that the country seems to be growing rapidly older, crankier and more obsessed with those damn kids on our lawns, this makes good sense. It hasn’t been very exciting though.

There has also been the occasional ethics issue popping up here and there. For example, the Minister of Industry managed to steer $50 million from a fund devoted to improving infrastructure on the Canada-USA border to his riding (riding is what we call districts). The problem? His riding is a four hour drive (in good traffic) from the nearest border crossing. Whoops. And he did it without following any of the established procedures for allocating that money. Uh, double whoops?

A nice juicy addition is that the Prime Minister hired a fraudster to work in the PMO (the Prime Minister’s Office – basically the equivalent to the President’s political staff). This is someone who has been convicted of fraud not one, not twice but five times. Getting a second chance is good, I commend giving second chances. When you are on your fifth chance, not so much.

That pretty much brings us up to the debates, which were held on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, one in English and one in French, i.e. one for almost all of the country, and one for Quebec. The English debate was pretty much a snoozer, even for someone as politics obsessed as me, and since I don’t speak French, I didn’t bother with the French debate. The big moment in the first debate was when the PM flat out lied to the people about how the constitution works and how the government is chosen. That was a warm, glowy, moment and I hope he’s proud of himself for taking advantage of the ignorance of the average Canadian on that one.

Now we are into the last two-and-a-half weeks of the campaign. This should be when it gets interesting. Canadians who have been hitting the snooze button up until now will probably start paying attention. Stay tuned, boys and girls.

The Nor’Easter

My upper arms ache all the way up through my shoulders. It hurts to sling a pocketbook over my arm. My hips hurt. My lower back hurts to the extent I can’t sit in the same position for more than ten minutes. My thighs? Fuhgettaboutit.

God Bless You, Advil. Because tomorrow, I’m going to do this to myself again.

I don’t look like a fighter. I’m female. I’m fat. My boobs are more suited to Playboy (trust me) than the ring. I’m clumsy—my body currently bearing the scars of a recent bike crack-up. I fall off curbs and down stairs. I have spatial problems and can’t quite remember what is left and what is right. I know jab and cross, through.

I started boxing a few years ago, as a joke. My husband was taking classes, and the instructor was offering a try-it-free session. He wrapped my hands, and I fell in love.

Throwing a punch felt very foreign, and very wrong, at first. I was the kid on the playground who usually got tripped or smacked or tortured. “Stand,” the instructor said, his gold teeth glittering under the fluorescent lights of the gym, “with your left shoulder forward, your knees only as wide as your hips.” Karim said, “bend those knees. Lower your head. Twist your torso. Now hit, baby girl. Hit.”

I threw like a baby girl at first, too, embarrassed that the heavy bag barely trembled, let alone swung, under the laughable non-force of my sad jab-cross combination. I kept at it, even when I was pretty sure the big boys with the barbed wire bicep tattoos at the gym were laughing at the fat girl attempting to become a fighter. “Don’t look at them,” said Karim. “You and me, we’re the only ones who matter here.” He’d put on the punch mitts and have me aim my punches at them, not getting pissed off when I accidentally hit him in the face. “That was a good one, baby girl!”

I didn’t get hit by an instructor until I’d moved on to Church Street Boxing, an old-fashioned boxing gym by the World Trade Center site with actual spittoons placed around the floor so the Golden Gloves contenders had a place to spit their blood after being hit in the mouth. Antonio hit me after I didn’t leap back to action at the sound of the bell, because I was engaged in conversation with a fighter with a nose as flat as the floor about the condition of Farrah Fawcett. “That bell goes, you go,” said Antonio, “or you get smacked.”

This was no girly kickboxing class. Church Street was another universe.

I thought I’d feel uncomfortable there, at Church Street. I have never felt more welcome at a gym in my life. Usually, as a chubby female not known for my grace, I feel like a pigeon among blonde birds of paradise with eating disorders. Not here. This was a land of broken noses, of dreams that had fallen in the ring and gotten right back up, of careers that had collapsed on the ropes and untangled themselves. This was a gym that kept a mop handy to soak up the occasional bloodstain. This was a gym where Golden Gloves contenders threw punches next to people like me attempting to learn the art; where taut 19 year olds readying for the featherweight title trained next to amateurs, like the 76 year old man who said he liked to feel powerful.

The trainers at Church Street coaxed the tiger in me to the surface. You must run, they said. You can’t last a round if you don’t run. So I ran. I put my fears of being humiliated aside, laced up my New Balances, and ran as far as I could. At first it was half a block. Then an entire block. Then two. I’m up to three and half miles now, which is nothing compared to a marathoner, but is a miracle for me. What astonished me is that I wasn’t a laughingstock as I ran down 35th Avenue in Queens, from my place in Jackson Heights to the edge of the Grand Central and back. The occasional truck full of landscapers or electricians would slow down next to me, the elephant lumbering along as the gazelles sprinted past. “Good for you, honey!” I’d get a thumbs up. The men doing maintenance at the housing project by the highway said they wished they had the motivation to run. When I said it wasn’t far, they pointed out a marathon is run one mile at a time. Wise men.

Now I do my rounds on my own back patio. I bought a stand up bag, the type you fill with sand, to beat up several days a week. I named him Karim, in honor of the man who introduced me to boxing.

I put on my t-shirt that says FIGHTING SOLVES EVERYTHING across the back, roll the bag, filled with about 200 pounds of sand and gravel onto the cheap faux grass carpet I bought to cushion it against the concrete, clip my portable Everlast round timer (three minutes on, one off) to the laundry line, crank up the headphones heavy on the gangsta rap, and get to punching.

I gave myself a boxing nickname, drawing on my New England roots and my history of covering snowstorms. The Nor’Easter.

The kids at P.S. 212 next door are fascinated by the Crazy Fat Lady Boxing Show. They were first drawn by the slamming sound of the bag rocking back from my cross, coming down on the concrete. They press up against the wrought-iron fence separating our properties, watching as I work through combinations and grunt with the force of the punch hitting the bag. I took off my headphones fast enough as the timer went off to hear one kid yell to his friends, “she’s got a TIMER!”

The people in my building have gotten used to my odd hobby. Some have had to learn about it the hard way—the building’s super once tapped me on the shoulder to say hi when I was mid-round. I came thisclose to clocking him. My husband knows to get my attention from the far side of the patio. The neighbors who live right above the patio are tickled, often leaning out the window and their pumping their fists. The man who lives next door stopped me in the street and said he couldn’t figure out what those long strips of cloth—my hand wraps—were, until he saw my gloves.

I love it when the sweat pouring from my head splashes against the bag. I love it when a kick ass song by NWA pops up on the headphones and I throw punches like the world is about to end. I love it when I have 20 seconds left in a round and despite my pain, I keep going. I love it when I’m rolling up my wraps at the end of 12 rounds and my shoulders ache like I’ve been battered myself.

Sometimes I beat up my husband. I’ve beaten up my boss. I’ve beaten up my editor and various co-workers. I’ve beaten up former and current friends. I’ve beaten up my mother. I’ve beaten up my father. I’ve beaten up Julie Gallagher, who made my life miserable in second grade. I’ve beaten up ex-boyfriends. I’ve beaten up the economy.

A remarkable thing happens when you’re able to do that. Another boxer at Church Street told me that people who don’t box don’t understand. It’s not about aggression. It’s about being able to leave everything you’re angry at on the floor, letting you be a calmer person.

Intellectually, I know I look like a four-star dork in my workout gear—complete with nerd sweatband!—when I box. I know I probably look somewhat silly, especially when I really get into it and start screaming my way through punches. I know it’s geeky to have the theme from Rocky on my boxing playlist. I know being proud of a strained shoulder and sprained wrist is a little ridiculous.

I don’t feel that way, though. I feel strong, and tall, and powerful. For the first time in my life.

Romance Novel Improv For Beginners

This odd improvisational experiment began as a dialogue in the comments between me and Mothergooch, and has grown into… something else. After you read the beginnings of our improvisational romance novel, feel free to add your own input to the story in the comments. Don’t worry about consistency, just try to stay true to who you perceive the characters to be. We’ll see where — and in how many different directions — it winds up, but this is how it began:

Mothergooch: Sinner or saint, we can never be sure which Salome we are going to get.

Salome Valentine: This sounds like the opening to a deliciously trashy romance novel.

MG: His body was hard — not hard like Milosevic, the Serbian strongman, but hard like the marble on your shower floor, when you fall and bang your knee.

SV: His member was hard: not hard like marble, but hard like he’d taken a fistful of blue pills roughly four hours earlier.

MG: He tore open her blouse like a Publisher’s Clearing House letter in which he and some guy named Steven Bouber from Stockton, California, were potential finalists for the ten-million-dollar prize.

SV: She felt no self-consciousness when he tore open her blouse, because her plastic surgeon had assured her that the implants she recently purchased could withstand a direct fall onto a marble floor, or the hardness of a Serbian strongman.

MG: He awakened her slumbering womanhood with his double tall loin latte. “Starbuck!” she cried.

SV: “No, my name is Santiago,” he replied in an irresistible and nearly incomprehensible accent as he moved her to operatic ululations with his manly thrusts.

MG: Claire felt swept away by this dark stranger, a helpless dust bunny in the roaring cacophony of his gas-powered leaf blower.

SV: Internal explosions like really bad gas – but far more pleasurable – coursed through her body as Santiago played her body like a master playing a cheap violin.

JohnDoeche: Sated like pensioners at a cheap Chinese buffet, they lay and stared into each others’ eyes wondering who would go to the bathroom first.

ChipsRafferty: As Santiago took the cigarette from his lips, its glow was reflected in his gold teeth making him look like an Inca deity.

MG: He gently doubled her entendre like a powerful and mildly awkward simile.

CR: Claire moved closer but Santiago moved away. She slid in closer still, only to find he was just giving up the wet spot.

CR: As they drifted off to a sated slumber, Santiago heard Claire whisper in her last semi-waking moment. It was the name of a long lost lover, or perhaps the man who drove her to despair. It sounded like…. El Goooche. Santiago turned over, disappointed, and ever so gently farted, while thinking, “Man, I gotta lighten up on the Mexican caviar.”

Alluson: Claire, uncomfortable by the growing dampness against her hip, started awake as she imagined the distinct aroma of dead fish eggs. She stared at the soft outline of Santiago’s hairy moob and began to ponder if she had in fact made a grave mistake.

SV: Santiago’s moob was, in fact, a carefully sculpted pectoral muscle, but Claire was too inebriated from orgasms to recognize this fact. Eventually, he knew that she would succumb to his charms, stay with him even without the restraints, and allow him to make sweet love to her again, once the effects of the chloroform wore off.

MomCrocker and DadCrocker + Stereo = Lunacy

Living with Mom and Dad in the Ancestral Family Split-Level was quite an experience, and law school was boggling. When I moved back home after college, I was unprepared for the efforts of my Old People to stay young.

I don’t know if it’s a Scot thing or a Milanese thing, but we all tend to sing when we think we’re alone and are doing a domestic task. Mine tend to come from VH-1’s Top 20, and Mom and Dad tend to Motown, since in 1961 that was the thing.

The central staircase of a split-level separates the living areas by function, which is cool. It also enables one to spy on what’s going on on other levels without being seen.

So, when I came home from work and discovered that my Jamiroquai CD was missing from my car, I was a tad startled to hear it blasting from the stereo in the dining room.

Mom.

She had her friend Pam in the living room and was dusting. There was wine – a huge bottle of Pinot Grigio. She sang “You know this spooky is for real!” and Pam folded up on the sofa in a pile of giggles. I stood there on the stairs to the den with my jaw unhinged as Mom pranced around with a can of Pledge. Canned Heat with lemon freshness. “I threw my caution to the wi-hi-hind! Oh. Hi. I borrowed your CD. Do you want some wine?”

“Mom, I think you’ve had enough for both of us.” The crazy bitch was actually speaking LOLcat.

Finally, I tottered out to the terrace and called my friend Bill. After telling him what was up, I asked if I could move in with him. “My Mom sings ‘Stairway To Heaven’ when she dusts.” he informed me. “You’re better off.”

Then, the next day, I was watching HGTV in the den with the kitty, and Dad was working in the garage with the door open just a bit. It was just enough to hear him yell along with Boston “I closed mah eyes and she slipped away-ayyy-hay! She slipped away-AY-HAY! It’s moar than a feeeeeling (moar than a feeling) when I hear that old song play woo-ooh-ooh-hoo!” The cat cocked an ear in that general direction, then shook his head, like “Christ, make it stop.” My sentiments exactly.

I peeked in, and there he was at his workbench – making a goddam birdhouse, so that the goddam blue jays have a haven from which to dive-bomb our outdoor meals.

“Are both of you batshit?” I asked him.

“Maybe, a little.”

“Great. That looks terrific for me and my future.”

“Heh-heh-heh.”

Don’t get me wrong. If I had boring Old People I’d be bored and more than slightly irritated. I just wish they were a little less musical about it.

And I’m so glad I live 20 minutes away now, with my Cap’n. Though he thinks I’m a bit kooky when he catches me singing Colbie Callait to the cats.

We All Have Pet Peeves

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I’m somewhat of a gadabout. I’m easygoing, good for a laugh down at the Diogenes club, and sometimes, when you keep me from getting too foxed, I will talk about something interesting. Ladies and Gentlemen like me because most petty affronts don’t get to me. I’m not easily offended, I’m not quick to quarrel and generally, odds are pretty good that after a night of drinking and banter with me, you will not be greeted at the door the next morning by my second, laying out the formalities of the duel we will have later in the day.

But, dear lord, I have pet peeves. Certain behaviors just leave me vexed. Oddly, they all, ALL surround the eating of comestibles. Yes, my peeves surround the consumption of various and sundry foodstuffs. Below I list the top 4 pet peeves. I challenge you to explain why I’m just being a beef-witted puttock, or to defend me. Better yet, fill the below posts with your own pet peeves. Tis a noble thing to vent frustrations on the internet.

Now for my food-borne pet peeves:

Chewing gum with your mouth open. Yes, we are all guilty of this, however that does not absolve you of your responsibilities to your fellow passengers on the omnibus, hansom or tramway. Whenever I see someone chewing vocally, I am reminded of cows, lazily chewing their cud upon the rolling hills and dales of the Cotswolds. Be less bovine.

Rakes and rapscallions who start eating their potato chips before they have fully closed their mouths. The mouth becomes an echo-chamber that blasts the sound of your chip-destruction for miles, like a salivaic alpine yodel. I have such a ‘gentleman’ at my local club. Worse yet, he is a slow eater. I am daily serenaded with his chip cacophony symphony for a hour. I have walked out of Gilbert and Sullivan plays for being that long.

People who slurp noodles or soup. Thank God I was in India for the Boxer Rebellion, for I am told the whole of China does this.

People who enjoy victual pleasures too much. Do not serenade me with sounds of gustatory pleasure that rival the noises of a Whitechapel Dollymop. I am not fornicating with my sandwich next to you so please spare me the auditory sensations of you taking Arabian delights from your Turkish delight. That new German pastry may indeed be better than sex, but perhaps you should just lie back and think of cricket. Better yet, pretend that God watches you eat, even though we know he’s too busy watching after the English empire to care what you continentals do.

What are the little things (or big things) that you really can’t stand?

-Baconcat

My Explicit Life – SFW

Sex is my hobby.

Not so much the having of it (lingering Catholic damage and a significant aversion to germs and off-spring killed any chance for promiscuity for me at an early age). But I am fascinated by the vast variety of ways humans have divined to get off. My “research” has taken me to some really interesting places and some really dark places, but all of it has been. . . rewarding.

My special interest is in pornography.

I’ve seen at least a few films from all genres that are not on-their-face disturbing (you know it when you hear about it) or illegal. To list just the kink genres alone would be a post in itself, so I will refrain. Remember Rule 34.

Let’s just say that I’ve done the leg work.

My pornographic life has seen its fair share of internal and external conflict. A common critique I receive (usually screamed at me after too many beers), particularly from my female friends, is that all porn exploits and degrades women; that there is no way the porn industry isn’t damaging the women participating and all women in general. I respect this opinion. I was once even persuaded by that opinion but as I have experienced more and branched out (way out) from the Vivid/Hustler/Playboy worlds of porn and seen some truly amazing (and H-O-T) work being done by smart women who are deeply committed to forwarding a feminist viewpoint in their work, I changed my mind. So, while I still agree that a significant portion of the business remains deeply misogynistic, I think it is an unfair and inaccurate picture of the entire industry.

I started this post thinking that I would make some recommendations about some excellent and incredibly hot work going on that you may not have heard of if your own pornographic life is restricted to X-Tube, pay-per-view, or trolling for whatever free genitals are bumping and grinding their way around the interwebz. But Lux Alptraum and the staff at Fleshbot (link is NSFW) have that covered and I cannot improve upon their work.

So instead I’d like to impart the some of the lessons I’ve learned about real-life sex after 10+ years (the beginning of my pornographic life was, technically speaking, illegal) of watching people have sex on camera.

Even if you are extremely porn-adverse, I think these lessons will translate. They are from the perspective of a straight woman (not on behalf all straight women). While I’d like to think they translate across orientations and genders, I don’t want to make any assumptions.

Nobody looks “cute” with their ankles next to their ears. Even the hottest of porn stars (Bobbi Starr and Junior Stellano – links NSFW) look silly. Sex, even on-camera sex, is not about looking pretty. It’s about having a good time. The best porn, while still porn (meaning that the positions are inventive, acrobatic, and cheated to the camera), is about two people enjoying the shit out of each other. It is not about posing or faking it for the viewing audience. Your sex shouldn’t be either. Regardless of who you are fucking and how “hot” that person is, if they are blowing the top of your head off, they will not care what your thighs, stomach, or sweaty, red face looks like in that particular position (unless they are a total piece of shit). Getting someone off is way more of a turn-on than a perfectly posed and composed body (as if there is such a thing).

Have a loose plan before you dive in. Believe it or not, porn, like any other film, has a script. That script mostly consists of a position-by-position breakdown. There are innumerable benefits to coming up with your own “script” for how exactly you are going to go about turning your partner into boneless puddle of goo. Not only does the anticipation kick the experience up about 100 notches, both of you will also feel more secure and prepared for what is about to come (pun intended). Surprises and spontaneity can be fun but they can also be disconcerting and doing it that way all the time can breed repetition and boredom. It also tends to remove an element of participation from the less spontaneous partner. Planning also helps remove any uncertainty about consent and help insure that no one feels overwhelmed, taken advantage of or for granted.

Talk! Talk about your sex before you have it (the “script”)! Talk about your sex after you have it (see if the “script” was successful)! If it’s your thing, talk about the sex while you are having it! Good porn is extremely communicative. Maybe the actors aren’t exactly using SAT words but questions are asked and answered and the status updates are constant. As a female viewer, that is perhaps the hottest part of the entire viewing experience.

Lastly, an orifice, is an orifice, is an orifice, is an orifice. From magazines, advertisements for bizarre products and services, and my own friends I get the sense that a LOT of people worry about about the appearance of their anuses and vaginas. While I won’t go so far as to say all that shit looks exactly the same (honestly, to me it does. I couldn’t pick my own vagina out of a line-up.) but essentially we are all working with the same stuff. The surprises are few. Also, not to be harsh about porn actors, but they are not the best actor-actors. I’m pretty good at catching nuances in facial expression and in all the porn I’ve watched, from all walks of porn life, I have never seen an actor show even the slightest sign of freaking out at the sight of a particular orifice. All I’ve seen, in all the time I’ve spent in the trenches, is a person who is just happy to be allowed to visit with a particular orifice for a while. So calm down and don’t feel like you HAVE to “bleach” or “rejuvenate” anything in order to join the party.

I hope this was illuminating for a lot of you and not too pedantic for the rest of you perverts (“pervert” is a term of endearment in sexxxy circles. I use it here with the utmost respect and affection.).

If you would like some porn recommendations and do not want to go to Fleshbot, ask away in the comments!